Sales Letter Question

[alanmag9]

Hello everyone,

I have made some money online with affiliate programs for years now. I have created my own product recently, and I am going to launch pretty soon. I have got the design down pat, as well as the product. But I have a few questions..

My questions are as follows:

1. I wrote my own sales letter. Is this bad?
2. Where would I find someone to write a good sales letter for the internet marketing niche?
3. Do sales letters really have to be as long as they usuanlly are?

My sales page is only about 8 pages in Microsfot Word, but I took a site like Google Massacre and it had liek 50+ pages of content! Is this necessary to be successful? To me it is extremely stupid, but maybe it messes with the minds of the readers in coercing them to skip reading the lengthy sales page and just skip to buying the product. I was just wondering if I needed to add content (and repetition) to my sales letter. I have to figure this out before the page design, as the guy is formatting the page for me, and he charges $100 per page extra. DO I really need to wrtie 50 pages of content, pay $5000 for a sales letter writer, and $5000 more for the format of the mini site?

Any help is appreciated,

Alan

[Ralf Skirr]

Hi Alan,


1. I wrote my own sales letter. Is this bad?
Depends 100% on how good your copywriting skills are.
We can't give any advice unless we see it.


3. Do sales letters really have to be as long as they
usuanlly are?
Not necessarily. Do not make it longer just to make it longer.
If you can convey a convincing sales message for your product
in 8 pages...then 8 pages it is. If you need 50 ... then 50 it is.


the guy is formatting the page for me, and he charges
$100 per page extra
Fire him. The price is beyond ridiculous. I really mean it -
you can't ask for $100 to format a few paragraphs on an html
page.

For that money you could get the sales letter written by a
professional copywriter. That would be a better investment than
giving the money to the html guy.

Contact me if you want the html stuff done for 10% through my
personal assistant who does my own websites.

Ralf

[Philip Mansour]

I agree with Ralf !

If you don't do your own Copy, here's some guys who will do it for you :

Mike Jezek - http://mikejezek.com (http://mikejezek.com)

Mike Morgan - http://www.outsourcecopy.com/ (http://www.outsourcecopy.com/)

If you do decide to do your own copy, then you should pick up a copy of Mike Morgan's course : http://mymagicoffer.com

Good Day`

[alanmag9]

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks guys!

[Sean Clark]

Hi Alan,

Ralf hit it right on the nail!

Sean

[Anthony Buchalka]

Howdy Alan,

Regarding writing your own sales letter

Ask several people you know to read it and get some feedback from them.

Also, consider adding some video to your sales page as it is powerful.

Lastly, both long and short form sales letters have their places and both can still can be very effective.


cheers,

Anthony

[Todd Lamb]

I don't think your nuts...the value in what you learn in the process...good or bad is well worth the time and effort..imho..good luck with your launch

[thomasukm]

Hi Alan,

I'm doing a product also, probably coming out in a month time or so...

Just to add,

- You can find some really good copywriter at warrior special offer, if you don't know where it is, PM me.
- You will need testimonials, as many of them, and put them on your copy.
- You can do your own HTML formatting, i agree with Ralf, $100 per page is way too much.

Thomas

[Stephon Rudd]

Wow Thomas,

Don't pay this guy ANYMORE MONEY.

I beg you.

You don't have to pay someone to write it for you if you understand how write good copy and it's pretty easy. Lot's of people write their own copy...I wrote ours (but then again I've written copy for hire before so I guess it doesn't count).

You don't need a long sales letter. You just need to write enough to sell the companies' benefits to the customer. Incidentally, the more your product or service costs, then the longer your copy will need to be to project its value.

Thomas, if it's ok with you, can you send me a copy of your sales copy? I want to look at it to see how you can enhance it.

Note: I don't want any money for this, I just want to help you because I know how hard it is to find a competent copywriter who won't pick you up, flip you around, and shake all of your money out of your pockets.

Let me know what your thoughts are, Thomas...


Stephon

[thomasukm]

Hey Stephon,

Thanks for dropping in, and offering a great help ;)

I paid someone to do it for me and it's still work-in-progress now, i will let you know when it's out.

That's why i like about this forum, Mike::)

Thomas

[Stephon Rudd]

I just realized that last post was also for Alan too.

But glad to help out Thomas...let me know if you ever need me to look at some of your copy.

[alanmag9]

Where would you go to do the formatting? Also, wouldn't I need him to put the testimonials where they should go, and use the correct fonts, colors, and sizes? I don't know how much is in the "formatting" process, but I don't know if I could do it. I have built probably 20 websites, but I want to do this right the first time whout having to get frustrted experimenting with code and all that.

Let me know if you know anyone that could format the sales letter for me. I basically have one guy writing the sales copy, and another designing the minisite. I have to find a way to mrge these two things together so that it looks right.

Alan

[Todd Lamb]

Hey Alan,

If you have designed sites then it is likely you will have to format the sales page yourself if outsourcing is out of the question. It shouldn't take you too long if the guy designing the minisite for you does a css sheet with H1 H2 and bodytext so when you put the items in those tags they will all be sized and uniformed with the color and font you desire.

Todd



Where would you go to do the formatting? Also, wouldn't I need him to put the testimonials where they should go, and use the correct fonts, colors, and sizes? I don't know how much is in the "formatting" process, but I don't know if I could do it. I have built probably 20 websites, but I want to do this right the first time whout having to get frustrted experimenting with code and all that.

Let me know if you know anyone that could format the sales letter for me. I basically have one guy writing the sales copy, and another designing the minisite. I have to find a way to mrge these two things together so that it looks right.

Alan

[alanmag9]

Thanks for the help everyone! I am having my sales copy written by Mike Jezek, and then having the site designed and formatted. I will try to keep everyone up to date in case they are interested in a JV.

Alan

[mikencm]

Hey Alan,

First, best wishes on your product and sales letter. It sounds like you're dedicated and motivated, so I know it will work out!

Hope I'm understanding your question. But for what you would be paying to get someone to design (format) your mini-site, I'd think strongly about getting Dreamweaver or something like that. You can dump your sales copy in and then format it however you want. It's pretty much point and click to format it. You define the styles for your various text segments and it creates the CSS for you.

You can get box covers for you ebook (it is an ebook you are selling isn't it?) designed for about $50 that are as good as any you will find anywhere.

Just trying to save you some money. Good luck--make a million!

[Anthony Buchalka]

One of the best tips I was given at a conference in 2005 that John Reese spoke at was "split test" your sales copy.

That is have 2 sales pages split tested and change just one thing at a time on one of the two pages for eg the heading, the bonuses, the price etc and keep the other one unchanged.

Track your results and see which one sells more or gets more optins (depending on what ever your conversion goal for that page is) . The "winner" becomes your new 'control' sales page, and you make one change to the other page and test that.

This way you are continually improving your sales copy by proper testing and should be then improving your conversions. :)

This a great copywriting book below you can get at Amazon.

"The AdWeek CopyWriting Handbook" by Joseph Sugarman.

Anthony

[Barry Weiss]

Anthony that is great advice.

Most direct marketers use split testing and some are very sophisticated and use multiple tests. It is important that once the control (sales copy that provides the best conversions from a test) is established, that any additional split testing be limited to single element changes such as headline, sub head, call to action, pricing, guarantee, multiple purchase discount, etc. so you can identify the element that provides the lift.

This should also be employed in Google adwords campaigns since split testing there is really easy.

Much of my experience is from the offline world and I wonder is constant testing something most affiliate marketers use?

Barry

[AbhishekAgarwal]

Hi Alan

Sure, you can do your sales copy if you are confident about it. Most big marketers started of writing their own sales copy. And i know a few who do it themselves still today. So it all depends upon how well you can pull the emotional triggers in the minds of the readers.

If you want to write your own copy, I would also suggest you study some sales copy of a few successful marketers.

Yeah, and if you want to hire someone, make sure you check out their credentials. Maybe you can also check out the Warrior Forum for a few good copywriters.

Hiring someone whose sales letter converts, would be really worth it. And it would save you a lot of time.

Best wishes!

- Abhi

[Patrick Wilson]

Hey Alan,

To the long form vs short form debate, there was a very interesting article that I read quite some time ago written by Michael Fortin on this very subject. I won't muddy it up with my synopsis of it, but rather let you check it out yourself. The article can be found at his blog: http://www.michelfortin.com/long-copy-or-short-copy/

I believe it was written back in '04' but there's no doubt that it still holds relevance today. Much of the difference between today's copy and the copy of several years ago can be found in the advent of video marketing. I think that most people would agree that, if done correctly, the use of video in a salesletter, for purposes like relaying your story, sales message, and displaying testimonials, has the potential to increase product conversions exponentially.

Hope you find this interesting... the data's a bit antiquated but I think you'll get the point. :)

Cheers,

JP

[Lemy Y]

From my opinion is that writing sales letter need a good skill to do...

Must be convincing, trustworthy, etc..

$100 is too much spend for a sales letter... :)

Lemy

[c4rves]

Hi there,
I Totally agree with the rest of the posts on here you don’t need to spend a load of money to have good copy, Make sure you test and test, I have improved sales on a website by 2% just by changing the background colour.