It will come as no surprise that one reliable way of making people care is by invoking self-interest.
[...]
First and foremost, try to get self-interest into every headline you write. Make your headline suggest to readers that here is something they want. This rule is so fundamental that it would seem obvious. Yet the rule is violated every day by scores of writers.”
Caples’s ads get self-interest into their headlines by promising huge benefits for trivial costs:
• You Can Laugh at Money Worries if You Follow This Simple Plan
• Give Me 5 Days and I’ll Give You a Magnetic Personality. . .Let Me Prove It—Free
• The Secret of How to Be Taller
- ⋱ communicate
- ...you can also see the darkness you can easily get into if you follow this strategy to the end from the very quote above