Hi Everyone,

I've been lurking on this board for a few months and have really enjoyed reading all the great posts. There are a lot of amazingly talented people here and I wish I found this place a few years ago. The phrase "better late than never" definitely applies.

So for my first post I have a question for you all. It has been said over and over that if you want to learn how to write copy you should study the great copywriters and their sales letters. It isn't too hard to track this stuff down and anybody with some motivation can find out who the legends are and dig up their work. But what about great online copy?

If you wanted to study great online sales letters, which ones would you choose? There are the obvious choices that have made a lot of money, like John Reese's Traffic Secrets, or the more recent Butterfly Marketing, and a few others. But what else is there?

Which online sales letters do you consider so good that they are worthy of study, and why?

George

Hello George:

That's an easy one...Marlon Sanders! He brought his offline genious online and quite frankly, there isn't anyone else online quite like him. His "Amazing Formula" salesletter is a classic thats been imitated many times over...but never duplicated! You can check it out here:

4 - "The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy!"

Dale King

Butterfly Marketing wasn't great copy by a long shot. It did what it did because of a great backbone of JV/affiliate partners.

Traffic Secrets did well for the same reason...a good backbone of JV partners, BUT unlike Butterfly Marketing, Fortin put together an extremely good piece of copy.

I think trying to to find great Internet copy is a tough task. . .especially since everything is JV/affiliate right from the get go. How do you know how good your copy is if on the day of the release you have 100 plus others selling it for you?

I've got a binder of swipe files that Ted Nicholas put together of all his ads where he graded each ad for effectiveness. In those days (of offline marketing) Ted was selling all his own info products by himself. NO JVs. . .NO affiliates. Back then you could judge the effectiveness of your copy.

It's extremely difficult to judge how effective your copy is today because who is selling anything by themselves?

21st century Internet marketing reminds me of this story:

A young bull and an old bull are standing on a hill looking down at some cows in the valley. Young bull says to the old bull, "Let's run down and get one of those cows." Old bull says to the young bull, "Let's walk down and get them all."

Internet marketers remind me of the young bull. They come up with a great idea...work extremely hard to put their info stuff together and instead of marketing it by themselves and grabbing all the hard earned profit for themselves they go JV and give up 50% right from the get go in their rush to get rich.

Good luck on figuring out what is good Internet copy and what is good JV. You'll probably have to go "old school" and grab direct mail compilation books.

My faves are about The Other 99% of Products and Services...

The Banjo Minnow site is as close to an online infomercial designed for the web as you'll find.

In contrast, I dislike the layout of the DAK online electronics catalog, but the copy is not to be missed.

Any copywriter worth their salt will have a dozen J Peterman catalogs. The copy tells the story behind the product, making it unique in online copywriting.

Most of the "great headlines" are not for copywriting products or get rich quick schemes. I suggest supplementing your examples with copy that sells actual products and services.

Wow! I didn't know DAK was back. I was in the basement thinin' out my junk (I'm a pack rat) a few weeks ago and came across a couple of DAK catalogs that I saved. I still have a stereo receiver, cassette tape deck and speakers that I bought from him.

You're right about his site. MY GOD what a butt ugly lookin' site. Maybe I should call him up and pimp his site.

Good to know that DAK is back. I remember getting his catalog back in the day, and I just loved it. It was his editorial style that grabbed me, and while everyone else had just pictures and a short blurb in their catalogs (good thing we don't see that anymore nowadays, huh ), his had rich detailed copy about nearly every product. And best of all, his products were unique (Gary B's 9 words there for sure).

John

Jay Abraham's interview with Drew Kaplan (the creator of DAK and fine copywriter himself) was absolutey amazing!!!

Jaykay,

I understand what you are saying about Butterfly Marketing. Sales by themselves don't really mean anything online if you don't know the conversion ratios. If I remember correctly Butterfly Marketing sold 1500 copies in the first month. A conversion ratio of 2% is pretty good online. The question is did Butterfly Marketing get more than 75,000 hits in that first month?

Let me ask you this. If Butterfly Marketing had a very good conversion ratio, say even higher than 2%, would you then say that the copy was good, or would you still put the bulk of the credit on the jv partners? Just curious.

George

I'd agree.

Drew talked about his approach to creating and marketing products (including copywriting).

It was fascinating stuff.

Steve

I loved that Jay Abraham interview with Drew Kaplan too.

His enthusiasm and wonder for copy, words and the products he sold was a breath of fresh air.


I believe the Butterly Marketing copy was written by Mike Filsaime (at least I seem to remember him telling me that) and it's really not a brilliant piece of copy you would treasure in a swipe file.

It did sell a lot of product though - affiliate traffic is a wonderful thing.

Mike was telling us on launch day he was watching those sales spin over and then they stopped abruptly - along with his heart.

He thought "My God they've shut down my merchant account even after I told them to expect huge volume today."

Then the sales restarted and checking his merchant account he found that the account HAD been suspended but an employee had immediately restated the account and left a note thanking him for warning them in advance.


The best free swipe file I know of is at www.hardtofindads.com

Online it's a bit more awkward to give you links because sales letters online change.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh
Free online copywriting course