Copy done by HUGELY respected forum Copywriter... Review please...

That was the wrong file I attached. Its been changed since.

Good point Andrew... I did see that and thought it was odd.

For a brief second, I thought they were involved with Ryan.... shows you
how foolish I was. Glad I wasn't the only one who saw that and found it weird.

But hey, if you're gonna steal, I mean swipe, you might as well make sure you're copying someone doing well :-)

Cool thanks.

OK,


I want you to really, really think about this...


If the above is true, how can ANYONE justify charging $500+ for a sales letter?


You have just said yourself than nobody knows how a letter will do. So what makes 'Copywriters' opinions on what will do better worth $500+?

I can't speak for others. I charge based on what will make me thrilled to work on the project and want to give it my all.

For this very reason, I turn down lucrative projects all the time. You cannot PAY me to be interested in finance. However, I know plenty of people who specialize in it that I can refer.

Of course I care about profit - but first and foremost I do work I LIKE.

I definitely see your point, Kev. But bear in mind that a lot of work can go into writing...

Research into the product, competition, audience... Research into copywriting approaches that might work for that product, competition, audience...

The more you pay, the more incentive the copywriter will have to leave no stone unturned in search of the right approach... and make sure every word works. He won't need to write a letter a day to make a living, and he'll have more time to do a bang up job with yours...

Claude Hopkin's "Scientific Advertising" comes to mind -- the part where he talks about the research involved in finding the perfect hook, sometimes based on some obscure fact about the product, or some technical process involved in its production...

Combine the legwork involved and the copywriter's native talent, ingenuity and track record, and you can see why one copywriter might be worth $5000 while the other just $500.

... But most valuable of all is knowing a bit about copy yourself, because copywriters are salesmen and ultimately they'll sell you on whatever fee they think they can. Knowing how to judge copy well is a valuable talent for marketers, whether they plan to write copy themselves or not.

Long time ago, when I worked 9 to 5, some guy convinced my boss to pay $7000 to write copy promoting a conference. The copy he submitted was a single half-page paragraph that read like some fanciful eight-grader had written it. It was absolutely horrible.

She asked me to rewrite it. I've saved that dude's draft to this day (knowing he had gotten $7k for it) as career inspiration.

Copywriters are in sales. Many will sell you on a high fee if they can -- whether they're worth that much or not. And talented beginners will try to undercut those guys. That's why all in all, knowing good copy when you see it (based on your own study) is valuable in marketing...

Any ethical copywriter wouldn't.

My quoted fee is my fee regardless of the size of the client or the price of their product. Many times, if it's something like a $7 product, I turn down the project. They're not ready to bring in someone like me. Not unless they have a funnel in place and the ability to drive a lot of traffic consistently.

[quote]
I mean who would pay $5,000+ for a sales letter for a $27 product.
[QUOTE]

For starters, a lot of experienced marketers and business owners. At least the ones who have the ability to drive traffic consistently to a salesletter. They get their targeted traffic from either their own house list (often 10K or more people), affiliates, JV partners, or some combination of the above.


No offense, but you're thinking too small in terms of the purpose of that salesletter.

The better questions to ask are things like...

... What's the backend to that product?
... Are there upsells or downsells?
... Are you trying to build a customer list that you can market follow-up products to (yours or other people's) in the future?

That $5K salesletter could deliver far more than that in additional and future sales than the single product it's selling.

Simple. A $7 product is the front-end offer. It builds a large list of buyers which you then turn around and offer similiar products and services forever to. So that $5K upfront investment could launch a $100K per year business IF you have the marketing skills and expertise to power the rest of the marketing funnel.

But like I said earlier, most of the people who contact me about a salesletter for a $7 product, I won't take on their project. They're not ready to work with someone with my track record or experience.

Pretty cool. How long did it take to get to that amount?

Odds are, it's usually revenue. The copywriter almost never has any control over the amount of money spent on PPC, affiliate commission percentages, business owner salary, etc. that can impact their client's profit margins.