I Want You To Destroy This Sales Letter

maximus · **I Want You To Destroy This Sales Letter -** 06-24-2007, 12:36 AM

Dont hold back, I wont learn if you dont point out my mistakes,

Speed Reading Secrets

Tell me what you think

Kyle Tully · **Re: I Want You To Destroy This Sales Letter -** 06-24-2007, 01:40 AM

I'm just going to crit the headline as it needs a lot of work... that being said a quick glance at your body copy says it needs to be broken up a lot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by maximus

The Speed Reading Breakthrough Of
The Century Is About To Change Everything...

This sounds like complete hype. Everything? How is this different to any other speed reading course? What's the breakthrough?

I think you're going to lose people straight away by mentioning speed reading. You're focusing on what it is not what it does.

I would bury the fact that this is a speed reading course until you've drowned them in benefits.

If you're targeting students something like "How To Slash Your Study Time In Half" might be a good starting point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by maximus

"If You Can Read 7 Pages,
Then You Have What It Takes
To Quickly And Easily Save More
Money, Be Free From Worry
And Have More Free Time
Than You Can Ever Handle ?
Once You Know The Secrets."

Your headline is all over the place and doesn't make much sense.

No one wants to read 7 pages, that's a turn off.

How am I going to save money?
How am I going to be free from worry? (what worry?)
How will I have more free time?

You're throwing out all these benefits without qualifying them in any way... nor making them intriguing enough to make someone want to read on.

And the question mark shouldn't be there.

The headline is not calling out to anyone in particular. You need to focus.

Following on from the student example above something like: "Average" Student Reveals How He Hit Every Party And Still Got A 3.7 GPA

Quote:

Originally Posted by maximus

At Last! After Reading At 1756 Words Per Minute, And Learning Information Faster Than 99% Of The Population, Student
Breaks His Silence To Reveal For The First Time Ever His
Proven Strategies Anyone Can Use For Consistently Reading And Comprehending Any Book As Fast As Humanly Possible...
No Matter What Your Reading, How Difficult The Subject
Is Or How Much You Have To Read...

Have you read this out loud? Without fainting? You need to cut this in half and get rid of the fluff.

maximus · **Re: I Want You To Destroy This Sales Letter -** 06-24-2007, 05:31 AM

Ah, thank you mr_kyle, I changed the pre-head, reworked the headline to better convey the benefits and shortened the sub-head.

Pre-head, less hypey, more benefit driven

Quote:

How To Cut Your
Reading Time In Half...

For the Headline I tried to convey how they will get those benefits in the headline

Quote:

"If You Can Read This,
Then You Have What It Takes
To Quickly And Easily Be Free
From Worrying About Studying
And Have More Free Time From
Reading, Than You Can Ever Handle
Once You Know The Secrets."

Sub-head, shorter and to the point, is it short enough or still needs more work?

Quote:

At Last! After Reading At 1756 Words Per Minute, Average Student Breaks His Silence To Reveal For The First Time Ever His Proven Strategies Anyone Can Use For Reading 287% Faster...

Kyle Tully · **Re: I Want You To Destroy This Sales Letter -** 06-24-2007, 06:13 AM

That's 100% better. Still needs some work but it's well on the way.

Have someone else read it out loud to you and you'll pick up the stumbling blocks

Mr. Subtle · **Re: I Want You To Destroy This Sales Letter -** 06-24-2007, 11:07 AM

The headline and body copy suffers from copywriter's diarrhea.

Here's the word count of the headline, subhead and body copy:

38
29
32
24
21
20
14 (wow, finally)
23

Are you a book writer or a copywriter? If you're a copywriter and suffering from copywriter's diarrhea then get some of this...

Also, if you're going to write a sales letter, then you'd better end it with a signature and a P.S.

Personally, I'd test a newsy format in addition to a sales letter. Something like this...

Deb Holder · **Re: I Want You To Destroy This Sales Letter -** 06-24-2007, 11:30 AM

I had to go back and reread the headline to try to make sense out of it. You really need to tighten it or smooth it out. I'm not quite cutting my reading time in half if I have to go back to read for clarity.

Do some serious proofreading. Your copy is full of spelling and punctuation errors:

Quite simply, if you read twice as fast as you do now, your (you're) going to save twice as much time. Which means you will have more time to do the things you really enjoy.

See like you, I had trouble figuring out how people were able to read so fast and still comprehend what they were reading. Since I couldnt (couldn't) figure it out, I thought it was all a scam. But as it turns out, it wasnt (wasn't) a scam.

At first I recieved alot (a lot) of useless background information but finally I got to the good part where it actually tells you how to speed read. Basically, by doing a few exercises you are able to increase your reading speed within the hour... and... if you keep practicing for about a month, you will be reading really FAST.

Well, from experience I can tell you it isnt (isn't) like regular reading. No. When you are speed reading, you stop hearing whats (what's) called sub-vocalization. Basically, as you are reading this right now, you can hear the words you are reading from inside your head.

I stopped reading here. I must read a lot in my work, and I'm turned off by copy that's full of spelling errors. I didn't point out every mistake in the copy; you'll really want to get a good proofreader. Although there are many opinions about whether spelling errors are okay, my take is that if you don't bother presenting a good sales package, then I won't bother buying it. It's always good practice to proof your copy because it won't turn off people like me who view a well-proofed ad as credible, and the people who don't mind spelling errors won't complain, either.

Casual language is fine. Breaking the rules of punctuation and grammar is fine. However, you've got to watch your spelling errors, especially when your copy is full of them.

I hope this helps.

Deb

Rachel Irwin · 01:42 PM

Hello Maximus,

I have 4 words for you that will help: Listen to Mr. Subtle! This person is obviously a genius for he continues to come up with clean and quick headlines that drive home benefits.

Use the one he came up with. It's gold!

-- Rachel

P.S. Check out this "speed reading" letter. SpeedReadingSecret.com - Improve Your Reading Speed - Speed Read Course Program Class

abdellah · **Re: I Want You To Destroy This Sales Letter -** 06-24-2007, 01:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rachel Irwin

Hello Maximus,

I have 4 words for you that will help: Listen to Mr. Subtle! This person is obviously a genius for he continues to come up with clean and quick headlines that drive home benefits.

I was going to said this.

not just the headline, the approach, newsy approach.

PS:I don't know why reading the sales letter I was thinking to : "Rain Man" the movie and the wonderful true person that inspire the movie.

maximus · **Re: I Want You To Destroy This Sales Letter -** 06-24-2007, 09:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Subtle

The headline and body copy suffers from copywriter's diarrhea.

Here's the word count of the headline, subhead and body copy:

38
29
32
24
21
20
14 (wow, finally)
23

Are you a book writer or a copywriter? If you're a copywriter and suffering from copywriter's diarrhea then get some of this...

Also, if you're going to write a sales letter, then you'd better end it with a signature and a P.S.

Personally, I'd test a newsy format in addition to a sales letter. Something like this...

Thank you very very much Mr.Subtle. I went over every single sentence to change them into all being 14 words or less.

I tried the news style copy as you suggested. That headline really is killer, thank you for writing it.

Heres the news style copy of the sales page

Speed Reading Secrets

I am unsure about the order form for a news style copy, should I leave it like it is or make it more subtle?

Thanks for pointing out the spelling mistakes Deb, I completely forgot to spell check. Im correcting the spelling on it right now.

Mr. Subtle · **Re: I Want You To Destroy This Sales Letter -** 06-25-2007, 10:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maximus

I went over every single sentence to change them into all being 14 words or less.

I didn't say anything about keeping all your sentences at 14 words or less.

Ted Nicholas used to pike about keeping all sentences 17 words or less.

A sample of one of his offline direct marketing letters:

Prehead: Attention business owners, professionals and top executives...

Headline: "The Secret To Earning Millions Is Simply Using The Right Words!"

Subhead: You are 17 words or less away from a fortune! I'll reveal all the "magic words" you need. Guaranteed!

Body copy: Dear Friend,

Words, not numbers, are the true currency of business.

The words we use every day have a life-altering impact. The right words bring you success and everything you want in life. The wrong ones, poor results and failure.

I've discovered the real secret to being a multi-millionaire. Simply using the right words with which to communicate.

This powerful truth eluded me for some time. I struggled for years working 12 hours a day with mediocre results. Then I made a startling discovery that changed my life. And it will change yours too! Certain words produce amazing results, as if by magic!

Here are some examples. I added two words to the headline of an ad and increased sales by 500%! A simple five-word phrase spoken on the telephone by telemarketers increased sales by 300%! A single word printed on a display package doubled sales for a $150 million cosmetic company.

(The letter went on for 10 pages.)

Did Ted break his 17 word sentence rule in that sales letter. Of course. There's nothing wrong with writing long sentences (20-30 words) every now and then in your copy. But, the long winded sentences didn't dominate his copy.

Most internet copywriters don't have the skillz to be pithy. It's so much easier to write long winded sentences connected by endless "dot dot dot" and "dash dash".