2 Pro Level Tactics for Busting the Feast/Famine Cycle in 2018

Create your own opportunities, instead of waiting for them to arrive

How did the freelancing life treat you this year?

Get a steady flow of clients to keep amassing your cash pile, Scrooge McDuck stylee?

Or find yourself scrambling for change on freelance bidding sites just to cover the rent?

If it’s the latter – I hear you.

I’ve been through more famines than I care to remember…

Times when I’d stare at my inbox praying someone would reply to the hundredth prospecting email I’d sent out that week.

Or thinking I was a fraud and crazy to think people would actually pay me to write for them.

Sometimes it got so bad I’d even look at full-time jobs. Just imagine.

But the most annoying thing is I could have escaped the feast/famine cycle a lot sooner than I did.

That is if I’d implemented two key pro level tactics.

These are tactics I previously had locked away in my eBook on fast tracking your freelance success. But as it’s Christmas, I’ll share them with you here:

1. Attending live events is the best way to find high paying clients who understand marketing and respect what you do
2. Positioning yourself as the “go to” person in a specific skill + niche (e.g. email marketing for vets or webinars for property investors) will focus your marketing activities and rocket your earnings faster than the price of Bitcoin (which is actually dropping as I write, but you get the point)

Now, giving out advice is easy (just ask any of the Facebook gurus making a killing repackaging the techniques of Schwartz or Caples as their own).

But do these tactics work in the real world?

Well, allow me to share how they played out for me at this year’s Copy Chief Live…

Live Events are Where the Big Dogs Hang Out

When you add up the cost of flights to Florida, a room at the Hilton, a new blazer to wow the clients, printing 20 copies of my YouTube Remarketing Generator and networking over nachos, my bill for attending CC Live came to a cool $3,000, or so.

That may sound like a big injection of cash reserves.

But it pails in comparison to the risk another CC member took who gambled their savings to attend, despite seeming cool as a cucumber when I met them at the airport (a gamble which paid off for them in spades, by the way).

Yet had the only benefit of Copy Chief Live been meeting “ethically minded” copywriters at the top of their game, I’d have handed over the money gladly to discover what it takes to be among the best.

Yet luckily for me, I did succeed in getting a new client…

And no ordinary client…

A major A-Lister…

Someone who’s mentored Parris Lampropoulos, Carline Anglade-Cole and many other elite marketers – many of whom are million dollar copywriters today…

I am of course talking about the living legend Clayton Makepeace (I still can’t believe it either).

Based on my samples, he was willing to give me a shot.

My challenge was to write a lead on the impending pensions crisis as a preamble for selling a financial newsletter.

Click below to read it (Just be warned – if you’re retiring soon and haven’t got much squirrelled away it may ruin your Christmas. But don’t worry too much. Japan is in an even worse state, and governments everywhere will likely click the money printers onto turbo and kick the can down the road for another cycle):

 

A Nervous Month of Waiting

After reading through it so many times I lost all objectivity, I hit send and spent the next few weeks living under a cloud of anxiety, self doubt and being convinced Clayton had mixed up my samples with somebody else…

Then one day an email from Clayton arrived…the first of a series, in fact.

Long story short, he said he was interested in hiring me and would I be available for a promo in Feb or March next year!

After throwing my laptop in the air, spinning in circles on the floor and phoning my mum, I replied in the affirmative.

Now, I know I may have jinxed it publishing this.

A lot can happen between now and Feb.

This career changing opportunity could fall through (comes with the territory, unfortunately).

So for now I’m just going to embrace the satisfaction of having someone of Clayton Makepeace’s stature deem my copy worthy of their perusal.

After all, that’s what we all crave – to have someone we respect tell us our copy is good.

3 Daily Habits for Raising Your Game

I didn’t just write this to boast about getting on Clayton’s radar…

I’m hoping my progress can show you where putting in the work, focusing on a niche and attending live events can get you.

I’ve been through the struggles of worrying about paying the bills, dealing with disrespectful low balling clients, hiring lawyers to take non-payers to court and feeling like a fraud seconds after submitting copy for review.

Yet, what got me through, and will continue to do so, is committing to doing three things every day:

1. Studying a winning sales letter
2. Writing at least a couple of pages of sales copy
3. Coming up with a big idea for a new promo

If 2017 didn’t quite hit the heights you were hoping for, make 2018 the year you commit to doing these 3 things every day to raise your game, as well as niche down and attend at least one live event.

If that event is Copy Chief Live 2018, let me know and let’s grab some nachos.

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Next Week Only – Free Live Training from John Carlton and Colin Chung

At Copy Chief Live 2017

You’ve heard of the legendary John Carlton, right?

One of Gary Halbert’s original “road dogs” who’s known as the “most ripped off copywriter” on the planet?

The brains behind the one legged golfer ad and “gun to the head” copywriting?

Of course you have.

So you’ll be interested to know that next week ONLY John’s offering training that normally costs $708 for absolutely FREE! Zilch. Nada. Cero.

The training will teach you 3 vitally important skills:

– How to Discover Your Unique “Copy DNA”… and never run out of ad ideas ever again…
– The Simple “Fill-in-the-Blank” Sentence… that turns your elevator pitch into instant sales!
– 3 Steps Every Close Needs… that turns almost any prospect into a customer-for-life…

>>>Find out more about this incredible free training

John will be presenting each lesson.

You’ll then get individual, personalized coaching from one of his most successful students of all time – Colin Chung.

Colin’s copy has generated over $25 million in financial newsletters, health supplements and business growth.

His clients include big hitters like Newsmax, Agora Financial, Weiss Research, Brian Tracy, Mike Koenigs, Integrative Nutrition, Dr. Al Sears, and more.

As a mentor, he charges $8,500 for training that’s taken multiple copywriters to the six figures per year level.

And he’s willing to give you his time and attention personnally for FREE!

Before I hit publish, I checked their info page and there’s still 21 spots left.

Unless you’ve booked a skiiing trip for next week and can’t cancel, I’d hot foot it over to the registration page to book your seat pronto before they’re all gone.

Nobody knows when John will make an offer like this again (if ever).

So if you’d love to get coaching from two truly A-List copywriters who’ve helped numerous fellow wordsmiths to boost their earnings to six figures and make millions for their clients in sales, reserve your place RIGHT NOW!

>>>Book your slot for FREE coaching from A-Listers John Carlton and Colin Chung

Earnings disclaimer – If you decide to signup for the full Simple Writing System Coaching Program yours truly will get commission.

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Onboarding Process for Copywriting Clients – Set the Ground Rules from Day One

When working with a new client it’s wise to set some ground rules.

Outlining how you work will establish yourself as the adult in the room. It will also avoid mission creep and “just touching base” emails gobbling up your time.

Clients like boundaries too.

If they’ve never worked with a copywriter before (or been burned too many times), they’ll eagerly grab your hand when you offer to guide them through the field of landmines they see stretched before them.

Here’s my process:

1. After I receive your email I’ll send you a questionnaire to identify the scope of the project and how I can help
2. I’ll conduct background research into your business based
3. We schedule a call to discuss your project
4. I’ll send you a proposal
5. If the proposal is accepted, I’ll email you an agreement to digitally sign
6. I’ll send you an invoice for the project
7. I’ll conduct market research into your product, competitors, customers and positioning
8. I’ll send you an outline for your project
9. Once approved, I’ll draft the copy
10. The copy is proofed
11. Copy is delivered
12. Based on your feedback, further editing is conducted to get a final version.
13. We publish the copy and track the results using analytics and heat maps
14. If conversions are below what we needed for the project to be profitable, I’ll work on changes to improve the conversion rate
15. Upon project completion I’ll send you a questionnaire for feedback

Feel free to copy this into your FAQ page or email it to a new client as part of your onboarding process.

Trust me. It will save you a lot of time and hassle down the road.

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Copy Chief Radio Appearance – The YouTube Remarketing Generator

How much are you paying for clicks these days? A dollar? Two dollars? Even higher?

How about your cost per lead? If you’re paying less than $3-5 you’re doing better than marketing heavyweights like Russel Brunson.

The fact is that millions of marketers have entered the marketplace over the last couple of years. And click costs are getting so high that you need a minimum order value of $100 just to break even, let alone make a profit.

Well, I’m here to change all that.

I developed a strategy I’ve called the “YouTube Remarketing Generator”.

It works like this:

1. A prospect Googles “how to solve X problem”
2. If they visit YouTube in the next 15 mins you show them a video related to X problem
3. If they watch for 30 seconds they go into a remarketing list
4. You can retarget them in Google Display for half the normal price

Using this strategy, I’m getting clicks from people trying to solve health problems for just £0.35 ($0.45). That’s half what you’d normally pay on both Google and Facebook.

Even better is that these are clicks from people ACTIVELY trying to solve a problem. They’re what Gary Halbert called “hungry buyers”. So you can expect to get higher conversions and profits from every click.

I break down the entire strategy on Copy Chief Radio with Kevin Rogers.

I’ve also written a report that explains how to implement my YouTube Remarketing Generator strategy step-by-step.

Joe Public has to hand over his email details to get a copy.

However, as you’re one of the savvy people who’s subscribed to the Copywriter’s Crucible already, a mere click on the image below will suffice:

 

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Copy Chief Live 2017 Takeaways

7 Webinar Copywriting Tips – Sell Through Education Instead of Hype

Webinars can be a powerful a way to sell to B2C markets that aren’t yet over exposed

In our marketing bubble, webinars have been the #1 way to sell high ticket items for years. Yet in most markets, their selling power is largely untapped.

B2B folks seem convinced anyway.

A B2B Content Marketing Trends survey placed webinars as the second most effective way to sell, after live events and ahead of videos, blogs and case studies.

Why are they so effective?

• Webinars instantly position you as an expert
• People unfamiliar with webinars don’t feel they’re being sold to
• They can convert leads into sales within 24-48 hours
• They’re highly measurable and can be automated for consistent ROI

Webinars are common in B2B, whereas in B2C they’re still fresh and underutilized.

Let’s say you’re selling a natural health blood sugar balancing supplement. Just imagine how powerful a 40 minute webinar could be at educating people on the causes of high cholesterol, what foods to eat and how to naturally balance their ratio and reduce their risk of heart disease?

A lot of people would rather sit through a presentation that resolves something that’s bugging them than wade through 5,000 words of copy.

Webinars are only effective if you keep people’s attention

The challenge is overcoming the million distractions threatening to pull users a way. Your presentation has to go beyond plain vanilla advice if it’s going to keep people from flicking through Instagram, chatting on Facebook or checking their email. As always, harnessing emotion, intrigue and building tension are the keys to success.

Here are 7 webinar copywriting tips to help you keep viewers engaged and buying at the end:

1. Tell a Story

Stories engage at a deeper emotional level than a straight pitch. It’s how we’ve been wired since cavemen times. Share the background to devising your product or solution. Talk about the struggles, the failures and the Eureka breakthrough that led to your product.

2. Give Them an Easy Win

Give viewers a tactic they can implement almost immediately. This will give them an instant sense of advancing from where they are now. It will also make it easier for them to FEEL what they can gain from your product.

3. Frame the Price

Before you reveal the price, establish the costs of not taking action. Explain how much time and money they’re wasting without your solution. While they could try and figure it out for themselves or buy a cheaper alternative, explain how this will cost them more in the long run.

4. Crush Objections

In every sales letter, VSL and webinar, crushing objections is vital to clinching the sale. Write out a list of  reasons why someone might not buy and then address every one in a clear, objective manner. Then by the end they’ll have no excuses and will only see positives from having your solution in their life.

5. Lead Them Up a Staircase

Imagine your webinar is a staircase. At the start your viewer is at the bottom, struggling with a problem that’s preventing them from advancing in their career or life. Over the course of the webinar your job is to jump them up the steps by revealing what they can do to achieve the salvation that awaits at the top.

6. Track and Optimize

The beauty of webinars is the ability to track and improve their performance. Your goal is to get average order value (AOV) above your cost to acquire customers (CAC). Once you’ve done that then you can open the money hose and potentially scale to six or seven figures.

7. Test Live then Automate

Doing webinars LIVE is the best way to test and perfect your pitch. The interaction, unscripted vibe of live webinars naturally creates greater trust and engagement with your viewers. Just calling out their names and reading their comments has been found to increase sales. Then when you have a winning formula you can switch to automation for a consistent pipeline of sales.

Ready to Grow Your Business with Webinars?

Recently I completed Joel Erway’s Webinar Accelerator Program. Joel gets paid up to $40,000 to write webinars for elite marketers like Russell Brunson. And for them it’s money well spent. Russell generated $10 million from his webinars last year alone.

At $1,997 (it will soon go up to $2,997), Joel’s Webinar Accelerator ain’t cheap.

However, webinars are arguably the best way to sell right now. They’ve got huge potential in under served B2C markets. And you may make your money back on your first webinar project.

So whether you take Joel’s course or figure it out on your own, writing webinars is a high ticket copywriting service to add to your arsenal.

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Live Event Networking Tips for Copywriters to Make Connections in an Extrovert’s World

Just Add Hustle Podcast Interview – 4 Career Crashing Mistakes for Copywriters to Avoid

If you’ve ever wanted to hear my dulcet tones, your lucky day has arrived.

I sat down with Crucible reader and natural health copywriter Paul Buzan (who has the envied position of being one of Parris Lampropoulos’ copy cubs) to share my sage advice on how aspiring copywriters can avoid some of my near career ending blunders, on the madcap journey to where I am now.

This isn’t a podcast where I talk about crushing it. About writing million dollar VSLs (true story), meeting copywriting masters like Mr Drayton Bird or jetting around the world working on a laptop (well, maybe a little bit).

No sirree.

This is a warts and all, no filter confession on what can happen when you launch a copywriting business with no experience, no clients and no portfolio (like I did). And what career crashing speed bumps you can hit on the way.

What you’ll discover:

• What happened when I got sued by a celebrity TV chef (and learned an expensive lesson on the difference between food poisoning and a shellfish virus).
• How my misadventure into “black hat” SEO led me running into trouble with a collective of hackers (and how I resolved it without having my website hacked into oblivion).
• Why you should never guess who your target customer is and how to find out who they really are (following this advice will put you ahead of 90% of copywriters)
• The books I recommend you read multiple times. Why? Because they offer a better education than many of the $970 Facebook promoted courses out there. Times change. But the underlying principles of high converting copy stay the same.

>>>Listen to my Just Add Hustle Podcast interview on career crashing mistakes for copywriters to avoid

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Use Toll Free Numbers to Build a ‘Red Hot’ List of Prospects at Low Cost

A survey by the Direct Marketing Association found that 83% of people prefer to listen to a 24 hour free recorded message than speak to a live sales person.

Click costs are outta control.

On Facebook they’ve rocketed from a reasonable $0.27 at the end of 2016 to a budget busting $1.72 today. And with 2 million advertisers (and rising) all fighting over that sweet Facebook traffic, the costs are only going one way amigo. And that is UP.

Google stopped being profitable (in most markets) years ago.

Traffic from Outbrain, RevContent and their brethren may be cheaper. But it has the precision targeting of a garden sprinkler.

So what can you do?

You can focus on customer lifetime value and backend sales. And treat the initial sale as a ‘break even’ on your ad spend.

Or…

You can switch to channels few dare to mess with.

I’m talking about offline my friend. And using a tactic that gets grizzled veterans nodding approvingly and young bucks shrugging their shoulders, mistakenly thinking it went out of fashion with the fax machine.

Hire a ‘robot’ to talk to your customers (in a good way)

Through services like Telecenter you can setup your own Toll Free (Free Phone if you’re one of my UK countrymen) number.

You can then can record a message to convince prospects to leave their name and address for further info (i.e. your sales letter).

It costs a measly $40/month for this number to then generate leads around the clock. And if done right, it can be higher converting and cheaper than running an online paid ad campaign.

Here’s the strategy…

Say, you’re selling a supplement for joint pain. You’d run a small ad in newspapers (using low cost ‘remnant advertising’) saying something like:

Free Report – Repairs and Lubricates Your Joints to Take the Pain Away. Toll Free: (123) 456789.

People with joint pain are typically over 50 and still get most of their information from newspapers. They also trust printed coms a lot more than all the ‘fake news’ awash online.

And unless they’re sat at their computer, you’ll have their complete attention as they can’t be Liking or Tweeting when their phone is glued to their ear.

What to say in your recorded message

There’s no perfect length to a recorded message. As with a sales letter, you need to say whatever is necessary to get them to take the action you want – which in this case is to leave their name and address.

In the message simply:

1. Introduce yourself, your credentials and the reason why you created this message (never say you’re a doctor, unless you actually are one. Faking that you’re a qualified professional can get you in seriously hot water).
2. Discuss their pain, such as unscrewing a jar, getting dressed in the morning or feeling like a prisoner in their own home.
3. How wear and tear is the likely cause of their joint pain and how widespread joint pain is.
4. Give 3 lifestyle habits that may be making their pain worse (build the tension and raise the stakes for why they need help).
5. Tell them how your report shares the latest breakthrough research into joint pain and how best to relieve it.
6. Provide some proof with a stat from a study in your report, such as how X herb helped reduce joint pain for 8 out of 10 people.
7. Ask them to share their name and address and their biggest challenge of overcoming their joint pain (you’re getting pure old market research and lead generation rolled into one).

What results can you expect?

With a toll free number, you should be aiming for at least 50% leaving their name and address. Trevor Toecracker Crook typically gets an 80% response to his recorded messages

Then when they get your sales letter with a handwritten post it note (in BLUE ink) on the front saying “Barry, thanks for requesting my free report. Call me if you need advice, Matt” do you think they’re going to read it?

You can bet the farm on it.

And their trust in you is going to be at ‘best friends’ level compared to all the snake oil salesmen they find online, with their unrealistic claims, suspiciously positive testimonials and ‘grinning couple’ stock photos.

If you can get a good rate on your ad costs (remember to use remnant advertising), getting leads this way could also work out WAY more profitable than buying a list from a list broker.

Because you see, bought lists can be of questionable value.

And when you’re sending letters to people who don’t know who you are or ‘when the heck’ did they give you permission to write to them, what do you think they’ll do with your letter?

It’s going straight into the ‘B’ pile compadre. Into the trash.

Hear from the masters on ‘Free Recorded Messages’

You can listen to marketing wizards Dean Jackson and Joe Polish discussing the Free Recorded Messages strategy in their “I Love Marketing Podcast”, and how they use it to generate qualified, red hot leads around the clock.

If you decide to try out this old school yet time proven tactic, let me know how you get on.

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7 Tactics Drayton Bird Told Me that Most Marketers Don’t Know About

Tactic # 4 – Always have a caption below an image

It’s unbelievable.

But the sad reality is that a lot of marketers don’t study.

They create campaigns based on intuition, creativity and hope, instead of studying classic ads from the last fifty years to see how selling in print is really done. Ask a crowd of ad agency folks if they’ve read Caples, Hopkins and Schwartz and you may as well be listing Renaissance poets.

Last week I had the fortune to be in the presence of a direct marketing legend. A real life Mad Man. A godfather of direct response copywriters, with tales that make Roger Sterling’s exploits seem tame. I am, of course, talking about Mr Drayton Bird.

For two days I was immersed in hardcore direct response training at Mr Bird’s swansong: the ‘Last Hurrah’ seminar. My pen rarely left the paper as I feverishly took down notes faster than lightning strikes the tree, not wishing to miss a single off the cuff comment that could explode response rates for my clients (and justify my rising fees).

My pen rarely left the paper as I feverishly took down notes faster than lightning strikes the tree, not wishing to miss a single off the cuff comment that could explode response rates for my clients (and justify higher fees).

Throwing gold nuggets like it’s spare change

Sharing the podium with Mr Bird was Trevor ‘Toecracker’ Crook. His no fluff, spit and sawdust attitude didn’t disappoint. And he threw golden nuggets into the air like they were spare change, with all of us lunging to grab and embed them into our notebooks (I believe just one of his nuggets will help me write more convincing proposals and double my fees at the same time).

Drayton Bird will soon be publishing the videos from his two-day seminar as a course. So I’m not about to share all my notes here and spoil the surprise.

However, I will share 7 moreish takeaways:

1. Have a case study or real life story at the heart of your promotion
2. Your competition is not other marketers. It is Spectator and Cosmo journalists. You need to raise your writing to that level to earn attention
3. Add incentives that are low cost but high perceived value (e.g. cruise ships make their income from drinks sales and excursions, they can afford to give the room away practically for free)
4. Always have captions below images
5. Cartoons for attention. Photos for conviction
6. Don’t accept ‘No’ as the reason. Dig down to find out why they aren’t buying.
7. Ask them to take the action you want at least 3 times

These are just seven tactics that can ramp up your response rates and moolah. I literally wrote down over 10 pages of notes (front and back) that I’ll be referring to every time I write a VSL or sales letter to try and inject some Drayton Bird magic into my copy.

I’ll post a link to the course when it goes live.

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Will I See You at Drayton Bird’s Last Hurrah?

“Drayton Bird knows more about Direct Marketing than anyone in the world … His talks are highly instructive and hilariously funny” – David Ogilvy

Drayton Bird is an original Mad Man.

In a career spanning nearly six decades, Drayton Bird has sold everything, from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig, for brands including American Express, Procter & Gamble, Deutsche Post (me too), IBM and Microsoft

His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, has been the UK’s best-selling book on direct response marketing since the early 80s.

He’s won countless awards and accolades from the best minds in direct response marketing, including Ogilvy, Schwartz and Bencivenga.

And this week it all comes to an end (speaking wise, anyway) because he is giving his last ever seminar aboard the S.S. Great Britain this Weds and Thurs.

I’ll be there in my best shirt, polished shoes and notebook ready. Will I see you there?

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Why I Don’t Charge Per Hour

If you’re charging per hour, you’re undercharging.

Why?

Because in this madcap world of freelancing there are all manner of tasks beyond sitting down and writing copy.

Try this for a week: Track everything you do on a spreadsheet. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just write down what you do in hourly segments.

I think you’ll be surprised to see how much time you spend answering emails, keeping track of receipts, dipping into Facebook groups, reading the news, staring out of windows etc.

You may find that only two thirds of your time is actually spent on client work. And with all the distractions, writing a press release or advertorial can take you half a day, rather than the two hours you billed the client for.

Do this instead: Charge project fees instead of hourly. Recognize that writing an advertorial or email sequence is actually a half or full day’s work. Then bill accordingly. Remember to include all the deliverables in your proposal so they appreciate all the stages that writing copy entails (more tips on writing proposals).

Most copywriters undercharge (and then grumble about it in social media). Don’t be one of them. Charge what you’re worth.

If you’re writing for a player, with, say, an email list of 100k or an ad budget of $5k per day, consider how what you’re writing is tied to revenue.

And if you believe you can do a better job than someone they could pick up from Upwork for a pittance, charge accordingly. You’re worth it.

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Schwarzenegger on Marketing

Schwarzenegger and ‘Jim’ Cameron will be teaming up on a new Terminator movie. At least we know the marketing will be great.

Recently I’ve been reading the autobiography of the prior Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And it truly is a rags to riches story. His work ethic, ambition and promotional nous led to him amassing millions before he was even a movie star. His appointment to Governor of California was no fluke (whatever your opinions on his performance in said role).

Anywho. Enough eulogizing.

I want to focus on one chapter in particular on turning around the fortunes of the movie Total Recall (as it relates to my recent post on dealing with failure).

At the time, Total Recall was the most expensive movie ever made. It was a bold attempt at bringing sci-fi to the masses, and a lot of careers were riding on its success.

But the pre-launch test scores were BAD.

Even after weeks of trailers and advertisements, its ‘awareness’ score was in the 40s, when it needed to be in the 90s. Unless they did something drastic, Total Recall was on track to be Turkey of the Year.

So what did Arnold do?

He switched the marketing team.

Out went the team who were clueless on how to market such a weird, over the top story (this typically comes down to a lack of research in our world), and in came a team that devised new hooks, big ideas and taglines.

The result?

Within two weeks, Total Recall’s awareness score rocketed to 92 percent. It went on to achieve the biggest opening weekend yet recorded, earned over $300 million worldwide and even picked up an Oscar.

All from switching up the marketing.

As Arnold writes:

The experience proves how important marketing is – how important it is to tell people what this is about; really blow up their skirt and make them say, “I have to go see this movie”

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What Separates Amateurs from the Pros

Research.

That’s what makes the grizzled veterans standout and is the key to higher conversions.

Within a few years (or months, in some cases) of hand copying sales letters and working from templates, you should be writing out decent sales letters that keep most clients happy.

But to reach the creme de la creme of clients (and fees), you need to be offering big ideas, hooks and triggers on an epic scale that few can match.

The only way to uncover these ideas is through deep, unrelenting and obsessive research. The top copy dogs typically spend 1-2 weeks (or even a month) on research before they even write the headline.

So what are they doing during this time?

Here’s my 12 step checklist for completing the research stage:

1. Send the client a questionnaire
2. Send their email list a ‘Deep Dive Survey’
3. Review the results with the client (optional)
4. Review all of the client’s current marketing and best-performing pages and emails
5. Research competitor websites and sales pages to identify their key hooks and benefits
6. Research the market for challenges, problems and language (Amazon reviews can be a goldmine)
7. List all of the problems the product solves and how it does it
8. Research the market again to assess how aware they are of the solution to their problem and my client’s product
9. Writing out pages of benefit bullets and headlines
10. Identify what ‘big idea’ will help the product stand out
11. Write down all the objections a customer would have before buying
12. Plot out the sales letter in Scrivener

Boom! Once you’ve done all that the writing part is easy.

As you can imagine, working through all these steps eats up a lot of time.

In fact, you should be spending two-thirds of your time on research and only a third on the actual writing.

Try working through all these steps on your next big project and let me know how it improves your conversion rate (and praise from the client).

 

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Dealing with Failure

Campaigns are a marathon. Not a sprint

We all have to face this at some point in our working lives.

We work our fingers to the bone to get a campaign launched, only to see it fizzle for a while before dying completely.

The clickthrough rate is abysmal. We barely get a 1% conversion rate on the sales page and we start questioning whether we’re cut out for this gig at all.

I’ll let you in on a secret: It happens to all of us. Even the grizzled veterans who’d assume haven’t had a campaign fail in decades.

But the reality is that failure comes with the territory.

You then have two options: Kill the campaign entirely and start from scratch or seeing if you can test your way into turning it around.

If a campaign has bombed it’s typically due to one of these reasons:

1. Not enough testing

The gurus may not tell you this, but few campaigns succeed straight out the gate.

You need to test them out to find out what’s working and what’s dragging your stats down. Test the big things first, like the headline, lead and bullets to see if that gives you a bump.

Then focus on tightening the fundamentals of your offer, the guarantee, the close and the PS. And don’t forget to test images with a caption too.

2. There isn’t a starving market

Too many times I’ve taken on projects where the client hadn’t tested the market to see if there was a demand for their product. It’s then up to me to, supposedly, wave my magic marketing wand to make people want something they don’t feel in their gut.

Its not gonna happen.

Not unless you start making outrageous claims that will only book you a visit from the FTC.

The first step in any product launch, is to check if there is demand, or a ‘starving crowd’ as Gary Halbert called it.

Thankfully, you no longer have to go door to door or walking around a store to interview customers to find out. You can simply write an advertorial about the challenge your product solves, have a signup form for people to register their interest in the solution and then spend some gold on ad traffic. Then see what the signups tell you.

A simpler option is to run a quiz, poll or survey to find out your market’s biggest challenges. This is also a great way of building a list of prospects to mail when you’re ready to roll.

3. Haven’t got to know the customer

Creating a buyer persona based on best guesses will only get you so far. You need to study the market and find out who your customers are if you are to be successful.

Spend 1-2 weeks lurking in your market’s Amazon reviews, forums, Facebook groups and YouTube channels to understand the language they use, who the villains in their market are and what they need help with.

Then when you sit down to write, you’ll have a clearer idea of who’s sat across from you that you need to convince to buy your new widget. Your copy will then naturally resonate more, be more conversational and higher conversions will follow.

Turning failure into success

Failure may come with the territory. But that doesn’t mean you have to accept it.

It’s always wise to set clients up with the right expectations before you launch (e.g. 1% of conversions on the front end, majority of profits from the back end).

But if they start freaking out because a campaign is failing, advise them to stay calm, to work through the three steps listed above and to treat it like a marathon, not a sprint.

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3 Secrets to Writing ‘Winning’ Copywriting Proposals that Turn $100 Mini Projects into $10,000 Monster Gigs

A strong copywriting proposal can both win and increase the size of a gig

You get an email from a potential client asking for a web page.

You’re smart.

You don’t instantly email back with a price and a delivery date. That would be stupid.

Instead, you do some digging.

You ask:

…what action do you want visitors to take?

…what’s the traffic source?

…what’s your current conversion rate?

…what does your sales funnel look like?

Yadda, yadda.

They email you back – “What’s a sales funnel?”

Your eyes light up.

You have the chance to turn a one off project into a monster gig (and pocket a tidy sum in the process).

But…

First you have to convince them WHY they need a sales funnel and HOW it will generate profits many times over the fee you’re about to charge them (which has a couple more zeros than they’d budgeted for).

You can do it by submitting a copywriting proposal featuring these 3 key elements:

1. Strategy – Business owners aren’t always savvy marketers. They need some hand holding. Rather than talk about word counts, explain how the web page forms part of a larger strategy for taking visitors from curious to convinced and ready to buy.

2. List ALL the deliverables – Sales funnels have a LOT of components. This can include lead magnets, registration pages, webinar scripts, VSL production, ‘sideways sales letter’ email sequences, upsell pages and Facebook ads. There’s also background research, competitor analysis and an audit of their current progress and assets. List every single deliverable in your proposal.

3. Talk about revenue goals, rather than conversions – Clients could care less about CTR, time on site and ‘engagement’. All that matters is revenue. Present an estimate of how your strategy can increase their existing sales and profits using conservative numbers (e.g. 1-2% conversions). Always under promise and over deliver.

Building a proposal around these three elements will positions you as a valued consultant and a profit generator, rather than just a vendor of words.

This naturally entitles you to charge more for your services as you can justify your fee in terms of solid ROI.

The next time someone emails you to write a press release, web page or an email, consider how you can expand it into a bigger gig by setting a more ambitious target for what your client can achieve.

If you do implement these elements in a copywriting proposal, let me know how you get on.

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2 Easy Ways to Make Leads More Profitable (without Spending an Extra Cent on Traffic)

Have your lead costs gone up to $10 yet?

Advertising is getting darned expensive.

If the rumours are true, heavyweights like Clickfunnels and Digital Marketer now spend $10 just on getting a LEAD.

That’s right, a LEAD, not a sale.

With millions of marketers ploughing their ad budget into Facebook and Instagram, click costs are getting out of control. This is why it is your duty to wring every last cent from every lead, if you are to have any hope of making your campaigns profitable.

Thankfully, there are lot of tweaks, hacks and tactics you can apply which most of your competitors are ignoring (or don’t know about).

For starters, here are 2 easy ways of increasing the ROI on every lead that swims its way into your sales funnel:

1. How to convert more opt-ins into subscribers

Most marketers agonize over their landing page copy, the bullets and how they frame the offer.

But they’re ignoring where the biggest uplift in response is to be found. And that’s getting people to confirm their registration.

It sounds so simple, yet most marketers completely ignore what happens after people enter their email address, thinking all the hard work is done.

But the hard truth is this: about 4 people out of 10 people who opt-in NEVER confirm.

That’s right!

About 40% of ad spend is being completely WASTED simply because people never opened the email and clicked the confirmation link.

So what can you do?

A great way of rocketing your confirmations is to record a short VIDEO, instead of relying on the boiler plate email copy.

In the video, thank them for signing up, remind them about the benefits they’ll gain from registering and then tell them exactly what to do to confirm their registration.

Now, I know many people will have stopped reading when I mentioned the V word.

Us copywriters are introverted types.

We’d rather complete our tax return then go on camera.

I get it. So consider recording a simple slideshow using Camtasia and speak over the top. You can even hire someone off Fiverr to record the voice over.

However you do it, recording a short video asking people to click the confirmation link is one of the most powerful ways of driving up the profits of every campaign.

2. Getting people to complete their checkout

Reading stats on cart abandonment will make even the most hardened e-commerce warrior put down their mouse and weep.

Across industries, the average cart abandonment rate is a migraine inducing 67.4% (source – http://ift.tt/NLx4mU).

In other words…

Even after your lead has read through your onboarding email sequence…

sat through the 90 minute webinar…

read the sales copy and nodded their head sagely before clicking the purchase link…

in 7 out of 10 cases something goes WRONG.

Maybe they get a Whatsapp ping, the doorbell rings, the kids start playing up or they suddenly remember to put the washing on.

The list of possible distractions and reasons why people don’t complete is endless. And they are all out of your control.

They only thing you can control is the checkout page.

So it is your duty to invest as much time, if not more, on creating the smoothest, clearest most checkout sequence possible.

Just a small change – like a graphical progress bar – could lead to getting 1 or 2 more people out of 10 converting. This, again, can trigger a MASSIVE jump in your profits.

Luckily, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Analyze how your competitors or Amazon does it. And see where your checkout process is falling short.

Small hinges swing big doors

These are just two small changes you can make to your funnel that can rocket your conversions and maximise the ROI of your ad spend.

Even better is that when you iron out the chinks in your funnel, you can look forward to predictable, reliable results, consistent reductions in your lead costs and more PROFIT from every visitor to your offer page.

Put simply, you can make MORE money from ZERO extra traffic. So it is your duty to your business’s profitability and future success that tighten and tweak your sales funnel until it is a slick, sales pipeline that

Attribution – This post’s content comes from a training webinar in David Garfunkel’s Fast, Effective Copy (affiliate link) I’ve only mentioned 2 of the 3 ways to claw back profits they covered. So if you want to know what the third one is, you’ll have to sign up for the course. I’ve been working my way through it over the last few months, and I believe that its volume of top tier strategic thinking makes it an investment that pays for itself many times over, whether you’re a newbie copywriter or a grizzled veteran.

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Sir Winston Churchill’s ‘4 Iron Clad Rules’ of Persuasive Copywriting

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy, than an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then it becomes a tyrant and, in the last stage, just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.” – Sir Winston Churchill, 2 November 1949, Grosvenor House, London

Sir Winston Churchill is famed for being the ‘British Bulldog’ whose speeches galvanized a nation against seemingly insurmountable odds.

He was also a writing workhorse. Over his lifetime, he wrote more words than Dickens and Shakespeare combined. His published speeches stretch to eighteen volumes, while his memos and letters run into the millions and fill over 2,500 boxes. He even won a Nobel Prize for his writing, much to the chagrin of his critics.

Although Winston Churchill was a writer of historical non-fiction, he’d no doubt have a few droll words to share on what it takes to be a top copy dog.

Here are four rules I believe he’d have drilled into any copy cub lucky enough to have him as a mentor:

1. Spend two thirds of your time on research and one third on writing

Describing the internet to someone in the 1930s would have sounded like the ravings of a mad fantasist. Yet, as one of the first people to fly a plane, Churchill would have been enthralled.

He had a contemporary equivalent he called his ‘factory’. It consisted of a cavernous library of 60,000 leather bound books and a small army of researchers, secretaries and literary assistants. With a few barked commands, he’d send them scurrying down to search for facts or texts, in the manner of his own rudimentary search engine.

After handing over their findings, Churchill would absorb them into his elephantine brain to be processed and his thoughts verbalized in concise, lucid prose. His dictation sessions could last an entire day and late into to the night, when he’d continue to reflect while sat, naked, in a bath.

My takeaway:

Without enough research, your copy will fall flat. Unless you understand the market inside out and your reader better than they know themselves, your copy is unlikely to create a deep emotional yearning in their gut.

Conversely, when you do enough research the writing part is easy. The challenge is then keeping the word count down rather than knowing what to say.

2. Review your copy three times before you publish

Churchill’s writing process had three stages.

First his typists got his spoken thoughts on paper. Then he’d go through the text with a fountain pen to cross out dull sections, rephrase clumsy syntax and, as a beholder of brevity, replace long words with shorter versions.

He’d then have the whole thing typed out again to be reviewed a third or forth time before he’d deem it worthy to be sent to the printers.

My takeaway:

After completing the ‘ugly’ first draft, we’re blind to our own writing. The only way to be able to spot typos, mixed metaphors and clunky phrases is to go through a ‘gestation’ period.

This is like rebooting your brain from the head space you were in when writing. Wait at least one day. Or go for a walk, watch a movie or clean the bathroom. Do anything to take your mind elsewhere.

Then when you sit down to polish, you can assess your copy with fresh eyes and review it from the reader’s perspective.

3. Write how you talk and put the reader first

In an era when people wrote post it notes like it was a job application, Churchill’s writing stood out for its ‘lucid self expression’ and ‘rich and rollicking readability’.

He wrote with crisp, punchy sentences that took readers racing down the page. His writing style may not have won him admirers in literary circles. But the public loved it. And he got paid handsomely for it too.

My takeaway:

Top copywriter Nick Usborne posts a lot about conversational copywriting (he’s even got a course on it), and for good reason.

Underneath their power suit, even hard nosed business types have a beating heart. And a new generation of marketing managers is ready to embrace the benefits of copy that speaks to their prospects as individuals with challenges to solve, rather than someone you have to impress with superlatives and sales speak.

4. Be trustworthy

Churchill often wrote from the front lines and wasn’t shy about exposing the horrors of war. He’d write about the machine gunned corpses and men without legs crawling to the Nile because they were dying of thirst as well as the bravery of cavalry charges.

This was at a time when politicians were eager for war to be glamorized as noble and heroic. His brutal honesty won him few friends in the military. But readers trusted him to pull back the curtain, as it was said that Churchill ‘cannot really tell lies.’

My takeaway:

In this era of ‘fake news’ and militant cynicism, you have to start every page as though the reader is staring across the table from you with a furrowed brow.

So consider how you can add a trust element to everything you write. Point out your product’s faults (while subtly turning them into an advantage). Explain who your product is NOT for and call out the lies told in your marketplace.

A show of brutal honesty will help position you on the same side as your reader against a common foe, and build trust that you have their interests at heart.

Who inspires you to write better copy?

These were just four rules I noted down while reading about Churchill. I could easily have written down 20 more.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that Churchill’s attitude to writing reinforces that tactics come and go. But the fundamentals of clear, persuasive writing never change. So consider replacing some of the time you spend in Facebook groups and forums with re-reading the classics. You’ll find more gold in Hopkins, Caples and Schwartz than hours spent panning in most threads.

Who inspires you to set higher standards for yourself as a copywriter? I’d love to know.

N.B. This post was inspired by ‘The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History’ by Boris Johnson (yes, that Boris Johnson)

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8 Ways to Spice Up Stories About Your Product

“Grab a cushion and gather round. I have a story to tell.”

Everyone has fond memories of story time as kids. And the love of a good tale, of heroes, villains and victory against the odds, never dies.

For this reason, stories are marketing gold.

They swoop under people’s anti-sales radar to deliver a payload of emotion, aspiration and desire in one concisely worded hamper.

And you don’t need the creativity of Tolstoy or Hemingway to write them.

A story can be as simple as:

• The challenge – what problem did the hero face?
• The struggle – what did they have to overcome on their journey?
• The resolution – what was the solution they found?
• The result – what victory did they achieve?

To spice things up, consider using one of these plot devices:

1.Surprise – Tell a story that challenges your reader’s preconceptions. Tell them something that goes against the status quo. Tip over the sacred cows and reveal why they’ve been misled by the powers that be all along.

2. Create curiosity gaps – This works great for email. Reveal enough information to make the reader realize they are missing a vital piece of knowledge. Then explain how to get it by checking their inbox tomorrow, visiting your website or buying your info product.

3. Create mysteries or puzzles – People love a good mystery. It’s why detective novels are one of the most popular genres and people went nuts over The Da Vinci Code. You can harness the same appeal by slowly solving a mystery over the course of your communications.

4. Make it trustworthy – In this era of fake news, distrust of the MSM and marketers respected as highly as car salesmen, we start at -10 on the trustometer when someone reads our sales message. So consider how you can build trust through the language you use. Instead of ‘smash and grab’ tactics of exaggeration and unsupported claims, pepper your story with concrete figures, referenced stats and quotes to cement your story in reality.

5. Create a springboard – People love a good yarn about someone who struggled to overcome a problem before succeeding and moving onto bigger, brighter things. People can relate to ‘springboard stories’ much better than a fawning testimonial or back slapping self praise in a corporate brochure.

6. Replace stats with meaningful examples – Rather than tell people how much sugar they eat per week in processed food, fill a bag with the stuff and describe its size and the thud it makes when dropped on a table.

7. Tap into their identities – People respond better to stories in which they see themselves. An advertising company needed to convince people in Texas to stop throwing their litter from the car window. So they fed on people’s affection for their state’s identity by telling stories involving local sporting heroes with the slogan ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’. Littering plummeted as a result.

8. Inspire them to conquer a challenge – JFK’s pledge to land a man on the moon inspired a nation to embark on a decade of work and unforgettable success. Consider setting your reader a goal and a vision for the future, which they can only achieve with product.

The next time you’re tasked with writing a press release, email sequence or case study, consider turning it into a story. In a world awash with mediocre ‘BUY ME’ marketing, stories can hook people in at deeper level and more inclined to make the relationship monetary.

P.S. This post was inspired by ‘Made to Stick’ by Chip and Dan Heath

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Would You Love to Earn $1,500 for a SINGLE Email? Find out how in the 80/20 Email Copy Course

Ryan Deiss calls his the ‘Invisible Selling Machine’. Andre Chaperone has his ‘Soap Opera Sequence’, while Jeff Walker named his the ‘Sideways Sales Letter’.

What am I talking about?

Email marketing of course.

Forget social media. Email continues to be the sales channel with the highest ROI. And for us copywriters the upfront cost to launch a campaign is ZERO, allowing us to pocket more of the juicy profits.

All you need to do is create a lead magnet, write an autoresponder sequence, run some ads et Voila! Muchos gold coins in the money vault.

If only life were that simple…

For your email campaign to succeed you need to know:

• How to write subject lines that get above 20% open rate (and that’s being generous compared to what many marketers get).
• How to structure emails so people LOVE reading them and inspire them to take action (hint: you need to offer more than reveal 7 ways to do X).
• How to link the emails together so people read the ENTIRE sequence, and not just dip in and out.

And (most importantly of all)…

How do you SELL stuff without feeling guilty about it..

Without shredding your list…

And without getting flagged for spam and your Mailchimp account shut down faster than lightning strikes the tree?

Well, you could work out how to solve all these money blocking challenges for yourself.

You could commit your own time and money to testing 100s (if not 1,000s) of subject lines, writing and rewriting emails to get the tiniest lift in CTR and going bald wondering why no one is buying.

But these are challenges that stop 99% of copywriters and marketers from making the big bucks. Otherwise we’d all be millionaires, right?

OR…

You could gain the subject lines, email templates, sequences and methodology from someone is already earn a six figure salary from email.

Ian Stanley is one of those overnight internet millionaire success stories you admire and envy at the same time.

He went from teaching tennis lessons and earning $10 per email to $1,500 PLUS a potential $5,000 bonus.

Ian typically charges $15,000 for a sequence plus up to $60k in bonuses.

And with his email copywriting chops. in just three years Ian has sold nearly $50,000,000 online and has built multiple companies (one is on track to do six figures per month).

You need never chase clients again

Would you love to be able to stop chasing clients for work?

To stop getting paid per project (or even worse, per hour)?

And be able to earn PASSIVE income, which builds with each autoresponder?

In that case, gaining Ian’s skills could be truly life changing for you.

Now, Ian is very generous with his time. He frequently gives webinars and appears on Podcasts to throw some golden nuggets of knowledge for us to scramble to grab and invest into our own businesses.

But can you imagine what one to one coaching with Ian would cost?

Considering how long it takes most of us to write a sales email, $1,500 is a realistic number. And then you’d need at least 20 hours for his mindset to seep into your brain.

Thankfully, there’s no need to pay $30,000 or even $1,500 to gain Ian’s email marketing mastery.

Because there is a way to gain his subject lines, sequences and strategy to bank a salary many of us can only imagine earning in our lifetimes.

Because Ian has created an email copywriting course in which he shared the methods he perfected writing to lists of over one million subscribers.

It’s called 80/20 Email Copy.

It gets this name because after completing the course you should be able to craft money making emails in as little as 20 minutes (and generating 80% of your income, I guess).

These are emails that use his structures and sequences to convert like crazy, and put more silver in your piggy bank with every email you send.

How does it work?

Over four weeks Ian will send you a daily email. This email will share a proven sequence or structure he has used to generate pots of cash. Not only that, you also get an example of a high converting email to copy by hand.

Trust me, if you are not already copying out winning emails and sales letters by hand than you need to start IMMEDIATELY (check out Copyhour for a sales handwriting course)!

It is the BEST way of developing your copywriting brain from DOING instead of just reading a book and forgetting everything a few weeks later.

By the end of the course you will have a complete set of 20 emails you can use to make money even if you don’t have a list, because Ian explains how to build one for free.

How much does it cost?

Now this might shock some people, but the course costs $197 (there is also elite level coaching upgrade for 3 x $197 for aspiring ballers).

If you’re new to copywriting this number may have made you fall off your chair. It’s a lot more than you’d pay for a book from Amazon. But when you reach a certain level then this is par for the course to gain the knowledge of some of the top dogs in our industry.

And when you think about it, $197 is a mere drop in the ocean compared to what your earnings could be with Ian’s methodology locked into your brain.

After completing the course you can immediately start charging a minimum of $100 per email. You can make your money back in the first two. You can then continue to bump up your rates as you out convert the amateurs and clients start clamouring for your services.

But soon you may be charging so much you will be unaffordable for most clients anyway. By that stage you could be too busy building six figure businesses from the proven, powerful methodology of 80/20 Email Copy.

You have 48 hours to register

Just one last thing – Ian is shutting his course to new members in 48 hours.

So you have until the end of Sunday to decide whether to give yourself the fast track to email marketing mastery or to keep struggling to find subject lines that get your emails opened and sequences that get stuff SOLD.

So do yourself a favor. Don’t look back on this moment with regret. Be someone who takes action and understands the importance of investing in your skills to advance your career and income:

>>>Find out more about Ian Stanley’s 80/20 Email Copy Course

Earning disclaimer – Let it never be said that I underestimate the intellect of a Crucible reader. You kept reading and saw through my devious plan.

As you suspected, I’ll earn commission if you sign-up for Ian’s 80/20 Email Copy course. I’m not just writing this as a favour to Ian.

But what I am doing is presenting you with a course that trains you to craft autoresponder sequences that generate passive income every time you hit sent. You can then fire all your clients, sling your laptop in a backpack and go live next to a beach somewhere to hammer out a few emails between snorkeling trips. You’re welcome.

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The Simple Way to Write Copy

Leave the clever wordplay to the impoverished novelists. We’re in the business of selling.novelists. We’re in the business of selling.

People often ask me what it takes to become a copywriter.

What I tell them is this…

to be a great (or just good) copywriter you don’t need to be able to write like Hemingway.

But you DO need to be understood.

Your writing needs to be easy to read.

And it’s the strength of your arguments, rather than strength of your words, that wins the sale.

Leave the clever wordplay to the impoverished novelists. We’re in the business of selling.

So how can you make writing copy simple?

Take this page as an example.

I’m using short sentences. Simple words.

Without chunky paragraphs to wade through, your eyes glide down the page.

This style of writing would make your English teacher go nuts.

But your reader’s brain loves it.

Because it doesn’t have to jump through hoops to understand it.

This article teaches you another lesson about simple writing.

What is it?

Simple.

Your “Subheads” Summarize Your Message

Seriously.

Even brains battling brain fog and a sugar deficiency at 4pm on a Friday can understand what this page is about from the subheads.

And this is important.

Because most people won’t read a page before they skim read it first.

People are busy.

You’ve got app pings, Facebook chats and YouTube to compete with.

All of them screaming for attention.

So if someone is going to read your page they have to know it’s worth their time.

Skimming the sub heads can reveal this to them.

There’s a third lesson I wanted to teach you in this article.

Your Copy Must Focus on the Reader

I haven’t tried to sell you anything.

Because I know you’re reading this because you hope to gain some useful information.

Not to be upsold to.

From this post, I hope that you’re learning that writing copy doesn’t need to be complicated.

It can be simple.

And if you’re still reading, I hope that proves my point.

It enables me to demonstrate a fourth lesson.

The more time you keep a reader engaged with your writing the more time you have to earn their trust.

A great way of earning trust is what Eugene Schwartz called ‘Gradualization’.

It works like this…

If you make simple statements the reader agrees with early on then when you make bigger claims your reader is more likely to accept them as fact.

This is just one way of influencing the reader.

Another way of convincing a reader is what Schwartz called ‘Mechanization’

This is a logical explanation of why something works.

Because results is what ultimately matters

My hope is that after reading this article…

The result will be that you find writing copy easier.

Because writing copy doesn’t need to be complicated.

You don’t need to be a creative genius.

You just need to understand your reader’s problem.

What solutions they’ve tried in the past.

What their objections are to trying something new.

Why your product is better.

And how you can prove it.

Then offer it to them.

That’s it.

Writing copy is not rocket science

When you strip away the ‘power words’, ‘open loops’ and other copywriting tricks, it comes down to one thing…

presenting a solution to your customer’s problem.

When you do that it doesn’t feel like you’re tricking someone into buying something.

You’re helping them.

So there you go.

Writing copy is simple when you follow these principles.

Think how you can write something that’s easy to read, focuses on helping the reader solve a problem and builds trust.

Selling your product is then the easy part.

Hemingway once said, “Writing’s easy. Just open a vein and bleed all over the page.”

Maybe in the literary world. But it doesn’t have to be that soul draining to write convincing, high converting copy

P.S. People often read the P.S. straight after the headline. So use yours to summarize your offer or what they will gain from reading the page.

Disclaimer – This post is a total rip off of a Frank Kern post. Here’s the original:
http://ift.tt/2jEKUSh

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