Let's discuss one of the most common types of digital material sold on the Internet our days. It is based on the assumption that the Internet is full of earning opportunities and the authors are going to show you how to make $100-$1000 or even $10000 per... day by just using their unique method. And they want you to buy the method straight away for a littlest price like $19.99. They even give you some other things ("worth thousands") free so you could get even richer at no time at all. Apart from an obvious knowledge that there is no such thing as a free lunch and money does not grow on the trees, one should ask oneself: "Why on earth he is selling something for $19.99 if he could easily make $10000 by using his own method?" But one of the main objectives of the sales letter is not to allow potential customer to ask such uncozy questions.
Some of the tactics are to give a "philanthropic answer", like I love you, lot, so much that I want to share (making lots of competitors?). Other is just to start psychological attack. The attack, also called sales letter or sales pitch looks almost the same for any product. It uses certain psychological techniques to attract and then fully grab visitor's attention. First little trick always used on such sites is date. Yes, using a small JavaScript insert the sales letter is always dated by today's date, therefore creating this brand new impression year after year. Then it is personalized, starts with something like "Dear Friend" or "Dear Fellow Internet user". After the close association is completed (friend, fellow, etc.) the elementary psychological tactics is implemented. What you are going to read now, it's something not even the owners of such sites know, as in most of the cases they simply adjust existing sales letters or hire a copywriter.
Modern psychology often works on "close association" concept, it's when the psychologist "gets into patient's shoes" and creates a bond between his condition and patient's condition. Bond works both ways and when the psychologist slowly moves out of the created emotional and mental state, so does the patient. Therefore some of the problems could be resolved by this tactics. The same method could be used in a sales letter, and let's see how.
Knowing that if the visitor is still reading the letter then he is, most probably, in some sort of difficulties and looking for a solution, author takes a first step to make the "associative bond". He talks about difficulties he had before discovering his new method. To make it as general as possible, he includes almost all type of financial difficulties that one person could have,
AAA+ Louis Vuitton, including loosing job, getting broke, having no money to pay bills, etc. Therefore each reader associates himself with one of the positions. When the "feel bad" point reaches the climax, author should start moving into the opposite direction (otherwise visitors would simply leave his site, sobbing).
And here we go, creating now a "feel good" part still keeping the visitor bonded. To do this, authors are using "testimonials from ordinary people" (bond is being straitened), then numerous rewritings of the same objective (what you will get), etc. We would not concentrate on the details here as the main objective is to create a feel good point still bonded with the visitor. The last effort - sales blast: today only (remember the date trick?) price is $19.99 (just because I feel so generous to my friends). This is it; some have already taken the bait. Authors could add many other safeguards like no condition money back guarantee (not many people will claim that, as another trick is usually in place like "even the schoolchild could follow the method", therefore refund for a customer would simply state that he or she is not even at the level of a school kid!).
I think only 0.1% of visitors are converting (word used by the Internet marketers meaning that visitor is turning into customer) but with almost zero initial cost this still trickle-feeds owners bank account.
4. No apologies please.Some actors seem to think they are among royalty when in an audition and apologize for everything they do if it's not perfect. That implies the wrong mindset in the audition. While it's nice to apologize, in an audition it indicates that you aren't totally involved in what you are doing...just focus on what you are doing, not how it's affecting the audience. You don't know how they feel about you. They might love your energy and everything about you but when you apologize you are pointing out that you think you did something wrong, so unless you fart in their faces or knock over the lights or camera, there's nothing in an audition to apologize for. I would say the one exception is if you are working on another job and don't have the time to get your lines down, you might want to apologize for that to manage their expectations a bit...but I'm not even sure that's a good thing.
Prepared or not, apologizing to them is the same as making an excuse for yourself. If you are apologizing to the room before you perform, you are basically saying, "Sorry I suck" before you even speak a word. If you start out thinking you are going to suck...do the math...not much chance for success in that environment.5. Casting is rooting against you.Maybe because auditions are so hard to come by and there's a certain distance maintained between casting and actors, actors often get the idea that casting directors are in some way rooting for them to fail. Nothing could be more false. Casting has made a big decision in allowing you to fill one of the few spots available for each role. They are putting their reputation on the line with their bosses, the producers. They want you to validate that they have made a good choice.