Since as far back as I can remember I have been infatuated with the idea that you could sell products in untraditional manners and make a ton of money. I remember the days of Don Lapre, the self-proclaimed guru who became a millionaire by selling informational packets through “tiny classified ads” (he since went bankrupt, but that’s a different tale). Since I was fascinated by this concept (although by no means ready to part with my money) it comes as no shock that I’m also fascinated by the boom in one-page sales letters found online.

These sales letters follow the single most basic sales pitch: buy our product, solve your problem, and live a better life. What’s interesting is not the message - which is the basic core message every good salesman should be sending - but the methods they use to get that message across.

Today we’re going to take a look at one method employed by e-product sellers across the globe:

Nobody Ever Got Popular By Being Obscure

Making sales online is a big popularity contest, and the current popular program is David Gales Automated Cash Formula. By the title of the product you can already guess what it is: a “formula” which promises to bring in money via an automated (or most-autonomous) method. Fairly straightforward, yes? This is key: the message of what the product does must be short, clear, and concise.

While Automated Cash Formula overtly tells us one specific thing, it sends several different subversive messages to the reader:

• This method is automated, therefore it is simple and does not require hard work
• This is a formula, something written out that can be executed time and time again for proven results
• This automated formula generates cash, money, moolah.

In other words, Automated Cash Formula expresses the idea that any fool can pick up the product, read it, understand it, use the formula, and generate cash from that formula. It’s not just a product name, it’s the entire product message.

Why is this important? Makes sales - both online and offline - is about grabbing your customers attention as fast as you can - and the greatest sellers do this by promising to solve a problem. To better understand what I mean watch any infomercial of your choice (I prefer the kitchen appliance ones myself): in the first minute of the infomercial you will be presented with three things: the problem, how to solve that problem, and the product that solves said problem.

Infomercial products have the benefit of being able to have cutesy names (like “GT eXpress 101″) because they have much more time to capture their potential buyers attention. On the Internet, you have about 15 seconds before a potential customers clicks the back button, therefore your product title becomes about ten thousand times more important, and the economics of the Internet forces you to select a name that is more productive than promotional.

Unlike traditional sales methods, where you can describe a problem and describe a solution, the Internet forces you to state the problem, solution, and product inside of 15 seconds.

So, what’s in a name? In the world of Internet Marketing: everything.