Before you say a word, be sure you’re saying the right thing.

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I have been writing a lot of copy recently. I have also been reviewing a fair amount of copy written by others.

Whether it’s my own copy or someone else’s, I keep finding weakness in the same area.

And this area of weakness is..?

It’s when the copywriter starts writing copy before he or she is absolutely clear about WHAT to say.

If the message is wrong, it doesn’t matter how talented you are as a copywriter. You’ll simply end up writing the wrong thing really well. And your ad or web pages or sales letter won’t achieve the result you were hoping for.

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To write a successful sales page, share one simple message aligned with one simple belief.

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Attractive couple on beachMost online sales letters are just too complicated. They make the reader think too much.

If you want your readers to buy, you need to give them a very simple message that is aligned with a very simple belief they already hold.

Above all, as strange as it may seem, you don’t want them to think too much.

To illustrate what I mean, let’s take a peek at what politicians do, because they have to work within exactly the same constraints.

Consider a politician who wants to promote a bill that will increase the minimum wage.

He will do two things…

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Why I’m opting out of the content race.

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Leaving the raceI don’t like doing things just because I’m told to do them. Or when I’m told I have to do them.

And recently I’m feeling a little pressured to keep adding new posts to this site on an increasingly frequent basis.

Where is this pressure coming from?

It’s coming from the web itself.

Both the search engines and social media favor content that is new and fresh. (How often do you check last week’s tweets or last month’s Facebook updates?)

Also, readers seem to favor content that is fresh and new. There is an assumption that posts and articles that are new are somehow better and more valuable than content that was published last week, a month ago or even a year ago.

More and more the web is about what’s happening right now.

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Tips on writing really, really long online sales letters.

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Hard working copywriterYou know the kind of sales letter I mean. When you look at the scroll bar on the right side of your screen, you can tell it’s going to take you a good half hour to read the page.

Of course, your friends and family will tell you that nobody reads these long sales letters.

And this week’s fresh crop of online gurus will tell you that nobody reads any kind of long copy these days. Period.

But people do read them. Lots of people.

There are companies making tens of millions of dollars a year from letters like these.

In fact, I just finished writing one of these long-form sales letters myself.

As a word document, single-spaced, the letter came out at 37 pages long…or a touch over 10,000 words.

Having just submitted the first draft, I thought I would share some tips with you.

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Copywriters: Learn your craft like a cabinetmaker.

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Learn copywriting like a cabinetmakerI know plenty of beginner copywriters who are constantly taking courses, reading books, following blogs, watching videos and finding as many ways as possible to learn more about the craft of copywriting.

That’s a lot of time and money being invested.

And why not? As a copywriter you can make as much money as a lawyer or a doctor. And even if you buy every course and program out there, you’ll still be paying less for your training than those other professionals.

But…here’s a funny thing.

Back in the late 1970s, when I got started as a copywriter in London, I don’t think there were any copywriting courses. I certainly never took any. And during my first ten years as a copywriter I think I read just one book on the subject – The craft of copywriting by Alastair Crompton. It’s a good book.

So how did I learn my craft?

That’s easy. I learned by DOING.

I just wrote and wrote and wrote.

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If you have a WordPress website, get yourself the new bizXpress plugin.

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bizXpress keyword research toolWordPress has become the world’s most popular website-building platform. The site you’re on right now is a WordPress site.

Along with so many other people, I like WordPress for a number of reasons. You have total flexibility over the design of your site. It’s the most social of all platforms. And it makes it incredibly easy to add new content and edit existing content.

In short, I love it.

But not all my sites are built with WordPress. My money-making website, CoffeeDetective.com, is built with and hosted on the SiteBuildIt platform.

Why? Because the platform was created specifically to optimize the performance of content-rich, topic-specific sites like my coffee site. In fact my coffee site attracts over TEN times the traffic of the site you’re on now. And believe me, the coffee topic is fiercely competitive.

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