Any real pro copywriters?

[lianjunyi]

I launched a product two weeks ago with the salespage I wrote myself. I'm not good at writing, I'm not even a native English speaker. As you can imagine, the conversion is less than 1%.

I need a real pro copywriter for my next launch. Can someone advise me any good copywriter?

I know that David Raybould is good, but I'm tired of the "It's NOT about SEO, adwords, media buying, etc,etc..." thing, I will close the window immediately when I see these kind of words.

I'm thinking of someone else, maybe Kevin Rogers. But I need more copywriters to choose on.

Any good advice?

[Rob Toth]

Hi Isaac,
You should post this in the NEED JV Related Services

Go to http://www.jvnotifypro.com/community/index.php#1 (main index) and scroll down.

Also browse the PROVIDE JV Related Services. Copywriters are listed there too.



Questions to answer first though:

- what's the industry/vertical? Unless you don't want to make this public to protect your niche, you should mention it.

- if your offer is already live, provide a link so a copywriter can skim the offer and better guage how complex the topic is and how unique the story can be (again, unless you have a reason to keep it secret, please mention it)

- what's your budget? Like anything else... you pay for a premium name, chances are you'll end up with a very unique and compelling salescopy (not necessarily but in most cases) and your potential affiliates will be more comfortable mailing if it's a respected name... BUT you're paying top dollar. OR you can find a talented up-and-comer who writes fantastic copy but doesn't have the name branding and client base in place yet... so you can get great work for relatively very cheap.

The budget for an established copywriter starts in the $8k range and can run you $30,000 for a really world class writer.

I have 2 copywriters who do all my work these days. For the first 4+ years I wrote my own copy, it converted well, was recognized in copywriting forums, I sold copywriting as a service but these days I no longer offer copywriting and, in fact, I don't even do it for my pages. But I have 2 talented writers. I trust them both and they each produce GREAT work.

I don't have any work for them until likely mid January. So get in touch if you'd like an introduction but I'll need the answers to the above questions first.


Also are you only looking for 1 salesletter? Or squeeze copy, direct response ads, affiliate toolbox emails, AR emails etc?

Finally... have you considered having a hybrid page? Sales video + sales text. It's the same copy, except one gets read and recorded as video, but you still have text on the page.

P.S. I'm about to spend 3-months with a seriously heavy hitter copywriter (charges $27,000 per letter and has endorsements from legends such as the "4 billion dollar man" Ted Nicholas). So I'm going to be mecca of world class direct response copywriting lol.

Anyways... get in touch on skype (robtoth) or email thegenie @ robtoth.com (remove the spaces).


Regardless... best wishes with the new offer.

OH!! and also mention the timeline. I see it's not for a launch and your offer is already live, but when do you need it by.

These are all useful questions for a prospective copywriter to be able to help you. Cheers!

[ianlian]

@Rob Toth, really thanks for the informations, I learnt a lot from your posts.

I'm also looking for a good copywriter, David Raybould said he will write me 4 salespages (3 upsells) for $20,000, and 6 emails as bonus. Is it really worth?

By the way, I never mentioned the " NEED JV Related Services" before. Thanks Rob.

And, thanks @Mike Merz, for building up this amazing community.

[ianlian]

By the way, I never mentioned the " NEED JV Related Services" before. Thanks Rob.

I meant "I never noticed it until you mentioned it...";D

[Rob Toth]

>> 4 salespages (3 upsells) for $20,000,

This is one of those executive decision you need to make.

But consider this...

Let's say a quality salescopy helps boost your conversion by just 1%.

So if your own attempt converts at 0.5% on cold traffic... but a star copywriter's offer converts at 1.5%, you are now seeing 3x the revenue from the salescopy. Correct?

(sure there's more variables in there but for simple math let's follow that).

Well... how much traffic do you anticipate you can drive to the offer each month? If you're getting started, you might be operating with very low traffic numbers. Let's say 1000 unique visitors per month.

If your offer is a $100 product. Then...

Your salescopy to you is worth 1000 visitors x 0.5% x $100 product = $5 sales x $100 = $500 gross revenue. Which, after either affiliates are paid or advertising money is factored in, let's say is $250 net.

With a more effective salesletter...

1000 visitors x 1.5% conversion x $100 product = 15 sales x $100 = $1500 gross = maybe $750 net.

In the above scenario ... to YOU is a $10,000 letter worth it?

Of course not. It's overkill.

You will have poured a lot of money into refining the sales process yet you're hurting in the "distribution" (ie: traffic) department which, in the above scenario is definitely where you want to money spent.


But consider if someone can get the distribution in place. Maybe because they are a big brand company (large corporations, major real estate companies, insurance brokerage companies and all sorts of verticals buy salescopy too!), or maybe you have a large internal database ("list") or you have a lot of JV/Affiliate partners etc etc...

If you can get 1,000,000 unique visitors to your offer quick then...

1,000,000 x 0.5% x $100 = 5000 sales x $100 = $500,000 gross

but a higher converting, quality salesletter...

1,000,000 x 1.5% x $100 = 15,000 sales x $100 = $1,500,000 gross revenue.


So to THEM, someone with high volume distribution, is it worth paying $20,000, $27k (like my friend gets paid REGULARLY), even $50,000 + bonuses for a high converting salescopy??? Of course.


It comes down to distribution and being able to make the numbers work.

You could be sitting there with the prettiest $27,000 salesletter from my friend (though, of course top copywriters don't take on small jobs so it wouldn't even happen)... but if you can't drive enough target prospects to your offer, your money was wasted.


So consider all that.




Or during a launch if you prefer the launch models

So if your own attempt pulls in

[Rob Toth]

There is the other side of the coin though...

If you were to tell me that Ted Nicholas, John Carlton or Craig Garber wrote a salescopy for your new product launch (and I actually believed you), there's no question I'd take you very seriously, I'd take a careful look at your offer and I'd at least test to see what sort of EPC I can get with your offer.

So there is a value to having a top premium copywriter on board. It will position you as someone who is serious and your affiliates will have more faith in your offer.

But both of those points are nothing more than feel good nonsense IF you can't get the traffic volumes to justify the high spend.

(though like I said, top copywriters have opportunities on their table for what company, industry and product to write for on a daily basis so they wouldn't even take on a project unless they know it's backed with a lot of firepower. )



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Lingo definition for the few who might be new here. EPC = Earnings Per Click. It's the ONLY variable that really matters when you're the affiliate. How much do you stand to earn PER CLICK (per unique visitor) you send. And what YOU care about is your NET EPC. Don't pay attention to the EPC which is too often an inflated BS number that a merchant might give... because even if they're giving you a very median and honest number, they are probably talking about the Gross EPC that they see.

A merchant might see "we're seeing $4+ EPC". To me that means it's probably only $4 in their best scenarios. Which means most are probably getting $2 EPCs *and* that's the gross earnings (sales) so as an affiliate being paid 50%, I'd actually see $1 Net EPC only.

Sidenote: If your offer does get exceptionally high EPCs, do anything and everything you can to show multiple exact proof and specific examples.




@Ian and @Isaac ... by all means dig around. But I'm personally studying media buying aggressively. So I'm very much setting up to push 100,000+ uniques to my offers on a monthly basis. So conversions matter to me. I'm very happy with the wok that 2 different copywriters I have in my digital rolodex do for me.

I won't give their info publicly because I don't want them to have too much work on their plate (it means slower responses to my jobs and eventually higher/premium prices). But as mentioned, I don't have new copy work for them until mid Jan. If you want a PRIVATE intro to one of them or discuss further ... you'll end up with a very effective letter and you're paying around $4000 for it. Get in touch. My info is all over www.RobToth.com .

[ianlian]

@Rob I got your point.

But every JV page posted on the "JVNP index wall" claim they have got 4%~6% conversions. So maybe it will boost the conversion more than 1%.

About the traffic, of course we don't need to get it all by ourselves. If I have got high converting salespages, I will test it, prove it. Then I will get more affiliates.

In fact, the first thing come up into my mind that cause me looking for a good copywriter is "I need a good salescopy to attract more JVs."

[Rob Toth]

Ian, I was posting that as something to consider for others who may have a similar question.

As for:

"But every JV page posted on the "JVNP index wall" claim they have got 4%~6% conversions."

This is where remembering that 99% of statistics are made up on the spot. (like the one I just gave you).

Fly at it.

But I've seen the conversions of TOP copywriters. I mean ones that are really kings in what they do. And 6% sales conversions from cold traffic is damn near impossible. Of course, that's a blanket statement. It does matter on industry and price point.

I'd take that statistic though as nothing more than unsubstantiated nonsense that someone wrote up because they wanted to look good to their copywriter friend in the testimonial they provide.

But if they'd like to instead back that up... by posting 3 months worth of stats prior to changing salescopy and then 3 months of stats after changing the salescopy, then I'd be happy to apologize.

Anyways... to me (and I think you'll find) those are garbage numbers.

Regardless though, my point was 1% increase in my exmple TRIPLED sales.

so if you prefer, swap my numbers with a start of 2% that then gets boosted to 6%. It's the same exact ration. The end result is the same (3 X the sales).

or swap it with 10% conversion vs 30% conversion if you like. Again, same math.

The math was the point.

And I'd also suggest that before you invest $20k for a copywriter, you instead invest $3k for a decent one or $4k for my guys or $8k for another good one... and then invest the balance into ADVERTISING. And after investing the $12k+ into advertising, you'll have enough actual stats (and cashflow!!) to then upgrade your entire sales funnel, bring in even better copy and then be taken seriously by top tier super affiliates.

the point to take away though, is my example was suggesting 3X sales and is there merely to paint a picture of how the math unfolds. Distribution is king though.

BTW... I've never heard of the copywriter that you mentioned. So whether great or not, you dropping their name doesn't carry the weight of what I was mentioning in my example. Instead if they did write copy for some amazingly successful promotions, then make sure you drop the name of the promotion not the writer.

[Rob Toth]

As possible food for thought to others who might be new to all this... I want to leave this to think about.

Ignore numbers that marketers give you (or post in testimonials) that don't have details in them. They might mean well but excitement and relationships or just error in how they interpret numbers usually leads to garbage information.

Not necessarily on purpose. This isn't about "don't trust others". But just know there's a lot more to the story than the conversion numbers and EPC numbers that you might read.

Example...

Of course low ticket consumer merchandise from a big brand would convert a hell of a lot more than a high ticket info product, so keep that in mind.

But assuming this 6% conversion for a second.

Take one of the big $2000 product launches.

You can be sure that the guys (especially the Syndicate boys) who launch $2k products and these days $5k products have the funds to pony up for a $30,000 salesletter. And they often do.

But that letter, for COLD TRAFFIC, would NOT convert at 6%. If it did...

Then 100 visitors would result in 6 sales (6% conversion) at $2000 each.

That's 6 x $2000 = $12,000 for every 100 UNIQUE VISITORS.

THAT works out to $1200 PER visitor.

Now I'm going to be stupid for a second... but in the IM space I can find targetted, relevant prospects for IM offers for $1 or less.

So if I could drive traffic to an offer than handed me $1200 for every $1 I invest, I'd probably be promoting that quite heavily. ;-)

Instead...

The reason you see those $2k offers get pre-launched, pushed from many channels (ie: JV partners etc) is to build the buzz and anticipation (as everyone in the forum here probably knows)... and the reason for the scarcity and urgency plays is to cash in on the fear of loss.

All of those elements and more is what boosts the offer's conversion to high levels.

(Not to mentioned the endorsed mailing from the super affiliate partners).

Even in that scenario, you'd never see 6% conversions. But that certainly isn't not a scalable, long term funnel.

A typical 2k offer, if sold via advertising would see less than 0.5% conversion at best (ie: mor than 200 unique visitors would be needed to close the sale). AND even then, it would be only if they had a quality sales copy and sales funnel.

So the generic "boosted conversions by _______" numbers... you can pretty much just see it and ignore it. I put zero weight on it unless they clarify what the product was, who the target prospect was, where the visitors came from and how much traffic / sales data that figure is based on.

The above is just something to think about for ALL data and stats.

Again, it's not a matter of others wanting to lie to you. There are a lot of great, ethical people out there. It doesn't mean their emotions, relationships or how they interpret the numbers don't affect it.

[Rob Toth]

Case in point... webinars.

Webinar guys will be quick to say "we're converting at an amazing 25%!!!".

That stat is probably, again, their best stat. So typically they likely convert at 15%. (It's like when you guy buddy tells you how many girls he's slept with... always round down... he's stroking his own ego when giving you a beefed up number).

But more importantly, even the 15% conversion doesn't mention that it's based on webinar attendees who stayed the whole presentation.

Typically a webinar host only cares about "who heard the sales pitch? 100 people? and we sold 15? that means we convert at 15%.".

Well...

You first need to get a prospect to the pitch page for the webinar.

They then have to sign up for the webinar.

They then have to ATTEND the webinar.

And they then need to stick around for the entire webinar before the "15% conversion" kicks in.


How that math looks is:

Send 1000 prospects to the webinar pitch page.

300 of them sign up for the webinar.

100 of them actually attend the webinar.

80 of them stick around for the full presentation.

Of which 80 x 15% = 12 sales.

12 of them BUY.

But the true stat of how the webinar funnel converts is:

1000 targetted unique visitors = 12 customers.

And THAT is 1.2% conversion not 15% conversion (or the beefed up 25% they tell you).

You MUST know these kinds of numbers before you invest your time and money into anything as an affiliate.

personally, I rarely take part in 3rd party affiliate promotions. But before I do, I really dig into how the numbers really unfold. And that way when I jump in, I can give it a SERIOUS effort to make the MOST for myself and the merchant.