I'm looking for people to shred my sales letter (with critiques!)

You're assuming that your pitch is powerful enough to overcome a lack of social proof. You're assuming that the reader will be so enticed by a lack of specifics, that they will join anyway, and go through to the next page, where they will THEN see the social proof.

While you're assuming these things, you will be losing subscribers.

Why on earth would I pony up my email to you - when you have offered me zero credibility that the information you say is valuable is, in fact... valuable?

Think about your market for a second: you're addressing people who are already trying to make money online. They're not completely wet behind the ears. The stars, if not gone from their eyes, are at least severely dimmed. You're addressing people who are tired of the "make money BS".

So how are you going to prove to them that your offer is different?

Maybe it shouldn't. But it does.

Because the reader needs to believe that the info is coming from a credible source. And, no, your people don't have to be well-known gurus. They just have to be credible.

Maybe it is, but how many people will never know?

Also, a few of my personal pet peeves:

- Your headline promises "step-by-step, hold-your-hand instruction". Lord knows, I've seen this enough times. And rarely does it turn out to actually be anything close to what has been promised.

Usually, these interviews turn out to be 20 minutes of "My Life History", followed by 20 minutes of "Most people make these mistakes", followed by 5 minutes of "This-is-what-I-did-leaving out the nitty-gritty-details-that-are-really-useful-to-the-clueless", followed by 15 minutes of, "Buy-my-product-and-I'll-fill-in-some-but-not-all-the-blanks-for-you". Interspersed with 20 minutes of aimless bantering chit-chat between the interviewer and the interviewee.

And an hour of my life that I'll never get back.

So, when I see this promise - yet again - it immediately raises My Big Red Flag of Skepticism.

If you're going to make this tired promise, you're going to have to do a lot more than just tell me. You're going to have to show me.

- You say, "Some of it is so easy to do you'll wonder why you haven't been doing it all along. You'll be amazed that you once thought building a list, creating an info product or driving traffic was impossible to do."

FAIL. It's not that people think these thing are impossible to do.They don't know how to do them.

So having yet another guru come along and say, "To make money you need to build a list. Drive traffic and have people subscribe." is not an epic newsflash. Your market already KNOWS that. They don't know HOW. THAT'S the "not easy" part.

Worse, the demoralizing part is that all these "experts" (and now, you)keep saying that this stuff is "easy". It isn't. It's work. The concepts may be simple, but the work is hard.

If I've been struggling to execute this stuff, you just made me feel like a moron for "not getting it". Again.

- One of the promises in your offer is: "Personal guidance from the top Internet Marketers! These are the top experts in the industry, all telling you exactly what you need to do to be successful. You can't put a price tag on that..."

Actually, you're offering nothing of the sort.

You're offering recorded interviews. If you offer me "personal" guidance, you are offering me a solution "personally" tailored to MY "personal" situation. In other words, "personal guidance" implies some kind of "direct access" to these "mentors".

Which is not the case, here. And it affects your credibility.

- And, BTW, you can put a price on how much it would cost for an hour of consulting time with your experts.

If YOU don't put a value on it, what's MY benchmark? Am I supposed to put a value on your offer for you? Don't make me work so hard.

Again, these aren't complete newbies you're talking to. They've already been exposed to pitches. So you're making your pitch in an already stinky market. You're going to have to work a little harder to pass the sniff-test.