Many A-list copywriters argue headline templates, and swipe files in general, are a waste of time. They don’t work.

Most purveyors of copywriting material, on the other hand, praise the plug-and-play simplicity of templates for selling any product or service.

As in most cases with two disparate views (and agendas), the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Few A-list writers would consider submitting a direct mail package with a swiped headline, no matter how successful the original. Not even if the derivative headline were undetectable.

The A-listers may have synthesized the knowledge of hundreds of headline split tests but they’re generally bound to the creation-from-scratch mentality that their clients expect from them.

Almost without exception, the purveyors of copywriting material claim that creating winning advertising is an easy process. All you need to do is insert your details into a readymade template, smooth over a few patches and presto, out pops a profitable ad. More on 9 Headline Templates That Have a Prayer

One of my favorite direct mail letters starts off:

"Dear Reader,

It was Scott Fitzgerald who observed, "The rich are different from us."

It was Ernest Hemingway who then shot back, "Yes. They have more money."

…so before you accept this invitation to move up higher financially, you may want to consider some of the pros and cons."

The letter then has two columns listing the "disadvantages of being rich" and "the advantages of being rich."

Ten disadvantages are cited in the left column, including, "You'll start hearing from long lost cousins looking for loans."

The right column is barren space, till you turn to the next page, where you see circled in red, "You'll have tons more money."

This and 209 other direct mail masterpieces await you when you crack open one of the most important direct marketing packages to be released this year.

It's called "The Bill Jayme Collection."

But don't expect a deluge of emails announcing this landmark collection from the Internet marketing hucksters.

There won't be any since there's no kickback invloved.

While on the subject, the term launch has almost become a pejorative.

You know what I'm talking about.

"Our servers have crashed due to the flood of orders but we'll be re-opening tomorrow to offer the final 100 copies…so hurry."

The email message is then regurgitated a dozen times before it fades away. Till the next "new thing."

Internet marketing launches don't add up to chump change compared to the dozens of magazines launched by team Jayme and Ratalahti. One of them, for American Health, brought in 250,000 paid subscriptions and allowed the publisher to exit with $29 million in 1990.

I'm almost tempted to invoke Guy Kawasaki's testimonial for Brenda Ueland's book, If You Want To Write: "If you buy this book and it doesn’t help you, I will give you your money back."

The New York Times Magazine article, "Junk Mail's Top Dogs," on Jayme and Ratalahti.

The Bill Jayme Collection: Master of Direct Mail Marketing.

"Junk Mail's Top Dogs" was an article that appeared in The New York Times Magazine on August 10, 1990.

Bill Jayme was the copy genius and Heikki Ratalahti was the design master behind over 200 winning direct mail packages.

Denny Hatch called them "the creative team of the century" and it's hard to argue with that.

Some excerpts from the article:

One still-famous Jayme line was for Psychology Today: "Do you close the bathroom door even when you're the only one home?"

Owen J. Lipstein recalls traveling to see Jayme and Ratalahti in 1982 with $150,000 and an idea for a health magazine. In about 30 seconds, he told them its name, American Health, and explained that existing health magazines "worshiped death" while this one would be "life worshiping."

Jayme says he and Ratalahti will spend three weeks crafting a package, with Jayme writing and rewriting the basic letter, a second letter, an order form and brochure, reading them aloud to himself and Ratalahti and never looking at readership profiles or surveys because "that tells us what they have, not what they want or who they want to be."

I just ran across one of the most startling proof elements ever devised.

It hails from a company called LifeLock.

The ad starts off:

My name is Todd Davis

My social security number is 457-55-5462

I'm Todd Davis, CEO of LifeLock, and yes, that’s my real social security number*. Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in America, victimizing over 10 million people a year and costing billions of dollars. So why publish my social security number? Because I’m absolutely confident LifeLock is protecting my good name and personal information, just like it will yours. And we guarantee our service up to $1 million dollars."

It's doubtful Claude Hopkins could come up with a more arresting headline and opening paragraph. But Claude never lived in a time when concerns over data protection cause sleepless nights.

No doubt, a very adept marketer came up with this. Even the product name, LifeLock, is superlative.

Whether the hubristic USP (and service) can stand up to Eastern European hackers and our own homegrown highwaymen is another question.

Tony Flores rang me up a few weeks ago and asked if I'd be willing to promote a new project he's got cooking with Clayton Makepace.

I felt bad telling Tony no.

He's Jesuit educated like me, a super sharp marketer and also one of my customers. But I'm as recalcitrant as they come where affiliate marketing is concerned.

However, a few days after our call, I downloaded the report Tony asked me to look at. When I got about half way through the 26 page PDF, I thought it was one of the most well crafted, informative and on target reports I'd read in a while. I recommend it…sans kickback.

If you download the PDF and are curious about the lead gen Clayton created, (and referenced to bring in over $20 million) you can find it here. The Great Dollar Panic of 2007-2008 (for Martin Weiss). A word of warning though. Clayton was a little too soft on our Central Bank. Perhaps, it's forgivable considering how well the piece is written.

Finally, here's one of Clayton's pieces I really admire. The 23 Cent Life Saver Heart Surgeons Never Tell You About!

It amazes me.

Quite often, a subscriber will email to ask my opinion of the recently launched "XYZ course." Inevitably, it's some flavor of yesterday's successful traffic tactic or a coaching program.

Now, I spring for a lot of these things myself. Besides being an easy mark, I find a routine diet of desire as a customer is one of the surest ways to bottle it for my own promotions as a marketer.

But what gets me is how so many keep chasing the dragon to discover the latest secret when all the while…

The secret is right in front of their noses

I know the secret.

You know the secret.

You do know it. Don't you? More on A Million Dollar "Marketing Course" for $100?

An insightful, free report I just downloaded from Drayton Bird's website led me to recall some unusual advice from an acquaintance back in New York, who was one part psychologist, one part prankster.

He advocated that everyone in the workforce should apply for a job while at their peak of security, solvency and job satisfaction.

His point was most applicants approach job seeking as supplicants and never experience the process from a detached, devil may care perspective. (This does carry some risk, as I've known more than one Wall Street person to get sacked when their present employer discovered they were seeking greener pastures.)

But there are things you can do when applying for a job with an aura of unassailable strength that you can't do otherwise. Like, going for positions that are "over your head" or for which you're "under qualified." What you may lack in technical knowledge is compensated for with bolstered confidence and lack of emotion over the result. You can also play hard ball when/if you reach the salary negotiation stage for the same reasons.

Though I'm now on the other side of the fence and plying topgrading strategies to avoid mis-hires in my own company, I found Drayton's report to be irresistible from a marketer's point of view. And who knows if one will need this again?

I especially like the letters he includes in this report, one of which landed a position for his associate across the Atlantic.

Drayton Bird eats, drinks, breathes (and teaches) direct marketing and this fine report is typical of his high standard.

"How To Get A Better Job" requires an opt-in and you'd be doing yourself a service to get on Drayton's list.

Here's a lead generation ad Gary Halbert ran in the Wall Street Journal in 1990.

I counted several insertions so this little lead gen must have gotten the phone to ring and there were few as persuasive as Gary to handle the incoming calls. The fact the leads were coming from the Journal was qualifying in itself.

Gary just picked a half dozen of his most intriguing bullets, slapped a headline on top, a toll free number on bottom and presto.

Here's a large image of: "Hot New Reports From Top Ad Expert Reveal 6 Amazing Secrets!"

Imagine having to wake up each morning and come up with a startling, new headline to sell your product.

Furthermore, imagine you're in a cut-throat industry in which yesterday's laurels mean diddley and constant threats like union strikes hang over your head.

To top it off, industry or niche specialization offers no advantage. Your market is any literate person with a pulse. Your only job is to sell, sell, sell.

Your headline must be so arresting, it causes an i-banker racing down the street…with a briefcase in one hand…a Starbucks cup in the other…and a Bluetooth headset on his ear…to crane his neck and soak up the marvel of copy calling out to him like a blue collar siren.

Tough assignment…huh?

This is precisely what the publishers and editors of the New York City tabloids have had to deal with for decades and that's why they house some of the deftest headline writers.

Take, "Headless Body In Topless Bar." If this isn't the most elegantly compact and titillating crime headline ever written, then I'll freely stand in the way of that hood's front page kick.

Or New York Daily News editor, William Brink's masterful "Ford To City: Drop Dead," a day after Ford vowed to veto any proposed Federal bailout of the City.

These are two of the most memorable newspaper headlines ever written. The Post and The News seem destined to battle each other in this gladiatorial headline game till one or both of them drop.

And what of the "old gray lady," The New York Times?

Unintentionally, it can be just as entertaining as its lesser colleagues. Like this 1984 classic, "Unknown Arm of Sicilian Mafia Is Uncovered in the United States."

The following article about Joe Karbo is excerpted from an interview entitled, "The Creators" from the now defunct publication, The Capitalist Reporter, circa 1975.

But was the mail order magnate who penned The Lazy Man's Way to Riches, himself lazy?

Here's some rare info about this direct marketing legend.

The wonder is that Joe Karbo works at all anymore. He is the millionaire author, publisher and mail-order advertising salesman of The Lazy Man's Way to Riches, after all. With more than 400,000 copies of the paperback sold in this country alone at $10 each - versus 50 cents per copy production cost - Karbo can afford to take it easy. Foreign markets now have begun to open up in a big way.

Karbo, 50-year-old son of a Russian Jewish immigrant who worked as a tailor in Los Angeles, now spends about half the year in LA, where he maintains a posh suite of offices overlooking the Pacific to tend to his various ventures that make him $300,000 a year. The rest of the time, he and the family (wife and nine children, although not all the kids still live at home) are at a sumptuous retreat in Washington State, about 50 miles south of Olympia - an ideal place to be, well, lazy.

The trouble is, Karbo doesn't like being lazy. "The idea of being lazy is appealing, but doing it, or rather not doing anything, is not my idea of a way to pass the time," he says. More on The Lost Joe Karbo Interview…Was He Really Lazy?