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You could have a fluent article, a captivating call-to-action in the resource box, a superbly designed landing page, and an efficient marketing funnel, but if your headline sucks, you're screwed.
So what makes a good headline? Well first, let's talk about what makes a terrible headline.
I don't know about you, but I've seen enough "how to make lots of money really fast" type headlines to last me a lifetime.
Don't get me wrong, it's quite possible to make piles of money quickly, but my point is that that headline is vague and does not promise instant gratification to the reader.
To make that bad headline into a good one, we would need to make it more specific, introduce a benefit, or add something interesting to it.
Instead of talking about "lots of money", we could talk about $1000.
Instead of "quickly", we could replace that with "seven days".
Doing this will instantly make your headline a little more believable.
However, we're not done yet.
So far, we've told the reader that they can learn the secrets to making $1000 in 7 days by reading our article.
Just as a little aside here, you've always got to deliver on the promises that you make in your headlines.
But like I was saying, there is more that you need to add to this headline to make it appealing.
After reading your headline so far, your reader might start imagining what your article will talk about and make up an excuse in their mind to skip your article.
For example, they may think "Oh, it's probably something about selling on eBay, or cold calling, or joining some MLM".
That's why you need to add one last bit to your article's headline to make it good.
This last bit should be something that makes your article's claims very specific.
Something like "how to make $1000 in 7 days on eBay selling other people's stuff" would work pretty well.
Readers of a "make money online" article will probably be familiar with eBay, but not many of them will be familiar with how to sell other people's stuff on eBay.
This would be an intriguing headline because the headline states that you won't be selling your own stuff and it implies that you won't have to do the actual shipping and handling of the product.
This headline-writing strategy isn't limited to the "make money online" crowd.
You can simply take out some of the words and replace them with words that are relevant to your niche.
Examples would be something like "how to lose 20 pounds in 20 days without going to the gym" or "how to get back with your ex girlfriend in 30 days even if she stopped talking to you 6 months ago".
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