By Terry Dean

It was 3 years ago.

An associate of mine had a web site which was getting pretty good sales results. It had only one problem. It was ugly...really, really ugly.

So I took it and had a gorgeous site designed out of it and kept the same ad copy on it. Results for the site instantly vanished.

Sales dropped to less than half of what they were before. Ugly worked better!

This bothered me for a long time. Why would the ugliest site you could imagine outpull a beautiful site with the same ad copy?

Does this mean we should only use ugly sites if we want to make money online?

Fast forward over a year in time.

Euekka...I finally found the problem.

Yes, it took me over 12 months before my lightning fast mind figured out what happened. Sometimes when it is your own business, you just can't see the forest for the trees.

It wasn't the nice design that was the problem.

The problem was simply that the nicer looking site took some of the emphasis off the headline of the sales letter.

Sure, the sales letter was still there. The headline was still there. It just wasn't the first thing you noticed when the page loaded.

BIG Mistake!

The headline of your page determines whether your visitor reads ANY of your page or not. If it doesn't stop them in their tracks, then off they go to somewhere else.

The headline of your offer can often equal 90% or more of the results you receive. To pull emphasis away from it...for any reason...will always be a mistake.

About half of the web sites people pay me to review for them don't even include a real headline. They just say something silly like "Welcome to XYZ..."

What a waste. With an opener like that, you just wasted 90% of your visitors. You could have spent $2,000 on advertising for your site.

You'll only get $200 of value out of it!

Look at your current marketing materials. Do your headlines reach out, grab your prospects, and force them to begin reading the copy?

If they don't, then go back to the drawing board.

You should be using powerful headlines on:

* Every Page of Your Web Site
* Classified Ads
* Solo Ads
* Banners
* Signature Files
* Article Titles
* Emails

If your web site or email has long copy, then you need to have headlines all throughout it. In case someone falls out of the copy, these are used to pull them right back in.

Here's the quickest and easiest way to create results producing headlines every time you try?

Swipe them.

OK, I'm not talking about literally copying other people's headlines word for word. That's plagiarism.

What you should do is use other headlines to generate ideas for your own. Use them as a
starting point to build your own.

I've spent the last five years of my business career collecting all the best sales letters you can find. My files include letters by Ted Nicholas, Gary Halbert, Jay Abraham, Brian
Keith Voiles, and more.

I even went out of my way to BUY sales letters. eBay was searched for compilations of letters. Product after product were purchased for letter samples. I've done everything I could to build a useful swipe file.

One of my favorite resources I just purchased recently. It's an ebook called, "Great Headlines Instantly" by Robert Boduch. I have a copy of it printed out and inside of my desk for quick reference. It has hundreds of headlines, templates, and more.

Whenever a new headline is needed, I simply pull out these manuals and search them. I read each headline and take notes as ideas pop into my head about how they could be used successfully in my copy.

When an article title is needed, out come the books. When a new email offer is sent out, here come the books.

Go to any good copy and ask them about how many swipe files they have? There will be a direct connection between the size of their files, how long they've been in business, and how successful they are.

Very little is actually created from scratch. The majority of sales copy is studied and reused in one fashion or another.

It doesn't take a great imagination to come up with good headlines. It simply takes practice, samples, and a little bit of work.

Don't you think that $2,000 in ad expenses should be worth $2,000...not $200?