No one wakes up in the morning and thinks ‘hey, I need a financial newsletter’… So suggested Agora founder, financial newsletter publisher and legendary copywriter in his own right, Bill Bonner. We can go one further: no one wakes up in the morning and thinks ‘hey, I need to read a direct response sales letter’. Not even copywriters. (Hey, […]
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 […]
Whenever I’m looking to take on a trainee copywriter, one of the tasks I always set is the same. It’s designed to see if the writer is able to turn features into benefits. On the face of it seems a very simple exercise… And frankly, it is. But it reveals something about a writer that […]
So this is a trick I teach any copywriter or editor I work with… It isn’t difficult. It isn’t time consuming. And it certainly isn’t fancy. In fact, it’s a very simple and purely technical change you make to your word processor each time you’re writing copy that will be read via email. It’s particularly […]
Once upon a time, direct-response copywriting was considered ‘the Don’ of copywriting… Not the Don Draper. Far from it. You see, Don Draper – the famous fictional copywriter from the TV series Mad Men – is an indirect-response man. He writes copy that’s designed to briefly get your attention and then force the product to linger in your […]
Take a look at this copywriting infographic… Of course, there are many weird and wonderful ways to structure a direct-response sales letter. As with most things in copywriting, there are no hard and fast rules. But… There is one particular structure that I return to time and time again and it always produces good results. […]
I make mistakes in my writing. Everybody does. Thing is, some of my mistakes, I don’t mind. In fact, I sometimes make them on purpose. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I let some of my mistakes remain. I’m not talking about misspelling their as there, or your as you’re – they’re unfortunate […]
I think it was Kurt Vonnegut who said it… “If you can’t explain your story to a fourteen-year-old in one sentence then you’ve got a problem with your story.” Something like that. Possibly. And hell, if he didn’t say it, he should have. It sounds like something he’d say. Anyway, the point is, it’s a […]
So look… You might disagree with me here. You might sneer. You might even think I’m an idiot for saying what I’m about to say. But I’m going to say it anyway. I’d be a liar if I didn’t. Spit it out? OK… With direct-response copywriting I think it’s often better to be cliché than […]