He looked at me gone out. Really? You read everything aloud? Even the 10,000-word letters? I was being interviewed for a podcast and we’d got on to my editing process. Yep, I answered. Pretty much. Between you and me, dear reader, sometimes I’m in a rush and won’t get a chance. But I would say nine times […]
Tag Archives: Copywriting Tips
This will upset some copywriters. But it will cause other copywriters joy. You see this is a piece about how to write more engagingly. But it’s not entitled 15 Tips For Writing More Engagingly. I dislike those pieces. I dislike them immensely. I see them all over the Internet. On Twitter, on LinkedIn, littering my inbox. 10 Rules […]
23
Feb
Feb
It’s 1938… Very bad things are going down in Europe. Anti-Semitism is rife. The Nazi’s are about to annex Austria. And for a little known university graduate, there’s no choice… He needs to get out of the country. Fast. He flees to America. He’s lucky. He gets a graduate place at Columbia University, where he […]
22
Nov
Nov
Writing copy to grab your reader’s attention is hard. You might spend weeks testing different ideas for nothing. Even if the product or service you’re selling is great, it doesn’t necessarily make writing captivating copy any easier. But there is an exercise you can do to write copy with a much greater chance of success. […]
A quick reminder before I get into this piece… My fiancée Ruth and I…otherwise known as ‘Gluth’…are running the Great Grimsby 10k this year and raising money for the British Heart Foundation. For the many readers outside the UK who are wondering what on earth ‘Great Grimsby’ is…it’s where I’m from. Grimsby is a small fishing port on […]
It’s one of those copy jobs you can’t imagine anyone actually has. You not only get to read loads of books… But your writing appears on every one you do read. Pretty cool. I’m talking, in case you haven’t guessed, about writing the ‘blurb’ on the back of a book. You know…that 200-or-so-word synopsis designed […]
Do you have a swipe file? You hopefully do. And if that is the case, rather than read this email, go read this interesting interview with post-punk legend Ian MacKaye instead. But if you don’t already have a swipe file, or you do have one and you’d like to discover some of my own swipe file secrets… Well, I guess you should keep […]
Imagine you’re living a roguish life as a bank robber in the Wild West… You drift from town to town ‘sticking-up’ the local bank… You’re damn good at it too. Just yesterday you moseyed on in, stuck your gun in the bank teller’s face and delivered your usual “this is a stick-up” line. The teller knew the […]
15
Jun
Jun
Often the first few lines of a direct response sales letter are redundant. Sometimes, even the first few paragraphs are too. Look again at the opening of any sales letter you’re working on and ask if it would not be stronger to start a little further in. You see, when we start writing we are […]
I’ve just published a new book for Kindle… Buy This Now: A Beginner’s Guide to Direct Response Copywriting. Inside I’ve brought together ten simple rules that I recommend you follow when it comes to starting out in your copywriting career. This isn’t abstract stuff. It’s specific advice that you can apply to any copy you’re […]