Copywriting

Writing good copy is hard, as evidenced by all the horrible copy out there. No matter how good your product, nobody’s going to buy it if your copy is poorly written. By the same token, lots of people will buy anything you’re selling, no matter how lousy the product, if your copy is good enough.

The products reviewed in this section of our site are all about using language to optimal effect in, specifically, an online sales environment. Writing for the web is quite different than writing for print, because readers read different from a computer screen than they do from a piece of paper. No matter how expert you may be at the printed word, you’ll never achieve optimum online marketing success until you learn how to write for people surfing the web.

There are essentially 2 kinds of products reviewed herein:

ebooks: those that teach, instruct, inform you of how to write for an internet market
software programs: those that facilitate producing web pages with sparkling copy, usually by using prewritten templates into which you simply fill in the blanks with the details of your company, product, contact info, etc.

So, before you decide to purchase one of these products over another, you’ll first want to decide which type of product you’re looking for.

“Teach a man (or woman) to fish?” (so to speak): Do you want to do it yourself? Learn how to write for the internet. Then select an ebook that’s written in a language you can understand.

Read the author’s web pages carefully. Remember, all these authors are applying their own techniques to these very websites. What better way to “sample their wares” than to study the copy they’ve composed to sell you on their product? If the copy on their website speaks to you, then their ebook probably will too. If not, there’s undoubtedly a more suitable product for you out there.

The downsides to the do-it-yourself method? It takes time and effort to get it right. You’ll potentially go through lots of trial and error before getting the results you desire.

But once you learn these skills, you can carry them with you throughout your career.

“Feed a man (or woman) a fish” (so to speak: Or would you rather have an established expert do the work for you? Would you rather employ the same time-tested and proven techniques without having to learn each and every one of them yourself? The clear benefit of purchasing a template-based software product is that it only requires you to enter in your company and product’s basic information before it’s ready to be posted online or sent out to your leads.

The downside here is that you’ll never really learn these techniques yourself. If, for example, you suddenly find that the internet (and thus your target market) is inundated with sales letters and web copy virtually identical to yours, how are you going to distinguish yourself from the competition? Will you be able to come up with something fresh, new, and original enough to persuade your visitors to trust you any more than any other company using the exact same templates? Probably not.

But it’ll save you a ton of time and effort and (consequently) money to simply churn out web page after web page with copy that’s been proven to convert leads into sales. And you can spend the time, energy, and money you’ve freed up on pursuits more demanding of your attention.

It’s your call.