Using Your Copywriting Skills for Personal Development
Writing sales letters is a fantastic skill. After all, you can make money selling sales letters to people. You can use your copywriting skills to sell products you’ve created.
But what if you could use that skill to do entirely different things?
I’ve come up with a couple of uses for sales letters that fall into the “different things” category. If you read this article, you’ll know exactly what to do and how to do these things as well. Read on to find out more.
Genesis Of The Idea
A few months back, I was talking to another copywriter/online business guy. He was telling me that he’ll often create a sales letter before he creates a product. He’ll send traffic to that sales letter and then create the physical product afterwards using the money that appears in his Paypal.
His product is a physical one and it involves white labelling and stuff. I can’t give away the product because it’s not mine to give, and I don’t really understand his process all that well.
The logistics of the enterprise aren’t what I’m going to talk about. It’s the fact that he uses sales letters to make money in a way that’s different to how most sales letters are used.
I’m not anywhere near that level and probably wouldn’t have the balls for it.
But it struck within me a good idea.
If you can sell a product that doesn’t exist, maybe there’s more to writing sales letters than just selling a product.
In this meandering, I’ve created a couple of great little uses for sales letters that aren’t what you’d normally use a sales letter for.
- Inspiration in creating a product.
- Personal development.
These are two things that I’ve used personally, so can vouch for their effectiveness. I’m going to describe them below, but bear in mind that there’s no particular method or logic to this (at least, not yet.) Adapt the exercises however you see fit.
Write Sales Letters To Inspire Product Creation
Once you get out of the early stages of copywriting – writing for content mills and viral blogs – you’ll find that copywriting requires in-depth research and knowing a product really well. Copywriters will often use the product and read all about it in order to find a hook point which they can base their sales letters around.
When it comes to creating a product, the above is usually the biggest challenge. Here are some challenges you might face:
- What is your product actually going to do for your customer?
- What makes it different from all the other products out there?
- What problems does it solve?
- What answers does it give?
- Why is your product superior?
- Why are other products inferior?
It takes time to create a product. Would-be entrepreneurs don’t want to waste time and money creating a product that nobody wants. Here’s where copywriting becomes a great skill to have when it comes to product creation.
Simply write a sales letter. To write a good sales letter, you’ll have to know the above questions. Those answers and your sales copy will guide your product as opposed to the other way around.
Let’s say you wanted to write a product about doubling your success with women. At the moment, you are just like any other twenties guy. You’re ok with women and you’ve read a ton of dating manuals, but you know that competing with David DeAngelo and all the other guys with a million mailing list subscribers isn’t going to happen.
What do you do?
Write a sales letter for a product you haven’t created.
- What is wrong with all the pickup guides that are out there?
- What’s the “big lie” when it comes to what you’re told at school/by your parents/friends/girls?
- What is it that you’ve experienced that nobody else has?
- What did you learn from that that gives you special insight?
- How does this translate into a product?
- What makes that product unique?
Following this sort of process will give you a pretty great sales letter (especially if you’ve read the copywriting articles on this blog.)
It’ll also give you a few unique ideas that’ll probably lead to you creating a useful and unique product. But that’s not all.
Motivation To The Extreme
One of the biggest things you get from reading a sales letter is motivation. Usually, it’s to click and buy the product. That’s what sales letters are designed for, after all.
How many times have you read a sales letter and thought, “Damn, I really want X out of life!”
Even if you’re never going to buy a dating product, chances are at the end of one of those long-form sales letters you’re thinking, “I really want to live the International Man of Mystery lifestyle!”
Or you might read a “Make Money Online” guide and think, “Gee… I know logically this product isn’t worth $5997 but it sure would be nice to learn about outsourcing, product creation and how to spend my millions on a beach while my Vietnamese Virtual Assistant does all the work!”
If a sales letter can pump you up to buy something, then it can be used to pump you up to create something as well.
Just write a benefits list with all the things you’re going to learn. If you’re ever feeling bored with your project, then read that benefits list.
Be as hyperbolic as you can. It’ll help. That way, you’ll inspire yourself to work.
A person who is inspired to work is going to be a productive person.
Let’s talk about that as well…
Part II: Using Sales Letters For Personal Development
There’s very rarely a product that’ll give you everything you need. (My products (and your products) excluded, obviously.) Yet most products sell you on a complete system. Now, knowing that, imagine if you could stick together all the products you’ve used and create a complete system around them. How powerful would that be?
The reason I ask is that you have the whole internet to get information from. This means that you can collate a whole ton of information and build your own education. You can then write a sales letter for that.
If you’re ever feeling uninspired, you can read back a sales letter you’ve written for yourself.
In practice, this exercise is an advanced form of writing a “Your Dream Diary” exercise.
In a sales letter, you’ll often see something like;
“Imagine your life when you’re sixty pounds heavier… and it’s all pure muscle! Imagine walking down the street not having to worry about being mugged, because you know that any punk willing to try anything clever is going to get his ass kicked by your immense strength. Imagine how all the girls are going to sigh as you walk by, and imagine what it’ll be like to look in the mirror and see that you need a new shirt because your shoulders and chest are practically popping the buttons already. And that’s just two weeks into our twelve week program!”
This is a dream sequence. You’re putting your reader into a place where they’ve seen positive results from the product (and perhaps more sneakily, they’ve bought the product in the first place in this dream. Think about that.)
You can easily use this technique to inspire and motivate yourself into achieving your personal development goals. It’ll also be effective to an extent that you won’t get from self-help books, because it’ll be personally tailored to your individual circumstances.
I mean, imagine starting the day reading a sales letter about how you’re about to achieve your own goals, and imagine repeatedly putting yourself in the headspace where they’ve already happened? That’s going to eliminate a lot of self-doubt and procrastination.
Add in all the other elements of a sales letter, and suddenly you’re going to be achieving a lot.
Final Thoughts
These are just a couple of crazy exercises that most people are never going to do. Most people wouldn’t even think of doing anything like this.
As with all exercises, I’m telling you: They aren’t going to work if you don’t do them, and even if you’re thinking, “That sounds stupid” you might as well do them and see if they work. Expected value, remember. The worst that can happen is that you lose fifteen minutes and don’t learn anything from it. The best that can happen is you become permanently more productive and motivated.
As always… you guys might be well ahead of me when it comes to thinking of games like this. If so, let me know in the comments.