Ben Settle

Not long ago someone asked me this interesting question:

This is a great question. A lot of people struggle with this exact same problem.

And the simple (but brutal) answer is:

You’ve got to find time wherever you can.

For example:

Four years ago when I was starting out, I had a full time job and an office cleaning business at night.

I didn’t have a lot of time, either.

What did I do?

For one thing, I left for work at least a half hour early and I wrote ads, read books researched my project notes when I got there.

Later, to seize even more time, I lobbied to work on second shift (when nobody was there). Then every day I would try to get my work done as fast as I could, so I’d have an hour or so to write ads or study something while at work.

Risky?

Yes.

One “surprise visit” from a supervisor or manager and I’d have been canned on the spot.

But I did it anyway because I was in a hurry and I really didn’t have a lot of time at home to do it.

Now, this may sound extreme and I’m not suggesting you do the same thing.

I just want to make the point of finding time wherever you can.

You may have to stay up to the odd hours of the night or get up an hour or two early.

If you have a job, leave an hour early and study or write ads in your car in the parking lot (I did this many times).

When you take your breaks, go out to your car and write or study ads. Even if it’s for only 15 minutes.

When you’re on your lunch break don’t sit around with all the gossipers, whiners and complainers. Write ads or study something.

On the way to and from work turn off the radio and pop in a CD about marketing or copywriting.

I know of one guy who writes books and ads in his car while he’s commuting. He has a little digital recorder and he “writes” by speaking his ideas, thoughts and inspirations into the recorder while driving, then has it transcribed later.

Heck, if you have cable television unplug it for just three months.

Spend the time you’d normally watch TV and read and write ads. Take the money you would’ve spent on cable and buy more books and tapes.

Look, everyone’s situation is different.

And what worked for me or someone else may not work for you. The above are just a few of things that worked for me.

The idea here is to get radical about managing your time and squeezing every possible second you can from your day.

It doesn’t take that long to get good enough to start making money with your copy.

But it does take some time.

And the faster you get through the “learning curves” — by getting merciless with your time — the better.

If you are just starting out as a copywriter, but are afraid of writing “crap”, then here’s how to abolish that fear and start making money right away — no matter how poor your copy is.

Look, here’s the whole secret to getting over your fear of writing bad copy:

Just start writing.

The more writing you do the better you’ll get.

It’s like anything in life. Nobody starts out being great at everything. And all it usually takes is a little “push” to get your started.

For example:

When I was a little kid around five or six years old I sucked at swimming. I hated it. I was afraid of the water and honestly thought I’d drown without those dorky little arm floaters on.

So my mom, God bless her, decided to make me take swimming lessons.

At first I resisted. I’d act like I was sick. I’d go away and hide. When it came time to jump off the diving board, I actually climbed the swimming area fence and ran away.

Thankfully my swimming teacher caught me, dragged me to the diving board and threw me in kicking and screaming.

What happened next was a miracle:

I didn’t drown, I didn’t flounder and I didn’t even cry.

Instead I actually enjoyed it.

A few days later…I was even good at it and looked forward to swimming.

And writing copy is the exact same way.

When you’re just starting out and you have that fear your copy won’t be any good, just write an ad.

Better yet… create a product (or find a product to sell), even if it’s just a little cheap one.

Then write an ad the best you can and throw it up on eBay.

If you’re selling something people already want (very important) people will respond to your ads even if your writing is lousy.

In fact, you’ll realize the “writing” is all relative anyway in marketing.

If people want what you have, your writing can be crap and you can still make money. But if people don’t want what you have, your writing can be perfect and you won’t earn a penny.

And that’s why the best cure for fear of being a bad writer is simply writing and selling things you know people already want.

Just realize you probably are going to write terrible copy at first.

Everyone does.

But like I said, if the demand is there, then you will have at least moderate success, no matter how hideous your copy is.

So there’s really no need to worry about it.

It seems like not a day goes by when one of my business partners doesn’t call me up, or I call him up, and say:

“Hey, I was just taking a shower and got this great new idea for that project we’re working on!”

I know that sounds strange, but it’s true.

There’s something almost magical about taking long showers and “suddenly” getting the answers to problems or coming up with ideas for your ads.

It’s just amazing the way that works.

I even did some research on this not too long ago.

And apparently there is something in your brain that stimulates creativity when warm, soothing water pours over your head.

Problems are solved, ideas are sparked and your creativity basically goes on overdrive.

Personally, I seem to get many of my best headline ideas for my ads while taking long, hot showers.

Whenever I’m working on an ad headline, and I’ve cranked out two or three hundred different headlines (and can’t seem to find the right one) I always take a lot of long, hot showers.

Sometimes even several showers per day.

I’ll just sit there in the shower, letting my mind wander, and trying not to think about anything specific.

Most of the time (so often it’s almost spooky) the answer will come.

Try it yourself and see.

Next time you’re writing an ad and can’t think of that right phrase, idea, theme, headline, etc, take long, hot showers. Maybe even two or three in a day. Just let your mind wander and solve the problem for you.

If you would like to make sure you never again stare at a blank screen or piece of paper when writing your copy, then this article will show you how.

Once upon a time a guy I know called me up almost panicky because he had a looming deadline and couldn’t think of anything to write.

“All I seem to be doing is starting at a blank screen! What do I do?” he asked.

“The reason you’re staring at a blank screen is because you’re not doing anything. You’re just staring. Start writing and your problem will fix itself.” I replied.

“Oh.”

A few hours later he finished his ad and made his deadline.

Listen, simply start writing something — anything — and I promise you ideas will begin to flow and concepts that were vague will take shape.

I personally write an enormous amount of content for both my copywriting clients and my own projects.

Not just ads, either.

But ezine articles, auto-responders, blog posts, even entire books.

And yet I never stare at blank screens or wonder about what to write.

Never.

It’s kind of ironic, but I get a tremendous number of ideas — for all the hundreds of different things I work on in a given month — while I’m writing.

For example:

When I’m writing an ezine article, I’ll almost always get two, three, four or more ideas for an ad I’m writing or for one of the other projects I’m working on.

There’s no “voodoo” about it, either.

It’s just how the human mind works.

The late copywriter Eugene Schwartz (a man who routinely wrote tens of thousand of pages of material for his ads, books and articles) talked about this in his speeches.

He explained how when you focus your conscience mind on a task, you allow ideas floating around in your subconscious to “bleed” in to the front.

Want to know something funny?

I actually just got an idea for another ezine article while writing the above.

That’s how quickly and immediately this can work.

The key is movement.

The more movement you create — like when you’re writing, for example — the more ideas will come to you.

On the other hand, if you’re just sitting there, chances are nothing will happen. Because you’re not moving or doing anything.

If you don’t want to write to get the juices flowing, then take a walk. Go for a bike ride (I’ve gotten hundreds of great ideas riding my bike). Do the dishes. Something. Anything.

Bottom line:

If you start moving I guarantee you ideas for your ads will come crashing into your consciousness so quickly you’ll probably have trouble keeping up with them all.

What would you say if I suggested there are certain cases where you should not use a headline on your sales letter?

Most copywriters I know would say I’m nuts.

I mean, not using a headline is the greatest “sin” of copywriting, isn’t it?

And 99.9% of the time I would agree.

Except…

There are many examples of successful letters — including a couple of my own — that pulled better without a headline.

The most obvious and well-known example would be Gary Halbert’s coat-of-arms letter — one of the most-mailed sales letters in history.

I’ve seen two different versions of that letter. One with typos and one without. And I didn’t see a headline on either of them.

Instead, it looks like a personal letter individually typed on a typewriter, written to one person — and not something mass mailed to everyone in the United States.

You can see it yourself here: Gary Halbert coat-of-arms letter

Do you think that letter, to that audience, selling that product, would have pulled better with a big, bold headline at the top of the page? If it didn’t have that “from the kitchen table of Aunt Martha” look?

Maybe, maybe not.

But that letter mailed to hundreds of millions of people without a headline for years.

Another example of a no-headline control letter is this pitch I get every few months from a company called “Biotech Research.”

And guess what?

No headline.

Here’s a scan of the first page so you can see yourself: Biotech air purifier sales letter

And if that’s not “contrarian” enough… this letter also has no subheads, no p.s. and looks like your garden variety piece of corporate “junk” mail.

Interestingly enough, I actually have several different direct mail letters from these guys. And they all have the exact same layout as the one on the link above — with the company’s corporate officers on the left hand side with no headline at the top.

Anyway, I have more than a few sales letters like this with no headlines in my files. All controls, and all proven money-makers.

Now, with all that said… I’m not saying to not use headlines.

But letting yourself get enslaved by a bunch of “rules” can sometimes be counterproductive.

And when you really, really, really want to hide the fact your letter is actually a “pitch” at first glance… you may want to at least think about testing not using a headline.

For example:

A couple years ago — when I first saw the above letters — my curiosity got the better of me. And I wrote two different versions of a joint venture letter to sell some people on running a product to their lists.

The only difference between the two was one had a headline and the other didn’t.

What happened?

Out of the 100 or so I sent out, all the responses (I think there were 6 or 7) came from the letter without the headline.

The letter with the headline didn’t do anything.

Why?

Who knows?

Could be any number of reasons.

All I know for sure is the headline letter didn’t work, while the headline-less letter did.

With the letter that worked, I carefully re-tooled the headline I used in the letter that didn’t pull any responses as the opening paragraph to make it look more personal (while still compelling) — as if it was written for just one person to read. And not something going to 100 other people.

Of course, this was not a “scientific” test by any means.

But I did find the results kind of interesting.

And I’m going to test a variation of this same “headline-less” JV letter in the near future just to see what happens.

Here’s another example:

The first time I offered my copywriting critiquing service to my list I decided, just for kicks, to try the headline-less approach again. Just to see if the JV letter thing was a fluke or not.

I didn’t expect much response.

In fact, I half expected a deluge of emails from people asking, “where’s the headline, jackass?”

But you know what?

I got twice as many orders than I wanted or could even handle. Something like a 3% response when I was overloaded with half that. It was crazy.

Of course, an argument could be made people were buying “me” and had already made their decision to buy without reading the letter — headline or no headline.

But the funny thing is, none of the versions of this critique letter I’ve used since (all of which had headlines) has pulled as well as that first one without the headline.

And that’s despite my list size growing with each offer… and despite word-of-mouth advertising helping fuel my response.

But, like the JV letter, this is not by any means a scientific analysis.

And I’m the first to admit both the JV letter and the critique letter could be flukes. If I could go back in time, I’d split-test everything.

One day I’ll do a real test of this with a completely different product, to a completely different market, and carefully analyze the results.

Anyway, let me “bottom line” this:

As I said before, I’m NOT saying to not use headlines.

The reality is doing a letter without a headline will probably murder your results just about every single time.

What I am saying is look at your unique situation, consider who you’re writing to, figure out exactly what you want the reader to think and feel and do when they read it, and take it from there.

If, for example, you’re writing a “from Aunt Martha” sales letter (like the coat-of-arms pitch), then maybe kick around the idea of carefully testing it without a headline to a small portion of your list.

Who knows?

You may be surprised (as I was) at what happens.

A few days ago I saw something really interesting while analyzing one of my clients’ sales figures.

When I looked at the names of the buyers and compared them to when they bought in the auto-responder sequence, I noticed people were buying anywhere from the first or second follow-up message… to the 11th, 12th and even 25th follow-up messages.

Some of them didn’t buy until they were even deeper in the sequence than that.

And it occurred to me just how much money we would have lost if we did what the vast majority of marketers do… and stopped at 5 or 7 or 10 follow ups.

What’s my point?

Simply this:

If you’re not relentlessly following up with your leads 10, 15, 25, even 50 times or more — then you’re leaving money on the table.

Probably a lot of money.

In fact, if you don’t have at least 50 “evergreen” messages dripping on your leads regularly, you could be flushing hundreds — even thousands — of dollars down the toilet…and not even know it.

Does 50 follow-up messages sounds like a lot?

Maybe it is.

But think about it:

If you have only 50 messages in your sequence, with one going out each week, then that means you have almost a full year’s worth of follow-ups in the “hopper.”

Now I know what you’re thinking — easier said than done, right?

Who has the time, energy and discipline to write that many messages?

Hey, it’s not nearly as hard as you may think.

Just make it easy on yourself.

If you write just one per day, five days a week, you’re done in two months.

If you write two per day, five days per week, you’re done in a little over one month.

If you’re really on fire and write two per day, seven days per week, you’re done in just a few weeks.

See? No problem.

If you have trouble getting started, use the Ann Coulter writing secret and pretend you’re writing an email to a friend — informal, personal, easy-to-read.

Look at your product from every different “angle” you can, and talk about it.

Make things dramatic, fun and interesting.

Keep their enthusiasm for what you’re selling high and that fire stoked. Every week provide yet another “excuse” to look at what you have.

Give a few mini-lessons, tell a few stories about how you or a customer used your product, do some Q&A’s. Say things that make people say, “That’s incredible… I didn’t know that!”

The secret is to make them inherently valuable with a “soft sell” at the end.

You can do a few blatant sales pitches now and then. But don’t overdo it. And if you do send a blatant pitch, still say something interesting and useful — yet achingly incomplete (so they have to buy your product to get the full secret).

If you get stuck for ideas go through your product and look for interesting facts. Or use the stuff you had to cut out of your ad you really wanted to keep in, but couldn’t. You can also get ideas reading magazines, books, and Internet forums (they’re gold mines of ideas).

Soon you’ll start cranking ’em out left and right without batting an eye.

The key is to just start doing it.

One today, one tomorrow, one the next day.

Before you know it you’ll have 50, 60, 70 or more follow-ups. Instead of just fizzing away like everyone else… your marketing keeps working hard week after week after week to make the sale on your behalf.

Go ahead. Try it yourself.

What have you got to lose?

A little while back, a friend of mine asked me how to sell to his e-newsletter list without coming off as being pushy, obnoxious and caring only about extracting as much cash as possible from his customers.

I don’t blame him for being concerned, either.

People are unsubscribing left and right from e-newsletters and lists who do nothing but sell, sell, sell.

But here’s the thing…

All the “selling” isn’t the necessarily the problem.

The problem is usually what’s being sold and to who.

Let me explain what I mean:

Three days per week I like to make a brisk, ten mile bike ride.

Only problem is, I live in an area that, during the summer, is full of annoying little thorns that get lodged into your tires and cause slow leaks.

This happened a few times to me over the past summer.

The first time I changed the tube myself.

The second time (a couple weeks later) I took it to a local bike shop. The guy fixed it and we went our merry way.

The third time (just a few days later) it happened yet again…and I brought it to the shop again.

This time was actually a pain for me, because I had a lot of stuff to do that week, and didn’t want to mess around taking a bike to and from the shop.

Luckily, there was a different guy working that day.

And before he changed the tube he said, “We get a TON of tire repair jobs like this in the summer. Do you want me to put on a tube with a sealant inside? It’s a little more expensive, but when a thorn gets in there, the sealant fills up the hole and you won’t even know it happened.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” I asked. I had no idea this thing existed (shows how much I know about bikes).

“And if you really want to make sure this never happens again, we have special tires that are almost impossible for these little thorns to puncture…”

Long story short:

I bought both the tires and special sealant tubes on the spot, and have not had a problem since.

Now, here’s what’s important about this for you as an Internet marketer:

When I left the bike shop, I was actually mad the first guy didn’t try and sell me the special sealant tubes or puncture-proof tires.

If he had sold me on the tube and tires I wouldn’t have had the hole, and I wouldn’t have had to take another day to drop off and pick up my bike.

And that’s the point.

Are you selling your list things they want?

Things that will make their lives easier?

Things they may not even realize exist right now… but will be happy and thrilled to buy once you show them?

If not, then you should be worried people thinking you’re just another Internet marketing “hawk” only out for money.

Because you probably are annoying people, and you probably are one or two emails away from a bunch of potential buyers leaving you at any given time.

On the other hand…

If you simply discover what your list wants and aren’t getting… and if you simply offer those things to your list for now on… then you have nothing to worry about.

You’re not inconveniencing anyone and you’re not coming off as a greedy, money-hungry jerk, either.

Chances are you’re a bright spot in their day — even as they fork over their hard-earned money to you.

If you don’t believe me, think about the ads you buy from selling you things you really want that genuinely solve a problem in your life.

Don’t you feel almost a sense of… well… gratitude… towards the company that sells it to you?

I know I do.

I can’t help but think the guy who sold me the tires and tubes did me a huge favor. I’m always grateful whenever I see one of those stupid thorns on the bike path.

And if you simply sell your list the things they want like this… you won’t have to worry about mass number of people leaving.

People will be happy to hear from you…instead of being sick of hearing from you.

One of the most useful and important tips I ever heard about running an Internet marketing campaign is:

In other words…

… don’t assume the printer, the web designer, the merchant account service or any other aspect of your Internet marketing campaign will just automatically do as they are supposed to.

Don’t think someone won’t drop the ball or have a brain fart at the absolute worst time.

Inspect your Internet marketing system — every detail of it — before and during the launch.

Good advice isn’t it?

You’re dang right it is.

In fact, it’s so important… and so ultra critical… I completely ignored it recently and lost a bundle of money as a result.

Let me explain what I mean.

You see, so far just about all the ads I’ve written have paid out and are winners.

There have been a few flops here and there where I tried selling to a market I didn’t really understand.

But the majority have pulled and pulled well.

Except for this one ad my client and I had up for about three months.

Even though it was for a very rabid market that loves to buy… and even though I’m very familiar with that market… the ad didn’t pull even one single order in the three months it was up.

And I mean nothing.

Nada.

Zippo.

Of course, it could be I simply penned a crappy ad.

But even that didn’t explain zero sales.

Especially in this particular market, where even a crappy ad pulls at least some response.

But for some mysterious reason… no matter how much I tweaked the copy, no matter how low we cut the price… we couldn’t produce a single sale.

And this drove me absolutely crazy.

I became obsessed with making it work.

I revised it dozens of times.

Played around with it.

Let other copywriters and Internet marketing friends of mine read it and then revised it again.

And still no sales.

I was almost ready to write the entire thing off as a dud.

And then it happened.

A few weeks ago my client got an email from someone who wanted to buy the product.

He was a customer who kept trying to order… but said the order form wasn’t working. It wasn’t taking his credit card numbers. And the only price that appeared was the cost of shipping.

Doh!

Turns out there was a small glitch with the shopping cart software my client uses. And it wasn’t working properly.

Now, we’ll never know exactly how many sales that stupid little mistake cost us. But judging from the response we’re getting now — about 3% — I’m guessing we flushed at least $10,000 in sales down the toilet.

Obviously, if we’d simply followed the “inspect what you expect” mantra — this never would have happened. We would have noticed the software glitch and nipped it in the bud.

But you know what the real irony is?

Other than the fact nobody phoned their order in (which is another topic for another time)…this is actually a classic Internet marketing blunder routinely committed by seasoned gurus and amateurs alike all the time.

I’d heard about this sort of thing happening hundreds of times. It’s in almost every good marketing and copywriting book I’ve ever read. It’s happened to just about every serious marketer I’ve ever met.

In fact, our situation is a joke compared to the hair-raising screw ups involving multi-millions of dollars being flushed down the toilet because the marketer’s secretary gave the ad rep the wrong 800 number or something to that effect.

Now, you may be tempted to think, “no way will I ever make such a stupid mistake.”

And I hope you’re right.

But it’s a lot like not regularly backing up your computer’s hard drive.

If you get lazy and refuse to sweat the details (as I did in this case) you’ll eventually get nailed.

Anyway, the moral of the story is make sure you inspect what you expect every time.

It only takes a few minutes to check your order form, see what your ad looks like on multiple browsers, verify your third party merchant account service (if you use one) is standing by and not performing “routine maintenance”, and all the other boring, mundane things we love to let other people handle.

And yet… those few minutes can make all the difference at the end of the day.

A little while back I was doing a three-way call with a client and his web designer about how we should position the email opt-in form on one of his sales letters.

He didn’t want to go with a pop-up window, a hover ad or anything like that.

Nor did he really like the idea of having the page refresh or the “thank you for subscribing” page pop up over the sales letter, either.

Instead, he was looking to eliminate any and all potential distractions from the sales letter.

Long story short… the web guy asked why didn’t we just use what’s called an “iframe”?

“An ‘eye’ what?” I asked.

“An iframe”, he explained, “is basically a frame within the web page. A small ‘window’ on the page where you get a glimpse of a whole different page.”

And he suggested we simply put the sign-up form in an iframe.

That way, when someone fills out the opt-in email form and pushes “submit”… the page doesn’t refresh, shunt them off somewhere else or even so much as budge.

Only the iframe — the table your opt-in form is in — changes.

The rest of your page and copy stays exactly as is.

For more information on how this works, talk to your web designer or do a quick Internet search.

It’s a very simple and easy way to eliminate a potential distraction in your online sales letters.