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Yet another crazy week has just about concluded. It's been one of those weeks that just never seems to end and by Wednesday afternoon we were wondering if Friday would ever come around.

If you've had weeks like that don't feel that you're alone ... I was chatting with a couple of people in a shop last night and they both said that this week had seemed endless. It makes you wonder ...

Swipe files
Have you ever seen people talking about swipe files? Late last week I saw one guy advertising on Facebook that anyone could have his swipe file in exchange for their email address.

Now that might not sound like much of a deal ... and it probably wasn't because I've never heard of this guy before ... but if someone who is well-known in the marketing industry offers to give you their swipe files then grab them.

Ok so now you're really wondering what these swipe files really are and why they're so important?

Well it's like this ... if you can't write a headline that really sells then the solution for you lies in other marketers' swipe files. You see ... there really are a finite number of headlines that will sell a product and copywriters don't have to go on trying to reinvent the wheel by producing new ones.

Instead they do what every other copywriter on the planet does and go to their swipe files and use a headline that someone else has written. They almost certainly modify it to suit their situation but they do use what someone else has written

Every time these guys see a headline that they really like they swipe it ... they copy it to their swipe files ... so they can use it at some time in the future.

So if you're headline-challenged ... or you're over reinventing the wheel every time you have to come up with a new headline ... start your own swipe file. Keep copies of the headlines that really appeal to you and use them when the need arises.

Is your message reaching today's market?
Years ago ... when I started in this industry the mental picture that most of us had of our target audience was of a guy of average age sitting in front of his monitor in a dark room and getting off on the images that we and our sponsors provided.

That mental image might have been fairly close to reality back then and having it there in our minds helped us to focus our marketing message on the guy in that photo. It helped us choose the right words and the right concepts for our marketing message to appeal to that person.

But what if our target market has changed ... or is in the process of changing? What if some of our target audience is still like that guy in the darkened room while others ... perhaps a greater proportion ... are more open to sex and pleasure and don't hide in those dark rooms anymore?

A few months back I saw a bunch of short interviews done by the PBS in the United States. They were stopping people on the street in a major city and asking them if they visited porn sites. Just about everyone they interviewed was quite happy to stand there and admit that they loved to watch porn.

Perhaps the dark room and the small screen is morphing into the lounge room and the big screen and it's not just solo guys but couples and perhaps even their friends who are hitting our marketing sites and sponsors' sites. So if people are becoming more open and honest about it are we now using the right words and focus for our marketing message or are we still talking to that guy in the dark room?

It's definitely something that we should be thinking about because if we're not resonating with the people who are visiting our marketing sites and if our sponsors aren't delivering what people want to see then we're not going to make any money.

Old sites and new servers
Have you built a whole bunch of websites based on WordPress over the years ... sites that are still getting traffic and sales even though you haven't touched them, added to them or updated the core or plugins in quite some time?

If you have and you're also in the process of moving everything to a new server then here's a little tip that may save you some pain. Before you move take the time to update everything because, if you don't, after the move you might suddenly find that you have a lot of broken sites because those old versions of everything just can't cope with the new programs on the new server.

And that's just some of the lessons I've learned this week. I hope your week was a good one and if it wasn't then do what I'm going to do this weekend ... try and catch up with all the work that has mounted up.