Why my clunky "amateur hour" sales letter still sell big
Published: Fri, 02/05/16
Back in my late teens and early 20’s my dream was to be a comic book artist. And, because of that, I was always practicing. Always studying art. Always dreaming big about breaking into the comic book bid’niz.
Only problem was, I sucked at it.
Actually, maybe “sucked” is a little strong.
I was *slightly* better than average.
And, because of that, to keep practicing and to contribute to Christmas time… instead of buying my family gifts (I was broke as a joke back then), I hand drew everyone a Christmas card in a very comic-bookish style.
Everyone loved them.
Even today, family members tell me they still keep them.
But you know what?
If you were to put those cards (which everyone thought were so groovy) next to “for real” comic book art, by for real artists, who draw for real comics… you’d find my stuff was basically amateur hour. Yes, they were good enough to accomplish the objective (give my family a card they’d enjoy and keep), even though I drew them very fast (I’m quite the slacker at heart and don’t like pouring over projects for long periods of time), and they were far from being “professional.”
The point?
Fast forward to today…
And it’s the exact same with my sales letters.
If you were to take any of my ads and lay them next to a John Carlton ad, or a Gary Halbert ad, or a Gary Bencivenga ad, or a David Deutsch ad, or a Richard Armstrong ad, or an ad from any of the greats… mine are pretty much amateur hour.
I put far less time into mine.
I have far less writing talent than they do.
And, I work far less harder than they do.
But you know what?
Despite that, my sales letters almost always pull very well.
No, they’re not “A list” level or even “world class” level.
But, they have accomplished things like:
* I have a control running in the MLM niche that hasn’t been beaten (including when tested against video, last I heard) in 8 years. I wrote that sales letter in about 4-5 days, I think. (Can’t remember exactly, but it was fast.)
* A headline I knocked out in about 30-seconds in the self defense niche circulated all the high traffic conservative news sites (like Drudge, NewsMax, etc — which are not cheap to advertise on) for years before the client ended up retiring.
* A series of sales letters — each of which I banged out in a day on average — helped take a start-up golf business a few years back from $0 to making $200k per month (obviously the product, positioning of the golf guru, emails I wrote, and the traffic they generated had a big part of that, but the sales letters for all their various products are what closed the deal). The ironic part is, I had never even played golf before, I simply knew some short cut ways to study the market and write the ads quickly.
* A sales letter I wrote for the weight loss niche in about 2 or 3 days converted the front-end at 40%. That's total list size vs sales volume — in arguably the Internet's most competitive niche.
* I helped take one prominent direct sales company from nabbing a .8% response to over 1.6% response from their front end sales letter. That may not seem like a lot, but to that company it meant (collectively) many millions of extra dollars in sales to them and their members over time, and tens of thousands of dollars in commissions to me (I got paid a small % of the company’s overall sales.)
* Most recently, I created a sales letter for another golf company (one I have part ownership in) that brought us $5.85 buyers (not leads, buyers). The traffic guy says in all his years of running hundreds of traffic campaigns (he works for some of the most prolific marketers in the home business niche), he's never seen ice cold traffic convert like that.
Anyway, those are just a few examples.
All from ads I wrote very quickly and then slacked off afterwards.
And, again, if you put any of the above ads next to an A-list copywriter ad, you’d see mine are pretty much amateur hour. They may look great to some people at a glance. But, really, they are sloppy, clunky, and not very well “written.”
Which brings me to the point:
This weekend I’m launching my “Copy Slacker” copywriting course that shows you exactly how I write my “good enough” ads very quickly that, while far from perfect, still pull a lot of sales.
I believe my methods can help anyone do the same.
(Newbie or seasoned pro looking for a few more tricks.)
And, until Sunday at midnight (EST) you can grab it for $250.00 off.
Go here for more info:
http://www.CopySlacker.com
Use the coupon code SLACK to get the discount.
Ben Settle