The Michel Fortin Blog

I'm having the first barbecue of the season on my back porch. And I've got Buddy Guy's raspy vocals and stinging guitar riffs pumping through the speakers... The man's chops are clearly massive, yet oh how he plays… with such exquisite...

One morning, you go into your mailbox and discover there's an envelope waiting for you from an unknown source. You bring the package into your living room, tear open the envelope, pull out what's inside, put on your reading glasses, unfold the...

I was recently interviewed by a print magazine about how I started my business. In it, I offered several tips and ideas on how to carve a niche in the marketplace that I personally applied. I realized some of these tips were particularly...

I wrote this article way back in 1998. It seems to have made a resurgence, especially with today's economy. So I said to myself, "Why not republish it?" So here it is. Enjoy! If there is something about which I'm pretty adamant, it's the idea of...

A student, who is an upcoming copywriter, recently asked where he could find clients willing to pay higher rates for his skills. Having built a client base through networking on Internet forums geared towards start-up business owners, he now...

A recent study found that 65% of online shoppers are "window shoppers," and take on average up to 33 hours to make a purchase -- often over security concerns. Some interesting findings show that most people who abandon their shopping carts don't...

In a recent critique for a coaching client, the issue of "gap analysis" arose. Gap Analysis is something I learned in sales, and it was heavily taught by sales trainers like Brian Tracy, such as in his course "The Psychology of Selling." Gap...

Some people tend to tweet, blog, post, and status-update their little hearts out. Be it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, their own blog, or whatever. They say it's all about transparency, and transparency is good. But I think we need to...

One of the most popular threads on my now defunct discussion forum for copywriters was one started by my friend Dean Jackson. If you don't know Dean Jackson, he is a Torontonian, a real estate mogul, an information marketing millionaire (author...