Sales copy is kind of like high school kids: the nicest, most polite ones often have the least friends. There are so many misconceptions going around as to what makes good copy that I thought it would be interesting to discuss the basics here.

Whether you are writing an ad to drive traffic to your site, an article or review or just a plain old sales letter, you need to make it 100% clear, to yourself, what you are trying to achieve. The most effective copy points and gently guides the reader towards one specific action. Anything that does not contribute to this action must then hinder it, and is removed. The number one step then, is to understand your MDA or Most Desired Action, and stick to it. If it doesn't further your MDA, drop it.

EXPLODE- You must grab attention. This is particularly important for your headline, but must be maintained throughout your copy, or its click and goodbye. It has been proven time and time again that the right headline with the same sales letter will produce fluctuations of up to 1000%. Test, test and test again. The right headline will go a long way for you.

In this case, as I am writing for a blog, my headline has to be a mix of generic and smack in the face. You shouldn't use a pure «smack you in the face» headline for this purpose because you want your article to be listed relevantly and you want search engine customers to come across it in their research, so plugging keywords is important.

When you are writing a sales letter or ad that people will have no choice but to come across, you can be purely imaginative and pay less attention to your keywords, just make sure you get relevant fast.

What are the guidelines to writing a great headline? Be as brief as you can, while still getting your point across. Use colorful active verbs and tenses, and look for «selling» words that fit well with your subject. For instance, when I wrote the title for this article, I could have been lazy, or do what the uninformed do and write a generic title. A generic title would have been something along the lines of «Writing Great Sales Copy». Since I know better, I changed the verb tense to present and replaced «writing» with «how to write». I did this also because I know that «how to» is a selling word, meaning that for some reason, it pushes the right buttons. Finally, I changed «great», a nice but generic word, to «killer», a visual, emotionally charged adjective.

Let's get some technical aspects out of the way fast: font matters, font size matters, color matters, width of text matters, readability matters, length matters, as well as correct spelling, short sentences, long copy and much more. It would be too much to cover all of those fields in a short article like this one, so I will skip ahead to one of the most important aspects: personality.

You see, I'd much rather give it to you straight up with an «if you don't like it, too bad for you attitude». Why? Because that's how I am. Or because it works. Personality is injected into my texts as much as possible. I am not a page in the Encyclopedia Britannica, so I don't need to use perfect grammar (as long as people can tell that it's personality, not poor language skills). If it push comes to shove, I'd rather offend you slightly than leave you indifferent.

Humans are emotional animals. We like to think that we're all logical and higher brain function, but the truth is much more base. We are impulsive, irrational beings that act on emotions most of the time. The same will hold true for acting upon your MDA. If your copy is generic and bland and expresses as much personality as an Al Gore puppet, your «readers» will run away by the second sentence as fast as their little cyber legs can carry them.

One of the reasons they are reading is for stimulation. Give it to them, and more emotionally than not. Get your prospects to love you or hate you; don't give them the middle ground of «yawn, yeah I guess it was ok».

One of the best ways to channel imagination and stimulate your readers while selling them is negatives. Let's go back to the title of this article. If it was going to be a sales letter or ad for a copywriting product rather than a blog article, I would have chosen something along the lines of «Bored to Tears - how your sales copy just isn't cutting it» or maybe « 99% of copywriting products are Scams, protect yourself! » or «This Title Sucks and yours do too» and finally, «Stop Writing like a Sleeping Pill». I would likely assort these titles to a subtitle that sells the main benefit of my product, something along the lines of «Copy Writing Secrets to Explode your Online Sales» or «What the Marketing gurus don't want you to know». For more examples, check out the sample Adwords I wrote for thefreejerk.com, here (they are towards the bottom, in the article). They're particularly harsh though, and not adapted to all businesses, tread with care.

Dare to be different. Tell it like it is. Stick to your guns. Shoot to score. Didn't like my article? Thought my sample ads used misleading or unethical tactics? Oh well, please accept my most heartfelt «I couldn't care less! ». B'bye now.
About the Author

The author specializes in copywriting and incentivized marketing. His site www.buildafreebiesite.com provides members with a free ebook, Big Freebie Profits, that describes in detail what is needed to join the ranks of profitable freebie site owners.

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