More Good Questions: Craigslist, Copywriting and Copyright

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(Photo Credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)

Thanks to every one who has submitted good questions the last few days - and at this point, I have to sort of selectively post the ones that seem to be most univerally applicable to everyone who is reading ( seems a lot of people are arriving via Craigslist keywords and submitting CL questions, which is sort of interesting considering that is only a VERY small part of what I do -  and not sure I am the best authority to answer a lot of them- but I appreciate the submissions anyway..:-)

On Copyright ( or possible infringement thereof for Splashcast videos) received this yesterday:

I read your posts about splash , however, my concern would be with
copywritten work(or with what people perceive to be so.) I see where you
have stated "searching public media sources ( Like You Tube for example)
for multimedia tagged with your keywords." I have been reading your posts
and have come to the conclusion that you wear a white hat with black socks
and are an aggressive marketer. As someone just starting out with very
limited money the last thing I would want is to make a great splash with
culled video from people who put tons of time into their work contacting me
because they feel their work is theirs alone.So, how do you avoid
confrontation with angry parties, just  take video from sites that are
explicitly regarded as being in the public domain?

My Response ( Albeit maybe a self serving rationalization, below)

Hi there -

You tube allows anyone who uploads video to preclude the video from being shared by stripping out theembed code option - Splashcast will aggregate and collect the videos that
are available to be shared from these sources.  Of course - you are right, there is the potential for someone to be unhappy with this - ( although you have to remember there are all kinds of very nebulous copyright sorts of issues that run top down from search engines like Google, all the way down to publishers like you and I) and if someone sent me an email saying - hey, you are using my video without permission - I would take it down!

( remember - using spashcast - you can simply remove the video from the appropriate channel with one simple click without screwing up the whole show so to speak)

It gets a little bit "iffier" when you are using redirects and text branding overlays ( my recent post a few minutes ago) but I have never had a problem - although to be fair - if someone was branding my videos with their site and redirecting to an affiliate offer, I might ask them to stop…:-)  It just depends I guess - my posts for example, through RSS - are found on many different sites that "pull" my content and use it for their own otherwise content ( less) sites - from which they monetize with ads and such.  Article directories like Ezinearticles.com - publish articles for you - and allow others to re-purpose my/your/our content similiarly - ( keeping attribution intact) etc - Ezinearticles founders, far from being an altruistic source (although a great RESOURCE) are making a FORTUNE with google ads on their site(s) on the back of these articles.  ( etc)

No simple answers - I feel I am honest - and if someone pointed out that I was hurting their efforts in some way, I would most likely just stop whatever it was that made them feel so.

2) And on Craigslist - I will paraphrase here, because there have been several.  " How do your write a good CL Ad?"

Honestly, this is the reason that so many people will NEVER make money on their CL ads - they dont' care enough about the copy to make it good.  You can buy the very best autoposter  in the world and make money on sheer dumb luck, because enough eyeballs will see your stuff that it would almost be harder to NOT make money, than it would to stumble into a few bucks.  However, you aren't going to do REAL well, or for any appreciable length of time, unless you can write good copy.  So learn it.  COPY it!  You need a good headline.  And some decent body text - that is really it.  One of my most successful ads for credit repair - which I pulled off a few weeks back ( and posted it here if you want to RIP IT OFF completely) is  very simply my having COPIED the very famous ( and immensely successful)

" They Laughed at me when……..Until I,……"

They laughed at me when I sat down at the piano, until i started to play.

They laughed at me when I started a new network marketing career, until I pulled up in a fire red brand spanking new ferrari

They laughed at me when I told them my Name was Michael Vick, until I pulled out my prison ID card.

You get the idea.  I only thought of it to use a month and a half ago while driving to work and listening to a Rosetta Stone Language Learning CD offer on the radio - and they are a pretty big business…..And they test, and tweak and invest big bucks in their national ads campaigns, and low and behold, with all of the creative genius they could create or muster with a big budget - they just lifted the exact same thing.

They laughed at me when I told them I wanted to learn french, until they heard me order the wine ( bread - whatever, I forget..:-)

A sentence or two later -

If they thought my french was impressive, then wait until they hear my Spanish.  

Same thing - the old " if….then" propositon.

Here is an Example -

If it's good enough for Rosetta stone to use on their 5 million dollar ad campaign, then it's good enough for you to use for your knock off viagra pills on Craigslist.  Capiche?

Anyway - this is the central part of any success I may have had, or will hopefully have in the future - all succesful direct response marketing can be traced back to good, compelling copy .  Whenever I get lazy, my results ( or lack of them) show.  Some of the best ads that I have personally run, are very site, city specific on CL - when I was trolling for consulting work a few months ago during baseball season - I advertised fairly heavily out in San Francisco.  So - my ads were very targetted to san fran - and baseball - and controversy - and generated more potential leads than I could handle.  And it was something to the effect of - "does your small business need a little extra juice?  Give me 15 minutes and I'll give you a minimum of 3 ideas you can use today to make more money.  And I won't give you a shot in the ass either"  Or something to that effect - a play on the Barry Bonds steroid thing - and I got tons of emails, a lot of them angry and kind of silly of course, but made some great contacts, a few friends and some reasonably easy money as a result.  I had tried other ads in the same market that were boring and standard fare sort of stuff with a negligible response.  In the end - I just decided to be myself - and that worked far better even if annoying some people. 

Anyway - that would be my best advice - spend an extra few minutes and make your copy not only stand out - but stand alone.  Go out there on the frothy edge a little bit in what you write, and how you make your offer - not only will you have more fun, you will get a FAR better response rate - even if you have to filter out the few knuckleheads to take it all a wee bit too seriously. 

Good luck!

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