What did you think of that headline? Consider it a gift from me and Markus Allen (of Stump Markus fame).

Let me explain: For several years, Markus Allen has been testing EVERYTHING when it comes to marketing. Subject lines are just one of the things that Markus is obsessed with. He tells me 're: phone call tomorrow' is a clear winner when he wants to get his e-mails opened.

Here's a funny story: one of Markus' other 'Subject' line winners is 'Holy crap...' Markus told me about 'Holy crap...' during our phone call last Thursday. Now, as many of you are aware, I thought Markus said 'Totally crap...' instead of 'Holy crap...' so I used 'Totally crap...' in the 'Subject' when I alerted you that last week's post was ready on coolsite.com

Guess what? 'Totally crap...' is a great 'Subject' line also! Checking my stats, I see that the 'open rate' for 'Totally crap...' was 80% higher than my average 'open rate' while the number of clicks skyrocketed by over 400%! (note: another factor for the increased clicks was that you HAD to go to coolsite.com for the message. In prior messages, I included most of the blog post inside the e-mail message. Also, many of you thought I was referring to your web sites--that they were 'totally crap' so you were further compelled to visit. Sorry for that confusion but a good lesson was learned all around).

However you slice it, 'Totally crap...' is an attention getter and worth testing (sparingly, of course).

For a boatload of similarly crafty marketing tips, I highly recommend that you tune in to Markus' live podcast, Stump Markus, this Thursday at 12:00PM EST (details can be found here).

They say there's 'no free lunch'? Listening to Markus Allen deliver a free brain dump for 120 minutes is about as good a deal as you're gonna find anywhere.

BTW, here's a sampling of what Markus and I covered over 58-minutes during last week's podcast (archived on this and Markus' site):

• How to make money recording yourself talking...
• List of affiliate networks that pay on time...
• The benefits of giving away free information to gain loyal readership...
• List of the top social networks...
• How to submit your content to over 40 social networks in just a click...
• The best affiliate programs (that pay on time)...
• Strategies to get your email opened...
• The most important sentence of your email broadcast...
• Advantages of pitch-free emails...
• Is your website URL blacklisted?
• Using heatmap studies for higher response...
• The dangers of emails longer than 65 characters wide...
• Why programmers are terrible marketers...
• How to attract over 1,000 precisely targeted leads to your site in about 50 days...
• The most profitable pay per lead program I've ever tested (revealed)...

Finally, I have a new poll on the site (right panel) that requires 10 seconds of your time (BTW, thanks to all who answered last week's poll about font sizes; I went with the smaller font as you requested)

Until next time,

Mike Corso
Cool Site of the Day

P.S. Be sure to regularly check my 'Resources' and 'Affiliate Opportunities' section in the right panel. I usually update it every week with very useful information.