The thing about having fun while doing an interview over the phone is you sometimes give up TOO much information.

The other day I got to talk to Robert Plank on Skype about how I optimize my blog for profit. We talked for 30 minutes and had such a great conversation about blogging… that many times I forgot that Robert was recording the call!

We shared our favorite strategies, favorite plugins, our favorite marketers, and more. I came at it from a copywriter’s perspective, which is something you probably haven’t seen before. (So let me know what you think)

In the future, only people who join my email list will get access to this interview. And while I hope you have signed up to receive announcements, I am going to let you access the recording today with no restrictions.

Here it is: http://www.stephensblog.com/robertplank

Hope you enjoy it, and don’t forget to check out Robert Plank’s blog. He set a goal to make $30,000.00 for the month of February and he’s almost there. I’m sure he’ll let you know if he makes it at the blog.

PS In the video I talk about using testing, multivariate testing and some plugins. A while back I made a video showing how to do all of these things. I’m going to do a 24 hour special for the video tomorrow; it’ll be for $15.

But as a thank you for reading this entry, you can get it now for $10 through the Paypal button below.

My brother has a great lesson for you on sales letters that DONT work.

He just got a new golden retriever puppy. Talk about cute.

Growing up our golden retriever once had 13 puppies that we got to watch grow up. Watching them walk out of the dog house one by one, single file and line up in front of the fence was an AMAZING experience.

Speaking of amazing experiences, have you ever had to potty train a puppy? Oh boy, that’s what my brother is dealing with now.

The last time I was visiting he told me he searched Google for how to potty train a dog. And he was having trouble finding an answer.

He did find one page and this is how he described it…

“I was reading it and it kept talking about all this stuff I didn’t care about. Then they were trying to sell me a bunch of different products and all I wanted was some tips to potty train my dog.”

I knew right away that he had found a sales letter. And one that did NOT work.

I decided to trace his steps so I could learn from the process.

* He searched Google for “how to potty train my dog.”

* He clicked on a sponsored link that is ABOVE the search listings, without knowing it was an ad.

* He read or skimmed most of the copy… even though that meant clicking through 3 different pages… and even though he didn’t understand why they were telling him all this unnecessary information. (It lacked a clear logical argument that mattered to him.)

* He saw a ton of bonuses (which were unnecessary) and thought they were trying to sell several products, when all he wanted were some tips to potty train his dog.

* The order link was finally on the third page, but with no call to action.

* He didn’t buy.

I have no clue why the site owner made the prospect click through 3 pages. Sometimes I’ve seen this done strategically with good results, but this was done very poorly and hid the solution my brother was looking for.

Lesson #1: Keep your sales copy on one page unless you have a good reason.

Lesson #2: Make sure to craft a strong logical argument in the copy that FLOWS from the conversation going on inside the prospects head… and not a logical argument that flows from the copy formula you saw someone else use once for a product in a completely different niche.

Lesson #3: You don’t need to have 10,000 bonuses ever. And you don’t need to have a half-dozen bonuses when your prospect is trying to solve one specific problem. You’re just confusing the prospect.

Lesson #4: Your copy can’t just give a couple compelling arguments for why they should buy, then drop them off at an order link. Finish the job. Build up the value of the product. Explain why they’re getting a good deal IF they act now. Then tell them how to act (usually clicking an order button).

This is my first article of the Robert Plank Challenge. Not all articles will be on copywriting or copywriters, but this one is. Take a look…

Title: Message To New Copywriters
By: Stephen Dean

If you’re a new copywriter, this is my message to you.

Hi. I used to be where you were at. I started writing copy for others 5 years ago. At the time, I had just enough copywriting know-how to pass myself off as a copywriter.

Because my copy skills were very young, I barely charged anything. Only $97 for my first few sales letters. Then $197. Then $297.

(That pattern is important, but I’ll get back to that.)

At that rate, my clients were essentially hiring me for manual labor. This was good because I knew I wasn’t ripping anyone off. I didn’t want to claim to be the best copywriter in the world and charge thousands…

…when I was still learning the trade.

At the time, I was pretty much the only copywriter working for so cheap.

HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

Now everyone seems to be starting a copywriting career.

While people were shocked to see me offering copy services for so cheap, it’s now commonplace to see people writing sales copy for $197.

And actually, now that the economy is worse… these same copywriters are DROPPING their prices. I’ve seen offers for writing copy for $50!

Listen. As a copywriter you should know better than to compete on price. “Cheap” is not a benefit of strong sales copy. More sales is the benefit!

Instead of positioning yourself as a “cheap copywriter,” use your copywriting brain to come up with a unique angle that doesn’t COST YOU MONEY. An angle you can CHARGE FOR!

If you pick a niche, you can charge more than the guy who brands himself “the cheap copywriter.”

If you offer more bells and whistles than just the sales copy (emails? graphic design?), you can charge more than the guy who brands himself “the cheap copywriter.”

If you come up with a strong guarantee, you can charge more than the guy who brands himself “the cheap copywriter.”

DO pick a unique angle, but don’t try to sell your services based on price. It’s bad from a sales perspective and it’s bad business in the long run.

On the other hand, if you want to start at $50, go ahead. Maybe you’re working at manual labor prices… but you need to consistently raise your rates!

When I first started, I often DOUBLED my prices from one month to the next.

In fact, I once double my rate from $1,000.00 to $2,000.00 without any drop off in work!

Sure, start small and charge less. But treat your clientelle well, stay in touch with them after you finish, and keep raising your rates.

Continue to IMPROVE your skills by reading classic copywriting books like “Tested Advertising Methods” and “How To Write A Good Advertisement.”

Read my blog (http://www.stephensblog.com)

Read Michel Fortin’s blog (http://www.michelfortin.com)

Read Clayton Makepeace’s blog (http://www.makepeacetotalpackage.com)

Whatever you do, don’t keep the same price from one year to the next. It’s like running on a hampster’s wheel. And you’re better than that.

If you want to discover if you’re guilty of committing this Copy Sin, click the link below to watch my free copywriting video.

Click here ->> http://www.stephensblog.com/7copysins

Once when I was a little boy trying on shoes at the mall, the sales lady slipped a shoe on my foot and asked me to tie the laces.

I was pretty young. And very happy that I had learned to tie laces. So I tied them proudly, but apparently not well enough. The lady looked at me and said…

“I said TIE your shoes not go through the ACT of tying them.”

She then undid my laces and retied them extremely tight. (Later after we bought the shoes and left the store, I had to untie the tight laces to let circulation back in to my feet.)

Now, the point of this story isn’t to point out what a witch this woman was for mouthing off to a little boy learning to tie his shoes (or maybe it is… …

…but instead to apply her mean spirited line to the P.S.’s I see these days. Hopefully in a more encouraging way.

It seems when people write their own copy they always add a P.S., probably because they’ve seen others doing it. But they don’t apply effective strategies.

They don’t write a P.S., they go through the ACT of writing a P.S. Which results in valuable real estate being completely wasted.

I’ve written a couple posts on effective strategies for P.S.’s in the past: Here and here.

Read them and use them. But here’s another.

A hidden treasure in your P.S.

The P.S. can sometimes be a great place to reveal for the first time an extra bonus, sales argument or clarification.

An Extra Bonus

You can use a P.S. to thank the visitor for reading the entire letter, and offer a special bonus for buying now. For someone who has read the letter from top to bottom, this might help to push them over the edge and buy.

For someone who has skipped to the bottom of the sales letter, maybe searching for the price, they’ll not only see the extra bonus… they’ll also see you thanking them for reading the entire letter, which might encourage them to actually do so.

Also, since you thanked them for reading the entire letter (which they haven’t done yet), they might feel like they just “gamed the system” and discovered an extra bonus. To reward themselves for being so clever, they may feel an OBLIGATION to buy.

Sales Argument

Sometimes an additional sales argument may fit well in to your first P.S.

My best example of this would be a “Breaking News” type message. If current events have given the customer an extra reason to buy, say that…

“Breaking News: Just last week Gold went up in price by $40! Now may be the perfect time to invest before the gold soars in value.”

Clarification

A while back I wrote sales copy for a product that was guaranteed to make the user cash if they followed the instructions. I didn’t want to make this claim up front, I was afraid guaranteed cash was too unbelievable.

Instead I started off the letter by saying 13 of 14 test subjects made more than $200 from using the product. A seeming admission that 1 person had not made money actually gave the claim credibility.

But the truth was, all 14 people DID make money.

So in the P.S., I made a confession.

“There’s something I need to tell you that I couldn’t reveal earlier. I had said only 13 of 14 people made more than $200 with this product.

“What I didn’t tell you was that the 14th person made $180 using this product with just 3 hours work.

“I was afraid that if I told you this product had a 100% success rate, you wouldn’t believe me. But now that I’ve explained why it works, I’m confident you’re ready to hear that YES, this product does work for everyone.”

This could be the final proof that really puts the reader over the edge and forces them to push the order button.

…

Now that you have three more tools for writing an effective P.S., please do it! Write a P.S. that would make me proud.

If you want, copy and paste your P.S. in to a comment to this post and I’ll critique it.

Good luck!

Remember when I had Click2Mail send me a test postcard for ad campaign? I wrote about it here: Sending Postcards To Advertise Your Product Or Services.

Well it finally showed up yesterday. It took a LONG time…

…because of user error. My fault. I accidentally picked “standard mail” instead of “first class.” Instead of 4-5 days it took 9-15. (And I saved a whopping 11 cents!)

So that’s one mistake I noticed. The other is the graphics program I used to create the postcard.

Microsoft Paint just isn’t going to work! I saved the image I made in paint as a .jpg file, which looked fine until it showed up on a printed postcard. There’s too much noise surrounding the words… as a result of Paint not saving the .jpg at a high enough quality.

It’s possible that Paint might be able to work if I save it with another image format. But whatever…

Instead I’m going with Gimp. This is a free software program that acts a lot like Adobe Photoshop (a great program, but very expensive).

Gimp will be able to make a high quality screenshot and fix my postcard.

One more note. I took the advice to keep all of my content an inch up from the bottom in case the post office put a sticker on the bottom. The postcard did not get a sticker. In fact, I think the “sticker” was printed on the card.

However, I don’t want to risk it unless I need the extra space. So I’ll continue to heed that advice for a while.

I just noticed Perry Belcher created a site based on his order button… a button he says is the most tested order button in Internet history. Check it out…

The Belcher Button

Now compare that to Eric Graham’s Ultimate Submit Button.

The Ultimate Submit Button

Can you see the similarities? What are the differences?

Ok, so we got a few questions. Thanks Tony and Ron!

I’ll be sending both of you guys “The 2 Hour Sales Letter,” “7 Copy Sins,” “Digital Scarcity,” “Tapping Michel Fortin’s Brain,” “Tapping Michel Fortin’s Brain 2,” and a series of videos on increasing email sign-ups from your blog.

Let’s start with the first question…

“Let’s say i want to have a video on my page instead of lots of copy- would you advise this, and would you script it any differently?”

My opinion is to have a bit of both. Because I skim copy when I read it, I’m not a big fan of video-only (because you can’t skim it).

But that’s only my opinion, because I don’t have data on video-only sales pages.

A master copywriter who is a big fan of video-only sales pages is Dr. Harlan Kilstein. Follow him on Twitter and you’ll likely learn more about it: http://twitter.com/drkilstein

“Are there any shortcuts to learning (Muvar 2009)?”

For some stupid reason I haven’t purchased Muvar 2009 yet. I have several copies of 2007 and 2008 so I’ve been using these.

So I don’t know the difference between ‘09 and ‘08. I’ve heard the training videos didn’t change from ‘08 to ‘09, which has left some people confused.

That said, I’m pretty dang good at using ‘08.

Probably the best thing you can do when learning the software is to get familiar with the files inside that “data” folder and how to modify them.

James advises against doing this for an understandable reason. But there are times when I want to have that option. For example, if the variable version is larger than a certain number of kilobytes, Muvar can’t save it via the admin section. You must upload the content via FTP.

“Glyphius is I suspect a good basis for learning copywriting but I still need to ensure that the flow between the paragraphs are natural. It tends to push me into stringing together sentences that don’t sound right when read aloud. Have you any tips for using it?”

Simple, if it sounds awkward throw it out. Don’t sacrifice readability for a higher score, it won’t work.

“OK now for the big one I have tried to raise the price for a product but found the drop in sales meant I was losing money. Obviously I am about to drop them again blaming the credit squeeze and currency variations. Is this a good idea or should I just drop them without a hint of reason to stop people thinking I was desperate for sales.”

I wouldn’t use the credit squeeze as a reason for lowering your prices. That does imply that less people are buying your product… and that’s not good social proof.

Instead give a positive reason. Come up with a reason for a special sale, special offer, anything. Is your birthday coming up? There’s your reason. Anything can work.

But, do you have a lot of repeat visitors to your sales page? Are people going to notice you drop or raise your prices? You may not have to mention it at all.

And I’d recommend testing your prices using Muvar. Put several different price points in there, make sure you give the proper credit to each sale, and see which price is the most profitable.

Before I write copy, I send all of my clients a questionnaire. The questions I ask are based on 5 years of experience writing copy for clients.

The posts below reveal the questions I ask and why:

My Copywriting Questionnaire, Question #1

My Copywriting Questionnaire, Questions #2 And #3

My Copywriting Questionnaire, Questions #4, #5 and #6

My Copywriting Questionnaire, Question #7

My Copywriting Questionnaire, Question #8

My Copywriting Questionnaire, Question #9

My Copywriting Questionnaire, Question #10