Websites That Write Your Salesletter For You?

When you sell anything on the inter­net… whether you do it using e-​​mail mar­ke­ting, forum mar­ke­ting, blog pos­ting… if you sell e-​​books, phy­si­cal pro­ducts, e-​​classes, even a news­let­ter… the best way to sell anything is using direct res­ponse sales copy.

But not all of us can be world-​​class copyw­ri­ters like Michel For­tin. I con­si­der myself a pretty sloppy copyw­ri­ter, and althought I can whip up a head­line, quick story, bullet point list of bene­fits, test­mo­nials, fea­ture list, gua­ran­tee and a call-​​to-​​action… I will never be a great copyw­ri­ter.  Gary Hal­bert can’t hold my atten­tion for lon­ger than a few minu­tes, I’ve never read Scien­ti­fic Adver­ti­sing, so how do I scrape by wri­ting ave­rage sales copy?

The ans­wer is: prac­tice and resour­ces. I’ve writ­ten enough sales let­ters that I know what my audience wants and how I can pre­sent it to them to maxi­mize sales.  I rarely spend more than a cou­ple of hours wri­ting even 5 or 10 page sales let­ters, and some have con­ver­ted as high as 19 per­cent for me.

Even if you don’t have the skill or the prac­tice, you can still hit the follo­wing sites to pro­duce an ave­rage sales let­ter, enough for a copyw­ri­ter to rew­rite it or cri­ti­que it.

Site #1: Digg​.com
As far as I’m con­cer­ned, Digg is THE best place to find niche head­li­nes from popu­lar, spe­ci­fic and benefit-​​oriented, but funny news items.  Go to Digg​.com, type in your niche key­word and click Search.  Then refine the search to search by the title only (so your key­word is in the title), show all sto­ries (not just front page sto­ries), and sort by most diggs (so the news items “the peo­ple” like float right to the top).  Using the Digg tech­ni­que, I hel­ped a copyw­ri­ter come up with this head­line: “Man Wins Divorce Without a Law­yer In Sight!”  Makes you want to find out more, right?

Site #2: Hard​To​Fin​dAds​.com
Michael Senoff’s Hard to Find Ads is like an ins­tant swipe file.  He shows you ran­dom ads, most of them deca­des old, writ­ten by the most famous and best con­ver­ting copyw­ri­ters that ever lived.  You can take cle­ver head­li­nes, ideas and bullet points from these ads and rew­rite them as your own.

For exam­ple, the first ad I found reads like this: “Top Medi­cal Doc­tor Speaks Out!  An Open Let­ter to Anyone Who Wants to Lose Up to 20 Pounds in Two Weeks the Easy Way.”  If you were wri­ting copy for gro­wing orga­nic toma­toes, you might say: “Top Orga­nic Gar­de­ner Speaks Out!  An Open Let­ter to Anyone Who Wants to Grow 15 Pounds of Toma­toes in 8 Weeks the Easy Way.”  Obviously you’d change the num­bers to wha­te­ver you can prove, but that head­line is bet­ter than anything I could come up with from scratch.

Site #3: Ama​zon​.com
Amazon.com isn't just for buying books. You can use Ama­zon to find out seve­ral things: what KINDS of books in your niche are hot sellers right now.  You can also choose the top selling books and most of the time take a peek at the table of con­tents.  Bingo, ins­tant list of bullet points you can hit on with the sales let­ter.  Ama­zon also gives you a list of key­words rela­ted to that book, to give you even more ideas for bonus reports, videos, and emo­tio­nal hot but­tons.  If all that wasn’t enough, you can read through reviews of the book and make a note of the ter­mi­no­logy peo­ple in that niche tend to use.

Site #4: Archive​.org
Look at one of your com­pe­ti­tors’ sites in your niche.  Then look their site up on the Internet Wayback Machine to see how their page has chan­ged over time.  The other day I was watching the TV show “Mad Men” about adver­ti­sers in the 1960’s.  In one epi­sode, the men in the ad agency are tal­king about a maga­zine ad by Volks­wa­gen.  The ad was ugly, and the car was ugly, and the guys were baf­fled because Volks­wa­gen kept pla­cing the same ad… so it must be pulling in money!

This is the inter­net equi­va­lent of that.  If you know a site pulls in lots of sales, and it was writ­ten by a copyw­ri­ter who tests the head­line, phra­sing, bullet points, call-​​to-​​action, offer, and so on… you can open up the web page as it looks now, and the web page as it loo­ked 6 months or a year ago, and see what chan­ges have been made.  If a copyw­ri­ter kept twea­king the head­line over time but kept switching back to one in par­ti­cu­lar, you know it’s a money-​​maker and you can look at what makes it such a great headline.

Site #5: Goo­gle Ans­wers, Goo­gle Alerts, and (Your Niche) Forums
These sites “should” be a no-​​brainer for any copyw­ri­ter, but so few peo­ple pay atten­tion to them and as a result write very “flat” copy.  When you’re selling something, you’re selling a solu­tion, which means you’ve fixing a pro­blem.  Peo­ple are in pain whether that pain means not having enough money, gro­wing tiny toma­toes or not being able to play the piano.  Look at what ques­tions peo­ple are asking in question-​​and-​​answer sites like Google Answers and in the forums in your niche by searching for your niche key­word plus the word “forum.”

Site #6: Goo­gle Insights, Goo­gle AdWords, Yahoo! Search Mar­ke­ting, Quantcast

Can you tell I’m a fan of Goo­gle?  The fact is, simply searching for your key­word in a search engine and seeing what ads appear on the right side is the per­fect way to see what head­li­nes pull the best.  That’s the most logi­cal place to go and works won­ders com­pa­red to pulling out a head­line or a hook from thin air.

With those six free resour­ces at your dis­po­sal, you have finally run out of excu­ses.  You can write half­way decent copy for your next promo e-​​mail, blog post, or sales let­ter just by seeing what great copy is out there, and “cop­ying” it!

About the Author

Robert Plank is a computer programmer and Internet marketer. Even master copywriter Michel Fortin quadrupled his signups by adding Robert's simple exit pop-up email form to his blog. How many more subscribers and sales will it get you?