It's Amazing What Some People Call Salescopy

[Steven Wagenheim]

I won't mention any names. Truth is, I have no idea who wrote the sales
letter.

Long story short.

I occasionally promote other people's products IF I find they are good.

Well, I came across one that I really liked. So I reviewed it and said I
would promote it when it was ready to go.

Well, the product finally got approved by Clickbank and the sales page
went up.

I then took a look at the sales page and immediately said to myself, "The
product creator must have written this."

I contacted the creator and told them the sales page was awful and that
they really should have gotten a copywriter to do it.

Much to my surprise...it WAS written by a "copywriter".

I didn't ask what they paid for the copy but IMO, anything over $100 was
too much.

Yeah, it was THAT bad.

I realize we don't all have the budget for Vin Montello, but even at $197
for a sales letter, you should get better than what this crap was.

I honestly have no words for what I saw.

Now, I salvaged my promotion by warning people that the sales page
sucked but that the product was really good. No, it wasn't a make money
online product. It was actually a technical product.

As a result, I did pop 5 sales in about 5 hours.

But I can only imagine how much better I would have done with anything
closely resembling a decent sales page.

Anyway, this got me to thinking about how some people can either fool
themselves into believing they can write a sales letter or how some people
can just blatantly take advantage of others knowing full well that they
can't but just don't care.

And I was worried about writing sales letters for others.

Next to this piece of crap, I am Vin Montello

[David Raybould]

Steve, I fully agree.

Unfortunately, because most people have
no idea what they should ask when hiring
a copywriter, the bar of entry is almost
non-existent.

Seems like some of these guys just say
"hey I'm a copywriter", and start asking
for money.

It's a pity, because all those hacks out there
give the rest of us a bad name.

And yeah, I know not everybody is in the
position to drop $10k on a writer or whatever...

... but boy, even when I was DIRT cheap, I
worked super hard to deliver good copy, you
know?

True, I was a little obsessive about it, but
jeez, don't these guys have any pride?

It's kinda sad to see clients get taken by the
charlatans, but unless the buyer spends a
little time getting to know what to look for
in a writer, I don't see a way of stopping it.

Definitely annoying though.

-David Raybould

[Rezbi]

Did you offer to redo his sales page for a fee?

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by Rezbi

Did you offer to redo his sales page for a fee?

I didn't want to go there. I didn't want to come off as giving a sales pitch.

I honestly told them what I thought of their sales page, from the perspective
of an affiliate promoting their product, and left it at that.

If they want to sell more product, they'll have it redone. Whether they come
to me or not doesn't matter to me because I'm more interested in promoting
the product and earning commissions from those sales. With a proper ad
campaign and the fact that this is definitely an evergreen type product, I
could be making sales for a long time with very little work.

[Loren Woirhaye]

When a person who sells their personal services feels they can
only get work by working very cheaply, it's a sure sign he or
she hasn't got much of a clue about marketing.

That's okay with a lot of clients. If I need ditches dug I
might ask a few guys in the Home Depot parking lot - "how much?"

The problem is when you go looking for a marketing expert or
salesperson... you cannot reasonably expect to get competent
work from a freelancer who can only sell on cheap price.

The claim that "I can write you a cash-sucking salesletter"
is just not credible if they appeal to buy is a cheap price. If
the salesperson really could sell well, they'd be charging
a bigger price.

[Scott Murdaugh]

It's amazing what almost anyone considers an advertisement.

I'm reading through an industry specific magazine right now and it's full of junk ads.

I'm looking at an ad right now from an ADVERTISING AGENCY... This ad probably cost at least $5k to run, and here's the text, word-for-word...

"Company Name"

Buzz.

We Create It. You Benefit.

(Company URL)

And that's it.

They aren't a household name. I don't even know who they want to respond to the ad.

It's ridiculous, and even the biggest of the mega-corporations are guilty.

But hey, if big deep-pocketed ad agencies are that dense, there's a lot of room for those of us with a clue to profit.

This is true online as well. Many Clickbank top sellers and mega product launches could probably convert 5x as well as they do, but product owners don't mind since they generate revenue in sheer traffic volume.

Oh well. Good for us. Bad for them.

-Scott

[GeekGranny]

What really incenses me are those who do not even know what copywriting is!

As for the cheap offers -- I remember a friend of mine who used to be in a position to set up workshops telling me if the presenter offers a workshop at $300, don't hire that person -- it's so cheap that all it shows is that he or she doesn't know the business.

[Collette]

Steve - It might be worth getting the OK from the product owner to set up your own sales page. I know that some people have gone that route when they had a good affiliate product but the sales page sucked.

[MikeHumphreys]

If it's a Clickbank product that you're promoting, you can always put together your own sales letter and send your buyers directly to the Clickbank order form.

The merchant will be delighted that you're making more sales for them and you'll get a fatter affiliate check too.

[MikeHumphreys]

Oops... just saw Collette's post after I posted mine.

What I meant to say was... "Yeah, what Collette said!"

[jasondinner]

Hey Steve,

LOL to this one. I've seen it so many times.

Since you did review the product, have you considered writing your own version of what you would say had you written the copy yourself and use that to bypass his crappy copy?

You know, put his pay link on your version and drop your cookie on the page.

Make a ton of sales with it, then sell it to him or just send traffic to your version indefinitely

- Jason

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by jasondinner

Hey Steve,

LOL to this one. I've seen it so many times.

Since you did review the product, have you considered writing your own version of what you would say had you written the copy yourself and use that to bypass his crappy copy?

You know, put his pay link on your version and drop your cookie on the page.

Make a ton of sales with it, then sell it to him or just send traffic to your version indefinitely

- Jason

Jason, the truth is, I'm so good at preselling stuff (I presell everything
that isn't my own product, and even some of them I do too) I could
send these people to a buy now button and make the sale.

I've even told people that the sales page sucked and knocked off 4 sales
in 4 hours.

I'm just not sure, with all the other stuff I'm promoting, if it's worth my
time to actually put a sales letter together.

Maybe if I'm bored one day I will.

[jasondinner]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Jason, the truth is, I'm so good at preselling stuff (I presell everything
that isn't my own product, and even some of them I do too) I could
send these people to a buy now button and make the sale.

I've even told people that the sales page sucked and knocked off 4 sales
in 4 hours.

I'm just not sure, with all the other stuff I'm promoting, if it's worth my
time to actually put a sales letter together.

Maybe if I'm bored one day I will.

Take the email you wrote and format THAT into a pre-sell page with a buy now or add to cart button.

Won't take you much more time since you already wrote it, and the revenue that comes to you as a result will be well worth it

When I do something similar, I am averaging 500% ROI (and sometimes as much as 2000%) when I run PPC traffic to a page like we are talking about.

Just sayin ;P

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by jasondinner

Take the email you wrote and format THAT into a pre-sell page with a buy now or add to cart button.

Won't take you much more time since you already wrote it, and the revenue that comes to you as a result will be well worth it

When I do something similar, I am averaging 500% ROI (and sometimes as much as 2000%) when I run PPC traffic to a page like we are talking about.

Just sayin ;P

Actually, the email is already up on my blog. It's a review of the product
along with my ethical bribe (my own bonus)

So that's pretty much taken care of, more or less.

[writeright]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Next to this piece of crap, I am Vin Montello

Now that one's a zinger!

That apart, I totally agree with you. Ignorance from the part of the client and complete con job from the part of the writer.

First rule of Copywriting:

"Don't commit to something that you are not good at."