Where do you advertise? Links, FFA's, Classified ads, opt-in email, news groups, message boards, search engines? All of them are limited in how many characters you can use. In ocean of ads, you have to grab viewers attention, then make them click.

Grabbing there attention does not mean SHOUTING! Viewers tend to see all CAPs as spam. Better to use spacing to grab initial attention. Example:

[Subject] Make Money Under One Plan!! this is HOT see what you think Internet Spy Kit!!! Kill Your Credit Card Debt! Bologna Sandwiches... Opportunity Triple your Income/ 1 Million Emails Retire Working at Home!!

Some use a trick with characters to try to get you to see them. I don't mind this is it is not used to extreme.

[Subject] Make Money Under One Plan!! this is HOT see what you think Internet Spy Kit!!! Kill Your Credit Card Debt! >>>Bologna Sandwiches<<< Opportunity Triple your Income/ 1 Million Emails Retire Working at Home!!

You'll notice I used another trick for attention getting. Getting to meat of matter, don't you want to find out why someone would have a link about bologna sandwiches? Be careful with this one though. If you use it in an email campaign, it better be humorous or about bologna sandwiches, or your email recipients may call it spam.

[Body] "...with 45 easy payments of $499.99, you'll still be able to afford bologna sandwiches."

That might be hard to stomach. Usually a question that needs to be answered is good for a headline. You have to read email or click link to get answer.

[Subject] "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

[Body] "Practice!"

In a banner advertising campaign, where I'm actually using a button, I have been getting a good response using very simple text. "Webtools" is text and button is sent to a specific audience of webmasters.

Hmmm, you may muse. AM I a one trick pony? Whatever hell that is. In fact, Just what Is good old uncle ed getting at?

Hmmm...Oh well, you don't have time to figure out what Mr Lazy Dude is asking you... You've gotta a lot of work to do. After all, Your sales are flat. Your old newsletter members are un-subscribing. Your New newsletter subscribers all have free email addresses.

And every damn person you hear from is broke and looking for a handout...Sorry, uncle ed, you've got other fish to fry.

Does above sound a little like your Home Grown Biz these days? Are you feeling economic downturn? Are your tactics, ads, offers, sales letters not getting response they did just a few months ago?

Are you in a scramble to find new affiliate programs? Are you looking for something, Anything, that works? Have you even considered buying email blasts? After all, isn't that why you have your junk email accounts?

Am I making you a little nervous? Am I hitting close to where your Home Grown Biz lives? Well, don't feel like Lone Ranger. There's plenty of this going around.

So what's happening here? Is it really just fallout from much ballyhooed slowdown? Perhaps it is. Then again, perhaps it's because you, like so many of us internet marketers, have become a stale One Trick Pony.