Salescopy Disaster - yes by me!! Arrgh!!

One other thing I have to add.

You're trying to get people to part with $67.

While that's not a high end product, that's going to require a hell of a lot more
copy than what you have there.

Your sales letter is literally ONE PAGE.

I've seen squeeze pages that were longer.

I'm not saying you have to write a novel but it's going to take more than
one page of copy to get people to part with $67.

Maybe later if I have time, I'll rip the whole thing to shreds.

But please...get a copywriter.

Somebody here has got to be able to do a better job than this for a
fair price. I mean for crying out loud, you don't need Vin Montello, but
you can get a decent sales letter for 1K.

Think about it.

This Is Your Lucky Day!!

:confused::confused::confused:

Please...get a copywriter.

Copywriting is NOT learned in a night...please get a copywriter.

Colin, I'm no copywriter but I can tell you two mistakes that hit me instantly and they both fill the entire top fold of my screen.

1. The header is taking up the top third of my screen, personally I would do away with it altogether.

2. You instantly start off talking about yourself and how YOU benefited.

See, this is what I don't understand about people's logic...or lack of it.

As your sales page stands now...it won't convert...period.

So all you're saving by not getting a copywriter is...nothing.

You might as well take the product, package it in a free giveaway and
use it as a bonus for promoting a related affiliate product. At least that
way you might have a chance of making some sales.

Right now?

It's not even good toilet paper.

Colin,

If you can't afford a copywriter, then you
got to start investing in your education now.

And learning to write a persuasive salescopy
is not something you can learn in an instant,
despite what some may tell you.

It takes a lot of practice.

And practice takes time. And often,
you have to pay your dues in term of
"lost" potential revenue and wasted
advertising fees.

Either way, it's gonna be costly at first.

If you got a seriously good product,
I still recommend you invest in a good
copywriter.

If not, you can check out the list of
recommended copywriting books in the
sticky section.

Lastly, check out and sign up
to any newsletters from Agora
(e.g. EarlyToRise).

You will see plenty of persuasive
sales copies there.

Agora has got a team of insanely
talented copywriters.

I keep a swipe file of their letters,
and I learn a lot just from reading them.

Jag

Colin, you are not like anybody else, don't presume the majority of people think like you. I made that mistake for many years. The reason most sales copy are founded on the same basic formula is because they have been tried and tested for many many years and haven't changed a great deal since.

Like I said I'm no copywriter but I'll have a go at critiquing it for you.

First, lose the fancy look and use a simple font, it's all distracting.

As a customer I'm only interested in one thing ... "what's in it for me!" I couldn't give a toss about you unless it's relevant to how it will benefit me. Something like "I made the same mistakes as all beginners," "After two years I suddenly realised what I was doing wrong, just like you are now" etc, that might keep me interested but not until you've already grabbed my attention so these kind of things don't belong at the top unless they're real good, your's aren't.

You've got three seconds max to stop me hitting the back button and I'm not prepared to scroll down unless You've already grabbed my attention. Not everybody has a high res screen so you better do this in the top four or five hundred pixels of the page.

The first thing I see when I load your page on my typical sized laptop screen is almost half the screen is your header logo, it's the first thing I see and by the time I've read "total traffic domination" I'm already bored, I'm thinking "yeah whatever, seen it all before," and then one small headline that doesn't give me anything. "did you say traffic?" ... er, no, you did, and then you start telling me all about you.. I'm gone, I've just wasted three seconds of my life!

The header graphic, if it's going to be this big then it had better carry a powerful message to make me want to read on. "traffic domination - (with a twist!)" Now that's not particularly powerful but it might, just might arouse my interest slightly because now I might not be thinking "here we go, it's another one" (yet) but you've now got two more seconds with your next headline to make me want to read the next sentence.

What do I see ... "did you say traffic" ... you have slightly caught my attentin with "with a twist" but now you've blown it, I want to know about the twist and why this is going to be different, cause if it isn't different I'm gone. I want to know why it's different, why it's not like the fifty bucks I blew on the last one and how it's going to help me me me me me. I want maybe something like,

"90% of beginners use the correct methods but with one fatal mistake that makes them lose traffic, not gain it"

Now that might not be a particulalary good attention grabber, I don't know (and might not be appropriate to your product) but what it might be telling me is that all the other methods tell you the right things but leave out one vital piece of information that gets overlooked because the others take it for granted that I already know. Maybe your product has the missing piece of the puzzle? I'm interested, now I'll read the next sentence.

etc etc etc ... and at no point am I interested in you!

When I read throuh your copy all I see is how YOU learnt this and YOU found that out and YOU got it right. I want to know what I'M going to learn and how I'M going to get it right.

Also you repeat the same thing over and over, there is no need to rephrase the same thing, I already get it... you learnt the hard way but now you've got it, say it once and once only, I understood it the first time. Every sentence has to keep me interested and make me believe you have something different.

That's it, take my advice with a pich of salt, I'm no expert but hope it helps.

No....get a copywriter.

Well you need to start by making clear, in the sales letter, who it is for.
Say something that shows that you are talking to small business owners.
People who have hopes that the Internet will bring them new customers to their local shop, and new mail-order sales from customers all over.
Their site looks cool and it's got all the latest buzzwords.
One problem: no sales!

If someone like that came across a Web page, would they assume that "total traffic domination" is for them? Probably not. How about "Internet sales success for small business?" That's not a great domain name and title, but it's closer to what they are already thinking about than your title.

Now, you have identified the problem.
The problem is that the site is not making them any money.
And they don't have any idea why.
They did all the things they were told to do... by programmers and designers who are not salespeople, and who don't know how to get anyone to visit a web site.

You need to educate here. The CAUSE of the problem is lack of traffic. The programmers and designers didn't talk about it because they don't know either.
The SOLUTION is building traffic. Does this mean buying a lot of expensive Internet ads? Not necessarily. In fact there are 17 ways that for less than five minutes a day, with no extra money, they can start getting visitors to their site right away.

How many visitors? It depends on how popular their industry is. But for a typical shop, such as (give some examples), it's realistic to expect that an hour a day doing the right things can bring a hundred visitors a day or more within just a few months. If a third of them sign up for your free email newsletter, how much better is that than buying more ads? If just one percent buy from your site, that's a new customer every single day. How many flyers, newspaper ads or Yellow Pages upgrades would they have to buy to add a customer a day, when the Internet can offer this for free?

The catch: they don't know how to do it.. and their existing Internet team can't teach what they don't know either. That's where you come in.

NOW there's a reason to learn about your book.

Until it's obvious to you to put some kind of structure like this to your letters, you really are better off outsourcing as much as you can afford.

Sure Colin.

Best of luck. If you're going to be seriously studying copywriting then I'd recommend either starting off with John Carlton's Simple Writing System or something by Clayton Makepeace.

They should explain the fundamentals to you in a step-by-step banner, so you can truly grasp the art of selling as opposed to having to test everything out for yourself.

Kind regards,

Connor

It's not a flaw, it's simply something that you haven't mastered yet. Nor have I to be truthful and it is MUCH harder work that I ever invisioned to begin with (I see you are at this point now hehe).

You have a fantastic attitude though, it's perked me up a bit!

While I agree with a lot of what some are saying in this thread, I think you are doing the right thing Colin, good luck to you and don't let anyone put you off.

If things were as simple as "hire a copywriter" then we'd all be rich. I'd hire a copywriter, a backlinker and an article writer and all my problems would be solved. The reality is it don't work like that, not quite anyway. We can outsource everything but we still have to learn first, and that's usually the hard way. There are only two ways to outsource, hire only those with great reputations so that you know you're getting the job done properly or hire by trial and error, both methods are expensive.

If you can't afford those with the best reputations then you need to know that what you are paying for is worth it. No offense to your writing efforts Colin but it's pretty clear you could go on paying for services and never having any idea whether it's your product that sucks or the copywriter you hired. We don't need to be an expert in every department of our business but we certainly need to know the basics, especially when on limited budgets. If you don't then you're never going to know where your business is failing.

I can't offer you much on your sales letter but it does look like a slight improvement, only slight though. The overall layout is much better but lose that font, it's distracting.

Answer these questions...
Why should I buy your product, what's different, what's better, what's your USP, what's it going to do for me that the other products in your niche wont. Why should I believe you.

What do I want as a customer? ..
I want solutions, I want BUYING traffic, I want it now, I want lot's of it, I want it to be easy, I want to know you're telling me the truth.

I don't want you to bore me for one millisecond. I want every word I read to have impact and convince me I'm not wasting my time before bothering to read the next sentence.

I hate reading. I don't want anything rephrased. say it once and say in as few words as possible. If you can relay the message to me in five words or fifty, I'll take the five word sentence, no matter how much the long version makes YOU feel better, unless it's absolutely vital. And in that case, I'll take it as a simple breakdown, maybe with bullets, they read a lot easier.

I'm already sceptical before I even click on your link.


I'm already bored. You haven't grabbed my attention. What's that really telling me. It's telling me I tried but I f**ked up

now your telling me I didn't know what i was doing, I f***d it again.

yawn

See ya then, bye.

You just told me that, see above

er, do what?

ok so you've finally got to the point, but ... "show me what's involved" to get people to my website. Involved? people? I don't want to know what's involved, i just want an easy solution. And what are people? I want buying customers!

So far you've taken a full fold of my screen to tell me I tried, I f*kd up, and you're going to send me people.



Now go and study some sales pages and analyse the headlines, now do what they do to tell me how I f**ked it, you've got the answer and I'm gonna get money. Do it in as few words as possible, one headline if you can, or a headline with a sub. Blow me away, make me want to read more.

Stick with it and soon enough, you'll master the fundamentals and start to create your own style. This forum is a truly wonderful place to learn. Isn't it interesting how there can be several powerful hard-hitting letters with such completely different approaches!