What I Know and Remember About Baseball: Don’t Throw Like a Girl
It’s good to elope with someone else’s wife. Website design By BotEap.comIt’s good to rip your bumps off. Website design By BotEap.comIt’s good to cheat on your taxes. Website design By BotEap.comIt’s good to cheat on exams. Website design By BotEap.comIt’s good to sneak home early on Fridays. Website design By BotEap.comAnd much more besides… Website design By BotEap.comThere is also an insidious new way of cheating now being seen in copywriting all over the net. It is important that business owners are aware of how it works. Website design By BotEap.comThis article was started after discussing with a friend how one of his clients had hired a copywriter for a natural health product and after a wait of almost three months (full copy still not ready), the headline that finally presented to them said the following… Website design By BotEap.com“They laughed when I said I was going to try XYZ but when…” Website design By BotEap.comYou can guess the rest. I don’t know about you, but I think I would have been pretty upset with that kind of acting. Website design By BotEap.comGranted, the copywriter just took a headline from a classic letter from way back in the day (in an era when it ran like a gang bang), but I’m not all that concerned about that kind of copy, although the client would have been when he saw how bad it was. the sales letter he threw away. Website design By BotEap.comNo, the type of copy I’m talking about here is incredibly blatant… Website design By BotEap.comTo turn this ‘bad’ into good and make it more palatable, it is now sometimes called ‘Shaping’ and it works that way. You put your sweaty palms on a copy of a current sales letter control (the control is simply the current ‘champion’ who goes out and makes more money than everyone else) and ‘Models’ how it’s written… Website design By BotEap.comYou model the headline. Website design By BotEap.comYou model the cover. Website design By BotEap.comYou model the body. Website design By BotEap.comYou model the offer. Website design By BotEap.comYou model the closure. Website design By BotEap.comYou model the bonus. Website design By BotEap.comYou basically stick it under the tracing paper and you get…a carbon copy. Actually, true modeling as used by aspiring copywriters doesn’t mean that. It’s really supposed to be a way of getting into the minds of great copywriters through something like the process of osmosis. The form, structure, and processes used to write good copy begin to see into your being in an almost subliminal way. In a way, copywriters have been using this ‘good form of modeling’ for years, hand-copying great sales newsletters, for example, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Website design By BotEap.comBut here’s the thing… Website design By BotEap.comInstead of using ‘modelling’ as an apprentice would to learn from a master, these people copy large swaths of sales newsletters that have produced stellar results in the past, to replicate and use in different markets. Website design By BotEap.comCards that have made those who used them millions are being stolen by writers who hope that by passing them off as their own work to unsuspecting business owners in different sectors of the industry, their ‘magic’ will rub off on them too. The hope is that the new market hasn’t seen your ‘modelled’ sales letters before, and therefore doesn’t suspect that the work has been brutally ripped off. Website design By BotEap.comThese writers want as little as possible to be changed from the original letter; they are terrified that doing so might weaken the sales power of the control letter. The slightest form of cosmetic ‘disguise’ change is applied to ensure that the original lurks just below the surface, with all its drawing power intact. Website design By BotEap.comHere are a couple of thoughts on what I just told you… Website design By BotEap.comIf the original business owner paid a fair amount of money (in some cases over $25,000) to an A-list copywriter for a high-quality sales letter, in case someone else gets it for free, adapt it. a little and earns a lot of money to pass it on to an unsuspecting customer. as if it were her own work? Website design By BotEap.comIs it right that the industry is being infiltrated with a new breed of writer who just swipe and copy their way to the top of the tree and mar the reputation of copywriting as a whole? Website design By BotEap.comHow would you feel if you, as a writer, had tormented yourself for weeks over a copy that was later stolen and ‘adapted’ for another niche and received nothing? Also, imagine these ‘modelling’ writers and then lapping up the recognition and fees that should have gone to you as a legitimate original author? Website design By BotEap.comHere’s what legendary copywriter Gene Schwartz has to say about this exact process in his groundbreaking work “Breakthrough Advertising.” Discussing what he calls “The Three Levels of Creativity,” he says he… Website design By BotEap.com“The first, shallowest, most widespread, and ineffective, is the word substitution technique. Here, the copywriter consults a list of tried and true headlines. He then pulls out the original product name and replaces it with his own. .. Many editors get old, or get tired or afraid. They stop looking for the unique solution to each problem. From this moment on, they start copying instead of creating… But it won’t work. Any pup can do the copying “All this process does is reduce talent to the level of filing cabinet mediocrity. The true copywriter must argue with success: he must overcome it every time he’s faced with a new product.” Website design By BotEap.comA sincere Amen, Gene, I think! Website design By BotEap.comIf you are wondering whether or not this practice actually occurs, I have solid evidence. Here in my office I have a DVD of a well-known international copywriter bragging at a recent seminar that he regularly ‘swipes’ and models copies of hot checks to produce letters for which he then charges new clients $10,000+. It is a copywriting that the client assumes is 100% original… but it is not. Website design By BotEap.comJohn Carlton’s letters have been torn up like this (one of the boasts at the seminar) – Imagine the money John Carlton’s clients paid for him to write letters? If you know anything about John Carlton and his ‘dig deep’ philosophy, then you know that he goes the extra mile to produce copy above the B-list copywriters, which is why he gets paid so much by clients. Website design By BotEap.comIs it correct that his cards are drawn, ‘adapted’ and then, in a sense, ‘sold’? Website design By BotEap.comTrust me, it’s a surprise of a seminar. Visit me and you can see for yourself, or send me an email and I’ll tell you where to get it in private. Website design By BotEap.comYou might think it’s okay to pull a copy like this as long as the modeled copy works and the client is happy with the results. With that being the case, why didn’t the customer grab a copy of a control and save $10000.00 or more just by customizing it themselves? Website design By BotEap.comSurely that would be cheating or even stealing, right? Website design By BotEap.comOr has evil suddenly mutated to be good again? Website design By BotEap.comBluntly speaking, writing a new master copy is agony. It literally takes blood, sweat, and tears. Agony, but when it’s done there’s nothing like it. Website design By BotEap.comThat’s why John Carlton rocks. Website design By BotEap.comThat’s why Clayton Makepeace and Gary Bencivenga and all the greats are great, because they are UNIQUE and time and time again they create an ORIGINAL copy. They sweat and push until it’s time for EUREEKA and they don’t give up until she does. Website design By BotEap.comSo, in closing, ask yourself what you want in your copywriter. Website design By BotEap.comDo you want someone who cheats (even if they have a big name) or… someone who sweats blood to give you the freshest, freshest, most up-to-date copy of the block that pulls like crazy, and that no one else has because it’s 100% original? Website design By BotEap.comIt’s a noon shootout between the true value versus the short cut copy traders that the net seems to be deluging into these days. Website design By BotEap.comWho do you want to win?