Miscellaneous Essays

How to Write A Good Headline

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This is about headlines, particularly headlines for materials that sell health supplements, but there are lessons here for every headline writer. The headlines I’m going to quote come from Mike Pavlish, a successful copywriter who claims that they made him “$4 million in royalties.”

Mike correctly says that headlines are critical. He alludes to John Caples, a famous dead copywriter, who claimed that headlines “can pull 19 times more response than another headline with no other change in the copywriting or offer.”

“Without a great headline,” Mike says, “you are like the person who brings a knife to a gunfight – defeated before you even start.”

That said, let’s take a look at 10 of Mike’s headlines that performed very well…

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Miscellaneous Essays

My Office

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Like many male writers of my vintage, one of my literary heroes is Ernest Hemingway. Not just because I loved his stories and admired his prose but also because of the large, masculine way he lived his life. I liked the skiing and the sailing and the fishing and the boxing and the hunting and the bullfighting and the drinking and I even liked the fact that he shot himself when his end was inevitable.

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Miscellaneous Briefs

The Three Most Important Numbers

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I don’t know if there is a formal study of the history of numbers and their importance in culture, but if there is there is no doubt that scholars have found that the three most important (and powerful numbers) are one, two and three.

  • One for unity.
  • Two for duality: (two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs, etc.)
  • Three represents everything else

Religious leaders and some philosophers and scientists like to search for the One. The one god. The one truth. The one unifying theory of whatever.

Naturalists – those who observe nature – have noticed that most things in nature come in twos: two eyes, ears, arms. Two energetic impulses, etc.

Mystics – people who can’t figure out what to make of anything – focus on three – the divinity.

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