For your next sales letter you might want to use Head Copy to get example headlines to use:

You can see it here: Head Copy

Worst case – you will laugh at some of the headlines 🙂

cheers
Tony

If anyone would like to write a guest post critiquing my sales copy while showcasing their skills and promoting their own copy writing business (or product), please send me an email. I can accept a couple of posts (possibly more).

I would be looking for a post that teaches something to my readers

1. A critique of the sales letter (brief or detailed).
2. Recommended testing action for me to take to improve the sales letter.

Also, I would expect you to include

3. Self promotion (why are you qualified).
4. Call to action to one of your own products or sites
5. A do-follow backlink or two

I will promote the post to my list….

Any takers?

(Hint to Joe — video is allowed).

Thanks,
Mark

@Scott — thanks for the comments. I have very thick skin. I fully admit that I do not know much about copy writing and I am trying to learn on the job. All helpful commentary is completely welcome. Bring it on!

@Dave — Thank you so much. I will incorporate your comments into my testing. Dave — a question for you. How many impressions per test do you think are needed to really get an answer when you are testing headlines?

Right now I see at least six headlines, all saying pretty much the same thing (except for that rather silly – sorry, but that’s the way it seems to me – quip about the new bookkeeper).

I mean, how many times can you repeat the same words and phrases – “niche AdSense themes for WordPress” or variations of it – and not cause your readers’ eyes to glaze over? That’s way too much stuff and way too much repetition.

Get out of your computer chair, step back a bit and look at your screen. Everything above the fold is all headlines and it is a cluttered mess. The eye doesn’t know where to start or where to go. Make it easy on your reader. The job of a headline is to grab him by the heart and jerk him into your sales copy, and not to bore him to death with some sort of mantra repeated over and over.

So … think the 3 Esses: Simplify, Streamline and make it Sing. I suggest you:

** Get rid of the lines that begin “Premium Grade” and “Professionally designed” as well as the line that begins “Ready to finally.”

** Get rid of the word “Warning.” That is a cheap – and frankly pretty amateurish – way of trying to be clever. I interpret it to mean, “Warning, I am about to stick my hand into your wallet.” Instead, say something like:

“Turn Your Passive Income Stream into a Raging River
with these Amazing New Niche AdSense Themes”

And replace the bookkeeper line with something like:

Google Will Love You for it – and So Will Your Spouse!

Anyway, for what it’s worth.

Best of luck!
Dave Tishendorf

@Barbra — Appreciate that feedback. It is meant to be humorous, but I certainly see what you mean. I will be talking about How to do split testing next week, and then in about a month or so I will talk about the results.

@Jeff. Thanks. Glad you like the graphics. I’m no copywriter either (obviously), and I appreciate the feedback.

Copywriting is a difficult thing to get a definite handle on. I don’t know why because it comes as second nature to me.

When I do copy for a sales letter, I don’t do the graphics, I leave that up to the end user, however I think the thing that makes or breaks a sales letter is the headline and first paragraph.

You have to remember the AIDA concept, meaning if you don’t grab the prospect in the first 10 to 20 seconds, they move on. So with that being said, Test, Test and Test again.

Make subtle changes to test, don’t change too many things at once, use your control copy as a standard and if you beat that, use the new copy. Always trying to improve on conversion rates.

One other thing I would say, write the copy as if you are sitting in a bar talking to a friend over a beer. Don’t hard sell, let the copy or the products speak for themselves.

One last thing to remember, You can not please everyone all the time, if you try, you will definitely fail, Some like hard sell, some like soft sell so trying to find a middle point is the actual art of writing good copy.

Hope my 2 cents helps.

Scott

PS, remember that everyone has a different point of view and you can not take criticism to heart, if you do, it will cause internet marketing to lose “being fun”!

Pros:
I definitely like the new sales letter letter. The header and footer graphics are 10 times better and really make it look more professional. I especially like the new graphics for your money back guarantee. I also like the length of your sales letter. I can’t stand reading these 30 page sales letters, in fact I don’t and I imagine most people don’t. I skim them. So the more sub-headlines throughout to break things up and grab my attention the better.

Cons:
Now, I’m no copywriter so take this with a grain of salt but I like the headline from the old sales letter better. But you testing will tell you which one converts the best.

Mark, my review of both sales letters comes from the eyes of a prospective buyer and not a copywriter, so what do I know. It’s all about what converts the best for you.

Nicely done Mark.

Later,
Jeff Sargent

There is no need to debate the length though, long sales letters constantly outpull short ones, many people say “i don’t like to read long salesletters” but the thing is, most people don’t like to read BORING long salesletters.

When writing, just remember your letter should be long enough to get your message across, and address any objections a person may have, how long or short really depends on when you get done talking.

If you think about it in the sense of price, you’ll always undershoot your potential, think of everything you sale as being high priced, and watch how good your copy will become.

You’ll give more reasons why a person should buy it, and you’ll address any and every objection you can think of. All you have to make the sell is your words, it’s just like a conversation, when you’re done, stop talking lol

People read long sales letters all the time, when they are written well and keep the person hooked, problem is, not very many folks are good at writing long…they just do it because they feel they need to…so it turns into nothing more than a rambling session….hmmm….kinda like this comment.

IM OUT! lol

hope I made sense to you though man, seriously.

peace

Having said that – if it is converting better for you Mark then obviously it is a better sales page! Congrats and thanks for sharing your experience.

@Mark — thank you. It sure helped the conversions.

@Joe — LOL. Glad you like it. No, I did not do the graphics. I use Steve at GraphicsQuick.com.

Joe

I would definitely continue to test the headline, maybe the subhead…as those two will give you the most increase ( or decrease) in conversions. Don’t test them at the same time, maybe create a few more pages or get a script that can run the split tests for you.

But, I agree, the original graphics looked maaaaaaad preschool. Now you look like you at least in middle or highschool 🙂

Especially for selling templates. Good job man.