The Writers Roadmap to Making Money Online

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AWAIonline.com and is republished here with permission.

Interviewer: “Where did you grow up?”
Famous person: “Florida.”
Interviewer: “Where did you attend college?”
Famous person: “Florida State.”
Interviewer: “What was your major?”
Famous person: “Soil and water science.”

Y-a-w-n. That’s what your reader will do when you write an interview like most run-of-the-mill writers.

After all, common sense tells us the interview process should be logical and matter-of-fact. But to write an exciting interview, you have to throw common sense out the window.

As copywriters, there are two major reasons why we should know how to conduct and write a great interview:

• An interview with a potential client and/or the creator of a product you’re writing about can unearth great information you can use to make your promotion a winner. Usually this is information you can’t get any other way, and often it can be the source of your “big idea.”
• You can make money by interviewing experts and selling those interviews to the appropriate publications. (Keep an eye out for an upcoming article in “The Golden Thread” about how to do this.)

To find out exactly what makes a good interview, I spent an hour with Michael Masterson at his neighborhood cigar bar. This is what I learned …

To make an interview exciting, you need to do a little risk-taking with each of the four elements that make up a great interview:

1. Picture

   An average interview usually shows just a headshot of the person being interviewed – a face with little or no expression. But this is boring and safe. Instead, tell the person you’re interviewing to send in a full body photograph. Or, to make it even more interesting, tell him to have a goofy expression on his face (like sticking Read more »