You can write a great sales letter. Sure, you may have to learn some new skills. But keep in mind, the great copywriters of today weren’t born writing great sales letters. They started right where you may be–having never written a sales letter. Or maybe you’ve written a few sales letters, but they have disappointed you. Take heart. In this article, I will show you step by step what you need to put in your sales letters to give them the structure and persuasiveness you may desire.

Every sales letter has a basic structure. Now, each sales letter may insert these basics in different orders or using a different method, but generally all sales letters will include these basics:

Headline: Every winning sales letter should have an attention-grabbing headline, one that draws the reader into your sales letter. If they don’t read your letter, they won’t buy your product. They must read the sales letter first.

Make your headline exciting. What will your product do for the user? For example, if you sell a product that helps the user find discount travel packages, a few strong headlines could be:

How to Travel Like the Rich on a Pauper’s Income

How to Travel for Less than Half-Price

Travel the World for Less than Traveling Locally

How I Travel Everywhere For Half-Price

Try to write some similar headlines for your product. Simply substitute your product and benefit for the keywords in those headlines. Try to write 20 or 40 or so headlines—some of them will be lousy, but some of them may surprise you. One thing about writing is that you will get more creative and efficient as you spend more time writing. Practice, practice, practice.

Benefit Bullets:

These bullets will be key points about your product. For example, if you are selling a product geared towards grade school teachers, your bullets might be:

Learn to manage your classroom with no effort
Discover the keys to teaching vocabulary at any level
How to teach math so that students learn the fastest
What every teacher needs to know about discipline

Notice that these bullets promise a benefit to the reader. Bullets are designed to draw the reader to purchase the product, so that they can receive the benefits of the product. These bullets reveal the benefits to the purchaser.

Guarantee: Especially when selling online, you must include a specific guarantee. Online purchasers are already skeptical of purchasing an information product. By offering a money-back guarantee, you assure the buyer that if the product isn’t what you say it is, they can receive a refund. Your responsibility, of course, is to make absolutely sure that the product does everything you say that it does. If you do that, you will have few returns. Here is an example of a guarantee: Your complete satisfaction guaranteed: If for any reason during the first 30 days after you purchase this product, you are not completely satisfied for any reason at all, simply return the product and we will cheerfully refund your purchase price, no questions asked.

Obviously that guarantee should be modified to meet the nature of your product, and the time frame altered. By having the guarantee, although you will have to give a refund from time to time, you should sell far more units than without the guarantee.

Close and ask for the sale: This step is critical! No matter how good a job you do describing the product, it will not sell itself. You MUST ask for the sale. Tell the customer to buy. Give them an easy link to your order or shopping page. If you don’t ask for the sale, you won’t sell much.

Try to write your first sales letter using this template. Write comfortable, as if you were talking to someone at lunch. A sales letter should be easy to read and feel like a friend discussing the product. It should not have stilted or awkward language, but should flow naturally—just write the way you would talk about your product.

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You’d probably never write a sentence like this unless it was a direct quotation: “Well, I mean, you know, we just kind of, you know, kicked it around some until Mel goes he won’t, like, support the campaign.” People speak like that. It’s called speaking “colloquially,” which, technically, means as in informal spoken language or conversation. If that’s how we speak and the people we deal with understand us, there’s no problem. When non-standard English is spoken, someone may notice, but it’s gone as soon as it’s said. It may stay in someone’s memory for a while, but it usually fades quickly. When it’s written, though, it may not go away for a long time. It’s right there on a piece of paper or on screen.

This is especially important if our job or even intention is to convey ideas and information clearly in writing. Then it’s necessary to recognize the distinction between what’s writing and what’s talking. Pick up any document from a scholarly paper to a company newsletter, and it’s clear that some of the old, strict rules of usage that many of us learned aren’t much observed except in the most formal writing. (The style of this article is a good example of that.) To a great extent, that’s the result of the current practice to make almost all writing more conversational. But, conversational, in this context, doesn’t mean exactly the same as colloquial. Being conversational in writing doesn’t mean that we can toss all the rules out and still be considered good writers.

In business, government, and education, there are still some clear guidelines we, as serious writers, are expected to follow. Unfortunately, too often, the difference between casual conversation and serious prose gets confused. Documents are commonly sprinkled with slangy terms such as bottom line, below the radar, synergy, and win-win. And, whether we use a preposition to end a sentence with is a matter of style or how “correct” we want to be. But, if we use bad grammar and poor syntax, we leave permanent proof that we may lack the skills needed to be a serious writers.

If someone knocks, and we ask who it is, the reply, “It’s me,” is perfectly acceptable. In fact, we’d probably wonder about someone who said, “It’s I.” That’s not how we speak colloquially. On the other hand, our writing skills would be questioned if we wrote “June presented the idea, and it was her who explained it.” In speaking, pronouns get messed with a lot. In writing, unless we’re writing speaking, there are still rules. Good writers follow them?or at least know when they’re breaking them. In a report on a meeting, “And then Fred goes that he’s not too sure about the total cost,” may sound OK, but it doesn’t read well. And, the perennial “But you knew what I meant” isn’t a valid excuse. In a serious correspondence, just getting the meaning across isn’t the whole point. Some rules for expressing ideas are preferred if for no other reason than it makes it look as though we’re serious about what we’re writing.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Just browse through any job portal or jobs classifieds, you’ll find one thing in openings in Content Writing. Yes, content writing has become the hottest job not only in India but worldwide. And you’ll be amazed to know that majority of the content writing work is outsourced to India. But, what is content writing? This is the most common question asked by many. Literally, content writing is nothing but writing for the web. Ironically, it sounds easy but to be honest it is not. It is not only lucrative but also a time and brain consuming job. Ask any content writer, he or she will show you the correct picture. However, the crux is that if you want to be a content writer, you should be strong in research. Research is the base of any content writing and it is said that content writing involves, 10% actual writing time and 90% research.

It is obvious to know that for whom you’re writing and what the motive of your written piece is. This is in return lessening the burden and makes the task easier. Even though you are racing against the time or deadline, the complete process of content writing should be done with calm and relaxed mind. As mentioned above, prior beginning with content writing, a content writer should ask three main questions to himself. That is:

1- Who is my target reader?

2- Why should they read it?

3- What can this written piece generate?

If a content writer is able to answer these three questions, then it won’t be wrong to say that half the battle is won. Content writing in India is in full bloom and people from all over the world are outsourcing content writing to India. Mainly because of the strong word power and great command over vocabulary. It is said that content writing should be done by keeping the target audience and SEO in mind. This is the reason why SEO content writing is catching up these days. Anyone who is into online business wants to capture majority market and for that they have started taking content writing and SEO seriously.

Content writing and SEO goes together and none of them is complete if anyone of them is missing. Earlier any online trader or entrepreneur used to concentrate more on their website design and layout but now the trend is changing. As nowadays they emphasize more on content and SEO. According to them, if their website isn’t that attractive, but still appearing on major search engines, they are ought to get more business.

Thus, we can say that content writing should be done in keeping SEO in mind and also it won’t be wrong to say that India is the best and hottest place to outsource any content writing and SEO work.

Popularity: 8% [?]

It’s no secret that “all writing is rewriting.”

So be reassured if your words land on your computer screen in less than perfect form the first time. Be reassured if you spend hours adding, deleting and shuffling phrases, sentences and even whole paragraphs around your document and back again. And be reassured if you’re just plain frustrated because it takes longer than you thought to get across the mood and meaning you want. Welcome to the writer’s world!

For me there are 3 clearly-defined steps in the writing process.

Step 1 – Getting The Words Down On Paper

All you are doing here is putting information on paper. Everything you know about your topic. Every idea you have about your ideal client and how you can help them. Do it without censoring yourself. Keep writing until you have exhausted all the ideas you believe belong in your piece. Don’t worry if you end up with seven pages of information and you only need three. You can go back and edit later.

Step 2 – Editing

Time to review and refine the content. What is absolutely necessary? What can be discarded? Are the ideas organized logically? Does it flow smoothly? Does your content precisely reflect the point you want to get across? Where are there gaps in information: are you making assumptions about how much people already know about your business?

In this step you’re also looking for the right words. Not just any old words that say roughly what you want them to say, but the exact words that get your ideal clients excited about your product or service.

Step 3 – Proofreading

Here you’re checking for consistency, spelling, punctuation, and the rules of grammar. Make sure that the company name is spelled correctly. Are you using the same format for the phone number each time it appears? Are periods and commas where they should be? Run it through a spell- checker.
You can get yourself into trouble by trying to do all these steps at once. But go about it in a systematic manner and your content will come together much more easily. Each of these steps can involve several rewrites until your material is polished and you’re satisfied that it presents you to your best advantage. Be patient with yourself.

Mark Twain is reputed to have said: “If I’d had more time, I’d have written a shorter letter.” That’s the crux of the matter: it takes time and many rewrites to craft a focused, concise piece that gets your message across with clarity and no distractions.

Now it’s your turn: take a look at whatever piece you’re working on right now. Which of the above steps are you working on right now? Or are you trying to do them all at once?

Copyright 2004 The Dennison Group.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Professional writers find it hard to read web content. Not because web content lacks quality, but because it lacks literary style. Obviously writing for the printed media and writing for the web are two different matters. There are not too many people ready to give up the morning newspaper for the, let’s say, “morning e-zine”, but more and more users browse the web looking for information, news and entertainment.

It’s easier to follow a story in the printed media than online. Reasons vary from the size of the text and the resolution of the monitor to how a page is read. While people read novels and books in sequence, web readers are unpredictable. You never know on what page a visitor is going to land and from where. People browse the web and look for specific information. Then they “scan” a page and read solely what captures their interest.

To write good content for the web means to be able to write plain. Here are some good tips in writing content for the web:

1. Write as you talk. That means: use a simple writing style: plain English, short sentences, clear content and easy flow of ideas. Don’t use fancy words to show how smart you are. Guess what? People don’t care. You don’t want your readers to run to a dictionary to see what you mean.

2. Summarize your main ideas in clear titles and headings. This is what web readers are looking for: a clear formatted text with a clear structure of ideas. Start with the headline, continue with a summary, and use subheads to outline different ideas. People do read bulleted text. Use bullets or numbers to condense important points (yeah, as in this article).

3. Write less: people don’t like to scroll down on infinite pages. Long articles almost always turn them off. Keep your articles short – let’s say not longer than 500 words.

4. Chunk your web pages. As users prefer shorter pages, try to limit the length of your web pages by creating slices of information. Use links to help readers quickly locate further info.

5. To enhance reader experience, use visible links to more information, news, related sources, pictures and so on. Don’t mislead your readers. Let them choose which links to follow. As a standard, links are blue and underlined. But many designers choose other colors and a hover effect that suggests to users that the text is a link.

6. Write exciting content: people love controversy and learn from debate. Turn on their imagination, encourage them to comment and send you feedback. Use a personal, friendly style to win their sympathy.

7. Write for your readers but don’t forget about the search engines. Writing for the search engines might cause your phrases to sound odd and repetitive, but search engines are looking for keywords. Keyword density is one of the factors influencing the positioning of your website in the search engines results. So: repeat words but don’t annoy your visitors with this technique. Repetitive is not synonym with stuffing.

Now, if you are an experienced journalist or a traditional writer, are you sure you want to give that up and become a web writer? Or could you be both? Think about it!

Popularity: 13% [?]