Fast Food Copywriting
Late last night I launched a special report called Fast Food Copywriting.
That product is something that started out as a blog COMMENT just a few days ago. I didn't even mean for it to be a complete blog post.
One of our discussions meandered into copywriting, and I typed up a quick response to quickly go over my personal formula for writing quick sales copy that's good enough to get the job done. Nothing fancy.
After the blog comment ended up being a couple of pages, I said to myself: "I'll just make this a blog post." I saved it to my drafts.
I came back to the draft later and edited it some more. Even when I said what I wanted to say with as few words as possible, it ended up being several pages long.
I moved it to a Word document, made the page margins as thin as I could and the font size as small (but still readable) as I could... and I thought, heck, maybe I should sell this thing as its own report.
The offer has been live for about 9 hours and sold 50 copies -- about 750 bucks. Not bad for a few hours of "smart" (not hard) work.
Update: After 48 hours I now have 104 sales
which comes to around $1400 after fees.
What does this tell me about infoproduct creation?
- The best products I have ever made were answers (solutions) to real live questions (problems). This does like a "duh" point but I know that the very best books and reports I made started out as replies on forums or blog posts... then got carried away... then I said, it would be criminal for this info to get buried in a forum after a couple of days.
- Keep your "sexy" information private and your boring information public. Perfect example: I gave away some WordPress SEO advice yesterday but saved the copywriting info for a paid report. Setting up blogs and sites are fun, but people get more excited about things that are going to make them money NOW and improve THEIR lives.
- Have a backend. I have always been kind of a crappy marketer when it came to marketing my e-books... but not in 2008! I made sure to plug-in an affiliate program just before launching. I embedded the affiliate code in the e-book so that the call-to-action at the end is for the reader to promote the book as an affiliate.
Since Fast Food Copywriting is my only copywriting product, I don't have any upsells to push into so we'll see how the perpetual affiliate program idea works out.
Speaking of upsells, I have been working on my product funnel and tweaked the sales letters for Black Hat PHP, Lightning PHP, Impact PHP and Push Button PHP so that they all on their own upsell to PHP in a Box, a package containing all those products in one. It's a pretty sweet setup.
Income so far for this month: From my PayPal daily sales report anyway... $9,807.46 $10,377.58 with 547 585 sales. After fees that's $9,300 $9,700. (I find it funny that the money I pay in PayPal fees is approaching the amount I pay for rent.)
Add Clickbank and day job income and I've broken $12,000 $12,500 for this month.
I have 8 Warrior Special Offers running at the moment.
If you want to get your hands on the special report and find out the step-by-step method I use to become a copywriting machine and pump out these cash-sucking sales letters... check out Fast Food Copywriting.
In the meantime, could you do me a favor and comment on this entry and tell me:
Are you giving away the farm by dishing out too much free information, or are you saving "the good stuff" for paying customers?
Have you ever written a forum reply, blog post, or free report and said to yourself... "I should charge for this!" Please, tell me the story of how it came to be and share the URL where the product is selling now.
Filed in: Product Launches
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Who would have thunk I would be buying a copy writing ebook from a programmer.
Dave
P.S. – Thank goodness you didn’t have that automatic price increase thing going.
Well, Mr.”Copyright” Plank, you finally caught my complete attention through the latest email. Moneymaking props sounds good to me. I’m not in the business of writing yet, communications student at Kaplan. This comment is not a solution or answer but I will check out “Fast Food Copywriting“. Thanks for the inspiration. Michal
Robert – I agree. I think it’s so much easier to create a product in answer to a question. I did the same thing with my “Talk to your Webmaster” report – it started as an email to a client who had expressed frustration in getting her idea across. And it blossomed into a report complete with case studies, screen shots and other materials to improve communication between her and her webmaster. Now it’s become a stable part of my product line.
And as with anything I’ve created this way – the sales letter came together faster than any other – because I knew exactly what I was talking about and knew exactly what the “ideal customer” was looking for.
You can see the results at http://TalkToYourWebmaster.com
Thanks for sharing your experience and your expertise!
Jeanette
Jeanette: I really like that sales letter.
Years ago, I once paid $300 for a physical book on how to write quickly (I would have paid $3000 for that advice).
The most helpful thing from that book was a tip that for each 2/3rds of a page… write a question, then write out the answer to that question, then delete that question and you have an easy 2/3rds of a page written.
Because you’re answering a clear question, you get right to the point and say exactly the right thing.
But what I’ve discovered on my own since then (just like you figured out when writing that sales page) is that the writing flows even FASTER if you’re answering a question someone else wrote (versus something you wrote).
Keeping the “good stuff” in reserve is good, but wouldn’t releasing some (a little) every now and then, increase sales? Lure ’em in with a bit more sugar?
…even if it is an answer to a question posed on a blog?
Rich: There’s nothing wrong with giving information away but it should lead-in to some kind of paid product, or get them on an e-mail list with follow-ups that eventually leads into a paid product.
So many people give away free info that just goes nowhere.
If you’re trying to establish yourself in a niche you could put the introductory stuff out there for free and then the more exciting stuff that solves a specific and very important problem, in a paid report.
What I’m saying is, when I decide what to charge for and what to give away for free, I give away the stuff that doesn’t relate as much to my product funnel.
In my example, WordPress doesn’t relate as much to infoproduct creation or copywriting as much as my PHP or marketing materials, AND search engine optimization is less exciting than all of those, AND it’s not a very hungry niche… lots of freebie seekers. Three strikes and you’re out.
Hi Robert,
I love helping people, which means I give away alot of things that could be making me money. Like the information I offer through http://www.listvalet.com or the 100% free advertising you can get at http://www.webpromotionboard.com.
Yes, alot of my sweat and tears went into these types of sites, but having people thank me for providing them this type of service free of charge makes it all worth it.
I’m only able to do this for nothing, because I do so well in PPC marketing, so it keeps me from checking my PPC campaigns 100 times a day.
Your Fast Food Copywriting idea does have me re-thinking my stance though.
OK …I’ll bite … what are the links to the WSOs?
Gren: You can always get a list of my current WSOs at Warrior Plus or click on the “Launch Schedule” link at the top.
Hi Robert,
I just read this post and guess what I was saying to myself at the end … “I have to check this copywriting ebook out” – so I did and now there are 110 people who purchased your ebook.
You are right that the hardest part is getting down to the actually writing the info product. I know there are probably many “nuggets” in your ebook because there are “nuggets” in all your products – and I do have them ALL! I am looking forward to reading this new “copywriting” product right away!
Thanks again.
Harry Crowder
of course when you dont have time to cook, fastfoods would always be the best option “`