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Ad Copy - Creative Writing (9)

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hey guys,

I notice my biggest flaws goes with ad copy / creative writing. How did you get better? I don't want to outsource/hire, I'd like to try to give it my all at first.

Did the recommended books help you?

Thanks!

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I usually check out the competition first to see what is out there. This will start the creative juices...haha. other ads can inspire a new directions with getting more people to like your ads.
And of course the simpler the better

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Good question, I always considered myself to be a great marketer but when I was asked by a third party company to run a campaign for them to make a hefty figure. I had to decline, because I honestly didn't know jack shit about making a good landing page or anything, I just ripped and modified bits and pieces to split test.... I wish there was a place to learn to get better at it

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I swear, almost every competitor has a redirect to the offer.

Are you using some type of software? Where are you finding your competitors?

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The best way to learn is practice. Unless your a creative writing guru, this is something i think all of struggle with. Besides how many new ways can you re-invent the wheel on products. answer: not too many.

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Here's how you become a great copywriter, and there is no way around this: you get your hands on all the classic ads and sales letters, and you hand write them over and over every single day for a year. You don't type them, you hand write them. It's hard to explain until you have done it, but this puts an "imprint" on your brain, and you start to think in terms of headlines, subheads, first sentences, bullets, transitions, ps's, etc.

I learned this from John Carlton, Gary Halbert, and Dan Kennedy, then I actually did it, every day for a year. Then when I started spending money on ads (earning while I was learning, I ran my ads while I was doing my year's worth of writing, not after) I got an idea of how good or bad I was.

What you need are "swipe files," compilations of ads and letters that became "controls" (meaning they worked, and that ad ran until another ad beat it). You can find some of the great ads in the John Caples books, in David Ogilivy's books, the original Scientific Advertising/My Life In Advertising by Claude Hopkins, Eugene Schwartz' Breaththrough Advertising, as well as in Gary Halbert's 1996 Copywriting Seminar in a Box and Dan Kennedy's Copywriting Systems. There are many more, of course, but these will get you started. Copywriting is not an easy skill to learn (and a lot of people who call themselves copywriters are not) but if you put in the time to learn it, you will always have a skill that allows you to get money, and that makes the time investing worth it.

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Thanks for the great response. So while I'm learning how to become a great copywriter, I'll be testing and making $$ on the way. Can't complain about that one. But that's the answer I was looking for. Thanks Johna5150.

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http://www.thefastlaneforum.com/comm...g-group.50217/

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Great advice John.

I haven't started the hand-writing approach yet but I plan to.

Copy writing hasn't changed much in the last few decades, because humans haven't. Technology/society changes rapidly but the fundamental drivers of human behaviour don't, just the mediums/proxies through which we fulfill these drivers.

Ergo, the works published by copywriting greats such as those John mentioned are still just as useful today as they were decades ago - hell, even more so with the dilution of the affiliate marketing industry by people who don't consider copywriting at all.

If you can write good copy, you can sell almost anything, and that's a skill you can leverage regardless of the times.

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