How to Get Good at Copywriting

If you’d like to learn more about copywriting, the rabbit hole runs very deep. Start by reading works of the classic ad men like John Caples, Claude Hopkins and David Ogilvy. By doing so, you’ll be writing while standing on shoulders of giants.

The only trouble with the classics though, is that mass media and mass marketing are gone. The golden days of television, radio and print are gone, because – thanks to the internet – everyone’s a channel, an expert, or guru.

Not to say there aren’t great classics. A couple of books that have stood the test of time are Harry Browne’s Secret of Selling Anything and Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. If you memorize these, you’ll be dangerous.

Modern “living legends” of sales and marketing include the likes of Roy H. Williams, Seth Godin, Robert Cialdini, Jeffery Gitomer and Susan Weinschenk. Follow their work, if you want learn how to sell, persuade and influence in the years to come.

Keep in mind that technology and delivery mediums change, but human emotions and motivations remain almost the same. We all have hopes, dreams, fears and desires.

We all need food, shelter, clothing. To love and be loved. We all want to be young, virile, attractive, healthy, wealthy and wise.

I’ve boiled affiliate marketing down to a sentence. Sell the end result, or emotion, that you want the person to have and provide the consumables to get them there.

All you really need to do is find their motivation and appeal to it. Or in other words, find out what they want and show them how to get it.

Tap into that emotion to multiply their dreams and desires. Then once you’ve built the desire, focus their attention like a laser on your product.

All that remains, is to persuade them that today is the right day. This is the right product. You’re the right person to buy it from. And that it will solve their problem.

That’s really all there is to copywriting.

So what’s the secret to getting good at it?

There are thousands of copywriting books. Read a few. I suggest that you start with some of the people I mentioned.

After about three weeks, close the books. Go join some affiliate programs. Put up some landing pages. And write some salesletters to hone your chops.

You don’t have to be good to start, but you have to start to get good. Show up every day and write. Split test ideas. Observe the results. Make changes based on your observations and you’ll get better through practice.

Or as my friend Ken McCarthy – one of my favorite modern day copywriters – said recently, “Show up every day. Work. Pay attention to results. Think. Learn. Adapt. Desire to improve. There’s no magic beyond that.”

I couldn’t have said it any better myself, but I’d also like to add…

Consistent action leads to massive results. By observing the results, you keep the positive ones and scrap the rest.

The positive results lead to self belief. That self belief causes you to take more action. That action leads to more results, greater potential and towards success.

Build on that cycle of momentum and you’ll never look back.

Here’s to your success,

Michael

P.S.

In case you’re interested on how I stumbled into copywriting, here’s the short version of the story.

Once upon a time…

Nah… just kidding… LOL

I kinda got into copywriting by accident. After graduating desktop publishing school, I went to work for a production house. They made flyers for nationwide chains that sold things like groceries, tools and office supplies.

There were no guidelines on what to write. They sent you boxes of physical canned goods. Some photographs. A few fact sheets. It was a total mishmash that I had to make sense out of. It’s not like I could look them up on the internet, because it was back in 1988.

After years at the production house, I flitted around a few ad agencies and design firms. I thought most of them were too flaky and flighty for my personality, which is more down to earth.

I finally parked myself at a large printing plant. I was head of prepress and the lead designer. (You’d be surprised at how many people bypass the ad agencies and go straight to the printer for their designs.)

Since I already had experience writing copy, I was given every job that came into the plant. That meant producing copy on the spot for several customers on a daily basis. I became damn good at it because I had to.

I loved the challenge and the clients loved what I wrote. Every time they ran coupon offers, my copy outperformed the previous ones. Soon clients were coming into the plant and asking for me by name.

My point being, that there’s only so much you can learn from books. Eventually you have to put them away and take action.

Remember that don’t need anyone’s permission to become a great freelance copywriter. Find a couple of products that you like on Clickbank.com, join their affiliate programs and write about them.

Set up a sales or landing page on the web. Buy a little PPC traffic. Throw the traffic at the offer and see what you get.

Motivated buyers convert around 2.5%. People not so far down the buying funnel – as its called – convert around 1%.

Keep testing new ideas. Monitor your results. And always try to beat your best.

You’ll have a lot of fun in the process and become successful before you know it.

Want to read more?

Here’s a related article along with a video that I did.

How to Be a Successful Freelance Copywriter

Feel like you’re not getting anywhere? You’re not alone. It’s one of the main reasons people quit affiliate marketing, or stop trying online.

I looked at one year’s worth of data, why people unsubscribe from this newsletter. The top three reasons are; no time, too many emails, and various versions of, “I’m not getting anywhere.”

What I have for you today, is something that I hope will change all that. It is a training system that’s different than anything else.

Its set up like trade school with a seven month training program. Each of the 25+ levels come with completion tasks, so there’s no slacking off. You will be held accountable for your actions, or lack thereof.

This isn’t theory. It’s based on research. And it’s proven to work. The people who run the program are successful, full-time affiliate marketers, that I know, respect and trust.

By the end of the course, you’ll have a successful online business, serving the needs of a real audience. Simple as that.

There’s no excuse anymore. Get the course. Make a commitment to see it through.

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That’s how much I believe in this course. And that’s how much I believe in you.

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to your success,

Michael

You might know Jim Collins for his outstanding research and published works like Good to Great and How The Mighty Fall. I consider both of those titles essential reading. You’ll discover why some companies fail, while others prosper despite all odds.

(Personally I prefer the audio version. It’s great listening while exercising or commuting. And as an added bonus, Jim reads his own work, capturing all the emotions that hired talent cannot.)

In addition to reading his work, what I’ve got for you today, is a quick short story from 2003. You’ll find out how Jim himself almost failed, but found his calling as a researcher.

His mentor asked him three questions. By answering them, Jim learned to quit his lucrative job and follow his heart.

I suggest that you ask yourself these questions, if you want to be successful and happy in your work.

It’s a personal story from Jim Collins. New Year’s Resolutions and Stop Doing Lists. Please read it and take it to heart. It will help you be happy, no matter what stage of life you are in.

Serious students of advertising have missed Terry O’Reilly’s Age of Persuasion podcast since it stopped in June of 2011. He’s one of the brightest minds in advertising.

Terry’s shows are fun and entertaining. They’re always bursting with fun facts, new information and nuggets of wisdom.

You can pick up several of the past episodes and subscribe to the old iTunes feed, if you missed any shows here: Terry O’Reilly’s Age of Persuasion. But keep in mind that there won’t be any new shows on this feed.

The good news is, Terry has a new CBC Radio show called Under the Influence. Just click that link, or go search for it on iTunes and enjoy all new episodes of Terry’s genius.

Just listen to one “Under the Influence” and you’ll discover why more than 300 people have rated it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Personally, I give it a perfect 10.

China will be the largest English speaking country in the world by 2015. (India is currently #1). Which means almost everyone under 30 in China can read and speak English. They might be a little shy about trying, but it’s been mandatory in school for the past decade, along with Mandarin and math.

Just a heads up… using a proxy service is illegal in China. If you get caught using a proxy, or an illegal internet cafe, you could be in big trouble. I’m not taking sides here. I’m just trying to spell out how it is for people who live there.

Paypal and Clickbank work fine, but sharing services like Facebook, Twitter, and ALL video sharing sites like YouTube are completely blocked. So if you have these sharing services on your websites, or blogs, they won’t show up in Google search results. (I know because I spent six weeks there testing everything out.)

If you want make sales to the massive Chinese market, remove all the social sharing widgets and stream your videos from Amazon S3. Then your website will show up in search results and open in their web browser when clicked. That’s all it takes to open yourself up to millions of new customers.

Sudden link growth isn’t always a bad thing. You could get 1,000 links overnight and not be penalized. Most new links would come from related categories in the blogosphere – at least related at a high level category like travel, exercise, cars – while others would come from social media sites and bookmarking services.

The trick to avoiding ranking penalties, or tripping any filters is the social factor. There needs to be enough buzz in the social media space, or social proof, to warrant the sudden link growth.

So in other words, don’t worry about Google’s Freshness Factor, unless you have a site dealing with news, sports, weather, or some other time sensitive content. Those are the only times when freshness really matters.

Stick to writing quality evergreen articles and posts, that you have some level of expertise in. Doing so will create the kind of content that naturally attracts deep, quality links over time.

Then as you creep up the rankings, it will be nearly impossible to knock you out of the top 10. (Unless you do something really silly like buy links from private blog networks, or participate in some other scheme which violates Google’s Terms of Service.)

In the last few weeks, Google has been deindexing private blog networks. These are services that sell links and let you post to hundreds of blogs at a time. It doesn’t matter if they are on separate IP addresses or not.

Most of the content posted on these “blog link farms” were spun articles, creating several backlinks from unrelated content. Even if the content and titles were spun up to 50%, Google found three word fingerprints,as well as sudden link growth, and penalized the lot.

Google publicly stated they are, “… turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years.” I think it’s link popularity – the shear number of links – that won’t matter anymore. What will matter are quality links, and deep links, in context, from topically related content.

Version 2.0 of the Ultimate Heatmap includes new single column layouts. These have proven to be excellent revenue generators when used for video, or content curation sites. The trouble is bending Thesis, or one of the other WordPress themes, to make them look how you want.

What I’ve prepared for you here, is a review of the top three drag ‘n drop WordPress themes. They make it easy to replicate any layout in the Ultimate Heatmap research.

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Battle of the Drag ‘n Drop WordPress Themes

Until recently, like many of you, I’ve had to rely on web developers to customize my WordPress themes. Back in the day Thesis was my first choice, because it was so widely supported by the developers.

Now I don’t have to rely on developers anymore. The moment new data comes in from my Heatmap tests, I can make changes to my layouts, across dozens of affiliate sites. And I can do it myself, thanks to this new generation of drag ‘n drop WordPress themes.

But, I wanted to test the three most popular drag ‘n drop themes in a head to head battle, before deciding on which one to use. I tested Pagelines, Headway and Builder.

A quick disclaimer though, none of them were given to me. I purchased all three. So I didn’t receive any special treatment, or bonuses. Here’s what I discovered…

Pagelines Theme Review

Of all the visual drag n drop editors tested, Pagelines is the quickest to get up and running. Install the theme and within moments, you can choose columns, their position and widths. You can choose a base font – but not the size – plus headers, footers, social icons and more.

Other than creating the bare bones design though, Pagelines is the least intuitive of the three. It took a while to find and test the drag and drop functionality. Although its an interesting approach, and somewhat simple looking at the outset, the more you get into it, the more cumbersome it gets.

The sites that Pagelines creates – out of the box – are square looking, reminiscent of Thesis. You can purchase a premium theme at the store, but there’s only a handfull of choices available. That means if you’re on a budget, you’re stuck with a square looking site.

In addition, to give Pagelines the same functionality of the other two themes, you need to buy each piece separately from their store. This means getting your site to look and behave as you want, could cost as much as the theme did in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong though. Pagelines – although square – is an elegant design. It’s also the fastest to set up with the least learning curve for the basics.

It does give more control over fonts, layout and widget areas than non drag and drop themes, but its layout flexibility isn’t as good as the other two in this shootout. Click here to find out more about the Pagelines theme for WordPress.

iThemes Builder Theme Review

Builder from iThemes takes a little getting used to. It doesn’t look like much out of the box.

You have to install a Builder child theme before it starts to look good. Depending on which option you purchase, you can get dozens of themes and some plugins, so you can get started without needing anything else.

The more you get into Builder, the easier it gets. The training video mentions that its easy to change fonts, but you have to install a plugin to add that functionality. Once you do get into the Style Manager plugin though, it is easy to change fonts, colors, backgrounds, borders and more.

The Builder layouts section, lets you create a “stacking order” for the design elements on each page. You can design top to bottom, adding a custom headers, nav bars, content areas, widget areas, footers and more.

It makes it easy to save a different look, or layout for each page on your site. You can also use this functionality to show different footers on each page. (Very handy if you’ve been link sculpting using my Pumper Linking method from the Dynamic Media Vault.)

One of the few downsides, is that the widget areas are specified in terms of percentage of overall width. So to get a widget area to line up with your post and sidebar, it means setting up two column widget and eyeballing a percentage (say 30/70) and lining them up manually.

Overall the theme feels very strong and stable. Although it does allow drag and drop, it’s not a true liquid layout like Headway. But that said, it can create great looking sites that are easy to edit and undo. You just need to get over the initial learning curve of creating layouts and adding styles to the child theme.

The more you use Builder – and get used to the interface – the easier it gets. Having created a couple of new sites using it, I’m really enjoying the flexibility and getting exactly the looks that I want. This lets me test layouts in the Ultimate Heatmap without compromise. Click here to find out more about Builder theme for WordPress.

Headway Theme Review

Headway is by far the most complex and powerful of the themes in this battle. It has a very fluid layout, where you just drag and drop wireframes onto a grid. You then tag the block you created with a type, such as header, breadcrumbs, widget area, content, footer and more. It’s a great concept.

Headway makes it possible to get the exact look you want, for each type of page on your website and blog, through the use of reusable templates. You can change the column widths, block locations, fonts, colors and more. Each element can be specified right down to the nitty gritty pixel.

On the downside, Headway comes with a massive learning curve and less than stellar documentation. There are settings for the same items in a couple of places, meaning that it can be frustrating, when trying to make rounded corners, but the settings are being overridden elsewhere in the editor software.

Last but not least, it’s not completely stable. Reverting to earlier saved versions leads to unpredictable results. The changes aren’t always accurate in the preview window. And the user interface is oddly squished in a small window at the bottom of the screen, so you’re almost forced to work on a big monitor.

Having said all that, Headway can make your site look however you want, if you’re willing to invest a few hours into the nuances of the editor. It doesn’t feel as polished or stable as Builder, but if you can put up with the shakiness of this early release (version 3.0.4 at the time of writing), you can be rewarded with any design that you want.

I purchased the “Standard” option, which they display as the best value on their order page. Having experienced the value of Child Themes with Builder, I know how valuable they can be when updating your site. As soon as the Headway Child Themes become available, you will be able to redeem your child theme credits. Click here to find out more about Headway theme for WordPress.

Winner of the Drag & Drop WordPress Theme Battle is…

In third place is Pagelines. Although it creates an elegant look, it’s square looking and not very intuitive to learn the drag and drop functionality.

Pagelines offers very few child themes. You need to purchase them and all the other add ons in their store. And on top of that, several hours into it, I still couldn’t figure out how to change the font sizes in their layouts.

In second place is Headway. It offers true design flexibility with it’s grid interface. The new 3.0.5 version – which was just released – promises a more intuitive grid, better stability and SEO functionality.

Headway’s poor documentation though and flaky revert – to previous saved version – means some changes can’t be undone. So I’ve bumped it to second place. Overall though, I think its a good choice, especially if you’re creating a new site from scratch. I love the look of the sites this theme creates, and will continue to use and support it, as it will only get better with time.

The winner of this contest is iThemes Builder. It comes with excellent documentation and offers flexible layouts, so you can replicate any of my Ultimate Heatmap templates with ease.

Builder comes with dozens of child themes to get you started. It also includes plugins like Style Manager to change your design. Billboard for putting ads and images into widgets. It also has Rotating Images, Feedburner, Contact Forms, BuddyPress, SEO and more.

And finally, this may tip your decision in favor of a drag and drop WordPress theme like iThemes Builder… once you get it and learn how to use it, you can stop paying a web developer, every time you want to change the look of your site. Doing so brings the freedom and flexibility to test new layouts, the moment you want, without having to rely on someone else.

Wishing you all the best for success,

Michael

P.S.

Did you like this review? You can get dozens more just like it when you join the Dynamic Media Vault. Oh, and the link sculpting method that I mentioned called Pumper Linking, it’s in there too. So is version 2.0 of Ultimate Heatmap. You can get them all inside Michael Campbell’s private site, Dynamic Media Vault.