A couple of years after I started copywriting, I got the chance to write my first full-blown video sales letter.
This was for a product called The Kidney Disease Solution.
At that time, The Kidney Disease Solution had already been available on Clickbank for around 10 years, and it was a top-50 Clickbank product. My job was to rewrite the front-end VSL to make it less hypey — and yet to increase sales.
An impossible order?
Not at all. In fact, it was fairly straightforward. The VSL I wrote increased sales by 30% while removing all the typical “Clickbanky” hype. It only took two ingredients:
1) An emphasis on proof
2) A solid, proven structure for the sales letter itself
The first ingredient wasn’t hard to come by. Duncan Capicchiano, the guy behind The Kidney Disease Solution, had hundreds of almost-miraculous success stories from people who had followed his program. Plus, he had a legit background as a practicing naturopath, and he had done everything he could to make the program itself useful and complete.
But what about the structure?
I was still fairly green as a copywriter, so I reached for the most successful VSL I knew of:
Mike Geary’s Truth About Abs, written by Jon Benson.
I knew this VSL well because I had copied it out by hand several months earlier. I did this while following along on the sidelines with a course called CopyHour.
Derek Johanson, the guy who runs CopyHour, finds successful sales letter (like the Truth About Abs VSL).
He then sends the copy to you to actually copy out by hand, one sales letter each day, for 60 days.
And then he gets on a video call to explain all the fine points of what you just copied, and why it works.
It’s a solid (and proven) way to get much better at writing copy, and to do so quickly.
The thing is, you can’t join CopyHour most of the time. Because of the “live” nature of the course, Derek only opens it up for enrollment a few times a year.
Right now is one of those times. So in case you’re new to copywriting and you want to get better quickly, CopyHour might be worth a look while enrollment is open. If you’re interested, here’s the link: