When selling, a sure-fire formula is: “ Problem- Agitate-Solution”. Here’s how it works:

Problem:

Find the prospect’s pain and identify it as clearly as possible. “It hurts right here, yes?”

Agitation:

This is the equivalent of finding the pain and then poking it with a sharp stick, pouring vinegar on the wound until the prospect is yelling “stop! I can’t take it anymore, anything to make it go away!”

Solution:

Now that your prospective customer is writhing in pain, practically begging for relief from the real problem they have which you have now created a monster out of, it’s time to offer a solution.

Of course this was your primary objective all along…

That’s what this piece of Charles Atlas’ marketing does. Scrawny wimp on the beach. Jock kicks sand in his face. Girlfriend practically calls him a coward. He buys Atlas’ book and bulks up. Back on the beach, he catches up with the Jock and socks him one. His girlfriend swoons while other women gawk at his biceps.

Gotta love it

They haven’t been influenced by emotions or personal preferences, only a hunger for money that led them to the truth.

They’ve based their verdict on rigorous testing and scientific fact.

Fancy graphics bit the dust. Creative arrangements were purged from the competition as unceremoniously as boils are photoshopped off a cover models cheek.

Some of the competitors took the soft approach, calling selling words and principle hype behind their back. They can think about their mistakes while they rot in shallow graves.

Yes, if you were expecting different, there is an important lesson to be learned here:

The long, seemingly infinite scrolling sales letter with shitty graphics always wins. And that’s what happened yet again when SEOmoz, the sexy, sleek Web 2.0 Blog had a contest to find which landing page would sell more memberships. You can read the full report onsite…

Here are some of the arguments I heard against it. They seem convincing but they are BUNK.

1) We are a Web 2.0 site. We need to look like the other Web 2.0 sites and none of them use long sales letters (Editor’s note: idiots)

2) Our customers are too smart for that. Too smart for what exactly? Do they have superhuman attention capacities? Can they read your mind in the search for benefits and hooks? Are their brains wired differently so that they prefer clicking to scrolling? What’s that? You “thought this was different?”. Nostrils, time to meet coffee. Take a good smell and wake up, k?

3) Long form sales letters are ugly. So’s your mom, yet here you are reading this.

4) If we make the navigation perfect, the customer will go through exactly the same material at the same time, thus eliminating the need for a huge long page that looks like it wants to sell. Put down the crack pipe Johnny, it ain’t gonna happen.

5) Long sales pages look scammy. Says who, Mr. EggSpurt, your engineer / programmer / designer intuition? Survey (customers pulling out their credit cards) says otherwise. Deal with it.

6) But none of the “big companies” are using long sales letters. Who are you talking about exactly? Coca Cola? And yes, there are legions of big egocentric companies that wouldn’t know good advice if it pulled up in a Ferrari and bitchslapped them across the face.

Get it in your head: your company is not special. Your customers are not different. Don’t be an idiot.

Tags: salesletter, seomoz, conversions, selling, randfishkin

Once again we’re jumping right in because this is another “postzilla”.

As a reminder, the sales letter is in regular text and my comments are indented in blockquotes:

Below, we introduce the offer.  Lots of bullet lists and lots of benefits.  Again we keep the text well spaced with titles, lists and the like to make it easy on the eyes…

Co-op Lists is where the rubber meets the road. No blind theory and no beating around the bush. Only guaranteed results and money sucking action.

What you DON’T get with Co-op Lists:

• Worthless ebooks that do as much for your income as watching reruns on T.V.
• Blind theory that leaves you scratching your head
• The need to invest in expensive software
• The need to write reports or articles
• A learning curve that discourages you from taking action
• The need to pull out a single extra penny from your pocket
• The need to build yourself a website

Ok, so it’s nice to know you’re avoiding all the pitfalls that come with so-called “make money online” programs…

“What do you get then?” Glad you asked…

Here’s What You DO Get with Co-op Lists:

• A guaranteed list of at least 1000 double optin prospects
• The complete software tools you need to make it happen
• A complete report of approximately 20 pages you own all the rights to, effectively positioning you as an expert and instantly setting you up with your own product to sell and keep all the money
• Dramatically improve your selling power
• A system on complete auto-pilot: no setup, no scripts: It’s ready now!
• Super-Fresh leads added monthly
• Promote your blog, site, products or affiliate products and keep all the money
• 13,000 solo ad exposures to your list every year selling or promoting whatever you want
• Best Delivery rate in the business: your emails get delivered and they get read. You make more sales
• Up to 79,156 Sponsor ad exposures per year
• A complete starter kit ready to pump the cash out. You don’t need to invest a single penny more.
• Secured spot on your group’s blog for more marketing power and as many links as you can handle
• Takes out all the work and all the guessing, meaning you get it right and leave nothing up to chance
• The first stepping stone of your online empire
• A network of partner lists to exchange mailings with, doubling or tripling your profits
• An exclusive mastermind group to brainstorm your way to greater earnings
• The leverage you need to land those huge JV partners who sell thousands of dollars worth or your product with one message
• Profit sharing for platinum members (you can make back more than you invest just with this, more details in a moment)

So here we’re done talking it up for now.  Time to present the offer in the most straightforward, structured and easy to understand manner.

To do that, we go back to the problem we stated earlier.  We numbered the problems and now we number the solutions.

I said it above: there is ONE right way to build a list, and for that you need all the elements. If anything is missing, you might as well be trying to swim across the Atlantic with a lead jacket…

Let’s have another look at those elements and how you’re in the driver’s seat with Co-op Lists:

1) Choose a Niche:

We’ve preselected the hottest niche markets online. Based on extensive testing and cold hard facts, the following niches are proven, high profit performers.

All you have to do is pick one:

Internet Marketing:

• General Internet Marketing
• Reviews of Internet Marketing Tools
• Search Engine Optimization
• Home Business/Business Opportunities

Health and Beauty:

• General Health and Beauty
• Weight Loss and Health
• Alternative Medicine

Other High Octane Interests:

• Relationships and Dating
• Self-help / improvement
• Coupons and Shopping

No guess work here. These are rock-solid, proven performers with hoards of hungry motivated buyers.

2) Professional 15-20 page report:

Written by our expert ghostwriters, you get one complete report, ready to do your bidding:
• You can re-brand it in your name with whatever affiliate links you want
• You can cut it in pieces and submit it to article directories
• You can use it on your own to build other lists
• You can sell it for whatever price you want and keep all the money
• You can use it in whatever profit pulling way you see fit, it’s yours!

3) Expensive software:

Your list is hosted on a top of the line Gestresponse account we provide. No ongoing costs, no setup fee. Everything is included. In fact the campaign is already active and you just have to copy past your selling messages.

4) Traffic , Traffic, Traffic:

Big Headache? Don’t know where to start?

Well you can forget about it entirely. We take care of getting those hot, juicy prospects on your list. Fresh new prospects added every month.

All of them are guaranteed double optin which means they really want to hear from you, they’ve said so twice…

Everything has to be easy.  Mention effort and you’ve just lost half your prospects.  It’s one thing to say it out right but it’s even better to hint at it not so subtly…

I hear ya, and that’s why I’ve taken out all the hard stuff, the confusion and the extra bits and pieces.
As the owner of the business, you do only the most important aspects of it.

• You write your monthly emails and ads, promoting the products of your choice
• You discuss lucrative Joint Venture opportunities with other list owners
• You check your stats and cash your checks

Everything else is completely hands off. You get all the benefits of running a real business with a large audience, only without the work and without the tedious everyday tasks.

You could be putting in 30 minutes a month and reap fat profits…

Math can be the saleman’s best friend. It’s your job to make numbers speak.  This ups the desire factor, essential before engaging the pricing/close phase of the letter.

Unlike other programs that give you unrealistic expectations, I’ll give you some real figures.

With 1,000 leads every six months (2,000 a year), that’s about 167 leads per month. The first month, you’d have 167 subscribers you could directly e-mail in your list, 334 the second month, over 500 the third month, and so forth.

That translates to over 13,000 solo mailings…

Say you sold a product as an affiliate, and your average commission was only $20:

A 3% conversion would be over 390 sales at $20 a pop, or $7800. But let’s play it really, really low. Let’s say you could only get one tenth of that.

A 0.3% conversion would be over 39 sales, or $780. And anyone who owns a mailing list of double optin prospects would call these numbers pathetic…

In fact the industry standard is closer to $1 a month per subscriber. But remember, we’re low balling the figures here.

But wait! That’s NOT including our unique networking system where you have the option of displaying an ad across related mailing lists. Let’s assume that there are only three related mailing lists in this network:

The total exposure in this case will be over 39,000 times in a year that you’ll be able to either e-mail a subscriber or have a short ad displayed to them.

Although these numbers already look good, they only multiply over and over again as time goes on, as the lists will always be growing. In two years time, you’d have over 50,000 exposures on your list alone, or over 150,000 exposures on the network.

In three years, you’d have over 110,000 exposures with your list alone, and close to a third of a million exposures throughout the network … and that’s NOT including any of the extra leads you’d be obtaining from the ebook sales throughout this entire time!

In hardly any time at all, you would have a huge list with a network that would make the gurus’ inner circles look like 10 day old leftovers…

If you think we’re done here, think again…

Now what if you factor in the sales from your custom ebook report? And what if you play it smart and use your constantly growing list to land monster JVs with the big dogs?

Well, we won’t even go there.

As you can see, this isn’t an over-inflated, hype program, get rich quick scheme. This is foundational “build a real business online starting now” material.

Ask anyone that’s experienced substantial success online and they’ll tell you: there is no faster and more surefire way to get ahead and make job crushing income than building a targeted optin list.

Just below is the thing all wannabe internet marketers fantasize about: getting the attention of a guru.  Landing that big JV. Not being ignored like the hole in an old sock you don’t wear anymore.

There is no replacement. Having a large list puts you on a complete different level. Instead of emailing the gurus for JVs and getting ignored, they will email you. Then you can choose to ignore them if you wish, although I suggest you give them a chance…

—

The end coming soon.

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Thought / Action of the Day: What I’m listening to: “Nobody Gives a Crap” by Captain Obvious and the Irrelevants.

Number of the Day:3 : The number of people that thought Captain Obvious was a real band.  Shame on you.
The number of people that thought Captain Obvious was a real band.  Shame on you.

The number of people that thought Captain Obvious was a real band.  Shame on you.

Tags: salesletter, copywriting, writingasalesletter, conversions, profit

In it we discussed summarizing your offer and coming up with a title. As you’ll see below, I’ve stuck with one of the existing ones and made a very small tweak based on one reader’s suggestion.

This post is already a whopper, so we’ll get right to it.

Below, the sales letter is in regular text with my comments indented in italics.

“Now You Too Can Have a Huge List of Blazing Hot Prospects Standing by With Credit Card in Hand – Without the Headache, Without the Work and Without any Software, Site or Experience at All”

If you’ve ever heard the saying “the money is in the list”, (and you’ve probably heard it ten times) then you can finally breathe a sigh of relief because you’re about to tap into your very own list profits starting right now.

With the subhead, we basically reiterate our promise and augment the interest of the reader. Hopefully, we’ve got their attention now and it’s time to qualify the prospect by demonstrating you are familiar with their situation. You also generate interest by making a promise that caters to their desires.

It’s time to turn the page on all those ineffectual programs, over-hyped ebooks and empty promises.

If you know, deep down inside, that a list of thousands of hot prospects could mean the difference between slaving away another year in that corporate prison called “job” or the complete financial freedom you desire, then this is the most important letter you will ever read.

If you can give me just 7 minutes of your time, I’ll show you why this is different from anything you’ve ever seen before. In fact I’ll tell you exactly how you’ll join the ranks of the elite marketers whose lists are like ATM machines standing by to print cash on demand.

It’s now time to introduce the marketer. Here we need to build credibility while initiating familiarity. The perfect effect is for the prospect to believe in the marketer’s authority while being able to identify with him. We also develop the idea of the solution we are proposing to the problem the reader has.

Dear Future List Owner,

My name is Brian Koz. I’m no big shot, larger than life guru. I don’t need or want the spotlight.

The simple fact is that for the past 4 years, email lists have paid for my car, my brand new house, several extended vacations, luxurious presents for my wife and just about everything else that makes life so enjoyable.

Now I’m not telling you this to brag or rub your nose in my success. In fact quite the opposite. I’ve been fortunate enough to “make things work”. I’ve stripped away all the junk and put together a foolproof system that’s a surefire winner.

In fact I won’t show you how to build a list or pitch you magic bullet software, PHD theory or anything of the like.

I’m not even going to talk about a coaching club or hold your hand until you get it right.

I’m going do it for you.

Before I show you how, let me ask you just one question…

“It’s just me and you against the world…” Almost all prospects have bought other products before, yet they are still no further along. Here we address the need for differentiation of the marketer in a crowd or “shallow water sharks”.

We also continue to subtly build the credibility of the marketer while positioning him on the same side of the fence as the prospective buyers. He understands the situation, he’s on their side and he’s there to help.

Listen, I’m not one to bad mouth anybody but we’re talking about your money here. We’re talking about your fighting chance to “can the day job” and be something more.

With some of the products out there, you really have to wonder if those so-called gurus are even on your side or not.

Maybe they don’t know any better, or maybe they do but the fact remains if you believe what they say and buy the latest list building software or super tricked out auto-responder, they’ve just done you a huge disservice.

It’s great to have all the features. It’s nice to have the latest “viral this” and “buzzword that” but does it put prospects on your list?

Does it take the first step for you and get that snowball rolling down the hill?

I think we both know the answer to that question.

You know you need to build a list (I know you know). But you haven’t done it yet…

Maybe you know everything it takes to successfully grab and retain subscribers that buy from you again and again. Maybe you promised yourself to do it later but never got around to it.

Trouble is, what chance do you have to enjoy the rich rewards of a responsive money list if you don’t have one?

No chance.

But here’s the thing:

Here follows one of the most popular approaches. Strip away the guilt. Differentiate the purchase form past failures and demonstrate how the deck was stacked against the prospect who will now get his fair swing.

It’s not your fault. With all the emphasis on tips and tricks and all the hoopla surrounding the latest list building software pieces, you’re led to believe these things work.

You’re told you can invest your money and practically “set and forget”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are tips and tricks. There are many ways. But there is only one right way. Only one foolproof system that produces again and again.

And that surefire system requires investment on your part in more ways than one…

Here we continue the “it’s not your fault” angle by proving we are correct. This serves a double purpose since we are accentuating the problem, making it more painful and setting ourselves up to provide a solution that will be well received.

This is almost common knowledge, but the truth is, it’s really just not that easy.

The list recipe explained:

1) Choose a niche to start your business in.

(I think we can all agree it’s downright confusing the first time around.)

2) Write a professional 15-20 page report that you can give away to your subscribers in exchange for signing up and receiving your emails. Not only does this get you signups, it also positions you as an expert and makes your prospects more likely to buy from you.

(Not only do you have to master your subject in a niche you picked based on your educated guess but you also have to invest hours of your time tediously writing out your report. Researching, editing, proofreading – It’s a lot of work… But that’s not the worst part.)

3) Buy Software that costs nearly $200 a year before you even get started.

(It’s really starting to add up. But if you think now you’re out of the fire, you’d be right. Only you’re heading straight for the frying pan.)

4) Send Traffic to your site.

(Oh Boy… So you’ve done everything else. You’ve spent hours, even days writing your report. You’ve built an optin page. You’ve even invested your money. And what do you have to show for it? Nothing.

Now you have to break the traffic code or all that was in vain. You wanted to build a list exactly so you could have traffic in the first place… Only to realize that maybe the chicken came before the egg after all…)

When you take all that into consideration, it really puts things into perspective.

You could be dropping hours of your time and hundreds of dollars of your hard earned money in an uncertain niche where you have no way of knowing if it will fly or flop before it’s too late.

It’s NOT and easy proposition and it’s NOT risk free and there are NO GUARANTEES.

But what if you could chop out all the work and all the risk, leaving you with a black and white guaranteed result?

Well there is good news: now you can.

The itch our proposition scratches is now well into perspective and it’s time to propose the solution. Stay tuned for more.

Notice the generous use of titles, short sentences and paragraphs as well as numbered list. Make it as easy as possible for the prospect to keep reading. We’ve already set the timer at the beginning for 7 minutes. That is not too much to ask of someone you will help to solve a problem.

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Thought / Action of the day:

Go on this page, scroll down a bit and read a random entry. Bet you learn something.

Number of the day:

181 people thought this blog post was too long but read it until the end anyways.

Tags: salesletter, salescopy, listbuilding, emaillist, prospect

If not, catch up on it here: Win a Sales Letter.

The winner of the contest is Brian Koz, serial entrepreneur and long time Warrior. I selected him because he had a simple, straightforward product that is sure to provide value to the right audience.

He also has JV partners lined up and a sizeable email list so I know the letter will get read.

Here we go.

For me, phase one is to understand the product and synthesize my approach by writing a headline.

I won’t give too much explanation here, just enough for you to grasp what the offer is:

The product is called Coop-Lists. It allows new marketers to create a mailing list with no software, no auto-responder and no experience. It also gives them a report-length ebook which they can sell or give away.

Here’s how it works. For about $75 for 6 months, the buyer becomes part of a group of marketers sharing a new double optin list. Every month, new subscribers are added until the number of subscribers reaches 1000.

Every month, each marketer can email the list one or two times with the offer of their choice. They can promote their product, blog, affiliate product, whatever they wish.

The basic gist is that after one year, for less than $150, you’ve gotten exposure of over 13,000 solo emails to your targeted double optin list.

You also get to post on the community blog with promos or links to whatever you see fit. Plus you get a very limited PLR report that you can use or give away.

So in my mind it’s a no-brainer list building tool for newbies where you get a brandable report, a blog, support and training. You don’t need software, experience or anything else.

That’s my synopsis. Time to write a headline.

Here are my favorite headline types:

1) “The One-Legged Golfer from Iowa”

If he can do it, you can too. The name of the city ads specificity. Not really appropriate for this product.

2) “Who Else Wants an Amazing…”

Says that others are doing it too. What could be a better indication of worth than the unspoken endorsement of your peers? Good for a little curiosity also.

3) “Now You Can Have [object of desire] [favorable outcome] or [without obstacle]“

Draws the right target audience in by being targeted from the start. Benefit oriented. Benefits are good.

Ok, that’s enough; let’s apply them to the product:

1) “Self-Made Marketing Tycoon from Arkansas Releases Ultimate List Building System Guaranteed to Land You 1000 Hot New Prospects Hanging on Your Every Word”

2) “Who Else Wants 1000 Hot, Double-Optin Prospects Added to Their List, with No-Software, No-Website and No Experience Required?”

Or

“Who Else Wants to Own a Huge Mailing List of Red Hot Prospects That Spits Money on Demand?”

3) “Now You Too Can Have a Huge List of Blazing Hot Prospects Waiting to Buy – Without the Headache, Without the Work and Without any Software, Site or Experience at All”

Note 1: I often change the headline when done with the long copy because the concept and core benefit will have become even clearer to me or I will get a better idea as I go along.

The real purpose is to focus the pitch and introduce the foundation on which the letter will build.

Note 2: This is useful to you even if you don’t write sales letters. It applies to any promotional message of any type. You need to open by grabbing attention or qualifying the prospect, hopefully both. It works for short ads, elevator pitches, squeeze pages, even introducing your spouse to the idea of spending a week’s salary on new golf clubs.

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Thought / Action of the day:

Go ahead, one-up me by writing a better headline in the comments. If I select your headline, you may or may not win something valuable.

Number of the day:

256 people think my new Thought / Action / Number of the day is lame but I’m going to keep doing it anyways .

Tags: headlines, salesletter, copywriting, briankoz, warriorforum

The conversion rate of your sales copy determines some extremely important outcomes:

• How much you can spend to get one visitor to your site
• The number and quality of the JVs you can convince to mail out for you

Those two criteria right there cut a cruel line between dead in the water wasted efforts and the easy-breezy success that sets you on your path to passive income.

But here’s what this is about. In this recent post, I patted myself on the back stating how good I had inadvertently become at copywriting. Turns out I have yet to be proven wrong.

One of the letters I wrote launched earlier this week and the conversion rate would make some of the $20,000 a pop guys blush like little girls.

In fact the guy I wrote it for called me a “god of copywriting”, which might be going a bit far, but my ego, for once, isn’t complaining.

So I want to share with you some of my immense wisdom in an interesting way:

I will write a complete sales letter on this blog, piece by piece, explaining the why and how of each section, paragraph and cleverly worded sentence.

Based on this live, “over-my shoulder-clinic”, anybody with a 6th grade command of the English language should be able to ramp up their conversions or at least understand the principles behind a sales piece that heats up your prospect until they either whip out their credit cards and buy something to relieve the pressure or have a brain aneurysm trying to resist.

Not only will this entire clinic be totally free of charge but one reader of this blog will walk away with a complete kickass conversion piece.

To win the Free Sales Letter, you need to qualify for the following criteria:

• You must have a product that I deem worthy. I will not write a letter oozing with sales juice for some hogwash, refried, low-rent junk nugget.

• You must agree to let me disclose everything here. If you already have a sales letter, I claim the right to tear it to pieces and point out your glaring inadequacies in public.

• You must be patient. I will not write your letter over night. Creative genius takes time and the process will be spread over multiple blog posts.

• You must demonstrate sufficient intelligence to recognize rock solid copy when you see it. You may give suggestions, but you accept that I will probably not heed them since I know what I’m doing and you don’t (note: the smiley is to diffuse the tension, I’m actually serious about this though )

• You must demonstrate the capacity and willingness to use the letter to make you money. If you have only $14 to spend on advertising, no list and no industry contacts whatsoever, we are not a good match. I want bragging rights and if no one ever sees the letter because you are too tight, cheap or ineffectual to get it out there, I won’t get what I want.

• Priority goes to readers of this blog and people that have a product or service in the internet marketing niche. If you’re already a semi-established or even established marketer with at least a minimum of traffic, that would be great.

• I would prefer a lower price point since it requires a shorter letter to get massive conversions.

 

Well, those are all the rules I can think of for now.

Here’s how you can participate:

Either leave a comment here stating your product and why I should choose you as the recipient of a free brain-drain or email me: calgonite (at) gmail (dot) com.

Include your product name, what it does or teaches and what you will do with your top notch sales copy to ensure I will get maximum bragging rights.

Oh and be quick about it. There is all of one spot available and I want to fill it as soon as possible, because like all truly great performers, I can’t wait to get on stage and “do my thing”.

P.S.  Feel free to run this by one of your friends or acquaintances that could benefit from it.

I became a copywriter in regards to the quality of the sales pieces I can write.

How do I know? Because people spontaneously offer me money to write their letters or go over their copy despite the fact I’ve made no effort to sell myself in this manner. It’s taken place 4 times in the last week…

Here’s how it happened.

In the days of yore before I stumbled upon the privilege or working for myself (despite the extraordinary hours it entails), I was a reader.

Particularly of the classics: Dostoyevsky, Dumas, Camus, and yes Shakespeare. But not just those great masters, also their modern day equivalents like Roman Gary, Milan Kundera and scores of others.

And let’s not forget Steven King even for one instant. When I started reading him, the words seemed coarse and unpolished. I almost thrust it aside. But then I realized coarse and unpolished was perhaps the best way to describe the world we live in and the reality in which carve out our existences.

And so I started writing. Short fiction almost exclusively. And it was just for me. Less than a handful of people have ever seen any of it and it will remain such for some time yet until I pull out my Writer’s quill once again when things settle down and I’ve bought a nice stone house amidst plentiful evergreens overlooking a serene lake in some place where time is slower.

But I got into the habit of putting words on paper and then making those words sound better. That’s the important part so far as this story is concerned.

Later on in my late teens, I thought I might want to write for a magazine such as Maxim or FHM. I couldn’t get enough of their funny articles and witticism.

At some point I did write for such a magazine, although it wasn’t any of the big guns.
Eventually I stopped as the rewards were not forthcoming and a mix of incentivized marketing and Black Hat Seo made it so I could safely quite my job and pursue far greater riches on the internet.

That was until October of last year.

Before that, I had written exactly 2 sales letters and both were pitiful. The first wasn’t so bad because I copied a piece that was made to sell an ebook on how to make money on Ebay. It wasn’t terrible and did have the distinct flavor or an infomercial on paper.

The second was awful. I did it with no model at all, no real knowledge of selling principles in writing and near complete disorientation.

No matter how much I played with it, added red glaring text, underlines, highlights and bold sentences, it still read like crap.

And that really pissed me off.

Fast forward to October 2006. I wrote my second ebook, Project Black Hat, a guide to Black Hat SEO. The book was easy enough to write since I could string ideas together well and I knew the subject inside out.

But I needed a sales letter. Some nagging voice told me to outsource it and pay a pro. There was just one big fat problem lying in the way: my ego.

My ego wouldn’t let me get away with it. We had a conversation that went a little something like this:

Ego: Hey Alex, you think you can be a writer? You think you’re good, I know you do, don’t lie. You pride yourself on it.

Me: Yeah that’s right.

Ego: If you outsource it, won’t that kind of show you’re not as good as you think? Won’t you be giving up just a little? If you do it, I mister Ego, will have to shrink and make excuses and I think neither of us wants that eh?

Me: Ugh! Damn you! It’s for the greater good, we’ll make more money this way and you can use that as food to grow bigger and stronger than you were before.

Ego: Suit yourself buddy, but “writing” is one of your “who am I s”, if you lose it, it’ll hurt, I know it, you know it.

Me: Fine, you’re right, I’ll do it. But I still hate you.

This time, I said to myself, there is just no way I’m writing another junker. I have skills and if I follow a formula, I can make something of it.

Although not entirely convinced, I bought a bunch of ebooks and “secret packages” and started reading. Eventually I fell upon Yanik Silver’s Instant Sales Letters.

They had a kind of fill in the blanks simplicity to them that would only require me to spruce things up a bit.

That was Big Turning Point #1. With one of those templates, I wrote the Project Black Hat Sales letter. I haven’t touched it since November last year when it seemed to me I couldn’t improve upon it much. When I look at it today, I can immediately spot dozens of improvements I could make in a snap.

It’s a very basic, cookie-cutter piece, but you know what? It worked. That letter has converted at over 7% during its lifetime. That’s huge in case you were wondering. Of course I only send very targeted traffic but that’s a story for another day.

I then proceeded to write 3 more sales letters following the same template. By the 4th, I was getting it in a way I never had before. Whereas before I was simply adding A to B resulting in C, now I understood exactly why that was happening. I saw patterns and formulas arise, the same way a practiced veteran can solve a Rubik’s cube during a commercial break.

And that was Big Turning Point #2: proven formula plus practice or application = constant improvement and measurably rewarding results. Yeah, it’s pretty obvious but I think we all need to be reminded once in a while. Me for sure.

So I won’t start selling copywriting services. Even $5000 for a sales letter isn’t really worth it to me. For more I might be tempted but I probably couldn’t get it now. And it just doesn’t fit the model I’ve chosen.

To fit my model, a venture has to multiply me, not monopolize me. If I can’t scale it and outsource it, I don’t want it.

What I will do is start writing a bit more about copy on this blog. It should fit right in with the general theme of making money with sharp marketing and dedicated application.

Can you see one of my latest sales pieces and judge for yourself whether I’m just throwing myself flowers or not? Sorry, but no. I want to show you but the people I’ve written for are secretive and private. They want to claim credit or say they hired one of the big shots to do their work. That always sounds better.

And it’s fine with me.

You’ll see it soon enough when my new products hit the market.

Tags: copywriting, stevenking, yaniksilver, salesletter