Bullets

The most important “do or die” copywriting skill

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Some time back in the 2000s, Internet marketer Ken McCarthy put on a 3-day seminar titled, Advanced Copywriting for Serious Info Marketers.

This seminar has a kind of cult following in the marketing world today. Some of the most successful copywriters out there — people like Dan Ferrari and Ben Settle — say this is one of the best resources for really understanding what copywriting is all about.

Anyways, during this seminar, Ken asked the participants about the most important “do or die” copywriting skill.

“It’s a mechanical skill,” Ken explained. In other words, he wasn’t talking about secret ways of conducting research… or building desire… or even closing the sale.

All those are important. But there’s a single, mechanical skill that all good-to-great copywriters must master.

If I remember correctly, Ken teased this for over 10 minutes. I won’t do the same, because I feel I’ve teased you enough already. So let me just tell you:

This “do or die” skill is writing bullets.

Bullets? Yes, bullets.

Many sales letters are all bullets. But good bullet-writing skill will also mean you can write great headlines (what is a headline but your best bullet?) and subheads.

​​On an deeper level, being able to write good bullets means you can evoke curiosity in your reader, and focus his attention where you want it to go. That’s something you can use in your body copy too, or even in the structure of your sales letter.

But let’s assume Ken is right, and bullets are where it’s at.

So how do you get great at writing bullets?

Copywriter Gary Halbert had a solution for you:

Find a successful sales letter chock full o’ bullets… then get the book or newsletter or course they were selling… then reverse engineer how the copywriter “twisted” the original content to create the sexy bullet.

Thing is, the golden age of bullet-heavy magalogs has passed. And maybe you’re not keen on going on eBay and hunting for 90’s sales letters and the books they sold.

Fear not.

You can get access to some of the best bullets running today, along with the content that spawned them, for free, and in a pretty entertaining package. I’ll tell you all about it in my email tomorrow.

What, you don’t get my daily emails? Well, if you want ’em, you can sign up here.

A sexy technique for writing bullets that leave other copywriters green with envy

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I was at the gym today when I saw a guy getting ready to do squats after me. I watched him nervously as he stacked a few plates on the barbell. And then I took a big sigh of relief. I realized he will squat less weight than I was just squatting.

Like the other 7.8 billion people on this planet, I shrink with envy when I lag other people in some measure. I swell with pride when I am better than them.

You might know pride and envy as two of the seven deadly sins. Which brings me to a sexy copywriting technique I just heard copywriter Chris Haddad talk about.

Chris says most people write boring bullets. I know I do. The fix, according to Chris, is to take your boring bullets and marry them to the seven deadly sins.

Let me give you a few examples. Here are three sin-lite bullets I quickly wrote for the description to my soon-to-be-published book, The 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters:

II. A simple guiding principle that’s almost guaranteed to bring you into the top of the copywriting game (and it’s not just to work harder).

III. A 5-minute way to transform your copy so it sucks in your reader all the way to the sale, without him realizing what happened.

VII. A technique to convert even the most jaded, skeptical, and hostile prospects (some copywriters say this is the biggest breakthrough of the last five years).

Not awful, but not good either. So let’s soup it up by appealing to perennial human failings:

II. [WRATH] Hate losing, and hate yourself when you lose? Follow this commandment, and you will be able to crush competing copywriters, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women.

III. [SLOTH] The easiest commandment of the lot. It takes just 5 minutes to do but it can suck your reader all the way to the sale, without him realizing what happened.

VII. [PRIDE] How to “get one up” on jaded or even hostile prospects who think they are too smart to believe your marketing or to buy from you (some copywriters say this is the biggest breakthrough of the last five years).

These sinful bullets still have a way to go, particularly in the way of mechanism or proof. But I think they are better than what I started with. So if you too work for the Satanical Church of Direct Response… then try appealing to lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, sloth, envy, and pride the next time bullets are on your plate.

Speaking of lust:

My daily email newsletter can help you get laid tonight. And then you can brag about it to your friends… while you aggressively chew on a large leg of mutton, paid for by all the easy money you earned by taking my push-button copywriting recommendations.

Click here to subscribe. Or don’t — and be left in the dust as other, younger copywriters catch up to you and then overtake you.

7 Batman rogues for evil sales bullets

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Ken McCarthy has said that the fundamental, no. 1, can’t-do-without-it skill for being an effective copywriter…

Is the ability to write a good bullet.

And Ken should know what he’s talking about.

He was a successful direct mail guy, before becoming a successful internet marketing guy, before running some very big and expensive copywriting and marketing seminars and influencing generations of millionaire marketers.

All right, so let’s say Ken’s right and bullets are important. So how then do you write a good, or rather evil, bullet?

Well, lots of different ways.

Below I’m giving you 7 different templates, which, for my own enlightenment, I paired up with top villains from Batman comic books (some of the connections are obvious, some less so):

[#1 The Riddler]
Are you younger than 34? Here’s why you are at a disadvantage when it comes to writing bullets… Plus, the 5-minute daily habit that will help you write bullets on command. Page 79.

[#2 Ra’s Al Ghul]
The one element every bullet must have (besides a benefit or a warning). Used correctly, this activates the most powerful motivation for buying, according to legendary copywriter Gary Halbert. Page 10.

[#3 Two-Face]
The popular NPR show that doubles as a school for writing killer bullets. Page 108.

[#4 Poison Ivy]
How to write twice as many bullets in one-third the time. No stress or swipe files required. Just a simple shift in preparation — inspired by a jungle plant, and recommended by marketing genius Perry Marshall. Page 70.

[#5 The Joker]
How to write a killer bullet without having access to the product. A secret technique, used by irrational, violent psychopaths, that can also help ethical copywriters. Page 25.

[#6 Scarecrow]
When putting a big benefit in a bullet can backfire. This one mistake can ruin your whole sales letter. Page 44.

[#7 Catwoman]
Why you should never start your bullet off with a number. Plus a better way to get readers hooked when your product offers a 9-item list. Page 78.

And there you go. A rogue’s gallery of 7 evil yet effective bullet formats.

What, that’s not enough?

Quite hungry you are.

Here’s a bonus one for you then:

All successful sales letters need bullets, right? Wrong. Here are the cases when bullets can actually hurt conversions. Send me an email for details.

Shooting off a couple of impossible bullets

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An impossible bet

There’s a video of Ricky Jay at the end of a poker night, doing one last trick for his friends.

He fills a glass with water, puts a playing card on top of it. He then rolls up a second playing card into a little tube and puts this on top of the first playing card, and then puts an egg on top of the tube. “Here’s the bet,” he tells the rest of the guys. “I bet you that by throwing a card I can make the egg land inside the glass. Do I have any takers?”

It’s an impossible bet. The glass is covered by a card so there’s no way for the egg to get through. And all he’s got is some playing cards to throw. Of course, somebody takes him up on the bet. And yet, he throws the card, and gets the egg in the glass.

Today, I worked on a sales page for a video course on cryptocurrency investing. 80% of the sales page was bullets. Warning and danger bullets. Straight up benefit bullets. Curiosity bullets. And peppered in among these, a special breed, which I call impossibility bullets:

  • How to get an extra 10% return on your Bitcoin investment — even if the price doesn’t move one bit
  • How to take advantage of a crypto bull run — even while you sleep
  • How to safely use your cryptocurrencies — even on a computer infected with malware

Now that I’ve pulled them out, I realized they all had the same format:

HOW TO [GENERIC BENEFIT] — EVEN IF [SEEMINGLY INSURMOUNTABLE OBSTACLE]

In all 3 cases, the bullets wrote themselves, because there was an underlying mechanism which offered a surprising benefit. At the same time, I don’t think I could get away with these kinds of bullets too often — people would get skeptical instead of curious. (Unfortunately, copywriting isn’t a magic show — and people don’t like to be fooled by a sales page.) In this case, I think it will work, because the remaining 90% of the bullets are more moderate, and because there is other proof throughout the rest of the copy.