Warning: If you're addicted to spending ungodly amounts of money in an effort to interrupt enough people into becoming "aware" of your product, service, or idea ' skip this. You ain't gonna like it. I love Mad Men . And The Walking Dead , and The Killing . AMC has created some of the best television of the last two decades. So, when I saw the trailer for their latest " The Pitch " I was pre-sold. Two nights ago, I took the dog for a walk, grabbed a drink,

More and more, it seems like you need a degree in psychology to be an effective marketer online. The idea of turning prospects into buyers of your product or service can be a little overwhelming, and some of the advice out there is downright contradictory. If you're like me, juggling lots of projects at once, you don't have time to sift through it all. Thankfully there are some proven methods that work , and that never change.

I'm delighted to let the world know that the popular blogger and author Chris Garrett has joined Copyblogger Media as Vice President of Educational Content. You may know Chris from his highly respected course Authority Blogger , from his blog ChrisG.com , or from his guest posts here on Copyblogger and other leading marketing sites. Chris is also my partner over at Third Tribe Marketing , and worked with us on the Authority Rules conference.

Here's something you might not know about your audience: They're willing to pay for something that's available for free . Sounds weird, doesn't it? Given the option between paying nothing and paying, let's say, a dollar for the same product, some people voluntarily choose the paid version. Yeah. I know. But it's true. In fact, that's exactly what recently happened to a colleague of mine. He'd been playing around with creating and publishing ebooks on Kindle ,

This week on The Lede ' The Ultimate Conversion Optimization Reading List The Tao of "No" Why We Share Content Online Agile Content Marketing: How to Grow an Audience that Grows Your Business The Perfect Marketing Strategy for Soap, Soda, and Startups The Marketer's Guide to Google Plus Freedom Is Blogging In Your Underwear If you want to grab more useful links through the week? Follow @copyblogger on Twitter .

What if you've got something going for you so remarkable that it virtually guarantees your success? What if you're just not seeing it? Every business needs a remarkable benefit )or USP( in order to stand out from the competition. Identify that unique element, and you'll know exactly what the theme of your content marketing should be, because that will be the big story of your business. The fact is, often that extraordinary element is something you take for granted.

It's been almost two years since I got the email. It was late on a Tuesday night. I was drinking something good and wondering how the rent was going to be paid when it came through ' "Sonia and I want to hire you," Brian Clark wrote. I was not a professional copywriter. I had not spent $100,000 on ad school tuition. I was not well known on the Internet or elsewhere. I may tell the entire story later,

I sometimes hear that we're in a "post-authority" culture. I can see what people mean by it. We're looking at doctors, religious leaders, and )lord knows( politicians with a skeptical eye. The Occupy movement is a sign of a growing refusal to accept things "The way they've always been.

You may not think the apex of cool is a multi-colored scarf. Or a bow-tie. Or both. Unless you're a Whovian , of course. Doctor Who is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running science fiction television show in the world, and as the "most successful" science fiction series of all time )in terms of its overall ratings, DVD and book sales, and iTunes traffic(. The show has earned acclaim for imaginative stories,

Sometimes search engine optimization gets a bad rap because so many people abuse it. That's too bad, because SEO copywriting is a great )and smart( way to drive traffic to your site or blog. It will help you get more visitors through organic search, and when it's done properly, it can even attract links, since your search-optimized content will be compelling, useful, and authoritative.

This week on The Lede ' The Secrets Behind Content With 10,000+ Shares Why LinkedIn Will Outlive Facebook The 9 Most Creative Marketing Uses of Pinterest The Gory Details of a WordPress Blog Hacking Nightmare How to Create Time When You Don't Have Enough David Ogilvy's 7 Tips for Writing Copy That Sells Storytelling Advice from Billy Wilder If you want to grab more useful links )than the seven we highlight here( every week, follow @copyblogger on Twitter .

It's that time again. We're going to be launching Teaching Sells to a brand new group of students. If you haven't done this with us before before, let me tell you what it's all about. Basically, I spend the next four weeks or so writing my little fingers to the bone, giving you a ton of awesome content you can use right now to start creating something epic . Then we tell you a little about our flagship course, Teaching Sells, or as I affectionately call it,

You've heard all the advice about how to be more productive. Stay focused, be motivated, get your exercise, floss twice a day and eat your veggies. We've chimed in with our own thoughts on the habits of highly effective bloggers . Twice, in fact. And the truth is, I've gotten a lot out of productivity advice. If it weren't for David Allen and Tony Schwartz, my life would consist of eating cupcakes and checking Netflix to see if there's a new Phineas & Ferb out.

A couple of weeks ago, our friends at MarketingExperiments had the nifty idea of running a copywriting contest to find the best subject line to promote their upcoming landing page optimization conference , the Optimization Summit 2012. We got 492 comments with your ideas for subject headers . Some were clever, some funny, some serious. Some of them shouted for attention, others delivered a quieter message.

Is your blog a lonely place? Maybe no one is visiting. Or, if they visit, maybe they don't comment. Maybe they don't share your post on social networking sites. Or they don't subscribe to your email list . Or maybe you've got the big problem " you can't convert the traffic you do get into buying customers. Yesterday we talked about creating the kind of content that attracts a loyal audience . But the problem doesn't always lie with your content.

Would you like to become a better writer? Would you like to create content that people will remember, tweet, and plus? How about content that inspires your audience to click, subscribe or buy ? That's the Holy Grail, right? It may sound difficult, but it really isn't. You're about to become a writer that's incredibly persuasive and completely unforgettable. Ready? Let's start with structuring your content so your message becomes irresistible.

This week on The Lede ' The 7 Deadly Sins Of Content Promotion 10 Blogging Lessons from Seth Godin Email )Still( Kills the Social Networking Star The Marketing Organization of the Future How One Man's Passion Created 500,000 Profitable Fans The 2 Most Common Content Strategy Pitfalls Content Marketing Case Study: A 40% Boost in Revenue If you want to grab more useful links )than the seven we highlight here( every week, follow @copyblogger on Twitter .

People in the blogging and online marketing world know Darren Rowse from Problogger . Many, however, don't realize that Problogger is an industry sideline where Darren shares what he learns from his primary business, which is the multimillion dollar web venture Digital Photography School . DPS has 500,000 subscribers, and 5,000,000 monthly site visitors. But Darren started many years ago at the same place we all do " zero. )Problogger, which is still a much smaller site,

It's one of the most frequent questions we get from online publishers: How do I find ideas for all this content that's going to fuel my business? We all face the blank page screen every day. It's not easy. Ze Frank is an artist who illustrates " and overcomes " this creative struggle well. If you're not familiar with him, his stuff can seem quite ' unique. He's one of the best-known and most talented video artists/bloggers/content creators on the web.

Let's say you're a nutrition coach and you need a copywriter. You're scaling up your blog's editorial calendar and you need some help staying on top of all of the great content you want to create. You search online and find websites for two different writers. We'll call them Angela and Betty. Angela's portfolio of topics are health, technology, history, dating, finance, automobiles, skiing, and "other." Betty's portfolio of topics are vegetarian diets,