John “Angel” Anghelache Swipe File Interview Transcript
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BEGIN
BEN: John, how are ya?
JOHN: I’m doing good, Ben, how you doing?
BEN: I’m doing great and I want to thank you for doing this. When you shared this secret, it completely changed the way I write ads. So to put things in context before we talk about the specifics, I want to ask what you think is the biggest problem people have when it comes to creating their own ads, and maybe you could let people know. Because I think a lot of people struggle when writing copy and they don’t even know why. So maybe you can give us some thoughts on that.
JOHN: Yeah, that’s a good question and I’ll share a story with you that illustrates the point really well. A few years back I used to sell real estate. This is when I first got introduced to direct response marketing and copywriting and I was reading a lot of stuff by Dan Kennedy and there’s a sales trainer in the real estate industry named Craig Proctor. And he’s a student of Dan Kennedy’s in fact. And Craig Proctor came up with an entire course on how to use direct response advertising for the real estate industry.
So I was studying that material and learning how to write advertising that actually works. And I was sitting in the office one day and I was actually doing some cold calling. And the office manager had this look on his face—he was frustrated. And he walks out of his office and goes over to the secretary and I kind of stopped for a second and I eavesdropped a little bit on their conversation. And he was essentially telling her to help him write a new listing ad. And he basically gave that responsibility to her and basically said, “just write something, anything, whatever.”
It was funny because at that point I was starting to realize the point of good advertising. And I was also seeing the results of what good advertising could produce. I was starting to get leads and things were picking up for me in the business. And here’s the office manager having THE number one problem everyone has when it comes to writing an ad: Not knowing what to say. That’s the biggest problem.
Thing is you have to separate things from perspective of selling. When you sell in person what you say is still the most important thing. However, the delivery is critical because there’s body language which 70%, if I’m not mistaken, of our communication in person is body language. So the delivery and how you say what you say is also really important in face to face selling.
But when you’re selling on paper or electronically nobody is going to see any of that other stuff. So the words you put on that piece of paper… and the way you tie in your sales thoughts… is the most critical thing of all.
BEN: With that in mind, would you consider people not putting in as much time into what they say is that one of the bigger mistakes people are making then? Can you boil it down to that, or are there other factors?
JOHN: Well, there may be some other factors, but if we talk about the one outstanding factor—what they’re doing when they’re writing their advertising is they’re guessing. They’re guessing what they think their prospects are going to want to read. They’re guessing about the benefits, they’re guessing about the features, they’re guessing about the structure of the ad, they’re guessing about the infra-structure of the ad, they’re guessing about bonuses, they’re guessing about the offer, they’re guessing about everything and then they’re wondering why the ad isn’t working.
When it comes back to not guessing, when it comes to knowing really what to say to your market, often you can create more sales by saying the right things in a very succinct way, in a very short letter, and get more sales that blabbing on forever. And I’ll point you to two very famous letters. The Coat Of Arms letter that Gary Halbert wrote was I think only 160 words if I’m not mistaken. It was only one page. Mailed 600 million plus times. Because he said the right things in that letter to the market. He didn’t have to write 24 pages.
And then the second letter which we’ll get into a little bit too is the Wall-Street Journal letter. Only two pages, something like 780 words. And again the right things were being said to the market. You didn’t need 20 pages or more to make your point. If you say the right things, you can say them succinctly and get a sale rather than blabbing on forever.
BEN: When you shared this secret with us, you said you actually discovered this secret while you were reading that Wall-Street Journal ad.
JOHN: What had happened I had found out that a few people were saying the Wall-Street Journal ad was the most successful letter ever. So I did some research and I found out was that indeed anyone who is anyone in direct response marketing believes this is the most successful single piece of advertising in history.
Why? Well, first of all, it ran as a control for 28 years straight. And the top talent in copywriting in the world tried to beat this control and could not do it for 28 years. Secondly, it brought in an estimated $2 billion dollars in gross revenues for the Wall-Street Journal. It literally built their subscription base. And when you consider that there’s only 780 words, if you divide that by $2 billion, that mean each word earned $2.56 million dollars.
BEN: Now, when they finally beat it, wasn’t that almost basically the same letter, too?
JOHN: That’s right and that leads me to my next point about the letter. I’m sitting here going, “Okay, how did Conroy—Martin Conroy was the copywriter who wrote this letter—how did he come up with this letter? It’s pure genius. But I wasn’t certain that he necessarily sat down and a bolt of lighting hit him and he wrote the letter. In other words I didn’t believe he created in a vacuum. And I’ll tell you why because over and over again reading different copywriting instruction manuals and being privy to certain things I discovered that every top copywriter does not create their promotions in a vacuum. They just don’t do it. And so I started doing some more research on Martin Conroy and I found out he actually based the Wall-Street Journal letter on a letter that was written in the late 1800’s. He used that letter written back at the turn of the century as a template. In other words, he swiped the most successful letter in history which I’m sure would leave a lot of people shocked. But that’s exactly what he did.
Now when I say he swiped I’m not saying he cheated. I’m saying he literally took elements out of that other letter—including the infrastructure—most importantly the structure and the flow. in terms of this actual letter he came up with I’m not certain it’s the most mailed, but for sure it’s probably the most profitable letter that has ever been written.
BEN: So when most people our swiping, what are they doing wrong when they’re swiping compared to the way they should be—Martin Conroy did?
JOHN: Well first of all it’s important to understand this. I really haven’t found any copywriting tutorial that teaches how to swipe properly. In fact, I only know of one copywriter now who teaches it or a version of it. I’ve never bought anything from him so I don’t know how he does it. I know Gary Halbert had also taught it but in a very limited way. He didn’t go into the entire process. And I’m not contending with Gary Halbert. I’m just saying I’ve listened to audios of instruction he gave on how to swipe and it was really very limited in what he had to say about that.
In fact, most copywriters who are considered to be top level copywriters like Eugene Schwartz and even John Caples… they actually discourage swiping. They literally even say its best if you eventually come up with it on your own. Well, the fact of the matter is they also swiped.
BEN: You can take these Eugene Schwartz newspaper ads and a lot of them are just the same ad talking about different products.
JOHN: Exactly… and when it comes to the biggest mistake people make when swiping is first of all they don’t know you can do it or they’ve been dissuaded from doing it because they maybe read things out of context from different copywriters.
But when it comes to the actual process most people simply do it incorrectly. And here’s what I mean by that. They’ll swipe the wrong elements. They’ll go ahead and they’ll change the infrastructure and the sales flow. And by the way the most important part of swiping correctly is swiping the infrastructure—the way the letter flows.
Individual words can be changed with a thesaurus. But if you mess with the infrastructure and the idea behind that ad you’re swiping… the big idea… you’re going to kill your response. And here’s the thing: most people when they swipe don’t even know what to look for. They don’t understand the big idea behind the ad the concept that may be at work. So they’ll sometimes because they don’t what to look for completely neglect to use the concept behind that successful swipe.
And secondly, if they really don’t understand how a sales letter is structured, they’ll mess up the entire structure of the letter. And that’s how you go wrong. Swiping is not as easy as “Read this line and then here’s what you put in. Then read the next line and here’s how you change it.” You can do it that way, but that’s not really the right way to do it. That’s more a shortcut to swiping which should be done under circumstances where maybe you’re already using your own successful ad and you already understand what you’re doing.
But if you’re using another ad you really have to go further. Otherwise you’re going to end up with an ad that could infringe on copyright laws, it could smack of plagiarism, and it’s probably not going to be as effective as if you really understood how to swipe.
The other big point is you have to get the right concept. When you read the swipe letter you have to understand the concept—the big idea behind it—and you have to include that in your promotion. So the big idea and the infrastructure and the sales flow.
BEN: When we started this call we talked about it’s “what” to say. You kind of marry that with the proven structure of an ad that’s actually worked?
JOHN: Yeah, and when I say “what” to say, what I really, completely mean first and foremost is the concept. You know if you’re selling a money making opportunity, one of the things that people want and what the big idea is how to make huge and automatic profits. Gary Halbert used that for one of his seminars back in 2002.
Okay, so if you were going to write a money-making promotion the big idea is making huge and automatic profits—and you have got to keep that concept in your letter.
Now you don’t have to express it that way. But the concept has to come across that way.
BEN: Let’s say you’re going to swipe from another letter and it’s in the same industry that you’re writing in. How far can you go when it comes to actual phrases and things like that? Like maybe it’s a diet ad and you see a couple claims that you know you could apply to your ad. So do you tweak the words just a little bit… or how do you do that?
JOHN: What you do there—and this is where you get into more detail about what to say—let’s say you have an ad you’re writing for a diet product. And you find a letter or an ad you can swipe. First of all I wouldn’t use just one from the beginning. There’s a research part to this process. So in the beginning I wouldn’t just use one letter or one ad. I would use two or three ads and I’ll just give you one quick thing you should do to know what to say to your market.
What you do is take the first swipe ad and you write down all the benefits that are included in that ad. You take the second one and you do the same thing. You take the third one and you do the same thing. And then you circle all the benefits that are the same in each ad. Now guess what you are going to come up with. You are going to come up with another list of maybe four or five or six or seven benefits that each of those ads is hitting on. Those are the hot buttons that you better include in your ad. Because if you don’t it’s not going to work anywhere near as well.
There’s a reason those benefits are in each of the other ads. And that again highlights the importance of knowing what to say by mirroring what other successful ads are already saying. But you’ve got to know what to pick out.
BEN: You and I were talking about this a couple days ago, and you said something really interesting. We were talking about how sometimes people are writing an ad for their book on how to lose weight as an example. And then their swiping from an investment sales letter selling an investment newsletter. And you said that’s another way people are going wrong. They’re not understanding the intent of the two ads are different. Could you kind of elaborate on that part real quick?
JOHN: Yeah, well first of all let me say this. If you’re going to swipe successfully it’s best if you find promotions within your industry, your business category and then you’re product category. That’s the best way to do it. In other words be as specific as possible. Now, barring being as specific as possible, you can use successful ads from other industries. But you have to make sure that if you do that, you’re converting the concept—and let’s say you’re using an investment ad for a diet ad—you have to convert the concept behind that investment ad to something that pertains to your market. You can’t use the same concept usually.
So what I would say is this. Unless you’re going to a brand new market that nobody has written advertising for—generally what’s going to happen is in your particular market there are successful ads running right now.
So what you do is let’s say you’re going to write a newspaper space ad. So now you want to find other newspaper space ads in your industry and in your product category. So if you’re selling weight loss pills, you want to find other space ads selling weight loss pills. If you’re selling an exercise program to lose weight, you want to find space ads selling other exercise programs to lose weight.
You want to be as specific as possible. That is really a critical thing. Here’s why. Until you really get the hang of this swiping thing, you’re going to have a really tough time swiping from other industries.
But once you do get the hang of it, once you do understand it, then you can safely use advertisements from other industries and other product categories. And use them to write your own promotions for something totally different. But I would not advise anybody do that when they’re first starting out. You really have to get the hang of this process first.
BEN: What about older ads? What if someone has a swipe file full of old John Caples ads or old Eugene Schwartz ads. Can they still apply that to today’s markets? How would that work?
JOHN: I think you can but you I think the most effective way to use those is for the concept. Not for the wording. Because if you read a John Caples ad from the 1960’s—the way people used to talk back then is not the way they’re talking now. So if you start swiping it word for word it’s going to sound like you’re talking people back in the early 60’s.
BEN: The reason I brought that up is because last week when you first explained this to me, I was working on that martial arts ad I showed you guys. And I went back to these old comic book ads selling martial arts stuff. And you could just take things almost word for word they’re still being used today.
JOHN: You should look at those for the concepts. There’s no doubt in my mind you want to do that. But, you’re better off finding ads that are running over and over and over again successfully now. You know there’s a website I might bet getting this wrong, I’m not 100% sure I think it’s called “Inside Direct Mail”.
At that website you can join for I don’t know what it is $200 per year something like that—and you can literally be sent all the top direct mail promotions for any number of product categories.
So if you are in the weight loss market, you can join InsideDirectMail.com, pay your yearly subscription, and they will mail you the most successful direct mail packages.
Let me just say something else. I read in an interview with Gary Bencivenga where he said one of the things that happened when he was a new copywriter, a copy chief took him aside and I hope I’m getting this right—
BEN: You are right, I’ve heard the same story. So go ahead.
JOHN: So he took him aside and said, “okay look, you’re going to write an ad for whatever product. Here are all the space ads or whatever it happened to be that did not work. Here are all the ones that are working. Make sure you read both piles and don’t do what was done in the pile that didn’t work. And do what is working.”
In other words, the top copywriters are using the swiping strategy or technique themselves. You have to. Why would you sit there and try to invent something? So again, I say, if you are in the weight loss market or any number of markets… go to insidedirectmail.com, get a subscription, and then get the most successful letters mailed to you. So now you have a current swipe file of the best controls.
BEN: And that’s the key. Those are the controls. If you get on someone’s mailing list you may not be getting the control necessarily until later on after they’ve figured what the control is. But what you’re saying is that site actually will send you the actual control?
JOHN: I believe that’s true. And you can do this for space ads. You can go into the archives for the past two or three years at just about any library for just about any paper. And you can look up ads, let’s say again in the diet industry, that keep appearing over and over again.
Those are successful ads. That’s what you need to put in your swipe file. If I was doing something for golf, I would go into Golf Tips Magazine and I would look up three years of issues through the library and I would get all the ads John Carlton wrote that are running over and over again. I mean that’s what you need to do because that’s what all the top copywriters are doing.
BEN: A lot of those magazines where they have the real rabid markets, just like in Blackbelt, there’s this one ad that’s “Never Be Tapped Out Again” or something—I have Blackbelt magazines from back in the early ’90’s and it’s running either unchanged or very little changed, and if you can find those kind of ads I would assume that would be really…
JOHN: Right—and you know another ad in Blackbelt is that guy that Tennessee man…
BEN: That’s the same guy I’m talking about.
JOHN: Yeah… he’s got like the super grip carrying like 345 pound plates.
BEN: It’s not even that good looking of an ad but man that thing just runs and there’s gotta be something in it that’s just working.
JOHN: There you go—if you’re going to sell something to that market and you got something teaches you about I think the concept behind that ad is that you don’t have to lift heavy weights if you know how to release the chi in your prime meridian in your body—those pressure points—you can get the superhuman strength. Okay great, if you’re selling something about that type of a topic there’s an ad you can use.
BEN: Just to kind of piggyback on that—again if you use at those older ads from back in the ’60’s they’re using those exact same—especially for the muscle ones in the comic books—it’s almost the exact same type of appeals. Maybe not the same words. But they’re going after that same impulse of you don’t have to do this or that. And you’re gonna lift—I don’t know what their claims are but they’re pretty outrageous. But they’re still going basically today. Maybe they’re just dressed up differently.
JOHN: So if I can bring this home, the point is this. Whatever market you’re in, if you’re a business owner or a copywriter, find the most successful ads that are running right now.
And when I say ads I’m talking about the specific media you write for or that you’re going to write for. So direct mail, post card, space advertisement in a newspaper or in a magazine, there is a little bit of a difference. Internet website—whatever it happens to be. Part of your job is to find these successful ads, put them in your swipe file, and use them when you create your own advertising.
BEN: How do you divide up your swipe file? Do you have it divided up by the guy or girl who wrote the ad or by categories or by headlines or how do you do it?
JOHN: I do it by copywriter. For instance Gary Halbert used to write a lot for the diet market and he used write a lot about the money making market. His ads for his own services I call that money making or business opportunity or whatever you want to call it. And then John Carlton writes a lot for golfers, guys that want to beat up people, mixed martial arts, whatever that is. And I don’t know what else. But I think those are the two primary markets. So what you’ll find is most of these top copywriters usually only write for one or two or three niches anyway.
BEN: Last time we talked I was thinking, “man I really wish we would have taped this.” I’m kind of drawing back on that because you really dropped some really good information. You said it went back to something you read back in the “Boron Letters.” Do you remember that?
JOHN: Oh yeah, right—yeah, well again, it goes back to what I had talked about a few minutes ago with Gary Bencivenga and the copy chief telling him “hey you gotta read these successful ads and make sure you’re doing what they’re doing.” Well, Gary Halbert in the Boron Letters talks about seven steps to writing a direct mail package. And his second step I think or third step is gather about you three or four successful direct mail packages and use them obviously to swipe from.
BEN: Now when you say grab two or three promotions do you ever mix them up with different markets? Is it always three in the exact market or do you ever pick one maybe—let’s say you’re writing a diet ad—would you pick one from the money making market too just to get some more fresh ideas?
JOHN: No I wouldn’t… I would try to stick as close as possible to that category. But I’ll give you an example that’s a little bit different.
Let’s say I was writing a diet ad for a supplement. I would have no problem getting a body building ad selling a supplement and using that as one of the swipes. The point is it’s selling a supplement.
BEN: Okay, so it might not matter as much as long as it’s in the same product category?
JOHN: I would only do that if I couldn’t find at least two good swipes in the specific category of product I’m trying to sell. Specific as possible.
BEN: You wouldn’t use a book ad to sell a supplement—you wouldn’t follow that structure… you would actually find other book ads?
JOHN: Yeah, if I had no other choice then I would go ahead and use whatever was available. But otherwise I would be very specific and try to find other book ads.
BEN: I kind of want to bring this home for everyone. We talked about a lot of concepts. But let’s nail this down to say five benefits for copywriters and business owners who maybe they’re struggling with their copy or maybe they just want to shortcut the process. I know I do.
JOHN: If you learn how to swipe properly what’s going to happen is you’re going to get five really big benefits from using this process correctly.
The first one is you’re going to eliminate writer’s block. The reason people have writer’s block—some people say it’s because of procrastination they don’t want to get started. But the real reason is they don’t know what to say. So if you’re using successful templates you’re going to know what to say. So number one you’re going to eliminate writer’s block.
Number two you’re going to write your promotions much faster. Usually half the time. Sometimes even faster than that because you’re going to shortcut the research that you would normally have to do.
Now I’m not saying you don’t want to do research. You do want to do research. And I show you how to do research in a course I put together on swiping. But you can shortcut it by using the successful ads to do the research. In other words, you know you can just refer to them rather than going out and doing some of the other things that people would have to do. You can produce more effective copy and again the reason you’re producing more effective copy is because you’re using proven templates to create your own. You’re modeling success.
And it’s really simple and easy to implement this swiping process. It is not difficult. I think it would take someone maybe a couple hours to learn it. And then you have to start using it of course. And the more you use it the easier it’s going to get.
And I put all this stuff into a product which I call “The Copywriting Crash Course: How To Ethically Cheat Your Way To Crafting Advertising Promotions That Produce Profits On Demand.”
My contention is this: If the best sales letter and one of the most profitable advertisements in history—if not the most profitable—was created by a copywriter who essentially swiped another letter, then maybe it would make sense for the rest of us to use that process as well.
And the course I put together is an eBook with three audios that explain the process in detail. I’ve got a very deliberate step by step procedure I use whenever I swipe.
Also it comes with a bonus audio that talks about how to put together a swipe file for the product that you’re trying to sell. It’s really important again to take the guesswork out of creating your ads. It comes with a critique coupon. I’m including a critique of any ad you may have. You can send it to me and I’ll go ahead and look it over and send you my suggestions. I charge between $5,000 and $10,000 to write an ad so this is a real $250 value as I look over these letters individually myself.
And then the two billion dollar bonus—and what that is is this. I’m going to actually send you a copy of the Wall-Street Journal letter. I’m going to send you a copy of the letter Martin Conroy swiped to create the Wall-Street Journal letter. Which was the most successful letter in history. And I’m going to send you a copy of the new Wal-Street Journal control. After 28 years as a control Martin Conroy’s letter was finally by Mal Decker. And I’m going to send you that new control which beat Conroy’s by 24%—which is really huge.
And now you’ll get to see the swiping process. How did Conroy create his letter, his masterpiece letter. You get to see how that happened. And then how did Mal Decker create his letter he swiped too. But he swiped Conroy’s. And you’ll see how that process works. And we’re talking about—these are multi-million dollar producing copywriters hired by the biggest mailers in the country—in the world. And this is how they do it. And everyone else is trying to do it the hard way when you don’t have to.
So anyway that product is an electronic eBook and audio course. It’s $47 and you can check out the sales letter at:
That’s swipefilesecrets.com. And take a look at it and see if it’s something that might be worth your while.
BEN: Sounds really good and I just want to add in that www.swipefilesecrets.com is my—in full disclosure—affiliate URL. So what I want to just let everyone know is that if you email me your receipt after you buy it to ben (at) bensettle.com I’m going to send you 5 very valuable bonus gifts you won’t find anywhere else for any price.
Including dozens and dozens of exclusive swipe file ads from my own files that I don’t give away anywhere else. I’ve got four other bonuses, too. All unique—that you can’t find anywhere else—just for customers of this swipe file product. So they’re definitely worth it if you’re into this.
Remember, you go to www.swipefilesecrets.com and email me your receipt.
Anyway, I really hope you guys all enjoyed this call. I really appreciate John you coming on and sharing this stuff with us. It’s really fascinating and I know people are going to get a lot of value out of it.
JOHN: I certainly hope so. Thank you, Ben.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I recently purchased the course and have devoured it. I had never known that Mr. Conroy swiped the WSJ letter. I have seen that swiped some many times. At $47 it is well worht it and to be honest I have paid a lot more for a lot less.
Great interview and thanks for offering it without cost. If i didn’t have the course already I surely would buy it. I am sending the word out to my friends though so I hope you get some action from it.
Thanks Gary, and I’m really glad you enjoyed John’s course.
I know I did!
Ben
Hi Ben,
I just found your site, and love the info and swipe file likes.
*Listen, I wanted to know, if you can point me to a source
who can provide me a “Creative Swipe-File?” You know,
“Pictures, Images” of real people and some comics. Which I
can use, for some of my “Direct Response” Landing Pages.
Please advice!
Best,
~David