Solid looking sales letter/ crappy conversions... What Gives?

[cozandeffect]

I turned in what appeared to be a solid sales letter, but it fell flat. Can you guys offer some advice on why this isn't working?

here's the URL:

Rat Race Assassin

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Best,

Coz

[Jennie Heckel]

Dear Coz,

It's just not believable.

You use 54 words in the HEADLINE!

I have found in the last year the longer headlines are going away.

My 2 cents:

1. I feel the width of the copy is too wide, I don't like to go too wide, since if they are too wide it is too hard to read. I would make the width of the body copy no more than 10 words wide if possible.

2. I like my sale letters text copy to be 12 points too, yours is a little small.

3. Copy is too dense. Lately the one sentence and one word copy is what is converting better, people must scroll faster to read it and the time on site increases as they scroll down.

4. Cut the copy down and do more like these sites.

Google Slapper 2.0

See how this headline is an attention grabber?

Short and sweet and to the point and is almost identical to yours in 1/4 the words!

5. Better template and graphics... sorry as a copywriter and sales letter designer the 3 seconds I had to take a quick peak the intro, and graphics did not grab me.

See this one here of mine for graphics, this is a work in progress.

The Underground Affiliate System

The Underground Affiliate System

See how these graphics kick ***

That is what you need.

Might want to test this instead:

It's similar copy, same stuff just shorter, more powerful and more believable.
$100 a day is believable...

Headline # 1

"Have You Just About Had It With Listening to the Gurus?
Kick The Guru Habit! 100% Guaranteed Step-By-Step Process
To Dumping $100 A Day or MORE With Less Than 1 Hour Per Day!

WARNING: Tired of your A$$hole Boss! - You OWE It To Yourself To Read This Letter!

Headline # 2

Still More Credit Card Debt In Your Bank Account Than Income?
Kick The Guru Habit! 100% Guaranteed Step-By-Step Process
To Dumping $100 A Day or MORE With Less Than 1 Hour Per Day!

WARNING: Sick and Tired of your A$$hole Boss! - You OWE It To Yourself To Read This Letter!

Here is your current headline:

"I Know Men Richer Than You Can Imagine Who Are Still Locked Away In The Prison of Their Jobs. Now - For The First Time Ever - I've About To Reveal My Step-By-Step Process To $36,371.46 A Month, With No Experience Necessary, Working Less Than One Hour Per Day, All Backed By My Personal 60 Day Guarantee."

And now, for a limited time only I'm offering a few extremely lucky people the chance to free themselves from the rat race - permanently... Are you ready to become a Rat Race Assassin?

WARNING: If You Find Yourself Busier Than Ever, Overwhelmed By Traffic, Bills and A$$hole Bosses - You OWE It To Yourself To Read This Letter

See the big difference?

Need more help, email me.

Regards,

Jennie Heckel
SalesCopySecret

[damondallah]

Your headline is too long but it should say "I'm about to reveal"..... not "I've".

[Bruce Wedding]

Your headline:

"I Committed Murder And Got Away With It... Now - For The First Time Ever - Discover A Wealth of Money Making Secrets Others Would Kill For."

This headline fails in its most fundamental job: to make me read the next line. I have no desire to read any farther and I'm sure most feel the same way.

Study proven headlines, extract the formula and make it your own.

[DougHughes]

Hi,

Scammy and unbelievable. I admit, that I like the copy but there are a few things that blew it for me.

1. $100 bucks a day wont free you from anything where I come from
2. Photoshopped (or even real) screenshots can hurt your conversion. We've tested that. Unbelievably, on one page that was super ugly and basically only had a story we converted at 1-1.5 %. As soon as we made the page look fancy, added what we thought were captivating subheads, and...logos like Google, MSN News, Oprah, and ABC, conversions plummeted. I've seen similar things a couple of times.
3. Too many font types. This is the web. Verdana, Arial, Tahoma were made for the web. You may do better with all San Serif fonts for the body type. Perhaps Georgia or Times for the headlines.
4. The copy is somewhat violent. I don't know who your market is. What I can tell you is that far more women buy online than men. Something to think about. I can tell you most of the people who buy our "make money online" products are women. The same is true for other companies I've worked with.

But I think it's enough to say that the program is unbelievable. But what do I know? I would keep testing things until something popped.

Oh yeah, what kind of traffic are you getting? Are you getting enough traffic? Those will affect your conversions also. You have to have the right media-to-market message also.

Hope that helps.

[travlinguy]

Most of this has already been mentioned...
The headline is way too long. Rather than having the page left justified, center the template. I'd bet that would improve conversions a bit.

Other than that, this page could be a swipe file for hype. This for example,

"WARNING: Do NOT Read This Letter Unless You're Ready To Quit Your Job..."

You're kidding, right?

$100 a day? That might qulify as the "Part Time Rat Race Assassin"

I'd say you need to strip this thing down to the bare bones and rebuild it or figure out a new approach and rewrite it from scratch. Good luck.

[Matt James]

See this one here of mine for graphics, this is a work in progress.

Off-topic...

Jenny, did you design the Affiliate Code/Clickbank Code sales letters?

[Cruiser]

Thanks to Jennie Heckel for such an informative reply! I appreciate it to learn form you guys!

[cozandeffect]

Thanks everyone for your feedback. This is what I love about copywriting: one person suggests a change (such as $100 per day) and then others say the opposite.

Somewhere there's a sweet spot

I've shortened the headline, removed some of the hype, etc. as suggested.

Cheers,

Coz

[MikeHumphreys]

The sales letter needs a ton of work. And that's one of the reasons why it's not working... you're asking the reader to work to read it. You need to make it easy and painless to read.

Let me give you a few examples of what I mean.

Besides the headlines that everyone has mentioned, the salesletter is not centered which is a big no-no.

The layout right now is half-black and half normal, you did something to mess up the background colors... check your table and div closing tags as that's often the culprit.

Too small of a font for the body copy... go with at least 13 pixels size. Stick with the same fonts throughout except for headlines.

You're rushing the opening copy and headlines. Some things like introducing yourself are being done too soon. You jump from point to point without connecting them -- big mistake.

Slow down the frentic jumping around... transition from point to point... tone down the swearing so it's less offensive to women and people who don't like it (a good chunk of your potential market).

Until you capture the reader's attention and draw them into reading the rest of the copy, the reader isn't going to give a rat's a$$ (pun intended) who you are or why you are called the Rat Race Assassin.

If those are PhotoShopped Clickbank shots, then lose them. If they are legit then they need some clarification to remove doubt about their validity.

One of your testimonials is signed with a man's name but has a photo of a woman. Not sure if that's a layout mistake or not.

Honestly, if it was me, I'd scrap this salesletter and start over from scratch. It would probably be faster than trying to fix everything.

Best of luck,

Mike

[GaryJBloomer]

Dear cozandeffect,

Apart from the great advice you've read above, your sales letter talks about you or your product almost as often as it talks about the outcome for the prospect. This ratio needs to shift so that you're talking about the prospect and their outcome far more than you are now. I hope this helps. Good luck to you. —Gary B.

[cozandeffect]

Great advice all around... the web designer has been working on this site today, which explains why the font/center/text has been off (should be fixed soon).

As for the screenshots, yes they are valid. How could I make them more believable?

Thanks,

Coz

[Ross Bowring]

The Rat Race Assassin line is O.K. But the graphics you've got don't bring it to life. What could be less inspiring as a reader decides whether to "read on" as a graphic of a fella falling asleep at his keyboard?

[Daniel Scott]

Coz,

Your writing style isn't bad... and your "story" is okay.

The rest is a bit of a failure.

You're obviously making a fair bit of cash... why not just pay a pro to do this for you?

You *could* learn to do it yourself, but judging by that page your skills are a fair way below where they need to be to kick this thing into high gear.

Not to mention there's no hook which is super-important in this niche as it's pretty saturated.

Kind regards,

-Dan

[stanwyck]

The truth is I had to squint while I was on the page. Now thats the last thing I'd ever want someone to admit to me but I want to be as honest and helpful as possible.

The color is great for a shirt, not a background. I'd say a steel blue might work better.

I have a little time so I'll read the letter line by line and comment. This will be in- depth, hope you don't mind

As far as the graphic goes. I always like to put what the prospect aspires to be or do in there. So a great looking, but rarely used, pic from istock (maybe something from page 5 or higher) of who he wants to be should be used. And Assasin is the star, not rat race, right? So it should be bigger.

Headline ideas:
I have finally cracked the code to making $1000/day and if you give me 7 minutes of your time, I will tell you exactly how I do it, and how you can do it too, step by step.

Do you have any other pictures of yourself?

Stats about other people are boring. Lets talk about me, ie the prospect.

I think it'd be better to start off with the Lumberg story. People love stories about other people going postal.

Now I'm wondering who's your market? The copy makes it sound like entreprenuers who are tired of working themselves to death. But it also seems like you're casting your net kind of wide and trying to get wage earners too.

Hey this is a business in a box, isn't it? Why didn't you say that in the first place. Thats great. There's tons of people who'd love that.

I think that should be mentioned a lot sooner. In the headline maybe. Think of all the people who'll get the wrong idea from the headline or the opening stats and opening copy and leave the page long before they realize this is a perfect offer for them.

[Oxbloom]

From the nature of the product, I assume you are targeting people who would like to make money -- preferably a lot of it, like a full time income -- at home, on their own.

GREAT! Huge market, can't go wrong. I'm one of those myself. So...

1) I wouldn't get past the first three words before I clicked away. "Rat Race Assassin." When I see "rat" and "assassin" together, I feel like I'm about to get a pitch from a pest control product or service. Even if I DO manage to continue, the sales pitch is going to have an uphill battle to get me back.

2) Assuming I could get past there, I would only get as far as the first line before clicking away. "Still more credit card debt...?" Oh, it's another of the million examples of "fix your credit" or "bill consolidation" services. No interest. What I want is a way to make big money from home.

I started reading the sales letter's body, but even though it was okay, I stopped. I don't think that's your problem. I think the problem is that not enough people are getting grabbed by your first screen to even allow your letter to do the work of converting them to buyers. I'd start testing by reworking the stuff up top, and maybe even by split-testing against an identical product with a different, vermin-free name.

[ElGatito]

Originally Posted by stanwyck

Headline ideas:
I have finally cracked the code to making $1000/day and if you give me 7 minutes of your time, I will tell you exactly how I do it, and how you can do it too, step by step.

I like it. Much better than the one you have right now. I am now in a public place, andd I skipped the headline right away because I feared people behind me would see it, and would react badly to it.

Seriously, what's reaaaally cool with this one is, its kind of intriguing, and kinda gives a challenge. Actually I would slightly change the headline to challenge the reader into reading your copy.

"I have finally cracked the code to making $1000/day and if you give me 7 minutes of your time, I will prove that you can do it."

At the end, you can then challenge them to do it, otherwise they can ask for a refund.

Otherwise, except the beginning, I like your copy. As a few people said, the story itself is ok, well weaved. Personally I would the text on the right, and continue the copy on the side, because I lost the flow copy and stopped reading at that point. But that's debatable.

But here's the BIG point I would say you need to improve:
- The List in the beginning. Copy paste it on a text file, and SCRAP it.
- Then read this post The “oh by the way” copywriting technique | Fladlien Productions
It is one of the sneakiest way to give facts I know
- Then disperse the fact throughout the copy as a gentle way to push people.

Last Point I would make : I don't see any scarcity. People will procrastinate unless you push them. It can still be a gentle push, But it could be :
"For your benefit, Im running a special, it cost 77$ right now : each time somebody buys, it goes up one bucks."
Or :
"I don't want to overcrowd the net with this system, I'm taking this off the market that date."

Anyway you decide but do put some scarcity.

[MaxReferrals]

Good theme, and feeling.

I'd go with two words, very large as the solo headline

Work Sucks. or maybe...

Your Job Sucks.

Then subhead from there.

[NightWriter]

Just wanted to point this out... Your offer says $97, but the price is actually $77 when you push the "Buy" button. You'll probably figure that out on your own, but I thought I'd mention it, anyway.

One thing I noticed... this copy doesn't make me feel good... it's causing me to focus on things that make me feel bad for too long... I think you want to bring that fact to mind - that working for the man sucks, but, believe me I know that! I want to feel good about your product... if I feel good enough about what you're telling me... I'm a more likely buyer.

I think you did a good job in your narrative of keeping the focus on you while you're talking about the negativity, but when you get to the part about how you figured it all out, you want to go back to putting the focus on the reader and how all of your misery is going to pay off big-time for them when they get this product. It's good for you to talk about how bad things were for you, but, if you seem like too big of a winner, then I start feeling bad about myself again... and I need to feel good! Feeling good makes me want to buy. Feeling icky about myself makes me want to navigate away... just a thought.

Great piece for a critique.... I think it just needs some tweaks.

I wonder if that graphic could still work for this product if you changed the headline? Assasinate the rat race before it kills you... I don't know. Just a thought.

Graphics are important... but (all together now!) it's the copy that sells.

I've really enjoyed reading all of the analyses.

I'm glad this was posted.

[cozandeffect]

Thank you all so much for your in depth analysis. I'll be sure to change the header, background color, and split test removing the list at the beginning.

The last sales letter I wrote converted between 2.2-2.6%, whereas this one hasn't even broken 1%. My belief is that the overall "concept" doesn't vibe with people (as many of you pointed out).

Again, thank you for your candor - it is MUCH appreciated!

Best,

Coz