A successful sales letter is one that achieves plenty of sales.
“To be a successful copywriter, one has to turn off personal opinion, and follow the results,” says Tim Warnock, an expert at writing successful sales letters.
Tim wrote the controversial, successful sales letter for John Evans’ book Success Alert – Conversations with Successful Internet Entrepreneurs.
I don’t mind admitting that when I saw the sales letter I was disappointed.
I cringed when I saw it.
All that hype seemed to me to be unnecessary to promote such a good book.
What do you think of the sales letter?
Before you rush to judgement, let me tell you that this is a highly successful sales letter which achieved $56,400 in sales in just one month for John Evans – someone we’d never heard of before.
Why on on earth did Tim write a sales letter like that?
“I would prefer to write short, non-aggressive letters – the problem is that I haven’t found a way yet to make them sell,” Tim says.
“I wrote 21 versions of this sales letter (mostly minor changes), testing along the way to find the strongest general puller.
“I don’t write to win literary awards, or share info, when I am hired as a copywriter, I write to sell.”
Tim says he tries to look at the task in a very unattached and scientific way and not let his preferences or whining voices get in the way.
Into the gutter
“A couple of very big name copywriters that have become friends (guys who earn $10,000 a letter with waiting lists), did me a favor and took a look at the letter before we launched (in earlier versions), and told me, ‘Good job, but take it further into the gutter if you want to sell more, hit them even harder…’
“These guys are really good fellows, and they, like you, are often helping others. They are far from being sleazy as humans just because they sell aggressively.”
They were right, Tim says, and their general suggestions helped him to improve the conversion rate.
“It seems that this style irks a lot of individuals. We have even had people who bought complain about the letter! John and I just laugh at this absurdity. We don’t even point out that it worked on them!
“I have, however, received far more positive compliments than complaints – almost always from other copywriters – a few even said they bought the book because they liked the copy so much … and I have new jobs lined up because of this.
Less aggressive version
“At one point during the testing, I changed the headline to a much less aggressive version (something that I preferred), and the conversion rate dropped from 4% to 1%. I put up the current headline that is there now, and BAM, 5%! Tweaked a few things in the order section, and it went up to 6%.
“I would be willing to bet that there aren’t many ebooks out there that have had 25,000 unique visitors and a general conversion rate percentage of almost 6%.
“For me, it is simply a question of doing what I am paid to do well, without lying, cheating, or harming others. Nobody is twisting anyone’s arm to buy, and we do offer refunds for those that are not content, but again, ironically, most refund requests come immediately after purchase (they obviously had no time to read it), these individuals were simply looking for a free ebook … or the magic button that will create millions for them, like a guaranteed lottery ticket … We obviously respect all refund requests, no questions asked, but it is disappointing to see this…”
Tim says he chuckles at the comments he sees regarding the sales letter.
One fellow said, “I bought the book because of the smokin’ sales copy!”
In a blog someone else wrote, “The sales copy is poorly written and improfessional” – notice the misspelling.
What do you think?
Here’s Tim’s controversial successful sales letter
[UPDATE: I’ve made a special arrangement with John so you can get a $20 discount on Volume 2. Just use the following code: SA2AG.]Article describes how to write a successful sales letter
Here’s a good article by Paul Lock which explains 18 insider tips on how to write a money spinning sales letter. (The article itself is also a sales letter.)