Dale King Interviews Denny Hatch

Denny Hatch: I couldn't be better, thank you. Let me say that the
word "guru" bothers me. Peter Drucker said that people called him a "guru" because they could not spell "charlatan."

Dale King: Ha, ha. No problem. I'll definitely make sure I don't refer to you as a "guru," during the interview. Denny, tell our readers how and when you got started marketing on the Internet.

Denny Hatch: I do consulting and copywriting as well as journalism
via my 2x a week e-zine, www.bussinesscommonsense.com In both cases--journalism and copywriting/consulting, I found the Internet to be the ultimate research tool--click of a mouse gets me to a billion Websites, dictionary, thesaurus, it is fantastic. And virtually all of it is free. I don't know when I got started, but it did not take me long to get hooked. No more schlepping to the library, looking for a parking space, pawing through books and microfiche. With the Internet, a researcher can do 10 hours of work in two hours.

Dale King: Some Internet Marketing experts advise newbies to steer clear of certain areas of Internet Marketing, like selling e-books on how to make money, advertising services, SEO services, copywriting, etc., because they're too competitive. Do you agree with that assessment?

Denny Hatch: Nothing is too competitive if you are good at what you do. I work in the fields of health, diet, exercise, vitamins and supplements, self-help and get-rich-quick, pornography--not out of any moral compunction. I just don't like them; they bore me.

Dale King: How is Internet Marketing different now, as opposed to when you first got started online?

Denny Hatch: Google is one of the miracles of the modern age, ranking up there with people walking on the moon.

Dale King: Wow...that's pretty high praise. How important has goal-setting been to your overall success?

Denny Hatch: The only time I ever set a goal was when my wife, Peggy, and I started a cranky little newsletter called WHO'S MAILING WHAT! where we collected 2,000 pieces of junk mail a week, sorted it, annotated it, analyzed it, wrote about it and (for a fee) made copies of it available to our subscribers. Our goal: To sell the thing and do something else. We ran it for 9 years and sold it. We did not get rich, but we made something and got on with our lives.

Dale King: How important has reading been to your overall success?

Denny Hatch: For www.businesscommonsense.com I read three papers a day in hardcopy delivered to my house before dawn plus I visit 16 to 20 Web sites a day, vacuuming up stories which I download, index and cross-index. I have approximaely 25,000 stories in 300 categories after two years of surfing the Web. I read a lot and could not exist without it.

Dale King: If you could recommend one book that all Internet marketers should read, what would it be?

Denny Hatch: When the Internet revolution hit in the late 1990s, all the hotshot twenty-somethings told us old timers that the Internet was a new medium, a new paradigm and the old rules of marketing did not apply. This was a business of new rules and us geezers were vestigial. These kids did not know the rules of marketing: How to make an offer, how to ask for an order, how to make it easy to order.

They did not know that when rationalization and emotion come into conflict, emotion wins every time and that most buying decisions are based on emotion. Several trillion dollars were lost when the Internet bubble popped. To answer your question, what books should a newbie read to be successful on the internet? Books on direct mail and direct marketing. Books of the old rules. Essentially, the Internet is direct mail on glass.

Dale King: In your opinion, what technology has changed Internet Marketing the most over the last 5 years?

Denny Hatch: 94% of all e-mails are Spam. This is the great response killer.

Dale King: What new technology do you see changing Internet Marketing over the next 5 years?

Denny Hatch: I haven't a clue. BlackBerrys were a major development. It may be that sprained thumb and BlackBerry-holism (CrackBerry addiction) may claim a lot of Internet users. Maybe people will decide they do not want to be perpetually connected. That ain't new technology. It's old fashioned common sense.

Dale King: What person has influenced you the most in your lifetime, and how?

Denny Hatch: David Ogivly, Swedish/German entrepreneur Axel Andersson, founder of Grolier Enterprises Elsworth Howell--guys who dealt with common sense, obeyed rules, discovered rules, made money and benefited humankind.

Dale King: If you could give my readers one piece of advice,what would it be?

Denny Hatch: If you do e-mails, remember 94% of e-mails are Spam. Your e-mail effort is one mouse-click away from oblivion. Make your FROM line believable and spend a lot of time--hours and hours--on your subject line. Be sure to use the seven key copy drivers--the emotional hot buttons that make people act: Fear - Greed - Guilt - Anger - Exclusivity - Salvation - Flattery. If your copy is not dripping with one or more of these, said Seattle guru Bob Hacker, tear it up and start over.

Be sure to lace you copy with the 12 most powerful and evocative words in the English language: you - save - money - easy - love - results - health - easy - proven - safety - discovery - new. "Free is a magic word," said the late guru Dick Benson. However, use "FREE" in a e-mail subject line and the Spam filters will kill it.

Dale King: Thank you very much, Denny . I appreciate you taking the time to do this interview.

Denny Hatch: Hope this is useful.

Denny's websites:

http://www.dennyhatch.com

http://www.businesscommonsense.com

Warning: This interview is the exclusive property of Denny Hatch. It may not be reprinted in any format...period!