Rich Schefren is always sharing good information for free. You can get his latest “Phrases That Keep Attention” from his blog. No cost and no registration required.

If you’re looking for a swipe file with complete sales letter templates you should check out Yanik Silver’s classic Instant Sales Letters.

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It is no secret that most Internet Marketing strategies and tactics have been used successfully for decades in the offline Direct Marketing (DM) world. With email deliverability and click through rates steadily declining online marketers are looking for new ways to reach customers. Again, old fashioned DM comes to the rescue.

One of the Internet marketers who has been very successful in combining online and offline campaigns is Russell Brunson. If you haven’t done so already you should download his IM-Myth report and read it for inspiration. True to the message of the report there is a one time offer after you sign up for the free download where you are “bribed” to also part with your physical mailing address.

You have probably received dozens of emails from various marketers urging you to download the report from their affiliate link. Even though the report was free, Russel Brunson paid out $1 per download to the referrer. This list building technique was pioneered online by Scott Boulch and his Death of AdSense reports. (Note that this part of the campaign is over, my link above is not an affiliate link.) Of course Russell Brunson didn’t pay out over $50k just to build an email list.

Earlier this week the other shoe dropped with the launch of the 12 Month Internet Millionaire. This is a recording of a 6 hour coaching phone call Russell Brunson had with Vincent James about 1.5 years ago. I had never heard of Vincent James before, but he claims to have made over $100 million in 23 months. So he seems like a guy worth listening to. Here are some of the things you will learn from the 12 Month Internet Millionaire recording:

Memberships

• Sell memberships to get access to wholesales or distributor prices. It’s much easier to sell an annual $40 membership than to compete on price with all the other companies selling the same commodity product.

Autoship

• Get the customer to agree to locking in a discounted price and send them the same order every month. Make it sound like an exclusive club – a benefit to the customer. (Worked for dietary supplements.)
• With monthly recurring billing people often just tell their credit card company that they don’t want to pay anymore instead of calling the seller. Then this will be a chargeback on the sellers credit card merchant account. If the chargeback percentage is too high you risk loosing your merchant account. To prevent this they included a cancellation coupon in the second or third shipment.
• For information products you can sell a CD with interviews for $1 and then send the customer a new CD each month for $39

Direct Mail

• There are three types of mailing lists, in order of responsiveness: buyers lists, subscribers lists from magazines and compiled lists from warranty cards, questionnaires, etc.
• Check usage reports on mailing lists before you buy. You want to see a high percentage of customers who have continued to use that list over time.
• Don’t waste your time on small lists. It takes just as much effort to test 1,000 names on a small list as it does for a large list. If the test is successful you want to have a large well to go back to for more names.
• Use a list broker. It will save you time and effort, and it doesn’t cost you anything.
• The best pulling envelope has a simulated handwritten address in blue ink, a first class stamp, a return address sticker, all on a standard OfficeMax envelope.
• Postcards are good for offers of a well-known products and you’re solely competing on price. Or if you’re just driving traffic to your web site.

Life Time Value of Your Customer

• In the direct mail world you have to know the lifetime value of your customers, because a good campaign will break even on the front-end offer. Therefore you need a series of back-end offers, which together make up the lifetime value of the customer. Since online campaigns are practically free you don’t have to be so stringent with calculating the lifetime value of your customers. But there is a huge upside and profit potential if you do.

Copywriting

• Simple copywriting tips:
  • be excited about the product you’re about to write a sales letter for
  • tell a story in the first person
  • become an actor and get into the role of the target customer
  • use a swipe file
• The four reasons why people don’t buy:
  • they don’t know your offer – you’re not very good at getting attention
  • the don’t want it – you’re targeting the wrong list
  • they can’t afford it or they can’t justify the price you’re at
  • they don’t believe you
• A quick trick to increase the response rate once in a while: Run the usual ad that’s just breaking even and add a new headline above it that says this is the ad that we had to cancel last month since we sold out so fast.

Call Centers

• To jumpstart your own call center script, call and order another successful product and record/transcribe the conversation with their call center.
• If a call center charges 80 cents per minute and your script is 10 minutes, that means you’re paying $8 just to take the order. Offer a bonus for ordering from your web site to reduce the number of incoming phone calls and thereby reduce your costs.

Magazines

• For magazine ads use an editorial style layout. Make it look like the magazine it’s running in.
• Right hand pages have better response than left hand pages. Specify RHP when you place your ad, even if they can’t guarantee it. Place your cut out coupon in the lower right hand corner to make it obvious that the ad should go on a right page, since it’s difficult to cut out a coupon if it’s in the gutter.
• For magazine circulation you should look at paid copies sold and preferably numbers audited by ABC.
• Don’t waste money on brand advertisements; it’s just traditional institutional advertiser justifying worthless ads.

Competitors

• When you find something that works run with it as fast as you can before people start knocking off your campaign and your product. Run all types of media in parallel.
• If you find advertisements of knockoffs of your product talk to the magazine and pay to become the exclusive advertiser for your type of product.
• Establish credibility over your competitors.

Expand What Works

• Sell what’s already selling.
• When you’re successful with direct mail, start magazine advertising to reach more prospects and then to radio and ultimately TV.
• If you’re successfully marketing only on the Internet then you are not fully exploiting the market.

Testing and Tracking

• Test the big things: headline, price, envelopes, lists.
• Use different 800 numbers for every advertisement. That way you know how many orders each ad or list generated.
• Alternatively have the phone operator ask the customer where they saw the ad.
• For mail in coupons add a code to the address, e.g. a department code of CD6 could be Car and Driver June issue.
  If the coupon was cut out from a magazine you can just look at the back of the coupon to determine which magazine it came from.
• For online order you can have a drop down where the customer selects which magazine they saw your ad in. But that is not so good for competitive reasons. Better is to have a different landing page for each ad.
• Track the response for every ad for every issue and keep running them until they no longer make money. If your ad is really good it could be sucking out prospects faster than the magazine brings in new customer. In that case no amount of tweaking the ad will increase the response.

Technology

• Here’s an interesting tidbit that blew me away: The customer database Vincent James used to run his $100 million dietary supplement business was Microsoft Excel with some add-on macros.

The 12 Month Internet Millionaire audio files are good if you want to listen on the go or in your car. But if you’re like me and you can read much faster than most people speak you will appreciate that a complete transcript is included as well. Unlike most audio transcripts that I’ve seen lately, this one actually seems to have been proofread, although there are some blanks where presumably the audio was skipping. However it’s way too verbose at 197 pages. Vincent James has a very conversational way of speaking and every “you know” is captured in the transcript.

I just learned that the 12 Month Internet Millionaire product has became the #1 best seller on ClickBank. This surprises me a bit, since this is definitely not a products for beginners – there are no step-by-step instructions. The products contains tons of good ideas that can give you inspiration for both your online and offline business. And if you enjoy reading and learning about marketing it’s definitely a good read. You can find more information here.

If you decide to look at the sales page I’d like to give you a warning: I think it grossly oversells the product. It has very little to do with Internet business and a whole lot with direct mail and other offline marketing techniques. If you are interested in the topics listed above in this post, then this product will appeal to you. If you’re just looking to become an Internet millionaire in 12 months, then this is not the golden ticket.

If you enjoy reading in-depth reviews like this one, please let me know in a comment below. And don’t forget to sign up to the RSS feed or the email notification list so you will be notified of the next one.

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1. Select a topic you’re passionate about

Writing a book is hard work and you’re going to spend a lot of time writing. So you’d better make it as enjoyable as you can by selecting a topic that you like. Sure you can write something just for the money – ghostwriters do it all the time. But your passion, or lack thereof, will show through in your writing.

Thinking about the money you’ll make from the book can be great motivator or an inhibitor when you’re writing. Robert Allen once said that based on his previous books’ performance he knew that he was going to make $20 (don’t recall the exact amount) for every word that he wrote. So to him it was a joy writing every word. Douglas Adams on the other hand knowing how much money he’d earned from the Hitchhiker series agonized over every word he had to write. Because if it was worth so much, people expected every word to be very, very good.

2. Schedule time for writing

Writing a book is a large project and as with any large project it’s easy to put off taking the first step or getting sidetracked during the project. Therefore schedule 2 hours every day for your writing. It’s hard to be productive for longer stretches than 2 hours at a time. If you’re on a tight deadline, schedule multiple 2 hour block during the day with significant breaks in between. But don’t stop just because your timer says your 2 hours are up if you’re in a groove and your writing is just flowing, Conversely, and more importantly, don’t stop before your 2 hours are up because you’re struggling with the words that day. Every writer struggles some/most days, and if you start making excuses for why you don’t feel like writing today, then you will never finish the book.

Find a time during the day when you’re most productive at writing. For me it’s in the morning after I drop off my son at daycare and before I read any email or get engaged in the daily work of running a business. Tim Ferriss prefers 12 – 4 in the mornings. Find what works best for you and stick to it every day. During this time slot you isolate yourself: no phone calls, no emails, no Internet, no interruptions whatsoever.

3. Research first, write later

The Internet is a great tool for doing research, but it’s also an endless well of information. Before you embark on a new chapter in your book do all the necessary research to gather the information you need for that chapter. Set at limit on how much time you’re going to spend on the research. When you’re done, disconnect from the Internet before you start writing.

If you’re constantly switching between writing and looking up things on the Internet you lose your focus and your writing mojo. Should you find that you need some additional information just make a note in your text to get the exact quote from that famous person, or to research a specific topic further. The important thing is to keep moving forward, to keep that text flowing.

4. Write rough, edit later

Don’t struggle to find the exact words that perfectly convey your idea. Write the first words that come to mind. Don’t worry about spelling or perfect grammar, just keep the words coming. When all the writing is done you will go through the text many times to edit, improve, proofread; repeat. That magic word you spent so much time finding and committing to paper may not work in the larger context.

One of my favorite words is automagically. Since it’s not a real word it should be used very sparingly. My editor pointed out that I had used it 13 times in my book. You only get that perspective after all the text is written and you go through it again with an editor’s mindset.

Speaking of my book…

If you have an iPhone you want this book. The iPhone is a wonderful product with a gorgeous user interface, but it’s a first generation product. This book will help you get around some of the rough edges, discover many of the hidden features and make you more productive. It is chock full of tips and tricks; I guarantee that you will learn something new.

Sign up to my notification list on this web page. You can’t miss it – there’s a big hand pointing to it.

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There is just one little problem: Ken hasn’t written his book yet! Maybe he took this preselling concept a little too far…

I’ve written many reports and ebooks so I know that writing a full length book is a lot of work, at least it is for me. So I would feel under pressure and be a bit worried if I was in Ken’s shoes. When I’m embarking on a new venture where I have no prior experience I always try to find a good mentor who’s already successful at what I’m trying to accomplish. For his book writing project Ken has engaged one of the best in the business: Glenn Dietzel and his team from Awaken the Author Within. They are confident that Ken will be able to write a bestselling book in just 12 hours.

12 hours for a hundred pages is 8 pages per hour, or about 30 words per minute. Whoa! That’s half the speed of a good typist doing clerical work. Ken has not only have to type this fast, but presumably also put some thought into what he is writing. I’ve got to see how this system works! At that speed I could crank out 10 long posts per day for this blog…

Ken has invited me (and you) to watch over his shoulder as he’s writing his book. You will learn the tips and tricks Glenn and his team use to make Ken a bestselling author in record time. If you’re doing any amount of writing this could be a very interesting and educational journey to watch. Ken is a big and generous man, but there is limited space to watch over his shoulder. You can sign up for a spot at www.BooksMeanCredibility.com

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Terry Dean dispenses similar advice in his Monthly Mentor Club Newsletter: After you have done all your research, but before you start writing, take a break and let your subconscious work on the problem for a while.

While I’m by no means in the same league as Terry or the copywriting professionals at AWAI, I use a similar technique for my blog posts. I prefer to write using a nice pen and old fashioned paper. And since I have the great fortune to live in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, I work outdoors as much as possible; inspired by the sounds of nature.

My handwriting is much slower than my typing, so it gives me extra time to think about what I’m writing. Also I don’t worry about spelling, URLs, checking quotes and facts at this point. I just let the text flow. Then I let it sit for an hour, or a couple of days before I type it into my computer. Later as I’m reading and typing, I typically make significant improvements to the text.

Writing while offline also has the great benefit of minimizing distractions. As Matt says, it’s amazing the amount of work you can get done when you’re disconnected from the Internet.

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The user interface of Glyphius 2007 is identical to Glyphius 2.0; the only difference is in the data. So let’s examine how big the differences are.

First here are some well known positive power words:

Analysis: All these positive words have a decreased score in 2007, some quite a dramatic decrease. Glyphius staples such as guarantee, guaranteed and discover have each lost over 70 points. I wonder if Glyphius is registering an effect caused by Glyphius itself: 2006 was the first year that Glyphius was in widespread use. Many marketers used it to improve their sales copy using well known positive words. Some of these marketers were undoubtedly not successful with their products or promotions. This would be picked up in the 2006 data and cause the scores to decrease.

And then some negative words:

Analysis: No major changes here. I find it a bit surprising that video is even more negative in 2007. With all the Web 2.0 and year of the video hype going on, I though the word video would have a more positive score. Or maybe that’s exactly why…

Since Glyphius really scores tokens which are generally smaller than words, then just comparing scores for lists of words will not tell the full story. So let’s compare some headlines. These are the current winning headlines from James Brausch’s Copywriting Champion of the World contest:

Mathematically Validate Salesletters Using One-Click Statistical Software That Compares The Copy With Historically Profitable Ads… Guaranteed!
Glyphius 2.0 score: 664
Glyphius 2007 score: 506

Magic Software Scores Your Copywriting For Profitability By Comparing It To 1,000’s of Profitable Ads… Results 100% Guaranteed!
Glyphius 2.0 score: 651
Glyphius 2007 score: 562

“My Jaw Dropped When I Realized the Freakin’ Point and Click Copywriting Software Just Increased My Sales by 893%!” – Bobby Griggs, satisfied client of Glyphius
Glyphius 2.0 score: 355
Glyphius 2007 score: 200

Breakthrough Software Challenges Hopeful Marketers to Explore Overlooked Writing Talents in only 3 simple hours instead of 3 miserable weeks.
Glyphius 2.0 score: 581
Glyphius 2007 score: 454

Discover The Freaking Awesome Copywriting Software That Can Dramatically Boost Cash Flow By 301.21% Or More… Completely Guaranteed!
Glyphius 2.0 score: 1001
Glyphius 2007 score: 843

CAN A COMPUTER BEAT A COPYWRITER? “Impossible!” Said One of the World’s Top Copywriters Until He Got His Butt Whipped By An Uncanny New Software Program Called “Glyphius!”
Glyphius 2.0 score: 384
Glyphius 2007 score: 276

Analysis: The scores for Glyphius 2007 are overall lower, but only in one case does the order of the results change between 2.0 and 2007.

To complete the analysis here are the 100 most common words in English. These 100 words make up about 50% of all written material in English.

21 of the top 100 words had their score changed by 30 points or more. Interestingly their scores all decreased. Overall only 13 words had their score increase with Glyphius 2007. Analysis: Avoid common words in 2007?!

The source of these lists of common words is Wikipedia.

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Glyphius 2.0 is available as a standalone downloadable product for $135. Here’s a screenshot of Glyphius 2.0:

Glyphius 1.0 and 2.0 use the same database and will produce the exact same score for words and phrases you enter. The only difference is in the user interface, as you can see from the screenshots above. Notable improvements in 2.0 are:

• The box where you enter your text to score is significantly larger.
• A history box where you see the texts you’ve entered along with their scores.
• A negative words box where words from your text with a negative score are shown.
• The number of characters in the text you’ve entered is shown.

Glyphius 2007 is only available as a physical product for $185. The data has been updated for 2006, whereas 1.0 and 2.0 use data from 2005. The user interface for 2007 is presumably the same as for 2.0. When I receive my copy of Glyphius 2007 I will post a full review here.

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Statistical copywriting should be used on any text that is meant to sell. An obvious application is sales letters and online sales pages. Be sure to test and compare each section of the sales page separately, e.g. headline, product description, closing paragraph. Here are some other applications of statistical copywriting.

General Vocabulary

When I was writing this I was struggling with some general terms: Should it be called a tutorial, an e-course or eCourse or maybe e-classes? And should each part be called a part, a lesson, a class or maybe an installment? Here are the scores that decided the terminology:
tutorial – Score: 109
e-course – Score: 21
eCourse – Score: 23
e-classes – Score: 2
part – Score: 74
lession – Score: 59
class – Score: 4
installment – Score: 119

Call to Action

At the end of your sales letter you need a call to action so that the prospect clicks on your order link or performs some other action. Consider the following real examples from around the web:
Click here to order – Score: 172
Click here to order now – Score: 89
Click to order securely – Score: 209
Order ACME software: $105 – Score: 293
Click Here For FREE Access! – Score: 131
Click Here Right NOW To Try ACME – Score: 79
Click Here Right NOW To Try ACME, Before This Marketing Test Offer Is Closed – Score: 222

Another example: If your web site has a form where visitors can sign up to your mailing list you should analyze the wording very carefully, including the text on the submit button. The default from your autoresponder service is probably “Submit”. However this scores a very low 14. A much better wording is “Sign Up!” which scores 141. In a split test this change alone doubled the opt-in rate, confirming the Glyphius scoring.

Email and Forum Posting Titles

Another implicit call to action is the subject or title of emails and forum postings. Your first goal is to get the reader to open the email or click on the forum posting to read the rest of your message. This is a perfect application for statistical copywriting.

Domain Names

Before I selected a domain name for this tutorial I ran many names through Glyphius to see how they scored. Here are some of the results:
StatisticalCopywriting.com – Score: 367
StatisticalCopywriting.org – Score: 364
CopywritingTutorial.com – Score: 343
Copywriting101.com – Score: 330
ProfitableCopywriting.com – Score: 276

There is another tool made by the same author as Glyphius which is specifically intended to score domain names and URLs. It is called Nemeas and the interface is as simple as Glyphius. Just enter a list of URLs to score and the keyword to score them for. Here are the results for the keyword “copywriting”:
StatisticalCopywriting.com – Score: 185
StatisticalCopywriting.org – Score: 125
CopywritingTutorial.com – Score: 237
Copywriting101.com – Score: 247
ProfitableCopywriting.com – Score: 202

Why the difference in the order the domain names were ranked by the two tools? Glyphius scores against profitable ads and sales copy, while Nemeas scores against Google search engine ranking factors. Both are important. Before running the numbers, my original intent was to use StatisticalCopywriting.org (dot com is already taken). But the best combination of the two is CopywritingTutorial.com, and that gives me a broader scope should I want to evolve this site beyond strict statistical copywriting.

Prices

When you’re introducing a new product one of the most difficult decisions is to set the price. Why not run the numbers through Glyphius?
$35 – Score: 38
$37 – Score: 8
$39 – Score: 19
$40 – Score: 17
$45 – Score: 18
$47 – Score: -12
$49 – Score: -1
$55 – Score: 12
$65 – Score: 26
$97 – Score: -14

Makes you wonder about all those $47 and $97 products…

Articles

If you’re using articles to market your web site (you should!) then you know the importance of the article title and the resource box at the end of the article. If the title is not compelling enough then people won’t even click on it to begin reading. The resource box is your chance to show your URL and entice the reader to come to your site. Don’t send out any articles without optimizing these two important elements.

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Surprisingly, I found myself in the company of several very big name copywriters who also use the same software to complement their creativity. Here are some quotes that I found around the web.

First off, I have thoroughly enjoyed using Glyphius, because you have turned my headline writing into a “video game” of sorts.

Let me explain… once I find a fairly strong headline (a headline that Glyphius scores 500 or better), I do everything I can to beat my high score! It’s become somewhat of a game for me to try and “top” myself. And so, if I got nothing more from Glyphius than the motivation to best my latest headline – I have gotten tons of value.

But it doesn’t stop at the headline. For the past 2 months I have used Glyphius to write superheads (eyebrows), subheads, opening paragraphs, closing paragraphs, PS’s, and everything inbetween!

And I love the challenge that Glyphius presents to me every time I turn the thing on.

- Brian Keith Voiles

We can use Glyphius to not just come up with the most winning headline. We can come up with maybe five of the top ones. That gives you something to work with. Go out and test those headlines. Don’t take it for gospel. [...] I think Glyphius is an extraordinary tool.

- Michel Fortin in an interview with James Brausch

If you haven’t yet read Michel’s thought-provoking report “The Death of The Sales Letter” you should download it now. Although the title follows a tired trend of “The Death of …” reports, the content is top notch.

Clients don’t pay us for our creativity. They expect measurable results for their marketing investment. Copy tools like Glyphius help us do just that. Get a copy and test it on your own copy and promotional campaigns. Remember, when you maximize your clients’ results, you maximize your own rewards!

- Roberta Rosenberg, “The Copywriting Maven”

Glyphius is a simple-to-use piece of Windows software that allows you to statistically calibrate your writing against a huge database of successful ad copy. In other words, the software is like a massive automated swipe file that lets you see the effect (good or bad) of using certain words in the specific context you are writing about.

Based on my own use of the software, I’m joining in on the chorus of praise.

- Brian Clark

Brian has 10 excellent lessons on Copywriting 101. This is essential reading if you’re a beginner copywriter. No registration is required to read the lessons, but while you’re there I would encourage you to subscribe to his Copyblogger blog. Good stuff!

I took the Glyphius tool and reworked the sales copy on one of my sites that was currently pulling about an 8% opt-in rate for my free email course. After reworking it, the opt-in rate jumped to 15%.

I have seen an increase in each sales letter that I’ve reworked with Glyphius.

- Michael Humphreys

Michael has a nice blog at www.CopywritingProductReviews.com where he gives his honest opinion about copywriting products he has purchased.

I typed in a headline and let the software test it. It supposedly looks at your headline and compares it to a huge database of tested words, phrases, and other headlines. If you scored low, you change your headline with a word or two, or some punctuation, and test it again. You keep trying to create a headline or sentence with a higher score.

This was fascinating. I became addicted to “the game” of seeing if I could improve my headline. I was learning as I went along, too.

- Dr. Joe Vitale (”Mr. Fire!”)

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Statistical copywriting will not write text for you and has no understanding of the meaning of any text. You need to come up with the initial sales copy and then use a statistical copywriting tool like Glyphius to optimize it. Let’s walk through the process step by step.

1. Write your initial text

You know the product or service you want to sell. Write the sales copy as best as you can to convey the benefits. As a beginning copywriter this initial text is likely to have a conversion rate of less than 1%. After optimizing it using this process you should be able to achieve 2-3% conversion.

For this example we’re going to write a Google AdWords ad. Here’s our initial text:

Stuck Writing Copy?
Use software that has learned from
the masters. Free 5-day e-course.
www.CopywritingTutorial.com

2. Break the text down into parts

While you can score your entire text at once, it’s much more efficient to break down the text into parts and score each part individually. For our AdWords ad the 3 parts would be:

• Headline
• Main text
• URL

3. Optimize each part

Using Glyphius to score different variations of each part of the ad we came up with:

Headlines:

• stuck writing copy? – Score: 228
• copywriting is hard – Score: 230
• automated copywriter – Score: 57
• copywriter in a box – Score: 50
• discover copywriter tool – Score: 125
• check your copywriting – Score: 196
• get an edge writing copy – Score: 153
• compare copywriters – Score: 268
• compare copywriting – Score: 367
• compare good copywriting – Score: 377

Main text alternatives with scores:

• Use software that has learned from the masters. Free 5-day e-course. – Score: 155
• Use software that has learned from the masters. Free 5-day tutorial. – Score: 227
• Use software that has learned from the masters. Complimentary tutorial – Score: 341

Here are some scores for the URL.

The display ULR in AdWords ads does not have to be the same as the URL where the prospect is sent when she clicks on the ad. Therefore you should definitely optimize the URL that is displayed.

• www.CopywritingTutorial.com – Score: 344
• CopywritingTutorial.com – Score: 343
• www.CopywritingTutorial.com/free – Score: 272
• www.CopywritingTutorial.com/signup – Score: 378

4. Human review

The most important part of this process is the human review. Even if you manage to get a very high scoring headline it will not generate any sales if it’s just gibberish to a human. Double-check that it still has the meaning you want to convey. And read it out loud to ensure that the text flows smoothly.

5. Keep top 2 or 3

Statistical copywriting does not replace testing; it’s a complement and a great way to discover what to test. (More on this in a later installment of the tutorial.)

Google AdWords makes it very easy to do split testing: just enter the different versions of the ad and select the setting to show the most effective ad (higher click through rate) more often. If you take all combinations of the top 2 or 3 scoring headlines, main texts and URLs you will end up with between 8 and 27 ad variations to test.

Next installment of the tutorial

In the next installment of this tutorial you will discover who uses statistical copywriting. You may be surprised to see some of the big name copywriters on the list…

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Swipe Files

A technique used by both beginner and professional copywriters is called a swipe file. The principle is to save good headlines and sales copy that you come across in a file. When you write new copy you look at your swipe file for inspiration. You obviously cannot copy other writers work verbatim, but for finding inspiration and powerful words it’s a great technique.

One problem with collecting material for your swipe file is to know if the text that you are saving turned out to be profitable or not for the company who originally used it. If you start writing your next sales letter using material that did not result in any sales to begin with, then it is not likely that you will make many sales either.

Statistical copywriting takes existing copy that has been categorized as profitable or non-profitable and uses statistical analysis to find words, parts of words, punctuation and numbers that occur more frequently in profitable copy than in non-profitable copy. With this statistical knowledge it is possible to assign a score to any text that you enter. A higher score means that your text is more like sales copy that is known to be profitable.

What is Profitable?

However the problem of determining if a particular piece of sales copy if profitable or not, remains. If you have any relationship with the company using the sales copy you may find out that way. Or if the person who wrote the text is a big name copywriter, then it’s more likely that the result is profitable than not. Another way to solve this problem is to collect data over a longer period of time. It is a fairly safe assumption that if a company pays for the same ad week after week in the classifieds section of a newspaper or on Google AdWords, then that ad is profitable. You can start doing this right now within your niche since you are already keeping an eye on your competitors.

Thanks to the Internet and all the publicly available online advertisements it is possible to collect data on a much grander scale. 100,000 pieces of sales copy over a period of 12 months would create a nice database. Then it’s just a mathematical problem to analyze the data.

Check Out This Video

It should not surprise you that this massive data collection has already been done. Here’s a video that shows the end result of that study: play video

Next Part of the Tutorial

In the next part of this tutorial you will learn how to apply statistical copywriting, step by step, in your work.

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