Copywriting Challenge May 2018 (Join me)

[Joaquim]

A couple of years ago I read a thread from @oldscool. That is how I got to know what Copywriting actually was. So all credits go to @oldscool.

I have followed one Udemy course on copy to get going, which gave me a big ROI.
Now I want to take my biz to the next level and I’m convinced that copy is one of the few skills every entrepreneur should be really good at.

@Andy Black once said: “You can’t outsource passion and insight.” Never forgot this simple but golden nugget. Don’t know where he said it, but wrote it down in my notebook.

Challenge for the next 30 days:

• Reading 7 books twice ( see photo ) and maybe more when recommended.
• Rewriting around 9 ad and direct mail letters. I read on this forum that this step is not that beneficial, but I’ll do it, don’t think it would be a waste of time either.

You’ll find in this thread: book summaries, golden nuggets that are learned in this challenge, topranking of the books, progress etc..

I would love if I can convince some of you to join me in this challenge. I don’t mind you posting your progress in this thread. We can only motivate each other that way!

This challenge starts today the 1st of May 2018 and will take a whole month.

If you want to read the letter from Gary Halbert on the 30 day challenge:
The Gary Halbert Letter

 

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[Joaquim]

CA$HVERTISING summary:

Simply one of those books that should be on your desk.
I may even say that you only need to read this one book to see your sales go up. You get all the knowledge you have to know and it’s so easy to instantly apply it.

That being said. You won’t become an expert with just reading this book.

4 chapters:

1. The Essentials
2. 17 Foundations on Consumer Psychology
3. 41 Techniques for Selling Anything
4. Summaries, checklists + added tips

1) THE ESSENTIALS
Your ads should touch one of the following categories of desires. If possible you want to touch on the primer biological category (LF8), when not possible you should touch the secondary desires (9HW)

• The Biological Life-Force 8 (LF8):
  • Survival, enjoyment of life
  • Food & Beverages
  • No fear, pain and danger
  • Sexual Companionship
  • Comfortable living conditions
  • To be superior, winning, keeping up with the joneses.
  • Care and protection of loved ones.
  • Social Approval

• Nine Learned Human Wants (9HW):
  • To be informed
  • Curiosity
  • Clienliness
  • Efficiency
  • Convenience
  • Dependability
  • Expression of beauty and style
  • Economy
  • Bargains

Desire = type of tension you feel when a need isn’t met.
Tension -> Desire -> Action to Satisfy the Desire

Get in the mind with Mental Movies (created by words)

2) 17 FOUNDATIONS:

1) The Fear Factor: Fear always Sells.
2) Ego Morphing: Hone in on characteristics that society considers being desirable.
3) Credibility: Use symbols or images commonly associated with authority or respect -> so prospects won’t do their research and take action much quicker.
4) The Bandwagon Effect: Put equal effort into telling your prospects how buying your product makes them (aspirational), keeps them (associative), or helps them show the world that they’re not a part of a particular group.
5) The Means-End Chain: They buy your product for what it will do for them tomorrow, not for what it does today. Positive end results.
6) The Transtheoretical Model:

1. Pre-contemplation: Ignorant of Existence
2. Contemplation: Aware
3. Preparation: Thinking about buying from you. Needs more benefits
4. Action: Prospects takes action
5. Maintenance: Part of their everyday lives. Become part of your community

7) The Inoculation Theory:
8) Belief Re-Ranking: Change Their Reality. Appeal to either emotions like fear, humor, or guilt, or to the consumer’s intellect.
9) The Elaboration Likelihood Model: Adjust Their Attitude. Peripheral makes it feel good, but Central Processing makes them PREFER you.
Two Routes:

1. Central Route (When thinking is needed) - Persuading using logic, reasoning, and deep thinking.
2. Peripheral Route (No serious Considerations by prospect) - Persuading using the association of pleasant thoughts and positive images.

10) The 6 Weapons of Influence: Shortcuts to Persuasion. CLARCCS
1. Comparison: The power of your peers. Bandwagon effect.
2. Liking: “You like us, you should do as I say: BUY!”
3. Authority: Credibility.
4. Reciprocation: You get something and you’re compelled to purchase something from them in return
5. Commitment / consistency:
6. Scarcity:
11) Message Organization: Organized and Well-Structured. Simple is better, but simple isn’t necessarily easy.
12) Examples vs. Statistics: Use examples, they are less mental effort to process
13) Dual Role Persuasion: Comparison ads don’t have to be about bashing the other.
14) Repetition: “People don’t start seeing your ad until you run it seven times”. Run the same ad over and over.
15) Rhetorical Questions
16) Evidence: Prospects must, must, must be convinced that what’s in ‘your bag’ is worth more than the money you ask for it.
17) Heuristics: Long ads > Short ads. “There’s so much copy in that ad, there must be something to it!”


3) 41 TECHNIQUES:
1) Simplicity: Write so people can understand. Short sentences and short words make reading easier.
2) Benefits: Benefits, no features! WIIFM: “What’s in it for me?”
3) Biggest Benefit In Headline.
4) Scarcity.
5) 22 Psychologically Potent Headline Starters: FREE, NEW, NOW, FINALLY, LOOK…
6) 12 Ways To Lure Your Readers Into Your Copy.
7) Use circle-shaped ads.
8) Never use light words on dark background.
9) Crush Your Competition With Extreme Specificity .
10) Ogilvy Principle: Start body copy with a Drop Initial. Massive oversized letter. Always run pics with captions!
11) The Psychology of Typefaces: Sans-Serif for online (Arial, Verdana) and Serif for print (Helvetica).
12) Hire a real graphic designer.
13) The Power of Questions.
14) The "Granny Rule": Rapport, Personal, Simple and Personal.
15) The Psychology of Social Proof: Testimonials.
16) The Guillotine Principle: Put a photo of someone’s head in your ad. It’s warmer, a more personal feel and you’re a real person.
17) Powerful Visual Adjectives.
18) Directing Mental Movies
19) Make it easy to take action and then ask for action
20) Unique Selling Proposition: What makes you standing out!
21) Buy Your Own Island: Buy a Half-Page Island.
22) Authority Positioning: Become an authority in your industry.
23) A Sales Letter in Survey's Clothing: Ask questions about how they feel about your product or service, what they think about your prices, etc…
24) Pictures: “A picture is worth a thousand words”.
25) Grab 'em With Grabbers: Little items you attach to the top of the first page of your sales letter. (Dollar bill,..)
26) Long Copy vs. Short: Long outsells short.
27) Offer Testing: Vitaly important to test different offers. Tweak.
28) Survey Power: Best way to find out what people want? Ask them.
29) Editorial Energizers: Make it look like news stories.
30) The Coupon Persuader: Use a simple broken, coupon-style line around your ad.
31) 7 Online Response BoosterS
32) Multi-page Your Way to Success
33) Guarantees that Guarantee Higher Response: Offer the longest and strongest guarantee in your industry.
34) The Psychology of Size: Bigger ads attract more attention.
35) The Psychology of Page and Section Positioning: Makes no difference.
36) The Fantastic Four..
37) Consumer Color Preferences: Blue > Red > Green > Violet > Orange > Yellow
38) The Psychology of Pricing: Odd pricing suggest greater value, Even pricing (prestige pricing) is perceived as higher quality.
39) The Psychology of Color: Words should be Black and / or White.
40) Wrap Your Ads in White: Use lots of white space. Attracts more attention.
41) Give Yourself a "Cleverectomy”: Sell the benefits, do not try to be clever. In advertising, it’s never clever to be clever.

Some of these techniques speak for themselves, other needs some explanations.
But I really recommend you reading this book, it's impossible that it won't help your business.
And it's impossible to get all the nuggets into this summary.

 

[Joaquim]

The books will be read in the following order:

- Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
- Cashvertising by Drew Whitman
- Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy
- Tested Advertising Methods John Caples
- The Robert Collier Letter
- How to write a good advertisement by Victor Schwab
- The Boron Letters

I'm thinking of adding Breaktrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz.

 

[Argue]

Hey guys,
Here are some of my notes from reading Gary's newsletter. I hope this helps.

 

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[Josh Rhodes]

What is the goal of doing this challenge? Or is it just busy work?

I only ask this because the first step in copywriting is knowing what the final goal is.

I'm not going to do this challenge, however I have read/studied all those selected and those which Gary mentioned in the letter. Highly recommend 7 steps for anyone doing direct mail.

I really didn't grasp the full benefits of Scientific Advertising until the 6th or 7th time reading (over 20x now) because it's easy to miss as its "so simple"

Also, I did find hand copying letters to be very beneficial...however I don't think 9 times is enough, I ended up doing 95 complete sales letters so far. Around number 30 you'll start to notice a rhythm of the words and while writing your own, you'll self correct. Once again, just my opinion

 

[Late Bloomer]

They Laughed When I Sat Down To Read Copywriting Books,
But When I Began To Sell....​

I've read most of those books, and would enjoy joining a study/discussion/application group about them.

If I could only take one book to a desert island, and had to write a great sales letter in a bottle to get rescued, I'd choose BREAKTHROUGH ADVERTISING. It's probably the best single book on the topic I've found.

One of the things Gene Schwartz discusses over and over, is that each super-successful ad campaign was the result of a unique analysis of the unique situation. How much do potential buyers already know about the offer? What's their attitude towards it? Which functional features will be most appealing to them? What emotional hot buttons will connect with them the most?

Because these are unique in every new business situation, the attempt to "copy and paste" an existing ad is unlikely to be successful!

Because I want to learn that way of thinking for my own unique situation, I'm going to skip Gary Halbert's exercise to write out some classic sales letters longhand.

I'm looking now to figure out:

• How to apply the best of expert copywriting guidance to promote my own business now
• I've experienced that copywriting mindset can help with a speech... I want to find how else it applies, beyond just writing materials that's obviously an ad
• I want to include copywriting with marketing consulting I can provide to clients

Looking forward to where you want to take this discussion in 30 days and beyond!

 

[Joaquim]

Have finished Scientific Advertising yesterday, here’s my view on this book:

This book is in my opinion about the fundamentals of advertising. A great one to start with.

Every topic hammers on the fact that you have to tweak your copy to keep improving it.
Hopkins wants you to use the ‘Cost per Customer’ or the ‘Cost per $ Sale’ - metrics to key / compare your ads.

Hopkins also advises to use little money to test ads, products etc..
Now with the internet this is made very simple for us. Do not buy a big inventory on your own guess/expectations. Put little money in your product and test the market until you find a product that sells big.

Main Take-aways:

• Ask yourself: “ would it help me sell the product if I met a buyer in person?”
• Study your consumer. Consumer is your priority. Consumer is selfish.
• Readers forget (use coupons, CTA’s..)
• The more you tell the more you sell.
• Never use negativity or talk bad about competitors.
• Use actual figures and specific facts.
• Changing people’s habits is very expensive.
• Create a personality you want your brand to represent and show this also in your ads. Do not change this personality!

Began today with Cashvertising, which is one I looked forward to because of the many recommendations on this forum.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Reading notes ( and personal applications ) from Dan Kennedy's book "The Ultimate Sales Letter"

Intro: Greg Renker points out that the same techniques Dan discusses for typed, printed letters, also work on TV.

Dan likes to complain about the Internet. I wonder if he ever took a break from all that complaining, to write an entire book about how classic direct marketing techniques apply online? Did someone else write such a book?

"Before you start writing"

• Knowing your own business, product or service, and customer, is a huge advantage. If you brought in another copywriter, they'd have to spend a lot of time learning about this.
• Formal education isn't needed, but ability to collect and review good examples and relevant notes for this project is very helpful.
• Get something good enough. Don't worry if you only get one part good enough, you can copy and paste all the good parts later.

"Get into the customer"

• Mostly emotional: what keeps them awake, makes them angry, frustrated, eager with desire, influencing their decisions?
• Also their context: trends they have to deal with, is someone else selling something to them and how's that going for them?
• Visualization skills help here.
• Address the reader's priorities, not your own. Use their language, not your own.

"Get into the offer"

• Put each feature and benefit on an index card.

( Gary Halbert talks more about this... with a stack of cards about your offer and customer, and another stack of cards with classic headlines and proven advertising language... flip through them both together, saying Hmmmm? until a connection lights up in your mind. )

"Create a damaging admission and address flaws openly"

( This is important to me. I should list everything I dislike and am no good at, then exaggerate it to drive away people who care about it... and better attract my best business matches. For example, if you want someone who'll help you play office politics, you shouldn't put me on your team, etc. )

"Get your sales letter delivered"

( Gary Halbert also talks about this in more detail. What a huge amount of extra work and loss. How much better to use email, where instant deletion is so much more environmentally friendly that throwing the brochure into the landfill ! )

"Get your sales letter looked at"

• Good point that you need to deliver what you promise, so if the outside or headline proclaims it's Personal, New, etc., you'd better fulfill that in the message without gimmicks.

"Get your sales letter read"

Dan at his best! A collection of timeless headlines, prestige words, items to add for the mass market, and tips for building credibility for professional services.

"Beat the price bugaboo"

More of Dan at his best, with apples to oranges comparisons, production cost, ignoring total price for monthly payments, and problem-stirring formulas!

"Review winning copywriting techniques and tactics"

More of Dan at his best! You only need a few great techniques. Intimidation/fear of missing out. Appeal to ROI. Appeal to ego. Guarantees.

( I wonder if there's something I can do for "refund and keep the premium." Maybe claim a price for an informative newsletter for me, which is free for a year just for someone giving my service a trial? )

"Write the first draft" ... no need to try to make it perfect, just get something on the page.

"Rewrite for strategy"

• Copy is NOT too long to those who find the topic interesting and meaningful to them!
• Everyday readability matters, standard English doesn't. [ My English teachers would've used their red pens on this comma splice. ]
• Multiple reading paths, yes sequence, teasers: tricks of the trade.

"Rewrite for style"

• First paragraph is an extended headline. Entertainment vs. humor. Sensory details. Impactful words. Personal style.

Dan's brief discussion of personal style, fits in the "Individuality" chapter in "Scientific Advertising," about the persona and tone of voice of the apparent author of the advertisements.

"Answer questions and objectives"

• Include: a direct answer; objective plus social proof; restatement of the guarantee.

( This has been a worrisome area for me. I need to write out ALL the concerns, gotchas, issues I can imagine prospects having... toss out hte ones that are only emotionally driven in me, not really about others... and then go all Dan-credibility to demolish the rest! )

"Spark immediate action"

Seven specific suggestions from Dan that can make any offer more compelling to act on NOW. ( Can I find a way to add them all? )

"Check the checklist" but Dan doesn't offer one, I'm not sure what the point of this one page chapter was.

"Use graphic enhancement." Sure.

"Rewrite for passion! Edit for clarity!"

The headline alone here is enough to help me identify two different types of mindset, requiring two separate passes to improve the text. Great specific guidance. ( This chapter alone could be worth the whole book for me! )

"Compare your draft for examples"

Makes sense but I might have forgotten to do this if not for Dan's reminder here.

"Pretest"

Good examples. ( Gary Halbert mentioned he would chat with folks at the bar. "I'm trying to see if this advertisement makes any sense or if it's confusing, what do you think?" )

"Bring your letter to life" Huh? Pointless filler chapter?

"Change graphic enhancements," "Edit again." Okay, Dan.

"Mail a mock-up." Still valid in the Internet era, for example does your mail system discard part of your html formatting?

"The cool off" of 3-5 days. ) No, I wanna publish and get buyers NOW! Waaah! ;-) )

"Get second opinions" including Dan fishing for clients himself. Maybe I should put a $150 value on my initial consultation, and offer a coupon to make it free?

"Give it the final review," "go to press," "mail!" Short chapters for people who love logistics.

"The most versatile tool of all"

GREAT Dan material about integrating sales letters into a larger marketing campaign, including referrals.

"The million-dollar sales letter secret: the power of a sequence"

Dan at his best. Dan points out that "Georgio" keeps after prospects just like a collections agent.

"High-tech sales letters" - a very brief look at what was new technology way back when...

"About contacting the author" and "recommended reading list" - Dan got better at hyping his own whale-hunting efforts in his later work.

Looks like Caples is next on the reading list.

 

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[Joaquim]

So the challenge is not about 30 days. It's about doing everything mentioned within this challenge. I don't think we'll be loosers when we did this challenge eventually in 50 days or so..

None the less I will do this in 30 days if it's not harming my learning process.

 

[ProcessPro]

I want to be in but I have some school projects occupying my time. Final semester. So I'm half in. I'll follow as best as I could.

 

[craig1928]

Hey, I don't know who Gary is. :/
Can you kindly enlighten me?
Thanks.

Gary Halbert, creator of this challenge.

Here's the OP on this topic from this forum.

Gary Halbert 30 day challenge Copywriting Group

 

[Joaquim]

I'm in, starting immediately. Do you have any revenue targets?
I'll set mine at $100, and at least 30 cold calls.. lezz go

Good idea Eddie Temple. Because I'm into e-commerce my goal will be a bit different.

I Hope to sell more products with the same amount I daily spent on ads.

Hey, there are so many books on the topic. How did you narrow it down to these? What is your criteria? Thanks.

As Argue told you, it's the Gary Halbert List. Only Cashvertising and Ultimate Sales Letter are not on his list. I added these 2 because of the amount of people who recommend these 2 books, especially on this forum.

Hey @ProcessPro, these books are recommended by Gary in his newsletter.

@Joaquim great thread.

Thanks Argue. And what a great list of rules. People can sell more by only applying this list.

What is the goal of doing this challenge? Or is it just busy work?

My goal is to sell more products with the same amount of money I daily spent on ads.
As of now I am trying to lower the cost per product sold, this is one step to help this process.

Thanks for the advice and will try to rewrite more than 9 sales letters.

 

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[Joaquim]

They Laughed When I Sat Down To Read Copywriting Books,
But When I Began To Sell....​

I've read most of those books, and would enjoy joining a study/discussion/application group about them.

If I could only take one book to a desert island, and had to write a great sales letter in a bottle to get rescued, I'd choose BREAKTHROUGH ADVERTISING. It's probably the best single book on the topic I've found.

One of the things Gene Schwartz discusses over and over, is that each super-successful ad campaign was the result of a unique analysis of the unique situation. How much do potential buyers already know about the offer? What's their attitude towards it? Which functional features will be most appealing to them? What emotional hot buttons will connect with them the most?

Because these are unique in every new business situation, the attempt to "copy and paste" an existing ad is unlikely to be successful!

Because I want to learn that way of thinking for my own unique situation, I'm going to skip Gary Halbert's exercise to write out some classic sales letters longhand.

I'm looking now to figure out:

• How to apply the best of expert copywriting guidance to promote my own business now
• I've experienced that copywriting mindset can help with a speech... I want to find how else it applies, beyond just writing materials that's obviously an ad
• I want to include copywriting with marketing consulting I can provide to clients

Looking forward to where you want to take this discussion in 30 days and beyond!

A great view you have on this matter Late Bloomer.
Will definitely order breakthrough advertising now.

I'm also convinced that this challenge won't make me an expert. I just want to complete it for my own business and businesses in the future. It's a great beginning in my opinion, I have no single experience in this field.

Another benefit is that with this knowledge it will be easier for me to hire the right people for copy in the future if needed.

As with many things copy is a never ending learning process.

Greets

 

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[Late Bloomer]

Taking notes is actually the hardest part for me, it slows me down.

Looking forward to your notes! It does slow you down, but it makes you think more carefully about what you read, and save your ideas for use in the future. That puts the material much more deeply into your mind.

 

[Eddie Temple]

I'm in, starting immediately. Do you have any revenue targets?
I'll set mine at $100, and at least 30 cold calls.. lezz go

 

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[Argue]

Hey, there are so many books on the topic. How did you narrow it down to these? What is your criteria? Thanks.

Hey @ProcessPro, these books are recommended by Gary in his newsletter.

@Joaquim great thread.

 

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[ProcessPro]

Hey @ProcessPro, these books are recommended by Gary in his newsletter.

@Joaquim great thread.

Hey, I don't know who Gary is. :/
Can you kindly enlighten me?
Thanks.

-M.

P.S. I'm around 50 posts; getting my signature soon.

 

[Argue]

Hey, I don't know who Gary is. :/
Can you kindly enlighten me?
Thanks.

-M.

P.S. I'm around 50 posts; getting my signature soon.

What @craig1928 said.

And I can’t wait to see the new sig. I’m anxious haha

 

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[Eddie Temple]

I am already done with half of Scientific Advertising, and will share my notes when I finish..
Yeah it is "simple", but if you actually pay attention to what you read you will find tons of value

 

[Late Bloomer]

Have finished Scientific Advertising yesterday, here’s my view on this book.

I agree with your summary. My full set of notes on the book comes to six pages. Highlights for me now:

Chapter 1 - Advertising done right is an analytical and extremely low risk business activity. This contradicts a lifetime of fearful conditioning about advertising as super-creative and very risky!

Chapter 2 - Guesswork is very expensive. This concerns me as I don't have time or money for big surveys and research projects now.

Chapter 3 - Free trials work. I don't remember my parents or anyone else growing up, ever mentioning that they got something for a week's trial before they had to pay or send it back. What ever happened between Claude's time and my own?

Chapter 5 - Headlines attract people who ALREADY care about your subject. You don't have to convince people they should care, only find people who already do.

Chapter 6 - Psychology

• I love that principles of human nature are constant. This is a major reason I'm moving from coding geek to marketing guy now. If Bill Gates has some bright idea tomorrow, that doesn't make obsolete what I already know about how important love and pride are to people!

• I find the point about coupons buying the sample vs. the free sample itself, to be confusing and contradictory. Not quite sure what Claude was getting at here.

Chapter 7 - Being specific - Timeless, important advice. I'll see what numbers and specific facts I can include.

Chapter 12 - Strategy - I found this chapter intimidating, lots of questions that would be hard to answer without a fully staffed research department of a major ad agency.

Chapter 13- Use of Samples - Ties in with MJ's discussion of control. Got to stay in control of the salesmanship for how your offer is presented, the vibe and environment you set up around it.

Chapter 14 - Distribution - Hard to see how this relates to services rather than products.

Chapter 15 - Test Campaigns - In today's money these "little" tests would be tens of thousands of dollars, so I'm not sure how relevant this approach is today. Need to find a way to scale it to my conditions.

Chapter 18 - Negative Advertising - "Picture what others wish to be, not what they may be now. We are attracted by sunshine, beauty, happiness, health, success. Then point the way to them, not the way out of the opposite. Tell people what to do, not what to avoid. Assume that people will do what you ask. Say, 'Send now for this sample.' Don't say, 'Why do you neglect this offer?' You will find that the positive ad out pulls the other four to one, if you have our experience."

I need to look at this. From my engineering background and how I was raised and educated, and most of my friendships, there's a huge tendency to focus on what's negative, problematic, risky, The Issues etc. I don't care much for that myself, it's just that it comes easy from conditioned responses! I need to rephrase everything negative and gloomy related to my offer, into what's positive and uplifting.

--

I don't have a copy of Cashvertising right now, so I'll skip ahead to the Dan Kennedy book next.

 

[Late Bloomer]

It would take more than 30 days to really go through all of these books carefully. I think we should continue the challenge on the basis of going through all of these books, sharing our notes and thoughts, most importantly how we can apply what we learn to our current work... whichever month that happens.

I finally finished the Robert Collier Letter Book, with many more pages of notes. So many marketing lessons here IF you can see how to adapt what he did back then, to what you'd like to do now. I would recommend reading this book AFTER Breakthrough Advertising by Schwartz. Schwartz explains how to categorize the different purposes of advertising such as getting initial orders, or overcoming jaded reactions for repeat purchases. Collier's many letters would make more sense with that framework already in mind.

Lots of typos in this scan.

Collier includes sales letters for some positive thinking books. The letters say the books explain how to awaken the inner giant of the unlimited subconscious mind's power.

In another letter, Collier mentions that the 21 volume set of tutorials is too detailed, so here's the most condensed get to it quick version in only 7 installments.

Tony Robbins titled his psychology books "Awaken the Giant Within" and "Unlimited Power," and followed up his 20+ installment audio series with a 7 audio series of the most important highlights. Either Tony or someone on his marketing team was familiar with Collier's work!

Rather than comment on many of the letters, I'll highlight a few of the timeless principles Collier stated. That's still a lot of material.

"The point would seem to be that if you can tie in with what people are thinking about and interested in, you can sell anything. And that the particular form that your letter takes is far less important than the chord it happens to strike."

SELL TO KNOWN BUYERS. If you have something new to sell by mail, sell it, if you can, to those who've already bought SOMETHING by mail.

"You see, the product is of minor importance. There was scarcely a man in the whole place who did not know more about raincoats than I. But it was not raincoats we were selling. It was an idea - in this case, the idea that by specializing in one grade of coat, one cloth, one style, and making it in every conceivable size, we could not only save you money, but give you a better coat and a more perfect fit than you could get at double the price in stores. We did not need to know anything about coat manufacturers to convince you of that. All we needed to understand was human reactions to certain ideas, and these are what we studied."

"Notice how readily the idea adapts itself to overcoats, just as though it had never been used for anything else. That is my experience of most basic ideas. If they are good enough for selling one product, they can be adapted to selling almost any other product."

"For here is a strange fact, which has held consistently throughout all my experience in selling my mail: If you offer one article you will twice as many orders as if you offerd a choice fo two or more articles!" ( Gary Halbert confirmed that decades later. )

"The best mail order buyer is one who has already bought other products by mail, and it is ideas that sell goods - not mere descriptions of the goods themselves. Ideas are the only things that count."

p 217 Even if you have a good reason for the bargain, you still have to add lots of good reasons for the quality.

"We tried pictures on the letterhead and found that the old mail order letterheads, of which so much fun is made, showing the picture of the founder of the business, have a sound psychological reason back of them, and frequently increase orders anywhere from 5-10%."
"We tried everything - metered mail against stamped. Precancelled stamps against plain... Pen signatures against facsimile.... Black ink against purple and blue and red..... And the trend of all the tests seemed to be that anything which tended to make your letter seem more personal added appreciably to the number of your orders." ( Gary Halbert also confirmed this decades later! )

"These were just a few of the tests we made. There were literally hundreds of them. A book could be written about them alone but by the time it came out it would be of little value. For the fascinating thing about this selling by mail - the thing that makes impossible for any man or set of men to know all about it - is that it is continually changing. What you learn today you must unlearn tomorrow. You have to keep trying - and testing - and then just when you reach the point where you can arise and state with authority: you can do, that you cannot, along comes some darn fool who knows none of the rules and sells a million on the very plan you said could not be worked!"

Results are unpredictable and can go up and down at any time. "And yet, properly run, there is no safer business on earth. You need never risk anything but the cost of a test. ... for instance, when ( something to sell ) was offered to us, we didn't need to say: "All right, we'll gamble on that," or "We can't afford to risk that much money." No, what we said was: "Give us a 60 day option and we'll find out!" So we gambled the cost of a couple of tests, found that we could sell so many sets to each thousand names, multiplied that by the number of names available, and knew just what to safely contract to do.
There was no manufacturing cost, no inventories to worry about, no commitments. If the test had been a failure, we would bought enough to fill the orders received and been out nothing but the small cost of the tests. If that had not been available would would have returned all money received, notified those who ordered that circumstances made it impossible to go ahead with the project, and closed the matter. Is there any other business where future prospects can be forecast with such certainty and at such small expense?"

"The real profit in selling by mail lies not in the first mail but in the succeeding ones. If you cannot sell a second product to the people who bought your first one, then there is something wrong with your methods or your product."

"Beware of the letter that everyone admires for its cleverness. It may bring you a great deal of praise - but few orders. The good letter is one that leaves your reader hardly conscious of the letter itself, so interested is he in doing the thing you want him to do."

"We all like to feel important. Anything that raises our ego, that makes us feel more necessary to the general scheme of things, is sure to please us. The cleverness in ( letters with this appeal ) lies in their ability to feed our vanity, without making it too apparent that this is the real purpose of the letter."

"While most people lack the courage for real leadership, few there are who do not long to be looked up to, as being a bit above their fellows. Organizers of Lodges and Clubs realize this predominant trait in human nature and capitalize it to the fullest degree. And publishers have not been backward in giving their readers the chance to become Founders or Charter Subscribers or Members of some more or less exclusive group."

"There is no one best method of approaching your reader. And no one knows all the successful methods. But experienced advertising men have learned a number of ways that work well in a large majority of cases and unless you know better ones, it pays to use these tested methods. They go far towards taking the guess out of advertising. You have seen numbers of advertisements, for instance, starting - Give me five minutes, and I'll give you this or that. So successful has this approach been found, that it has been put among proven order-getters. Why not adapt it, then, to your offer? Here is the way we used it for one client..." ( A brilliant paragraph because the commentary about sales letter is itself selling that you should make sales letters like this one! )

"The one things that should always be borne in mind is that it is not merchandise you are selling, but human nature, human reactions. The movie people have found that people always respond to certain motivations, so they have their guaranteed laugh producers, their guaranteed methods of turning on the tears, and so on..... In the same way, you can take an approach that has successfully sold a set of books, and with very little change, adapt it to selling shoes or socks or luggage or any one of a thousand other products and be just as successful in disposing of these!"
"The Give 5 minutes approach, for instance, used in one of the foregoing letters. You can use it to sell a relief for Athlete's Food, as in, Give me 5 days, and I'll give you relief from itching feet. Or a new dance step, Give me 15 minutes and I'll give you the secret of dancing to the new slow-time music. Or a new car, Give me 5 minutes and I'll give you a new sensation in riding comfort."

Ranking of how to get your letter opened. If you don't have a headline on the outside, make it look like a personal note. "As to the motives to appeal to when you have won the reader's attention, by far the strongest, in our experience, is Vanity. Not the vanity that buys a cosmetic or whatnot to look a little better, but that unconscious vanity which makes a man want to feel important in his own eyes and makes him strut mentally. This appeal needs to be subtly used, but when properly used, it is the strongest we know. Next to it perhaps, is the is premium or "Gift" idea - starting your letter with the gift of some unimportant article, to lead your reader on to the buying of your real product."

Have an idea file.

To get inquiries write the shortest letter that will get interest. To make sales write as long as letter as you need to discuss everything about the offer.

 

[Argue]

@Late Bloomer, thanks for updating the thread with new notes.

The Robert Collier book is a gem. But wow, the typos in the PDF is crazy. Listened on audible and it was good. I didn’t take notes tho.

Anyway LB, how much time do you take to read a book? Are you scanning/speed reading? Or do you carefully read each page? I’d like some tips.

I’m not gonna lie, some of these books are putting me to sleep lol. Scientific advertising was very boring to me but very insightful. It was painful to get through... so I just read the summary for it.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Are you scanning/speed reading? Or do you carefully read each page? I’d like some tips.

Great question.

Study skills are skills we can learn, just like anything else. The advantage is, they make it easier to learn anything else.

I'd already read or skimmed most of these copywriting books. So for this current challenge, I am going through each page with a notebook handy. I'm glad for that, because I'm finding so many ideas I can adapt and use for myself. I always put the date and topic at the top of each page of my notes, or each new file. Sometimes I take notes by hand, sometimes I use a note taking program with tabs for multiple text pages, so I don't have to see clutter on the computer.

I am always asking, is this an advertising appeal I could use now? If so, how could I adapt it for my business? What is the lesson for today? Could I use this to help other companies with their marketing?

Oh, they gave a free one week trial of a travel bag for those who sent in a postcard. Could I somehow let people send me a postcard to get a free web site for a week? What other products could include a dozen organizer pockets, so there's a place for everything?

So this other business collected leftover, overstocked dresses into their showroom. Is there something I could collect as overstock at half wholesale prices, and display at discount retail for a profit? Could I do this online without needing a storefront?

This next sales letter said (politely, discreetly), if you're a know it all jerk don't waste our time, but if you're willing to learn we can sure help you. Would I like to have a web site that implies that only people of superior intelligence and open-mindedness are good enough to buy from me?

The way I like to learn something new, is to get several top rated books and skim through them quickly.

I pull out a big stack of books from the library or bookstore shelves, and pile it up on a table. For each book, if there's an introduction, I'll fully read that, the table of contents, and the first chapter, to let the author set up their theme. Then I'll skim with a quick look through pages to try to get the overall main ideas. I fully read a random page here and there to check out the style, and to find if there are diamonds of brilliance throughout the book. I'll repeat this quickly with several books.

If some authors seem to not know what they're talking about... or I just can't get into their writing style... or their stuff seems good but not relevant... I push aside those books.

Within an hour or two, I've gone from two dozen "hmm, maybes" to about four, "these look like the best!"

When there are some themes that it seems just about everyone talks about, I pay attention when those come up. (For example, every great master copywriter talks about the importance of testing and how they run tests.)

If there is someone who seems to really have a clue AND they're a contrarian, I pay some extra attention to their argument. They might just be a wacky outsider with weird ideas. But they might also be a very insightful person, who noticed important truths that everyone else overlooked.

Fortunately with copywriting, the themes of human nature, emotional appeal, organizing your message, testing everything, are timeless. There might be something in a book from 1917 that makes the light bulb come on for you. The very same point might be found in a brilliant blog post or video or podcast from last week, that's what made it finally totally make sense to you.

 

[Joaquim]

I would like to see someone else do a review or key points collection from the Whitman and Schwab books and from the Boron Letters.

I'd also like to see someone find out exactly why Gary Halbert was sent to the minimum security prison camp, where he wrote the Boron Letters. From what Dan Kennedy mentioned now and then, I have the idea that Gary was convicted of taking people's money and not shipping them what they ordered in time, or maybe of misrepresenting a stock investment? Seeing his friend go to prison made a strong impression on Dan, who always advises his audiences to very carefully follow every detail of the letter of the law, and to just get out of any business where that's hard to do.

Great notes again @Late Bloomer. You put a lot of value in this thread! Thank you for that.

Haha I asked myself the same question as @Argue.
It seems like you're a very good and quick reader.

I finished Cashvertising and will make tomorrow a readable version of my notes.
Currently reading Ultimate Sales Letter. Will have to do my best to still accomplish the challenge, will have more time now though. But the amount of knowledge I'm gaining is insane. Actually the whole book Cashvertising can be seen as notes. Full of golden nuggets and very comprehensive.

I also agree with reading the best books about 1 topic in a short time frame. Otherwise you risk to forget some important things that you should link to each other.

Never heard the story of Gary in prison, will dig deeper into that.

Taking notes is actually the hardest part for me, it slows me down.

 

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[Joaquim]

Thanks a lot Joaquim. Most of your notes make perfect sense, but I do have a few things I wonder about.

Will answer all your questions by tomorrow @Late Bloomer !
Which one are you reading now?

Finished this week Ultimate Sales Letter. Also a hell of a great read.

I find myself reading the same principles over and over again. Which is not a bad thing, but it will probably influence my order of 'top recommended reading'.

Will still finish the reading list, but it won't be in May..

I thought I would be able to finish this challenge in one month considering my reading speed.

But the month May has been my best month ever in business. Just finished my first $10.000 month. It took a lot of work, but it was worth it!

 

[Late Bloomer]

Hey @Late Bloomer - a bit late, apologies, but wanted to share my notes on the Boron Letters. Thanks again for your great notes on TUSL and Collier, hope these are valuable to you and the group.

THE BORON LETTERS - GARY HALBERT
*decided to upload my text file where I took my notes because when I paste it on here, it messes up with the formatting (indented tabs, etc)

Great notes on Boron Letters.

Gary Halbert was one of the all-time top geniuses of advertising. Many people think of him as the greatest copywriter ever.

In his career he sometimes did business together with other people. One time he did the advertising for a business with a couple of other people. The advertising brought in a lot of orders and money, but a lot of the orders went unfulfilled for a long time. The customers complained to the government, and a prosecutor decided that the team had a deliberate conspiracy to defraud the buyers.

Gary was sent for a while to a minimum security prison, Boron. While there, he wrote letters to his son Bond, who I think was a teenager at the time. That's why the letters have a mix of fatherly advice about attitude and healthy living, and also Gary's professional guidance on how to succeed at advertising. I think there's nothing else like it!

Gary's sons also went into advertising. Bond now offers an updated version of the Boron letters, with his own commentary as an adult. I haven't read that yet but hope to get a copy this year.

Standard Rate and Data Service is a publisher that provides reference information for advertisers. They're still around. Their books are very expensive, but many larger business libraries have a reference copy. I recommend you visit a library and flip through the mailing list book, so you can see what Gary's talking about in the letters.

The SRDS mailing list directory lists mailing lists that advertisers can rent in order to send out sales material. $50 CPM means that for fifty bucks, you can get one thousand (Cost Per Mille, with latin Mille for a thousand) names and addresses from the list, and have the right to send all of them one thing in the mail. A few of the names are fake, and go back to the list owner so they can catch anyone who tries to use the list again without paying another rental fee. As Gary points out, you can get a few names for a test, and if it works, then rent a larger number of names from the list.

SRDS has several other reference books, such as lists of magazines by subject with how many subscribers they have, and all the rates to buy ads.

 

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[ProcessPro]

The books will be read in the following order:

- Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
- Cashvertising by Drew Whitman
- Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy
- Tested Advertising Methods John Caples
- The Robert Collier Letter
- How to write a good advertisement by Victor Schwab
- The Boron Letters

I'm thinking of adding Breaktrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz.

Hey, there are so many books on the topic. How did you narrow it down to these? What is your criteria? Thanks.

 

[p0stscript]

Whilst I will not taking the challenge, I will follow this with interest nevertheless.

 

[Maxboost]

What was the Udemy course that you took?

 

[ProcessPro]

Good idea Eddie Temple. Because I'm into e-commerce my goal will be a bit different.

I Hope to sell more products with the same amount I daily spent on ads.



As Argue told you, it's the Gary Halbert List. Only Cashvertising and Ultimate Sales Letter are not on his list. I added these 2 because of the amount of people who recommend these 2 books, especially on this forum.

Thanks Argue. And what a great list of rules. People can sell more by only applying this list.


My goal is to sell more products with the same amount of money I daily spent on ads.
As of now I am trying to lower the cost per product sold, this is one step to help this process.

Thanks for the advice and will try to rewrite more than 9 sales letters.

Thanks Joaquim!