James Webb Young dropped out of school and started working for a book publisher. He was 12 years old.

By the time he turned 22, he was advertising manager. In 1912, he joined the prestigious advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. And he quickly became known as an “idea man.”

In 1917, Young became vice president of the agency. In 1919, he wrote one of his most famous ads. It was for the deodorant Odorono, and ran in the Ladies’ Home Journal. At the time, women found any mention of underarm odor to be in bad taste. Cleverly avoiding the word “armpit,” his headline grabbed attention with “Within the Curve of a Woman’s Arm.” But then readers were hit with this: “Persons troubled with perspiration odor seldom can detect it themselves.” Outraged, more than 200 women canceled their subscriptions to the magazine. Despite the controversy, sales of Odorono went up 112 percent.

Young believed the secret to coming up with great ideas was to use a method similar to the one Henry Ford used to produce cars. And in 1940 — at the height of his career as an advertising legend — he laid out his five-step method in a small book titled A Technique for Producing Ideas.

For marketers, it’s a secret so powerful that mastering it can mean the difference between success and failure. Consistently come up with ordinary ideas and you’ll make an ordinary income. If you work for somebody else, you’ll be easy to replace. If you’re a freelancer, you may starve. Consistently come up with great ideas and everyone will want you to work for them.

As motivational author Robert Collier once said, “A single idea, the sudden flash of a thought may be worth a million dollars.”

It was worth multiple-millions to Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia. In 1995, while working on starting their own business, they worried that their bosses might see the e-mails they were sending to each other. That’s when they hit on the idea for a Web-based e-mail system that could be accessed anonymously. As a result of that idea, Hotmail was launched on July 4, 1996. And they sold it to Microsoft less than two years later (on Sabeer’s 29th birthday) for $400 million.

Mark Zuckerberg got the idea for Facebook from his days at Phillips Exeter Academy. Like most colleges and prep schools, they had a long-standing tradition of publishing an annual student directory complete with headshots. Today, Facebook is valued at over a billion dollars. (At its peak, it was estimated to be worth $15 billion.)

Merv Griffin’s wife came up with the idea for one of his most successful ventures. They were flying from New York to Duluth one day back in 1964. Griffin was mulling over game show ideas when his wife noted that there had been no successful “question and answer” shows since the quiz show scandals. Then she said, “Why not do a switch, and give the answers to the contestant and let them come up with the question?” With that one twist of an idea, the hit show Jeopardy! was born. 

These examples illustrate the principle behind James Webb Young’s five-step technique for generating ideas: “An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.”

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how to apply the process to your marketing efforts … 

Step 1. Gather the raw material. 

In Young’s words, “In advertising an idea comes from a new combination of specific knowledge about products and people with general knowledge of life and events.” 

So before you even attempt to come up with an idea, assemble as much information as possible about your prospect, your market, and your product. Approach this systematically. Dig deep. Find all you can.

Young offered two suggestions to help you get the most out of the gathering stage.

• Grab a supply of 3 x 5 index cards and write down specific information as you gather it. One item per card. Organize the cards by subject. This will bring order to what you’re doing and reveal any gaps in your knowledge.
• Log general information in a scrapbook or file. By general information, he meant newspaper articles, magazine articles, etc. that are related in some way to what you’re selling.

Step 2. Chew and digest the raw material.

Take all the information you’ve gathered and go over it “with the tentacles of your mind.”

Specifically, Young said …

• Take a fact. Turn it several different ways.
• Bring two facts together. See if they fit.
• Try to find a relationship between facts.

Out of this, tentative or partial ideas will come to you. No matter how crazy or incomplete they are — write them down. (Use the 3 x 5 cards.)

Even if you think you’ve exhausted the possibilities, keep going. Your mind will get a second wind. Eventually, you’ll run out of insights. Everything will be jumbled up in your head.

That’s when you stop.

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The Secret “Three-Step Strategy” to Internet Riches

You’ll want to read and reread the “three-step strategy” to Internet Riches very, very carefully… for it holds the secret to Internet riches beyond your wildest dreams.

I’m dead serious.

A warning before you check it out – it sounds almost too simple. But don’t let its simplicity fool you.

This strategy is so incredibly powerful… and will save you so much time, money, and energy… that you will be absolutely astonished at how much progress you’ll make when you follow it.

What’s more, it’ll place you right on the fast track to making money from your own new website almost immediately.

Get this “three-step strategy” to Internet Riches right here.

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Step 3. Turn the process over to your subconscious.

Forget everything you’ve done so far … and do something completely different. Listen to music. Go to a movie. Go golfing. Go shopping. Play tennis. Anything that will take your mind off the task of generating ideas.

Young isn’t the only one who has advocated this approach.

According to Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of Psycho-Cybernetics, when people try to solve a problem through conscious thought, they become anxious and fearful of the results. That brings the creative process to a screeching halt. It’s a lot easier, said Maltz, if you let go of the problem and let your subconscious mind take over.

Master copywriter Gary Bencivenga explains it this way: 

“You’re effortlessly teaching your mind what’s going to be happening. Your subconscious mind … is a goal-striving mechanism. When you give your subconscious a target that you want to hit, it will pull into itself and eventually share with your conscious mind all kinds of resources that you never knew you had within you to make that happen.”

Step 4. Let the idea hit you.

An idea will come to you when you least expect it. It might be when you’re half awake in the morning. It might be in the middle of the night. You might be brushing your teeth, driving to work, or standing in line at the coffee shop.
“This is the way ideas come,” said Young. “After you have stopped straining for them and have passed through a period of rest and relaxation from the search.”

Step 5. Test, edit, refine, and polish the idea.

Now it’s reality-check time. The idea will almost certainly need a little “tweaking” before you can build a marketing campaign around it. What kind of tweaking? The best way to find out is to run it by people you trust and ask for feedback.

That’s it. Five simple steps for generating an endless stream of ideas.

Try it. If you get the results Young predicted, you’ll have mastered one of the most important skills for success as a marketer.

P.S. Producing winning ideas is just one element of the American Writers & Artists Inc.  Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting.  In this program — which I’ve taken myself — Michael Masterson and dozens of other master copywriters reveal the secrets of effective advertising copy. Even if you’re not a writer, you can learn to write moneymaking sales letters (and more) with their step-by-step guidance.

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Receive A $75,000 “Jackpot” From The Government
Recently discovered “glitch” enables U.S. citizens to “get paid” for improving your own home (or buying a new one!). Read more…

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Our Country’s Only Hope

I’ve told you before that I mostly got out of stock investing last year — before the market crashed.

I might look a bit closer into re-entering the market some time this year. But my primary investments will remain small businesses and real estate.

It will be entrepreneurs like me — true wealth creators who give people jobs and pay taxes — who will drive economic recovery. Government accounting tricks won’t work.

If you don’t yet have your own business, now is the best time you will ever have to start one. Why? Because the Internet provides a growing market, and new businesses are bolstered in growing markets.

The advantage of Internet marketing won’t last long. Every month, hundreds — no, thousands — of companies are joining the game. Ninety-five percent of them won’t succeed because they don’t understand what makes Internet marketing work. But you do — or you can learn — by reading ETR, investing in one of our Internet marketing programs, and, most of all, by attending our annual Bootcamp this November.

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Learn to Manage Risk Like the Pros 
You can’t take the risk out of investing – it’s just part of the game. But you can take away the fear that leads to so many bad decisions – and lost profits. Charles Newcastle’s four-step “profit removal” system can take the fear out of the equation and help your investments soar. Read more…

***

Better Than the Dog That Bit You

Next time you wake up with a crushing hangover, don’t reach for aspirin. Eat asparagus instead!

That comes from a study in the Journal of Food Science. The researchers showed that extracts from asparagus alleviated hangover. They also protected liver cells from the toxic assault of alcohol.

In fact, the asparagus reduced damage to cells by a whopping 70 percent. It also helped two key enzymes metabolize alcohol twice as fast.

“To get the best from asparagus,” Total Health Breakthroughs Editor Melanie Segala tells me, “you should eat the stalks and leaves.”

I’ve got asparagus in my refrigerator right now. And a friend’s birthday party coming up this weekend. Hmmm …

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“If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, we’re about to make a hell of a lot of money!”
The multi-billion dollar “home shopping” industry got its start on cable access as a low-budget public access “scheme” run by three guys in Central Florida. Before they had even made their first dollar their success was a sure thing because they had the “Billionaire Mindset”. Read more…

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Need instructions for fixing a flat tire … a copy of War and Peace … a map of the Paris Metro? You can find all of it — and so much more — online.

But the sheer amount of information can be overwhelming. Much of it is useless. And sometimes finding what you need can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

People have never been so well informed … yet, so confused.

Lots of entrepreneurs go around thinking “Access to information is what separates the winners from the losers.” And “The smartest person in the room should be the most successful.” Not true. If it were, whoever bought the most “how-to” products or read the most books would be the richest. And we both know how ridiculous that is.

That’s not to say getting the right information isn’t important. But it’s only a tool. When it comes to being successful in business, there are a few easily overlooked factors that are absolutely vital.

So, what are these deciding factors?

1. Being Action-Oriented

Taking action is the main difference between the super-successful and the wannabes. When successful entrepreneurs get good information, they act on it — as soon as they can. Wannabes simply absorb information and, at their best, react to it.

The reason so many wannabes don’t take action is because they are paralyzed by the prospect of failure. Add to that their mistaken belief that the next information nugget they come across could make the difference between success and failure, and it becomes obvious why “waiting” for it has them stuck.

If they press on, they become more confused by conflicting facts. At the same time, they become increasingly frustrated that they still haven’t found the magic they’re seeking.

If that sounds like you, here’s my advice: Stay focused!

Take a deep breath and ask yourself, “What do I have to get done today to further my success?” Not tomorrow or next week or even next month. Today! Not “What do I have to learn?” but “What do I have to DO?!?”

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Instead of spending money 4, 5, even 10 times a day… imagine if you could start collecting cash that often.

I know a way for you to…

• Pick up as much as $75,000 to buy a home or make home improvements…
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It’s easy to lose your focus on today when you are thinking about tomorrow. And it’s tempting to believe that the next pearl of wisdom you come across is going to make all the difference. But it won’t. You’ll never reach the level of success you crave without taking the specific DAILY steps that get you there.

It’s pretty straightforward. To build a successful business, you have to train your brain to crystallize a future vision, break it into small details, and organize those details into daily tasks. After that, all you need is the courage to commit to the completion of those daily tasks — despite any obstacles that get in your way.

Sounds easy enough, right? So what will sabotage your success? Fear! Fear is your enemy. That little voice whispering “What if it doesn’t work? What if I’m wrong?”

Look, some self-doubt is natural. But when it prevents you from achieving the success you deserve, it’s a problem. Which leads me to the next crucial success factor …

2. Rising Above Your Fears and Doubts

You have to get far enough above your doubts to keep going, or you’re doomed. What works for me is to get lost in the project at hand. It works for me, and it’ll work for you. Just throw yourself so deeply into what needs to be done that you forget about your fears. Every successful business owner learns how to do this. What makes it easier is knowing that experience will always be your best teacher.

You are going to make mistakes. We all do. Even the Intels, Microsofts, and Googles of the world mis-step from time to time. Building a successful company is complex, and there are always things beyond your control.

The trick is to learn from your mistakes. Just do your best to limit your risk. Keep trying. Learn what works. And don’t torture yourself when you take a wrong turn. Just acknowledge it … and change your approach.

And since we are talking about mistakes … do you know what’s at the root of most of the mistakes you’ll make? I see it over and over again. And practically everyone who struggles in business is guilty of it. It’s this …

For some strange reason, people want to make things more complicated than they need to be. It’s as if they are fascinated by the overly complex. So, instead of keeping things simple, they burden themselves with too much to do and too little time to do any of it right. Which leads me to …

3. Avoiding the “Stupidity Tax” by Keeping Things as Simple as You Can

The “stupidity tax” is easily avoidable. But, for some reason, almost everyone trying to make a success of an online business seems to walk right into it.

Here’s an example of how this flawed approach plays out …

Instead of picking one way to drive traffic to your website, mastering it, and then moving on — you do the opposite. You want to learn about pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, and every other method under the sun. All at the same time, and without developing any level of expertise in any of it.

Yet, the most successful online businesses I know concentrate on one method at a time. Agora Inc., for example, focused primarily on pay-per-click advertising to get to its first $50 million in online sales. My company focused on joint venture/affiliate launches — and in nine months, we did over $7 million in sales.

When you pursue multiple directions in your business, you end up making very little progress. And it doesn’t matter how smart you are or how hard you work, because you are spread way too thin.

With an Internet business, this mistake can really kill you. Here’s why: In online marketing, your results are directly related to how your skills stack up against those of your competitors. If your competition is better than you at using Google AdWords, for example, they’ll pay less than you to get traffic to their website and will convert more of it to sales. If they’re better at search engine optimization, they’ll rank higher than you. If they’re better at affiliate marketing — converting better, selling more — they’ll be able to pay their affiliates more, and lock you out of the market.

It doesn’t work this way with an offline business. You don’t pay more if your ad or commercial sucks. You might not get as many responses as your competitors — but you’re not locked out. And you’re not forced into paying the “stupidity tax.”

Isolate the fewest activities you can be successful with. Then knock them off, one at a time. Don’t make the mistake of trying to do too much and, thus, marginalize your results. As Confucius said, “Man who chases two rabbits catches neither.”

If you follow my advice, you’ll get to take back quite a bit of the time you’re currently wasting by trying to learn too much about too many marketing tactics at once. Plus, you’ll get back the time you’re wasting by trying to execute strategies with a superficial level of knowledge. What you do with your newfound free time leads us to our fourth and final success component …

4. Knowing Where the Money Is

It takes time to know your market. But it’s time you must invest if you’re serious about your business’s success.

The first step is quite simply to open your eyes and look at what’s going on around you. You need to keep your finger on the pulse of your market to know what’s “hot.” But that’s only half the equation. The second step is to do your best to understand WHY it’s hot. Until you understand your market at a deeper level, you’ll keep scratching your head and wondering why you are making less than your “dumb” counterparts.

The good news is that once you get it — once you fully understand the psychology of your market — your results will improve immediately. From promotional e-mails to pay-per-click ads, your results will multiply, because you’ll know your prospects better than any of your competitors do.

So there you have it.

If you’ve ever wondered why you make less than others even though you are smarter than they are, now you know. And it’s up to you to change that. Are you going to keep plodding along in frustration? Or are you going to embrace the four elements of business success that I shared with you here and decide that, once and for all, you are going to do what it takes?

Only time will tell …

P.S. Taking action is the only way your Internet business will go from dream to reality. At Early to Rise’s Info-Marketing Bootcamp this November, I — and a dozen other experts in Internet marketing, social media, copywriting, search engine optimization, and more — will help you do just that. We’ll remove your fears, help you determine the hottest niches, barrel through trial and error, and, most important, teach you how to become action-oriented. You can find out all about Bootcamp here.

The businesses I’ve coached have done over $500 million every year — piling up more than $1 billion in sales every two years. Visit my blog to learn how to streamline your business while skyrocketing profits.

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Increase Your Wealth by Managing Risk like the Pros Do - You can’t take all the risk out of investing. But you can take much of it away. More importantly, you can remove the worst aspects of risk – those that cause fear and result in bad investment decisions. ETR’S own Charles Newcastle has developed a quick and simple four-step “risk reduction” strategy that could bring you 132%+ gains in a matter of weeks. Read more…

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More from Masterson…

The Almighty Dollar?

Investor’s Daily Edge Investment Director Bob Irish has a great suggestion for protecting your wealth from the falling U.S. dollar.

The dollar has lost more than 90 percent of its value since 1913. That’s when the Federal Reserve Bank was created, notes Bob. Since 1987, it’s lost 50 percent. That’s the year Alan Greenspan came on board.

Bob expects this downtrend to continue.

Based on that, his advice is to look into bond plays, select dividend stocks, and hard assets. That includes gold, silver, oil, and the companies that pull these natural resources out of the ground.

And he’s got just the man to help you. Investor’s Daily Edge natural resource expert Dr. Russell McDougal identifies the best of the best companies in this sector. In the last year, 15 out of 17 of his recommendations have been profitable. His readers have seen gains as high as 241 percent.

Diet Soda Makes You Fat

Avoid sodas … even diet sodas, says Total Health Breakthroughs Editor Melanie Segala.

They will make you fat. And they lead to other health problems.

A recent study showed that drinking just one can of diet soda a day increased the risk of metabolic syndrome by 34 percent. (Metabolic syndrome is a condition that leads to diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic diseases.) That’s almost 10 percent higher than the risk associated with a diet of fried foods, says Melanie.

Melanie recommends purified water. For a little flavor, add orange or lemon slices … even raspberries. You can even try a splash of natural fruit juice. If you crave sweetness, try stevia. It’s a natural calorie-free sweetener that you can find in any health food store.

— Highly Recommended—

Nobody’s Going to Visit Your Online Business… Unless You Give Them a Reason - Everybody and his uncle has a website these days. But 99% of them aren’t making any money. The first in gaining Internet wealth is getting people to visit your site. Until now that have a very difficult task. But thanks to a technique you already use every day – but don’t recognize the potential of – you can attract thousands of “primed to buy” visitors. And it’s totally free. That’s ZERO marketing expenses. Read more…

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