New To Copywriting? Start Here...

As part of my coach­ing pro­gram, stu­dents can ask me unlim­ited ques­tions via email. One com­mon ques­tion I seem to get is, “I’m new to copy­writ­ing, where do I start?”

Since my coach­ing stu­dents also get access to any of my dig­i­tal pro­grams, they also get access to my Copy Doc­tor web­site, where I share over 50 hours of saleslet­ter and copy cri­tiques, recorded on video. It’s a great start.

But one stu­dent said some­thing that struck me:

“I learn bet­ter by doing than by watch­ing. Is there any­thing you can recommend?”

Great ques­tion. Some peo­ple are more visual (they learn bet­ter by watch­ing), some are more aural or audi­tory (by hear­ing), oth­ers are more kines­thetic (by doing or feel­ing). And I also thought it would be a great ques­tion to cover on my blog. So, here goes…

#1: Courses

If you want some basic guid­ance to get you started, there’s a course I rec­om­mend, which is really pop­u­lar and pretty well-​​rounded. It’s the Six-​​Figure Copy­writ­ing course by the Amer­i­can Writ­ers And Artists Insti­tute (AWAI). I own a copy myself, and it’s pretty good.

It’s a great primer if you’re just start­ing out and want to learn the fun­da­men­tals of writ­ing good copy. There are some advanced top­ics, but I like it more for its basic training.

The rea­son I also rec­om­mend it is, for those kines­thetic stu­dents who pre­fer to do the work, which I applaud, the AWAI course offers assign­ments with the cur­ricu­lum. And you get graded on those, too, and they give you feed­back along the way.

(I’ve never handed in any work myself, so I’m not exactly sure how the process is done. But even with just buy­ing the course, I’ve pulled a few gems and used them.)

One course I’ve co-​​authored and rec­om­mend is The Copy­writ­ing Suc­cess Sys­tem with Ken Cal­houn. This course offers train­ing from basic to advanced, includ­ing under­stand­ing the writ­ing process, for­mu­las, and using tools to boost your chops.

In it, I also offer my for­mu­las I rec­om­mend and per­son­ally use, such as my OATH for­mula (for deter­min­ing the stage of aware­ness of your mar­ket), QUEST for­mula (the proper struc­ture of a saleslet­ter), FAB for­mula, the sto­ry­telling process, and more.

Finally, here’s a prod­uct I inti­mately know and highly recommend.

(Why? Ahem, well, guess who wrote the copy?)

It’s by Dan Lok. Dan is not only an amaz­ing, hard-​​hitting copy­writer him­self, but he also cre­ated a prod­uct that pack­ages bril­liant inter­views with some of the best copy­writ­ers on the planet. Best of all, Eng­lish is his sec­ond lan­guage, which he learned later in life.

So if he can do it, do the math.

Also, in Turn Words Into Cash, Dan grills top names in the busi­ness — some of whom have never given inter­views before. Those inter­views are worth the price of admission.

#2: Web­sites

Next, check out this blog and look on the right for “most pop­u­lar posts.” It con­tains links to some of the most viewed arti­cles, which I rec­om­mend for some­one learn­ing the ropes — includ­ing some of the for­mu­las I talk about in my copy­writ­ing course above.

Another fan­tas­tic resource is Brian Clark, a lawyer-​​turned-​​copywriter who has some of the best copy­writ­ing arti­cles online. His blog, Copy­Blog­ger, offers an entire sec­tion called Copy­writ­ing 101, which con­tains arti­cles I rec­om­mend to any­one just start­ing out.

I’m sure you also know about Gary Halbert’s repos­i­tory of arti­cles. There are tons of great stuff in there. Don’t for­get my inter­views with the late Gary Hal­bert on this blog.

There are many other sources, too. There are tons of copy­writ­ing blogs out there. Or ask other copy­writ­ers in pop­u­lar forums. There’s also a copy­writ­ing forum, too.

But the very best learn­ing process I’ve found, par­tic­u­larly for kines­thet­ics (and visu­als alike), is to take a suc­cess­ful saleslet­ter and write it out, word for word, by hand. This is by far the best way to learn because it enables you to inter­nal­ize the information.

There are tons of copy­writ­ing newslet­ters out there, too. One I par­tic­u­larly love is John Forde’s Copy­writ­ers Rount­able, of which I’ve been a sub­scriber for years. Some of these blogs and newslet­ters offer swipe files or exam­ples you can eas­ily copy by hand.

Another great way to get your hands on some of the best saleslet­ters out there is to visit Clickbank’s Mar­ket­place. Just click on the “Mar­ket­place” link at the top of the page.

Look at some of the most pop­u­lar items being sold. But don’t stop there. Check out the list­ings in your pre­ferred cat­e­gory (I tend to check the “Mar­ket­ing and Ads” section).

With each prod­uct they list, which are listed in order of rank (by sales and pop­u­lar­ity), you get the actu­ally sales copy link, with a num­ber of use­ful stats to gauge how good the saleslet­ter is — such as pay­outs, per­cent­ages, grav­ity score, and more.

Rea­son is, you want to do this exer­cise with only saleslet­ters that are proven to sell.

#3: Books

Finally, let’s not for­got some of the most pop­u­lar books on copy­writ­ing. Many of these are time­less clas­sics, which all copy­writ­ers should have in their library. I cer­tainly do.

There are quite a few of them. So rather than list them all here, let me share with you my top favorite ones. (I own a copy of all of these. And my copies are note-​​filled, dog-​​eared and heav­ily used. For good rea­son. So I highly rec­om­mend them.)

• Sci­en­tific Adver­tis­ing (Claude Hopkins)
• The Robert Col­lier Let­ter Book (Robert Collier)
• Influ­ence: The Psy­chol­ogy of Per­sua­sion (Dr. Robert Cialdini)
• Break­through Adver­tis­ing (Eugene Schwartz)
• Tested Adver­tis­ing Meth­ods (John Caples)
• On Writ­ing (Stephen King)

Hope­fully, these resources will get you started and point you in the right direction.

About the Author

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