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Aspiring copywriters, you’re getting it wrong!

The P.S. is a widely known tactic when writing a sales letter. I’ve done countless copy critiques for product owners who write their own copy… and they almost always have a P.S.

What that usually means is that they’ve seen others doing it and assume it works.

Is that a logical assumption? Yes.

Especially since Michel Fortin and Eric Graham use them consistently, and they test everything.

There’s another avid tester who does NOT use them, however. That’s James Brausch (or Diego Norte).

I assume he doesn’t use them because either 1) he finds it a little unethical to pretend like you forgot to say something in the message, or 2) he hasn’t found them to work.

James often tests different parts of the sales letter against “nothingness.” Meaning some visitors might come to his sales letter and see the PS sections, while other visitors would come to his sales letter would not be able to see the PS section.

And whichever version of the letter gets the most sales wins.

My guess is that if James did test PS’s, he found them to hurt sales. That would match my test results with PS’s written by non-copywriters.

In my experience, if you’re new to copywriting you might as well just leave the PS section out. Most tests I run with other people’s copy, the PS is either beat or statistically tied by the blank variable. In fact, that’s been the case with every test for other people’s copy.

Sometimes the PS is actually far behind the blank variable, meaning the PS was actually hurting sales. So if you’re a beginner, you might as well just leave them out.

The PS’s I write do often convincingly beat the blank variable. I employ these “3 Quick Rules” for writing the PS section, and they work when done right.

I’m 25 and am trying not to “settle down.” Most people I know think the only rational thing to do is get married, buy a house and live there the rest of your life.

These are also the people who told me I’d never find a good job unless I went to college. (And they were right! Thank goodness.)

I certainly don’t see a problem with getting married or buying a house… but buying only one house in one location and staying there forever doesn’t appeal to me. That’s some peoples dream, but not mine.

Right now it’s easy to move a lot, because at 25 I haven’t taken on many responsibilities. In August I’ll be moving for the 4th time in about 2 years.

This makes it difficult to keep a regular mailing address. That’s why I was happy to see James Brausch recommend a solution: http://www.earthclassmail.com

EarthClassMail assigned me a street address in Seattle to use as my mailing address. Now I’m switching all my mail over to this address, and when it arrives, I get an email alerting me.

I click a link and am taken to their website where I see a scanned image of the mail. This way I can see what it is and who it’s from. From there I can ask them to shred it… or open it, scan the contents so I can see it, and then shred it. Or ship it to the address that I’m currently staying at.

That’s fantastic! What a great solution. This is one service I’ll be using for quite some time to further increase my freedom.

Many of you know that I’m training my sister, Rebecca at MissCopy.com to write copy. Her training is coming along nicely and she has also become a big fan of my copy consultant, Michel Fortin.

She reads his blog regularly and will often argue about my criticism’s of her work using lines she takes from Michel’s articles. Talk about a backfire!

Anyway, regarding the “goes nuts” part of this article… Recently I was talking to her on the phone while looking at her blog. She has a widget in the sidebar (like I do) that shows the latest members of MyBlogLog.com that have visited her blog. I saw Michel’s picture in her widget so I stated…

“Oh, Michel Fortin just visited your blog.”

And then there was silence…

Ok, that’s not correct. First there was a scream, “WHAT!!!!!” Then I heard a kerplunk, which I assume was the phone dropping… and THEN I heard silence.

When my sister finally came back to talk to little ol’ me, she was elated. That’s what a MyBlogLog.com widget can do for you.

They really are quite fun, add community to your blog, and have been a decent source of traffic for me. I highly recommend signing up for MyBlogLog.com and then joining my reader community. It’s probably the best way to get me to check out your blog.

I just noticed an interesting post at Terry Dean’s blog. He shares a Jay Abraham video that discusses doing market research on Amazon.com. I do this too.

Essentially every book title can be viewed as a headline. Most non-fiction books also have subheads. In fact, many non-fiction books also have bullet copy you can look at.

I was also glad to see how Jay uses the site to collect information. He reminded me to check out user reviews to find out what matters to the customer. This is extremely valuable. And probably even more so than the cover copy.

That’s because there are so many variables that can make a book a bestseller other than cover copy. A great title may help book sales, but if you have your own TV show the chances of making the top seller’s list is much greater. And that’s not all…

Michel Fortin wrote to me in greater detail about some of the drawbacks of Amazon.com for market research… and some ways around it. Here’s the email:

Amazon is a different beast, in that there are WAY too many variables do to any kind of research that’s statistically significant. For example, Amazon sells a lot using suggestive selling, monthly specials, affiliate marketing, etc. It would be impossible to determine the validity of a book’s copy when so many other factors are at play, here.

But that said, there are certain ways around it. If the book listed is fairly new, then suggestive selling and affiliate marketing are new and probably non-existent, too. If top-sellers are new, then the copy may play a role.

But sometimes, you also have to look at affiliate marketing. Many top sellers, who are new, have an affiliate machine in place. (How many times have you seen contests or campaigns by top marketers who are trying to get their books onto Amazon’s top seller list? Many, I know.)

So you might want to do a bit of digging, first.

What’s cool is to determine if book sales DO come from affiliate marketers, and then check out what those marketers are doing, what copy they’re using, what traffic they are driving, etc to extract some valuable nuggets.

And on those sites proper, do some digging to see what kind of rankings they have or keywords they use—and using tools like Quantcast, Alexa, Compete.com, SpyFu, etc.

Thanks for requesting updates for my blog! But you’re not done. A confirmation email is being sent to your inbox right now. When you confirm, not only will you stay updated, I’ll give you my Split Test software free!

I post often so you should be hearing from me soon. You’ll find copywriting tips, money makin’ tips, success tips and more. Just look at the categories on the left to browse through past articles.