6) Clear & Concise

Keep your ad copy free of clutter. Don't use words that aren't needed. You are wasting your readers' time, weakening your sales message and taking up valuable space that could be better served in your interest. Your readers ' attention span is short and they are usually in a hurry. Avoid redundancies, over-worded phrases and other poor writing mistakes that serve no other function than taking up space. Provide specific and concrete information in a clear and straightforward manner. The more specific you are less chance your readers have of misunderstanding you.

7) For God's Sake, Get to Point

Be direct and to point. There is not time for beating around bush or to keep your reader guessing.

Next to headline, first paragraph of your ad copy is most important text in your work. The first paragraph, better known as "Lead" paragraph, is what draws in reader. If your lead paragraph is uninteresting to reader, they will surely move on. Move right into your primary selling point. Don't waste time with introductions and explanations. If you must use them, use them later. Your ad copy should be essence of sell from first word to last. Loose fluff and fringes. They're for weddings not ad copy.

8) There's No Place for Sexism or Racism

I was listening to an ad on a college radio station in middle of summer semester. It was an ad for a local business. During course of this 30-second ad they managed to insult Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Thai and all women everywhere. Now needless to say that any type of racist or sexist attitude doesn't go far in advertising. But here we have a student population, which during summer, by statistics taken each year, is almost 30% of oriental origin and 65% female. Not only was this commercial poor advertising, but just plain stupid.

Gender bashing, racist remarks and general rudeness offends people. You don't sell by offending others. The hardest of them to deal with is use of gender in your copy. How do you handle it? Instead of "service man", it's "service person". Instead of "his", it's "his/hers". There are however a couple of other ways to help deal with this problem. One is two use plurals. Instead of his or her, try they, them or theirs. Another is to rewrite your copy taking out any reference to sex at all. You may even try alternating sexes through ad copy.

Well, that's it for now, hope you're walking away with more than you came with.

Listed above are just a few techniques that you can use to help you write better ad copy.

Remember good copy sells, but great copy sells well!

Some examples of behaviors that are commonly believed to be allowable which are in fact illegal in United States are:

- Taking images from newsgroups and posting them on your web site. Just because something has been copied to a newsgroup, regardless of whether copy was made by copyright owner or someone else, does not mean in any form that copyright has been given up.

- Using articles and images from other web sites. Again, this is illegal unless explicit permission is given or item in question is in public domain.

- Scanning images from magazines and posting them on your fan site. This is illegal as you are making a copy (a scan) of a copyrighted image.

- Recording sound from your favorite television show and posting them to your web site. Again, not legal.

- Getting permission from someone who has made a legitimate copy of material. The rule is simple: you must obtain permission from copyright owner or their legal agents.

- Modifying an image and claiming it as your own. Copyright protects derivations of works as well.

On other hand, following are acceptable under US copyright laws.

- Including a few brief quotes from a book in a review. This is acceptable under fair use laws - see http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/fairuse.htm

- Reprinting a confirmed public domain novel on your web site (public domain is theme of a future article in this series).

- Asking and obtaining reprint permission from copyright owner or a legal agent of copyright owner.

- Reading an article about cheese puffs and writing your own article about cheese puffs. Copyright protects creative works (writings, images, paintings, sound and so on), not ideas or concepts. You are safe as long as your work is not simply same as other work with words changed.

The best advice is simple. When in doubt, ask permission. If you are denied permission or for some reason cannot obtain it, then don't use material.