First Salesletter - Your critique and feed back please!

[Flierboy]

Folks,

I have just spent two weeks of my life writing my FIRST sales letter, and even I can tell...masterpiece, it's not.

fengshui-house.net/FengShuiDecorating (am not yet allowed to post links because of my low post count)

Please, give me some feedback and critique so it at least has some chance of converting. YOUR HELP IS MOST APPRECIATED!

Thanks folks

-Ritesh

[SamKane]

Nice job.

I don't like the headline. It doesn't flow.

How about something simple like :

"5 Ancient Principles of Feng Shui That
Bring Wealth, Health, and Happiness Into
Your Home"

The first seven bullets are a bit too wordy. You can try shortening them up to make them stronger.

Also the first sentence doesn't follow Joe Sugarman's "slippery slide". Which means you want to keep the sentences short, interesting and easy to follow.

Sam Kane

[Flierboy]

Thanks Sam. Agree with you, the beginning of the letter and the first quarter of the letter is what concerns me most. Too wordy and dense. Now if only some more fellow warriors could jump in and get my creative juices flowing with their suggestions...

-Ritesh

[ThePenMaster]

I WOULD RECOMMEND SOMETHING JUST A BIT SHORTER THAT GET'S TO THE POINT OF WHAT FENG SHUI CAN DO FOR THE READER

[Vadym]

Yeah, first thing that annoyed me was the first screen.

You're conveying about 4 different messages across at the same time. I miss 3.5 of them, and continue reading frustrated.

Most would just leave.

Sorry, it's 3AM, and it's the FIRST headline I pulled out of my ass, but ANYTHING that will convey AVOIDING pain and GAINING pleasure will keep the person reading.

"Feng Shui Is The Key To Amazing Relationships, Long-Lasting Health, And Massive Riches - But Doing It Wrong Can Completely Ruin Your Life"

Moving on, you use plenty of bullets. That's good. People don't read salespages, they skim.

But what's with these flowing blocks of text? I won't read all of that! Highlight the important/emotion words in order to keep the person skimming.

Highlighting is like... the bullet points of paragraph. They serve the same purpose. To be read.

Then, keep your links blue. Blue gets clicked on 2x more than any other color link, since it's familiar. And in your niche, though I don't know much, I doubt they're the masters of computer. They can be confused. And if they decide to purchase on one of your selling points, I doubt you want them confused.

Especially when you use the same coloring for NON link sentences.

For your guarantee box, I'd keep it short and sweet.

"If you don't consider this to be the best feng shui resource you've ever found, you've got a FULL year to simply write me for a refund."

Make sure you bold positive action statements. Bolding does force psychological triggers to consider it as MORE important information. When you say "You will like this book" in bold, the mind can register it as a subliminal command.. and the person will like the book

And after you offer them that guarantee, don't use the "BAD news" sentence. That totally turns me off, once again. Use something like, "But There's A Fat, Juicy Catch..." and tell 'em that you're only giving out a handful at this price before you raise it back up.

Raise CURIOSITY, not DOUBT.


There's more, but I'm tired of writing.

This is a great first copy Better then mine, which is STILL live and flopping today.

Sorry if this is all over the place, but hey, I hope you can pick some helpful parts out of it.

[Justin Mandel]

1) The header is cheesey IMO
2) The headline is not quite right. I like the angle of where you're coming from, but you need to express it in a more palatable and interesting way.
3) I think your best strategy might just be to significantly modify your positioning and present it in a whole different way which might even start with the headline to gain peoples attention and get them to keep on reading:

"Right Now You Too Can Put To Use The Same Actual Asian "Secrets" That Billionaires like Donald Trump Use To Increase Their Own Wealth, Prestige, Fame, and Well-Being!"

Not many people know that the mega-rich use the secret asian art of 'Feng-Shui' to actually increase energy flowing to them in the form of love and money and now you can too!

Dear Reader,

And then you start to tell some stories of how the mega-rich go to ultra expensive feng-shui experts before they build their hotels and for their advice on positioning, colors, etc...

You should piggy back off of the famous people who use Feng-shui because the logic is that "if these famous people use it then what do they know that I dont?"

(also just do the research and make sure the Don is a Billionaire to start with and if he personaly doesn't use Feng Shui then just make the appropriate substitution)

Best of Luck!

[Loren Woirhaye]

Strip this letter of the graphics, print it out, and the
weakness of your opening should be obvious.

You begin here referring to yourself ("I have no idea...")
in a pointless way. Then you go on to ask verbose
questions.

Think about effective advertising you've seen that
asks questions:

"sore feet?"
"corns?"
"sick and tired of paying high taxes?"
"do you make these mistakes in English?"

Questions lose their impact in print when loaded with
qualifiers. This is a constriction on what YOU want to
do with your writing, but it will also drag you towards
targeted core emotional appeals as you work to
strip superfluous language from your writing.

In short: if you're going to use questions in your copy,
make them punchy.

###

I don't feel bragging about how you're a regular guy with
no feng shui credentials strengthens your argument.

###

Your ebook covers are better than most I see people using -
good job with those. Some of the stock photos you've used
are nice - I hope you have the rights to use them.

###

Your "the publisher wants me to raise the price" thing is,
I think, a bit silly. It's not the same as the price-is-going-up
closes used by Robert Collier where he would tell the reader
the cost of wool or paper had gone up since the product
was made, so it would never be likely to be available so
cheaply.

I'd recommend against fibbing about price issues. Telling
lies in business isn't very aligned with Feng Shui values,
now, is it?

[Flierboy]

Wow!

Vadym, Justin, Loren, Penmaster,

Thanks a ton for taking the time to post your thoughtful comments. I really appreciate it!

Vadym: Your points make complete sense to me, esp. the easy one to fix - blue color for links. Thanks for the encouragement about being a 'great first copy' All your suggestions are great, and will feature in my salesletter Version 2.0.

Justin: Thanks for the great headline suggestion. I did think of including some proof by writing about celebrities who have endorsed Feng Shui, but don't know how I ended up without mentioning that in my sales letter. Will correct that asap.

Loren: Thanks for the 'tough love', I'm grateful for that. The site design, ecovers etc. was all done by me. And I purchased all the images from istockphoto.com, so we're cool on having the rights to use them. I can't imagine why so many sales letters still use poor quality images or worse, steal from other sources when for around a buck each, you can get professional graphics from istockphoto

As far as "publisher raising the price", it's true. My LLC is a 2 partner co., and my partner who takes care of all financial, legal stuff, does want me to sell for higher price ( which is still way below what several other competitors are charging), so honestly, no fibbing here. But I do take your point about "publisher raising the price" possibly being perceived as silly.

Like what you said about "questions losing their impact in print when loaded with qualifiers".
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Guys, this's super useful in helping me rewrite this letter. Will post here when the V2.0. of sales letter is ready.

In the meantime, other awesome copywriter warriors, please keep 'em coming

Best,

-Ritesh

[Loren Woirhaye]

In spite of my criticism of the way you handled it, the
"price is going up Monday" close, hackneyed as it is
in person-to-person sales, still works and works very well
in print... but only IF you provide a credible reason WHY
the low price is only available if the customer gets off
the fence and acts NOW!

Closes of this nature are simplest with a tangible product
where there really is a limited supply.

Variations include:

-> "we have a small number of damaged-box
items and since you are a special customer we are offering
them to you first."

-> "we will withdraw the present offer very soon because
the new model will supersede this one..."

... now with a little though you can work out how to say,
"We're going to release this product soon as a high-end
thing in a fancy box, but we'd like to offer it to you now
in a digital format in hopes you'll give us your opinion on
it's quality so we can make changes before going to press
with the boxed version."

[netvicar]

First off, nice choice of colors. Also like your web layout [opening drop case, font usage, tables, bullet graphic, ebook covers , etc]. Lots of consistency in design throughout the page. Your use of testimonials make this seem like a real product, and not plr junk just renamed and recycled. And I like your 365 day guarantee. A tested winning element for most offers.

About your copy though...

"What You Don't Know About Feng Shui Could Cost You MUCH MORE Than Just Your House"

...says to me, 'yeah right, buddy. I don't believe it.' Is a disconnect from reality. Someone could easily argue, 'Bad feng shui isn't gonna cost me my house. Not believable. All my neighbors, friends, and family have bad design too. This hasn't cost them their homes either. I live in a ghetto! So there.' Joking of course, but still...this headline is too far over the top for the market.

Then you open with, "I have no idea if we've ever met, but I do know some of these things describe you in someway" but then start asking questions in the bullet. Not congruent. You shouldn't claim you know something and then ask the type of inquiring questions that say you really don't know your reader.

As someone else already said, your testimonials are too far down. You need to move them up, at least one to the top so readers know immediately this is a solid buy.

You have too many drop case characters. The three stand out as not fitting the rest of the copy. If you've tested this to see if it works or hurt so be it. Otherwise consider using just the first drop character or test using drop characters throughout your copy in each opening sentence immediately after each subhead. But not just three. Looks like a mistake.

As also said, the bit about your publisher isn't believable. This is a digital product. How does your publisher play in the picture of what you choose to do with your digital product? Looks to me like they aren't 'publishing' it at all. You are.

So you need to do something to make those two lines about your publisher sound more honest. If this were being sold from your publisher's website that might be different. But as is, it sounds fabricated.

Hope something helps.

Andre