Who writes your WSO copy?

I write my own.

Not the greatest in the world, however, it's earned thousands of dollars.

The social proof, IMHO, is what you really have to work at building. Create an amazing product, give a few copies away as review copies, and 'hopefully' people will be excited about your product and leave honest reviews.

No, not the only one at all.

I've never done a WSO and have no figures or anything, so what I'm about to say may be completely unreliable and mistaken, but I suspect that for a WSO people really don't expect professionally-written copy like they'd expect for a product for which they might become an affiliate, say.

I mean - you're selling to internet marketers, with a WSO, whether they're actually members of the WF or not (and many people who aren't will still read them and buy WSO's, I'm sure).

I admire quite a lot of the "copy" I see in the WSO forum. Some of the "home-written ones" more than the apparently professionally written ones, to be honest. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Digressing completely, here: without wanting to embarrass Jeremy (Kelsall) in any way, I invariably love his WSO copy. I know he doesn't do "copywriting" for people (at least, he doesn't as far as I know), and I don't think he's employing a professional copywriter to write his WSO copy, because I think I recognise his style - I think he just does it himself, does it incredibly well (whatever it is he's promoting!) and is a really good writer with a deep understanding of his market, perhaps without even thinking about that too much. So anyone who's stuck can learn a bit by reading the copy for all his WSO's!

No offense but your sales copy looks pretty professional anyway. Of course, if you take offense to that - there might be a problem

This is the difference between a social transaction and an economic transaction. More simply, whether you are trying to make a buck, or trying to make a difference.

Most people don't have a problem with either of these things, to a certain extent, but they like to have a good solid feel for what the transaction is... and while social "sells" better, there's a level of intimacy problem when your audience are strangers.

I can "sell" you a lot more readily if I treat you like a trusted friend, but if you know you're not a trusted friend, it feels cheesy and fake.

Similarly, if you're my friend and I try to "sell" you like a used car dealer would... it's offensive, because I'm treating you like a stranger.

Sometimes things get muddled. My girlfriend wanted to find a good business name and domain name. When I started asking her the same questions I'd ask any other business client, she got upset because she was my girlfriend, not a client.

It took a lot of poking around and arguing the point before we came to the understanding that she wanted to have the social interaction of "let's toss names around," and I saw it as the economic interaction of "let's solve a business problem." So we started throwing names around, and she got frustrated that none of my names were "any good."

After a little more arguing, we finally came to the understanding that she actually wanted the results of an economic transaction, but she wanted them to come out of a social transaction.

This can be done, it just requires a different approach. In the 1970s "I'm OK, You're OK" nomenclature, this is somewhere between the "Parent/Adult" and "Adult/Adult" interactions. You could think of it as an adult sibling conversation: one of you is by definition older, but this has a subdued effect on the conversation.

I think about this stuff a lot.

A couple weeks ago, I sent a couple of very informal and largely inappropriate messages to my list. Those who expected to only have economic transactions on that list (or more appropriate social ones) unsubscribed; I lost about 15% of my list members from that mailing.

Some people would be upset about this. I'm not. I can't tailor my mail to every single member of my list. If you want to be on my list, you should like to read my mail, and if you don't want to get the occasional drunken rant on Friday night... well, mine is really the wrong list for you. And as far as I'm concerned, that makes my list more targeted and easier for me to talk to.

That's an interesting point about relationship building. When you're building a relationship with twelve people, and two of them leave because they don't like the relationship, you're now building a stronger relationship with ten people. So while 15% of my list doesn't like my drunken emails on Friday night, I think of it more like 85% of my list actually understands me.

Sales copy is the same way. Anyone and everyone can read my sales copy, but what my sales copy is really designed to do isn't "make people buy" - it's "help people know whether they should buy." Basically, if you don't want my product, I don't want your money... so if you're not convinced my product is what you want, I'd really rather not sell it to you.

I think of things a little backwards. I'm not trying to get as many customers as possible. I'm just trying to find the ones that are out there. There are already all the customers I will ever need walking around, who will be perfectly happy with what I create and how I present it. I just need to get my offer in front of them.

I think of it more like matchmaking than engineering. A social process, not a technical one.