Credibility..Putting a face to it

[gvc223]

I was wondering what all of you think about this... I have been fine tuning my site based on the feedback from many forum memebers and things are coming along nicely. (you may have seen my previous thread "sales copy, feedback needed") www.exposecheating.com My question is two-fold. When selling an informational product, is it wise to put a name and face to the author to add credibility. As it stands, I do not have either on my site for privavcy reasons, but I have been wondering if I should reconsider that approach. The second part of my question; is it legal/ethical to use a fictitious spokesperson or character to add credibitlity without using your own name or face. I'm sure the Maytag repairman, etc. are not real people but it is a different story all together to claim someone is an expert in a particular field. What about using a "pen name". I thought this might be an interesting topic to bounce around the forum. Any thoughts, comments...

[Zenit]

Wow. You website scares me. I think I'm going to forbid my girlfriend to go there :p.

Do the same that some writers, put yourself a pseudoname or false name and/or talk about you in third person. With this you can add credibility to your muse but having your identity covered. But if you do this you should indicate it is a false name.

For example, if you're a clever person you might know that Zenit is not my real name.

Regards: Zenit.

[webgal]

Interesting. Marcie sort of takes a different approach to this.

You need a more hard-hitting headline. "Hard to believe your thoughtful lover is really a Cheating Scumbag?" or "Is your man having a hot, lurid steamy affair behind your back?" The one you have there is a lightweight headline about a very emotional subject. Put some TEETH into it.

And you need to mention that if he is cheating, as a female you may be exposed to sexually transmitted diseases so you need something like this to protect yourself. It's a little too "sneaky". I think most women want to be validated that it's ok to investigate a lover. Make it OK to investigate before you launch into the sneaky part.

[Sven]

There's a valuable point if I ever read one!

[webgal]

Thank you, Sven.

[bmonsma]

Holy crap, your website makes me nauseous and I'm single. ha ha. I agree with every point webgal said. make purchasing your product justifiable to the woman. And, out of curiosity, are you a guy or girl? Would be interesting if a guy created this.

Just started a group, Networking for Friends and Profit, after the idea that it's nice to drop in one place, gather emails, etc., leave info about new resources and strategies, and pop back out. Saves time PMing, etc.

http://fourhourworkweek.com/vBulletin/group.php?groupid=1

There you go. Feel free to join!

Happy 4HWW!

[gvc223]

Thanks for the great input. I have changed my site to try to give my headlines more teeth as suggested. I do tend to go with a more subtle approach but am quickly learning that I need to get in my potential customers face alot more. As for making bmonsma nauseous, I think I will take that as a compliment lol. And to answer, I am a male investigator.

[webgal]

Funny, it never occurred to me you were female. I could tell immediately you were a male. I'll take a look at the site.

[gvc223]

Interesting... Maybe I write with a deep voice

[webgal]

No. I just could read it and tell. I'm a copywriter so I'm focused on the target market. I have to write like a female, like a male or be androgynous depending on the product. You simply had a lot of male perspective in there. To write to the females you are writing to, you need to step in their shoes. So go get a pair of high heels. Don't send us a photo. <grin>

[Keep a Movin' Dan]

Site looks great to me, don't know about the female perspective thing. Maybe try borrowing the color scheme of Heartless-Bitches.com?

One definite thing to fix, if you can do it without spending much time/money: I'm viewing this with Firefox + Ubuntu, and a lot of the text doesn't display quite right (letters covered up by pictures, letters running over pictures, letters running outside of textboxes and so on.) It looks unprofessional, but I assume the majority of people who see it with other browser / OS combinations won't have this problem, so only fix it if it's not too much trouble.

[gvc223]

Thanks for the input. My project for the week has been trying to get my site to look good in Firefox. FYI I have been using a free service called browsershots to check out how my site displays in various browsers. So far I am great in IE but terrible in Firefox. Very frustrating process.

[Keep a Movin' Dan]

I sympathize. My personal blog displayed great for me when I was managing it with XP + Firefox, but for some reason it looks awful in Ubuntu + Firefox. No idea why operating systems make a difference. I'm working on finding a web developer to give it a complete overhaul.

[jackson]

I have read online you should put your name, address, phone number and a small picture of yourself.