Thanks for the information Chris.

Simple yet extremely effective.

Thanks for sharing, Chris.

Thanks so much.

Highest Kudos on your newest template- had I the ability to socially vote on it…

It’d been an easy 5*- thanks!

Best regards,

Mark M. Bravura

I use the “pain” and “relief” format in all my sales and marketing and writing activities.

If you know your audience’s pain then it should be a simple task to get them to acknowledge the pain they have and then you can offer them the “medicine” (the solution) to counter their pain.

When I’m selling my marketing consultancy services I always get the prospect to close themselves i.e. I’ll go over each “pain” they have and quote them stating “You said you have no time, knowledge or resources to market your business, is that correct?” and repeat this for each pain.

I finalise by simply ask them what are they going to do to resolve their pain? They generally think about this for a while and state they have no idea and realise they need to take on someone like me to provide their solution.

I also extensively cover the reader’s pain and offer solutions in my book about referral marketing.

Carry on the good work.

Best regards,

Vince

Excellent!

Thank you for sharing.

Ioannis Mitrou

I was certified in NAC in Hawaii by Tony in 1991.

I’m certain Tony was not the originator of this pain/pleasure principle. This has been around for a very long time. :)

But I must say to the rest of you above me, you don’t tell me anything, you don’t elaborate on the formula, as even Chris asked you to. You don’t give me relief.

So I am in pain reading your remarks. Won’t you share also how the pain relief formula works for you?

I wrote up a complete marketing text for a website based on this concept. However, I don’t share it here or in a free ezine article because what I wrote is simply too valuable to give away!

Sorry folks but I have considerable marketing experience, and unless I get equal back I don’t give away!

Sorry not to relieve your pain by giving you the information I know that just got reinforced by Chris’.

best regards,
maria

Thanks ~ Gary

Thanks for this piece of great information ! The Pain Avoidance Template Simple Layout is surely simple enough to be simply understood by any marketer! Again, thanks for sharing, cheers..

Chris’ template opens up a whole new approach for me. This rocks!

Thanks!

Doug

Indeed and I must have 5,750 using this model or some variation of it. Especially, in business articles, self-help, future concepts and politics. Where, I:

1.) State the Problem or Challenge
2.) Give an example of such a problem and havoc that surrounds it.

(generally these 2-above are 1-2 paragraphs) Next, I focus on an innovation, concept, idea, observation or potential solution to these problems, and where such a solution or parts of that solution are borrowed from, another industry, sector of science or human endeavor.

3.) How similar situations are solved elsewhere
4.) The proposed solution or the solution that works.
5.) How wonderful it will be once this problem is solved for you (the reader), the industry, the government, the society, civilization or world.

And in closing, I would like to add that “Fear” is a huge emotional trigger and “Fear of Loss” is one of the primary closing techniques of salespeople. Think on this.

I absolutely agree that pain avoidance is the #1 underlying force in most buying decisions and that most people, including myself, will do more to avoid pain than they will to seek pleasure.

Chris, could you provide us with any examples of high-quality articles from your huge collection, which follow this template?

Thanks for sharing,

Andrei

Thanks for another useful article. In fact, my comment is not related to it, but to your blog’s template. I was exploring your source code because I like the clean and simple look of your site, and I found out that the code for all comments starts with the following (an open paragraph tag, then a closed one). Just wanted to point you to that error in the code.

Thank you for your template,

Anne

It certainly is a thinking point……..

Thank you for your advice,

Alexander

Instead of just saying Thanks Chris” or “Excellent Chris” in order to gain a link back to your site, perhaps people should make a meaningful comment. It would make the whole read much more interesting.

By the way, excellent tips Chris, if not slightly old hat!

Steve

Hard work is not pain but merely a culmination of discipline and focus. If you enjoy what you are doing, pain is the least that you can experience.

The advice is helpful and very simple.

Maynard Delfin
Manila, Philippines

“TY” comments don’t add value but they do help with the social proof thing.

Yes, I think we all enjoy comments that add value to the discussion…some by adding a unique angle or insight and others by reinforcing that a particular thought is on the right track.

Your insights are right on target as usual!
You sure know how to hold our “feet to the fire”.

Quote:
In closing, some writers often fail to produce new articles because the pain of producing a new one exceeds the future pleasure of the good that it will create. The solution is to focus your time on “WHY” you want to write more quality original articles… It’s not painful if you enjoy it or enjoy the reason why you’re doing it.

Hope your day and week is going fabulously!
Thanks for the kick!

Yvonne

I agree that folks should try to leave a meaningful comment, and I have seen a number of comments that are obviously “back-link” motivated, still, I know my comments aren’t, I have 13,000 X 3 backlinks from this site and probably 200,000 back links from those who have used my articles somewhere else, after they left here for there. So, of course my comments are not back-link motivated, as I assume yours are not, although, Steve the best proof of that would be to post more articles, and not just comments here. That is the proof of back-link comment campaigns vs. a serious online article writer.

Still, if someone participates and gets rewarded a back link, then that is fair and allows for a win-win. So, its all good of course. Steve, hear me, when I say this; if you really want your website to take off and climb to cruising altitude, you have to write articles to your target audience, and these back-links for comment participation, heck that is just frosting on the cake and a happy landing at your destination airfield.

It is your blog however and you are free to do whatever you like with it.

Just imagine if the blog became more of a debate with people showing differing views.

Surely even you are not right about everything.

In business I sometimes make a statement to my colleagues which is totally wrong just to see if any of them are clever enough to spot the error and to challenge my authority - this takes guts and shows who is likely to be of most benefit to me and my ultimate profits.

It would be interesting if you made a blog post which was utterly ridiculous in its content, just to see how many people would realise it. I am sure that you would still get the “Excellent Chris” comments.

It is like these people see you as the leader of a some kind of cult.

The site is top class but the comment side of the blog could be improved.

Just my observations, not a criticism.

Steve

Thanks for your comments.

I do write articles and have thus far had 741 published at ezinearticles with four pending.

I have even written an article about you:

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-King-Of-Writing-Articles-Lance-Winslow-Explains-Why-Article-Marketing-Works&id=334823

Steve

Being a “cult type” leader, while building an online community follows in line with the “love and respected” type leadership that works well in such esoteric groups like a 100,000 writers. It is working for Chris. The “yes man” critique is a problem with leaders and followers, and I never much liked “yes men” either. And your point about taking a strategy of making a silly comment to show proof of follow-the-leader-syndrome is not a bad advice offering.

Still, perhaps it is not that people fear Chris or being on Chris’ good side, but rather actually do agree with his points of contention or observations often enough. Over the past several years on this blog, I have debated both sides of an argument or discussion, played devil’s advocate, defended my position, and disagreed with Chris on his. And I have seen countless others do the same, many of the top authors and many new authors with barely 3-4 articles under their names.

Indeed, I have seen folks with 30-40 articles over a 2-year period or less than 60-80 over a 3-4 year period debate and disagree. For some I see their discussions as a learning experience, thinking outloud and attempting to get at the truth, which is ellusive in itself, as each author here has a niche and a reason for writing besides just article marketing, it goes deeper than that.

I did notice 3-in-a-row comments above on this post that came in nearly at the same time that appeared to be “quick kudos posts for back-link points” and that would be hard to deny, so I see what you see too, however, it seems that cheaters never really do good in online article writing, because to succeed at it is hard work. So they come and go, blow away some day, post 10-20 articles and then stop.

And then there are those who post; “I agree” or shorter comments one time in order to get their feet wet and try it out. Then later as they get more self confidence, they post longer comments. So, if Chris does make a rule, of such posts, saying they must be meaningful, then it will deter some commenters of course and that would prevent dialogue rather than enhancing the conversation, so you see that point too.

Thoughts? How many articles did you post today at EzineArticles.com? That is proof of your strength of character and comments here today.

1) DESIRE TO ADD VALUE: Your blog comments or questions should have a desire to ADD VALUE to the discussion, be relevant and meaningful to the discussion.

I guess our posts crossed, yes, I saw that article, and so did some of my friends, we all had a laugh, thanks, that was fun.

Now then, I know that some Blog Communities that are commerical based give points to commenters who are bloggers in the same community, in doing so they hope to help build relationships online that transfer into the real world. (ActiveRain Real Estate Network is one). It works.

What the folks at that network did was to stop giving points for posts of less than a couple of sentences and eventually stopped the active links by writing “no follow” for the search engine spiders. Unfortunately, this hurts the users, but prevents the scum and “Sploggers” spam comments.

It seems that it is unfortunately human nature to do less and get more. I irks folks like me who work hard to put in what we expect out. I see with 741 articles yourself and 450 by the end of the week, that you and I are on the same page here and cringe and these BS posts for favortism, back links or just mob mentality motivation.

I had a goal at the start of the year to submit an average of one article per day and so far have managed to do that.

I would love to be able to write as many articles as you do but have to manage my time with many other things. As an example I have two young children who I love to spend the majority of my time with. I also run a speech therapy business and am a webmaster of a number of sites.

Steve

A thought occurred to me, sploggers often use that; “I agree” tactic, because they realize that most people are apt to leave up their posts, because they so much want people to like them and agree with their opinion. So, for them it improves their chances of their BS splog comment or “Comment Post for Back-Links” being left up.

Then there are others who are people that are afraid to “disagree” as mentioned above as the same, for fear of being un-liked? So much wanting to belong that they give up self; call it lack of self-esteem or in need of justification that they are a worthy person rather than understanding the reality of things and asking; “Why would I want to join a group that would have me as a member,” as someone once said?

So, now we see these two different issues blending as one on this Blog, as some want to agree to ‘win friends and influence’ people, thinking that compliments will elevate their social status and others who use this syndrome to propel free back-links. Now then, I see a little bit of both scenarios here and it’s a little hard to tell which is which sometimes.

Zen saying,

“Whatever you are FOR, strengthens you;
Whatever you are AGAINST, weakens you.

Let’s be for more thoughtful comments that add to the discussion; but let’s not be against those who post comments that didn’t meet your rules for value. Be for being helpful. :)

A so called negative comment can easily be turned into a postive, if people can learn from it. We can all improve and we all make mistakes.

When I make a statement to my colleagues that is totally in-accurate - on purpose, it is very rare that I am challenged - sad but true. The people who do stand up and say “No, I think you are wrong there” are the people who work with me over the long term. Yes men (or women) can go and work for someone else.

Steve

Good point indeed. Sorry if anyone mistook my comments for an attack campaign here. Now then, you bring up a very good point Chris. It is my contention that working hard, pulling your weight and maintaining strength of character is difficult and so, many folks wish to take the path of least resistance, but why? Well, because it is painful often to work harder, have higher values and stand for something larger.

So, should we condemn those with higher values for pointing out that folks could or should put in a little more? Or should we simply throw up our hands to human nature and realize that people will always try to do less and get more and take whenever something is offered or steal if they can get away with it?

Now then, your “Pain Avoidance Template” solves two problems, in that it speaks to how writers can get more for doing less, while still delivering the goods to the reader, who feels pain in some area of human endeavor and truly wishes to avoid that. So, “the Pain Avoidance Template” is a win-win. However, with that being said, these articles do not write themselves, article authors write them, right? Sure, they do, so my challenge to all the article authors out there is to get writing, and now that you have this awesome template, you have no excuses.

In other words; “No Pain and All Gain!” and you gotta love EzineArticles for that.

As my personal learning technique I have applied the formulas, such as the procedure Lance gave, and again wrote new marketing copy, or article copy.

I don’t share the actual article and marketing copy because its content is extremely valuable for money-making purposes, since I am sometimes paid as a copy-writer or a prospectus writer, as well as a successful book writer.

Here is my contribution.

Personalize your article or selling copy.

What might make even more effective the formulas here described by Chris, Lance and others would be to story-tell the content.

- Instead of describing a problem and the pain it causes in general, describe what the person with the problem must be feeling in having such a problem.

- Don’t describe objects and procedures. Describe people. Personalize whenever and wherever you can.

- Next, empathize with your hypothetical person feeling the pain of the problem, by describing yourself, the writer-expert, as also having had such a problem, so you understand what they are going through.

- Next, give your reader hope by describing yourself as having solved the problem and felt great relief.

- Do not describe yet how you solved the problem, only the relief felt from solving the painful problem.

- Next describe the conditions and the changes the reader will need to make if they are going to use the solution to the problem that worked for you.

- Make a short commitment list of things the reader should do from easy to hard. Give alternatives but get some sort of commitment to use the solution offered, when it is offered.

- Don’t solve the problem for the reader by giving them the solution to the problem!

What?!

- Keep the reader in suspense!

- Now you make them do something you need them to do if they want the solution to the problem.

- You describe some of the pain relief benefits you gained, like not having the problem any more.

- You give them a partial solution to the problem, one step, a key concept, a short list of taking the first step in solving the problem.

- Then you give them your link to go to for the full solution to the problem, or buy and read your book, buy your course that is tailored just for them, read all your articles on relationship, or whatever the problem-field is that you are expert on, and so on.

Why am I giving you all this?

Maybe you think I’m nuts? Maybe I am, but also then this style of problem-solving is not for you.

My motivation is to give back because I have been given to here. I don’t give the house away but I at least invite you to a party there.

And hope you invite me to your house party some day.

And a few of you have!

I could not agree more, throw them from the ship, people who can disagree and justify it or back it up are worthy, those who cannot, see ya. I think Bill Gates would agree with this, from one of the examples I read in a Book about Microsoft, that stuck with me as highly relevant.

Now that is not to say that you want a bunch of terrorists in your group purposefully attacking the leadership, but true leadership does not demand 100% agreement from the round table.

In fact, this is the problem with committees, everyone aligns themselves in a way as not to avoid any social hardship or pain and in the end the resultant is unworthy and a disaster of a decision.

Without challenge or pain, how can anyone grow into anything but the Borg? and Chris has shown through Motorcycle Repair Scenarios that I am in a highly weakened state today, as I have allowed such things as; Hypocrisy, Bureaucracy, Procrastination, Cheating, Falsehoods, Laziness to be placed on my list of things I am “against” and so now I have to go take a nap, and allow the things I am for to catch up such as; Excellence, Dedication, Perseverance, Strength of Character, Integrity, hard work ethic, and action.

Then, when I have my strength back and that pain is gone, I will be revived of all my worldly energy to write another article!

“That UAV’s wing fell off in mid-flight, just imagine how that aircraft felt, oh that poor airplane?”

So, where as a psychologist might use one technique for problem-solution or pain avoidance templates, it will not always work for inanimate objects, other than perhaps a futuristic artificial intelligent android with human characteristics programmend it. But, I submit to you that a template for problem solution for objects can work for people problems, just not the other way.

Now one could say that you can mention how the people who owned the aircraft or the engineers felt about it, but that would be dribble to those who seek the solution, and I submit to you that “white papers” rarely introduce people and empathy into problem solution articles, even though they too use the pain avoidance template.

Of course, a psychologist type, would always want to bring up the empathy thing, because they deal with people emotional issues, and women reader’s do rather fancy the empathy play within the pain avoidance template, but, it cannot be used all the time, so, its not really a silver bullet solution. Often the empathy is inferred or the individual reader relates to the article with or without telling them how everyone associated with the issue felt.

Also realize that when people are looking for solutions, they are scanning articles anyway and so, keeping the article short is of value to the click happy world, and emotional baggage is not always appropos.

I just visited your blog, very interesting and I see you and Strephon have similar interests and work together on things. Excellent choice and such a fine person to work worth.

I too like Strephon’s world class posting here above, just one of the best comments I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I think it is a great template strategy he has for promoting and marketing his line of topics. And it ought to work for other article authors too, if indeed they write articles similar to what he and you are writing.

Indeed, I feel as if this strategy of Strephons is a little too complicated for new writers and very niche oriented and thus, will not be effective in all types and categories of articles. But with that said, I wish you and Strephon continued success in your working together and your niche category, because it is something that many people need.

How could you allow such an awkward English language sentence to be used so prominently against your thousands of writers as this one?:)

Does anyone agree with me?

The offending sentence:

“Article: Being Smart, As The Way For You And I To Go In Life has been updated, and awaiting to be re-reviewed.”

“and awaiting to be re-reviewed.”???!!!

Certainly not common usage. Either use: “and is waiting to be re-reviewed.” Or, “and waits to be re-reviewed.”

You don’t normally have a passive verb (awaiting) referring to a verb “to be re-reviewed.”

Note: “awaiting execution,” where the verb refers to a noun.

But I’m not suggesting anything that extreming!

I also voted for “Disagree” because, I enjoy disagreeing with you personally. You see, Strephon, you are a very hard to get along with individual and often your comments, attacks and posts are simply mean-spirited. Which is totally interesting because you preach being one with the Universe and in complete euphoria, that is if you are not practicing high-speed sword swallowing or levitation sleep?

Not easily.

Many already do this template by simply SOLVING PROBLEMS as the core purpose for their article focus.

I can tell you this:

Some fail at this template when they talk for 99% of their article on the “WHY” solving the pain is important vs. the “HOW” to solve the pain. We would say that this type of ‘cheating’ is like failing to deliver on the promise made on your article title.

I think that failure is synonymous for learning lesson. You can do nothing about the past, but you can change the future.

In 1986, Halle Berry, Miss USA, did not qualify for the finals at the Miss World pageant in London, UK. In addition, she was favorite until last second. Who is the greatest black actress of All-Time? Halle. I remember when she had won the Academy Award. I could not believe it was true. What happened? She worked without letup (more perseverance than talent). Certainly, Halle Berry is an example…she loves her work!

Alejandro

So, when you see a super star like Halle Berry learn from both her successes and failures, well it’s just amazing what they can do. So, I enjoyed your point here today Alejandro, continued success to you my friend and may your failures in life lead to the same patterns of success of great characters of our time.

Indeed, I did enjoy your list, these are very important folks to have as role models, here is a list of folks that I believe everyone should study:

http://www.carwashguys.com/0021803_2.shtml

I put this list together to assist others who want to reach their dreams, and yes, sometimes you cannot avoid the pain, but understanding the pains that they went through, well it might be some wise lessons to learn in advance of that journey.

Thanks again

Being a published author means business relationships with others, means big sums of money.

Behind any of these ideas on this blog, or countless other blogs, are real world successes and failures, I am sure.

When I worked as a dreamwork psychologist how I worked with people could also mean success or failure. Sometimes other psychotherapists sent their failures to me. Very difficult.

Was I to help them handle their failures? Was I to help them become successes? Was I a success?

The identity problem is defining yourself as a success. Some find it more to their liking to define themselves as failures.

In my experience as a psychologist I would change the avoid pain formula maybe a bit for writing articles.

Find a person’s true motivation and help them with it.

-Are they basically a person who is always struggling with their failures, their pain?

-Are they persons almost always trying to make a success of things, taking opportunities whenever they can, using their resources as effectively as possible?

So please consider then two kinds of pain, for yourself, and for others. Know your own pain and try not to give it to others but deal with it yourself. Seek healing.

If you are not a trained psychotherapist but a writer of articles or in business, still know what kind of a person you are writing for.

-To help them get out of their pain?

-To help them maximize their potentials into successes?

My observation: there are these two kinds of personality differences. Those who live life from negative motivation and those who live life from positive motivation.

The EzineArticles pain formula, I speculate, only works for negative motivated people, not for positive motivated people.

Right now I have a business partner of each kind, and believe me, the mix does not go easily, and may be impossible.

-For the complainers of the world who live from fear of hurt: stick together!

For the excited idealists of the world who seek out the opportunity in everything: stick together!

Keep your distance, you two! You don’t work well together!

And watch out if you find yourself in between!

The sun rises, but it also shuts down for the moon to take over, but still there is utter darkness. The light needs darkness to shine.

These are my original ideas. Please acknowledge a bit if you use them in some writing of yours.

So, if we limit the problem and capitalize and spend 2/3 pr 3/4 more time on the solution, then perhaps we catch the interest of the negatively motivated sole, but still catch and pique the curiosity of the “Believe to Achieve” optimist?

In saying this, we must realize that the title, must be almost ambiguous double meaning. Why? Because a negatively motived person will click on the article, but a optimist must have strong power words to motivate them to click on the title, then if we are careful, maybe we can keep both interested long enough to read it without clicking out, as a true article marketer hopes, so they get to the bottom of the article and want to learn more?

I read all of the comments and only found one that actually mentioned physical pain, (bicycle racing husband). All of the rest have been mental or psychological related pains (not to deminish them). I very much enjoyed Strephon’s idea of presonalization.

My feeling is that when I am dealing with people that I need to personalize the relationship whereas with objects it is a totally different situation.

About the template, I view it as an excellent outline for just about any kind of marketing presentation. As Chris pointed out he encountered it via Tony Robbins and realizes that Tony also got it from somewhere else. That does not make it any less of an excellent general format that can be followed for just about any presentation.

Strephon and myself and probably a few others find that personalization also has its place in article writing. I tend to personalize mine where appropriate.