Good Writer Required...

This is a commodity product, will appeal to the lowest common denominator audience (the $1/500 word bottom feeder crowd).

Worse yet, this idea has been done ...and pounded into the ground.

My suggestion would be to scrap this for a value added product which actually suggests which headlines, body copy, subheads and closes to use.

It would add intelligence and information to the writing process -- the big flaw in the vast majority of products so far. And in doing that, it would answer the crucial question I have: Why don't these things ever come with an Intelligent USP Wizard?

The lack of unique selling proposition for this "swipe file in a can" approach is, frankly, stunning. Everybody and their brother has this idea, and executes in the very most primitive way possible.

The Big Problem: Without some intelligence in selection, you're essentially throwing together an untested, experimental sales letter. That's exactly the opposite of what the buyer thinks they are getting from putting tested headline #237 with subhead #119 and canned P.S. #34.

Unfortunately the clueless target market doesn't know they've just assembled an untested mess from mix-n-match elements, because the elements (while each might have been tested) have never been tested together as a whole letter.

Worse yet, one mix-n-match element might conceivably rule out certain other elements. No product I know of suggests, for instance, you might want to use this close with that headline.

The result is the sales letter thrown together is a Frankenstein mismatch any legitimate "good" writer would hesitate contributing to. The reason is counter intuitive: Good Input doesn't necessarily mean you won't get Garbage Out.

Because there's no system intelligence to safeguard the typical user who would buy this.

And when given no context what do the clueless gravitate to? Odds are what every newbie does ... might as well just give 'em a "Who else wants...." and save them time. Because context of which canned headlines competitors have driven into the ground is missing from this type of product, universally.

This is unnecessary. Anyone with a lick of sense could apply the same concept keyword selection tools use ...but it just doesn't happen. Ever. And that's a more interesting project for good writers to contemplate than this one.

It's almost like an automated, canned IM "Stereotype In a Box" project the good writers you're looking for would shun on the face of it.


P.S. Maybe I'm not the target "good writer," but it didn't even occur to me to even think about PMing on this. But I would consider the project as described. I suggest, if you're trying to get good writers to consider this, you look into developing a slightly more competitive product.

Honestly, guys... I disagree with you. If software like this is used properly (aka for ideas, not for push-button instant salesletter) it could be helpful to a lot of people. And besides... Yes it has been tried, but I haven't seen one like this. There are headline creators, salesletter creators (that are just fill in the blanks, but no samples given), and swipe files - but nothing I've seen that effectively mixes the three. And I test a lot of software like this - I find it handy for coming up with new ideas. It's more "inspirational" than "push-button".

You may be right - it could be a done-to-death, useless idea. But I'd rather see Adeel try to create something that can help those who maybe can't afford a copywriter or would prefer to do it themselves than see him get discouraged and do nothing. If nothing else, when his customers get bad conversion from bad copy, it will mean more customers for us.

I say give it a shot Adeel - and maybe send a review copy my way when you're done.

- Cherilyn