Most of my sales letters have been in the Internet Marketing/Biz Opp field.
It’s probably… along with, say, weight loss and dating… the most profitable niche in the world.
At least, there’s a ton of money floating around and folks happily snap up new releases even if they already have a bulging hard drive or overflowing bookshelves of unread courses.
(We’ll get into the “how” and “why” of that in another post. I’m not in the mood for grim insights into human nature today…)
But because I work in this field and because it’s so damn competitive…
Every single sales letter has to be polished to perfection, tweaked to within an inch of its cash-pulling life and… crucially… stand out from all the rest.
So I work extra hard to make sure my work feels fresh and new while still contained within proven, time-tested copywriting techniques.
But you know, sometimes you just have to come out with a “Who Else…” style headline or an “If… then” lead-in. (Trust me these are copy cliches of the highest order).
Because, although I believe writing copy is a mixture of art and science, sometimes you have to dispense with the fancy-pants artistic self-indulgence and stick with what’s proven.
Gary Halbert said it best…
I think it was his last ever seminar where he’s creating a letter live in front of the audience.
His pre-head is something like “Who else wants to slash strokes from their golf game in 24 hours flat…?”
So he asks the audience (and I’m paraphrasing here)… “anyone know why I used ‘who else’ in my pre-head?”
A few shout out… “because it gives the impression others have tried it…”
And… “it makes it more inclusive” there’s a lot of discussion and all the comments are correct.
But Gary replies…
“I used it because it’s been proven to work in 40 years of copywriting.”
He goes on to point out if those two words are proven and time-tested why come up with something new and risky?
Like the man says…
“Business is tricky enough as it is…”
