Better start off with this:

This is an OPINION. Biased? YES! Subjective? YOU BET.

Here's a tip to the newer copywriter. Find old ads that worked, you can google "old ads" or something like that and find plenty.

Then buy the product. This is especially easy with books. An example:

I regard Eugene Schwartz as one of the best, and worthy of your time and study. It really doesn't matter which one of the many successful copywriters you research and develop from...it is a good idea to find ones in your field or with products/services that are similar to what you plan on selling...

OR, if you want to specialize in a given field... then you study everything in that field...anyhow,

Here's a less than 5 dollar "course" in copywriting. Go to abe books or amazon and search for John Alan Appleman's book: "How to Increase Your Money Making Power". This morning there were many selling for less than a buck 50...add the shipping and you have almost 5 dollars. Now find the ad that sold the book and if you don't have it and DO buy the book, I'll send you the ad (but to only those that own the book).

Now here is what you do. YOU deconstruct the ad. The headline for this ad WORKED. The subheads worked. The Bullet Points worked. Schwartz reportedly sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of this book @ 5.98 plus S & H.

See? This is how you study the craft, at least ONE way to do it. Find ads that sold stuff. Get the stuff. Deconstruct.

Keep a yellow highlighter and notebook handy. With this ad I'm mentioning, you can see where Schwartz got his bullet points from...How he used the ONE, TWO, THREE technique...that keeps you interested in the ad.

You can repeat this "5 buck" course several times and not even approach the cost of the lowest cost copywriting course...and by doing this, you can get a better feel for HOW the copy was written...how the legends and greats pulled copy from the product...just doing a few of these will help you wrap your arms around the elements of direct response (DR) copy, from those people, like Schwartz, who mastered the art and the science of DR.

Here's a bonus with this particular book, a LOT of what Appleman wrote about in the 1950s is a mirror image of what is taking place today in our economy.

Newbies, especially, want to get the most bang for their bux, and this is one way to do it. What worked, what works and how it worked is certainly worthy of your time and attention...in MY opinion.

gjabiz

Excellent suggestion, Gordon. I've never thought of "reverse engineering" the ad from the product but immediately see how it could be useful.

I'm giving it a try.

Nebulousx,

You will find it useful...and ALSO, consider reverse engineering (RE) the product too, here's how:

The 15 years of social work, mainly with persons with mental disabilites, provided me with alternative views and answers...take "Backward Chaining" for example.

It is a staple of "Personal Program Plans" "Individual Habilitation Plans" Ind. Education Plans, etc. all the "PLANS" produced by an Interdisciplinary team for the good of the client, resident or relative (I always thought of them as friends, but that was the contrarian opinion, anyway,)

It is when you set a goal and deconstruct the end result step by step until you get back to the FIRST STEP. Then you set goals, maybe a year, and quarterly, plus monthly, weekly goals...so you know where you are at along the plan's pathline. I've used this extensively as a Job Coach and Job Developer too. It is the old saw, "Eat an elephant one fork at a time"...just with various activity steps involved.

Say someone reading this wants to write a best seller, be it on the NY Times list or on their own money making list (a best seller for some might be an ebook that generates 50,000 bux in a month, for example)...

In Magick (or Social Work) the beginning is the END. Magick, for me, encompasses all of the "mental manifestation" techniques including but not limited to The Secret, Law of Attraction, Law of Prosperity, THINK and Grow Rich, et al and etc.

So, the wannabee best seller would IMAGINE and SEE in her mind's eye the end result, be that the old checking account on FULL or in the NY Times list.

Then the backward chain or RE begins. To be on NY TIMES I have to sell 25,000 books in a matter of _________. Whatever it is. Or if the goal is the 50k in the bank, it becomes a matter of:

1000 sales of book at 50 buck profit...so, I could offer it for 67 and reach my goal of 50 grand...that is the END result, the "manifestation" comes via belief and action in the direction of the vision, plus ADJUSTMENT.

So...then you get back to the PROMOTION, because nothing, or dang little, sells itself.

The PROMOTION must go people who have a predisposition to that type of stuff...Magick and The Secret don't do anything for me and millions of others, however, there are many more millions, apparently, that it does attract.

So KNOWING the response you want your BEST most PERFECT PROSPECT to make; pull out the credit card and ORDER the book...gives you a baseline to work off of for both your copy and your product.

It can happen both ways, but Direct Response has higher chance of working if the PRODUCT already has an audience (or list, or passion group, or niche) that is receptive to it.

THEN you can reverse engineer the whole program, along with, and including the BACK-ENDS...and that might be as good a starting point...the TARGET...the final result...of the whole chain.

For example...there is an appearant thirst for Copywriter information...and it may be an unquenchable thirst...as is the "Biz-Op" field, and so you can start with what you want...

I think there are people here who have the perfect product for this crowd...and if you were to REVERSE ENGINEER a few of them or to BACKWARD Chain the events and money going out...it would help those product developers, in any given niche, to have a technique that would help them not only develop "long tail" strategy, products but also provide them with the AMMO to create sensational promotions, or copy, if you prefer.

My idea of the PERFECT product is one that produces recurring and ongoing income and that is wanted, needed and bought by large numbers of people over years...second to that is the "ALLIANCE" model, which I've written about extensively...get your people to pay you a yearly fee to have your "certification", or in business, a licensing FEE renewable every year to maintain the status.

End Result. Backward Chain. Reverse Engineer. Starting point. Time ahead. Adjustment. And Perseverance. OH...

and taking the first bite of that elephant too.

There are at least 8 people on this board who are sitting on FORTUNES (albeit some may be small ones) because of their background and knowledge. HMMM. Just need to do a little hocus pocus...or set some goals.

I think you KNOW who you are.

gjabiz

As an engineer, I've applied your "backward chaining" in a slightly different way. I've used a technique called "Fault Tree Analysis".

Instead of starting at the goal and working backward, we start at the fault and work backward to see how we could get there. Same technique, different use.

You always bring up interesting stuff G. Good post.

Copywriting newbies need a certain level of understanding before this method will work for them. For example, unless they understand the components of an ad (headline, offer, PS, etc.), they won't know what to deconstruct the ad to. Also, they need to understand persuasion techniques and the emotions these techniques trigger.

Alex

I was at the library yesterday looking through a magazine and ran across an ad for a product with this headline:


Everything I've studied about headlines tells me this is not a good headline.

I'm not sure if this relates to your OP but what it made me do was copy the ad, take it home and research the product to see if I could write a better headline (and ad) for this product.

If nothing else, for practice.

Maybe that is not really deconstructing, but I wanted to see if I could find out why they couldn't arrive at anything better for a headline by going back and learning about the product.

I'll consider your experiment on deconstructing Schwartz. His book is great.

I ordered the book. But no luck finding the ad via Google.

What kind of proof of purchase would you like in order to get a copy of the ad?

"This" is one of the most powerful words in copywriting, one of the unsung
heroes of of power words. Some of the most successful email campaigns
I've written have made use of that word.

Don't underestimate the power of "THIS"!

-Ray L.,

And "These" can be even better.

"Are You Making THESE Mistakes In English?"

Both words help draw your reader into the copy by hinting at
valuable content they'll find.

But I agree that the headline needs to be more
specific to have power.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh