How to Write Fear-Fueled Openings Readers Will Be Too Scared to Ignore

You’ve seen it… over, and over, and over again:

“The only thing readers read are the headlines.”

“The headline is the most critical part of any post.”

“You should spend 90% of your time on the headline; 10% on everything else.”

In fact, pretty much every article you’ve ever read on epic, click-inducing, page-one-of-Google-ranking blog posts have one thing in common: it all comes down to the headline.

And so you buy in.

More than that, you slave. You sweat. You swap. You steal. And finally, after hours churning out duds, you arrive at that wonderful moment: the perfect headline, one that even Gawker and Mashable would be proud of.

You’re sure nobody could resist it. And, in fact, nobody does. The clicks start pouring in.

There’s just one problem.

Those clicks are all you get.

No comments. No signups. No shares. No scrolls.

The question is: Why? What went wrong?
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