ComHacker.org

by Patricia Mayo

Believe it or not, there are actually quite a few truly useful things sold by those 10 mile long sales letters (with the distinct exception of “make money online” information products). Not all products promoted in such ways are crap - and thinking that way is just the coward’s way out.

Original Photo by Steve Woods

However, in order to fully understand whether you’re being sold a rip-off or a real resource, you need to know the full-on ins and outs of sales letter marketing.

It will take some practice before you’re good at reading between the lines, and I’m sure some deceitful marketer is going to read this and revise their marketing - but I’m going to have a go at making this as bullet-proof as I can.

Why a Sales Letter?

When a telemarketer interrupts your dinner, they’re calling with a script in front of them. When a sweaty dude with a cart of encyclopedias behind him rings your doorbell, his spiel is scripted. Anyone and everyone who works in sales uses “tried and true” methods of selling.

That 10 mile sales letter is basically just a written interpretation of age-old sales practices. Pros in the industry call the method “greased chute” - you can’t argue with the sales letter, it just tells you about the product in a formulaic way to get you to buy. Much like a car salesman.

I would agree that there are definitely far less questionable methods of selling online, but sales letters still work - and most people don’t care to look past them.

Depending on your target audience, sales letters can have an extremely profound conversion rate. Think about it - the first time you bought a car, you fell for the salesman’s pushing, didn’t you?

Eventually you learned how to manipulate the system to your advantage. Nevertheless, sales letters are great at blind-siding the ignorant casual web surfer.

Three Methods of Development

Obviously, being a copywriter, I opened myself up to a lot of schmucks. Nowadays though, I think the schmuck grape vine has a whisper warning all schmucks not to contact me (they apparently don’t like having a new a-hole - who knew?)

1. One Man Bandstand: Some guy had a great idea, then wrote the book / program and the sales letter. You have about a 70 / 30 shot this guy is actually honest, and these are the easiest to spot.
2. Hired Mercenary: Some guy found a market, then hired a copywriter to write the book and sales letter - often times depending entirely upon the copywriter to know the subject. I’ve seen gigs for things like “write a 25 page ebook on being successful on eBay” with absolutely ZERO tips or resources from the client. These are the trickiest to read through, and you have a 5% chance this is honest.
3. Outsourced to “Smart People”: Some guy had a good idea, probably wrote or rebranded the book or program, then hired someone else to take care of the things he’s not so good at. Maybe he hired someone else to go through the book and perfect it. Here you have about a 60 / 40 shot this is a good deal.

Dead Giveaways

There are certain hallmarks of an amateur and True Pro you can use to pick a winner. You still have to read through the copy to make sure, but think of it as a point system. The more points you have at the end, the more likely it is you’re getting the real deal.

• Nails-On-Chalkboard Horrible Design: +20 points. You know what I’m talking about - animated graphics EVERYWHERE (not to mention their caps lock button must have been stuck), clashing colors, broken code, the works. This is a site made by the source - and he’s a lot less likely to be in this biz purely for the money.
• Tried But Failed Design: -20 points. Basically they used a template and stuck a bunch of stuff inside it which broke the alignment and formatting. Why negative points? Chances are, they know just enough to be dangerous - the “internet marketing initiated.” They had to get those templates from somewhere, and most likely bought the templates and rebrandable PLR product without doing much editing.
• WOW This is Pretty: -50 points / +50 points. I’m talking SUPERB design here - original, flashy, well formatted, really sweet graphics, etc. Someone has a lot of money to sink into this sales letter - buyer beware! If the product is more than $1,000, add points. If it’s less than that, subtract points.
• The “Who Cares?” Headline: +10 points. If the headline is awful (i.e. you couldn’t read it aloud in one breath or it isn’t terribly compelling), you’re most likely reading sales letter straight from the horse’s mouth.
• “Well That’s New” Headline: +30 points. In a nutshell if it uses totally different words than you have seen before, you’re probably going to get what they promise.
• Something is Missing Here: +50 points. No auto-loading audio or video? No fly-in information capturing window? In fact, no email input form before you can see the sales page? Nothing stopping you from just closing the window on first click? No standard 30 day money back guarantee? You probably have the real deal. He who walks to the beat of his own drum probably knows what the heck he’s doing with something genuinely useful to sell.
• That’s Not Normal: +100 points. If it’s a program, can you get tutorials on how to use it now and for free? Maybe up-front diagrams on how to use it? Do they give you a phone number? Can you try it absolutely free with $0 up front? If they do everything they can to be as transparent as possible, they are almost definitely honest.
• Private Label Rights / Resell Rights: -30 points. 99.999% of the time, if they are offering the ability to duplicate something, you can probably get it or the information to build it for free somewhere else online. If they aren’t being very transparent about what they’re selling, it will be harder to find that information, but look around anyways - just keep in mind that info is probably buried quite well.
• Ten Miles of Bonuses Worth Hundreds: -30 points. When you’re getting a huge list of “bonuses” - you know what all those books are? Rejects. Either the marketer just wants to use up all the crap on his hard drive, or he has a bunch of “partners” who gave him a bunch of crap to promote with his product because - guess what? They put links in those ebooks to bring you to their site so you could buy their useless POS. The marketer selling something with a ten mile long list of bonuses is no better than the “tried but failed design” guy - except he knows a little more, and is thus a lot more dangerous.
• Short List of Bonuses: +50 points. On the other hand, the marketer with a short list of bonuses either doesn’t have enough crap to unload on you (highly unlikely!), or they were actually picky. Most likely they were picky about their bonuses - and if they’re picky about their bonuses, they did their best to give you a good product.
• Graphical Proof of Income / Results: -20 points. If anything, you should at least ignore it. Anything digital can be doctored.

Run - It’s a SCAM!

• Make money processing orders: You’re basically buying that template website so you can sell the template website. Yes, people fall for this - including me many years ago, because I swear I must have been the most naive person in the world.
• Make money with data entry: Those “hundreds of clients” are affiliate products on Clickbank, and that “data entry” is running ads in search engines and classified sites.
• MLM: The last three are just Multi-Level Marketing. The big guy at the top is the one making the real money - off of all the unlucky Joes who thought they could make money selling the stuff in a catalog or web site they paid to get. This is a fairly decent option if you really want to be in the retail business - but who wants to be in the retail business? And if you want it that bad, you’re better off doing it the real way.

It’s also worth noting that all of these “business models” have two phrases in common - “no selling” and “no cold calling.”

No Selling = you are actually selling, you’re just not doing it the honest / transparent way.

No Cold Calling = you’re selling to your friends and family. This is a very common stance of “network marketing” business models which rely on your network in order to grow and stay profitable. If you don’t have a network, even if it is an honest product, you’re not going to make money.

The Little Things

Basically, the easiest way to “separate the men from the boys” in Internet Marketing can be summed up in one word - transparency.

Try to think ahead and figure out exactly what they are actually giving you. Usually there is a bulleted list of benefits or “what you get” - take a long hard look at each one and think about what they might be giving you. If you think you already know it - you probably do.

Next, go from top to bottom and skim the copy. If they’re pretty much saying the same thing over and over just in different words - they ran out of stuff to say a long time ago and you’re probably going to get some flimsy excuse for a product.

If the copy looks otherwise legit, you should still do some investigation.

1. Whois: Go to Whois.net and check out some back end information. If they have a phone number or address on the website, make sure they match up. You should check out the whois information before you buy anything anyways.
2. Read their newsletter: Now this is an interesting catch-22. Read their newsletter for a few weeks. If the information is good and you learn something - don’t buy the product. You just got it for free, and the product won’t teach you anything new. If the information doesn’t teach you anything new - don’t buy the product. You already know it. However, here is the dividing line - a well-done newsletter will give you problems, not solutions. So if you get done reading it and all you can think is “why?” and “how?”, then it’s probably a good product. NOT “what else?” - because trust me, there is nothing else.
3. Google their name: Look for their other endeavors, blogs written by them, any press mentions or public speaking they’ve done, and most especially - BBB reports or complaint records.
4. Google their testimonials: Start off with just the names of the people who gave testimonials. If that person has a product of their own - even if they’re some big name “guru” - ignore that testimonial. If that person doesn’t seem to exist - they probably don’t (yes people do that!), so ignore that testimonial too. After a few testimonials you should have a feel for the credibility. If you need to dig more, Google the entire testimonial. I’m not kidding.

And yes, I do this for every product before I buy it - and every client before I take them on. So if you contact me about doing something for you and it takes me a few hours to a day to get back to you - that’s why.

All that is the only reason I haven’t high-tailed it outta marketing (and life in general, really). I’m confident about decisions I make. Are you?

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Trisha, @mayobrains on Twitter