Dear Friend,

Begin the body of your sales letter here. Refer to the following 17 step formula and additional information below for writing an effective, order pulling sales letter.

Note: I recommend printing this page out now. You can delete the unwanted text on this page by highlighting it with your mouse, and then hitting your delete key.

17 Step Copywriting Formula...

Step 1) Before writing your sales letter, do your research. Get to know your target market like the back of your hand. Learn what they want, and how to spark their emotions. Online, this is best done by frequenting and participating in the message boards and forums related to your business. Use the knowledge you gain within your sales letter.

Step 2) Date your sales letter so that people know your offer is current, and not one of the thousands of "left for dead" sites.

Step 3) Write your sales letter as if you're writing to a friend. Use the word "you" liberally. You're not selling to a group of people, rather to one individual at a time... Your sales letter should reflect this fact.

Step 4) Introduce your letter with a powerful headline that spells out the ultimate benefit of your offer. Reinforce this ultimate benefit throughout your sales letter.

Step 5) Start the body of the sales letter with a "hook" that supports your headline, and that compels the reader to find out more. Your hook may lead into a powerful personal story, or several anecdotes illustrating the ultimate benefit of your offer.

Here's one tip in relation to step 5 that could help you immensely. Let's say you're promoting a money-making or business opportunity, and you want to demonstrate the effectiveness of your offer, but YOU haven't made any money with it yet. Well in that case, find *others* who have made money using similar methods or approaches to yours, and include short stories about -them-. For example, if you're selling an ebook package with resale rights, but you're just getting started and can't "boast" of having made any money in the field of selling ebooks (yet), find others who have had significant success and ask permission to include a paragraph or two about them, and how much money they've made with ebooks, in your sales letter.

...Of course, whenever possible, you want to focus on selling products and services that you DO have experience in (see Step 7).

Step 6) Demonstrate how your prospective customer will benefit from your offer. Paint a picture in his/her mind with an illustration... "Imagine what you can do with...", or "Imagine what it will be like to..."

Step 7) Establish credibility and build trust with the prospect in every way possible, and early on in the sales letter. On the Internet, where it's easy to hide behind a web-site and a false identity, you need to SELL YOURSELF. Tell people why they should buy from you, and trust you. People buy from experts. Establish yourself as the expert. Include customer testimonials. Continue to establish credibility and trust by participating in third party "quality control" sites, such as CertifiedGuarantee.com. And always offer a full money back guarantee.
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Step 8)

• Use bullet points to drive home your main benefit, as well as every benefit of your offer. Use plenty of action verbs (i.e., "generate") in your list of benefits.

Step 9) Establish a unique selling proposition throughout your sales letter. Your U.S.P. is something your offer provides that your prospects can't find elsewhere. Demonstrate why the prospect should buy from you and NOT your competition. Stand out from the crowd instead of blending in!

Step 10) Establish a perceived value much higher than the actual selling price of your offer. Demonstrate to prospective customers why your offer is a bargain, perhaps by contrasting it with "the cost of the alternative". Also, give people a valid reason as to how and why you're able to offer such an excellent value.

Step 11) Call the prospective customer to action. ALWAYS ask for the order. Here's an optional text link you are free to use:

CLICK HERE TO ORDER NOW!
(Convert to your payment link.)

Step 12) Add in a limited time offer - Ex. "This offer expires on such and such a date, so ORDER NOW!"

Step 13) Make ordering as easy as possible - tell people HOW to order - and make sure you are capable of accepting credit cards. Offer INSTANT ACCESS to your product if possible. Tell people exactly what they can expect following their order.

Step 14) Offer quality "free bonuses" related to your offer. Often people will order because they desire the bonuses over the main offer. With 4 bonuses, you give the prospective customer 4 additional reasons to order. (You may want to tie in your bonuses with your limited time offer.)

Step 15) Use a P.S. to summarize your offer, to reiterate your "no risk" guarantee, and/or to again stress the ultimate benefit of your product or service.

Step 16) Frame your sales letter in a professional looking, fast loading site, perhaps with a few tasteful graphics. Refer to other successful sites with similar offers for design ideas. Note: If you're using a template from the Ultra Templates™ collection, you've already taken care of this step =)

Step 17) Follow up! ...Ok, this step is really an extension of your main sales letter, but it's VITAL to your success. Your primary initial objective as an Internet marketer is to "capture" the contact information (name and email address) of your web-site visitors.

...This is most easily done by prompting your site visitors to sign up for your *free* "ezine" (online newsletter) through a form in a prominent part of your sales page, or if it doesn't "fit" in that manner, through a pop-up window...

And to *maximize* ezine sign-ups, offer an additional incentive (beyond just your free ezine) such as an ebook or even better an informative (and interesting!) 3-7 part email course delivered by a sequential "autoresponder". Now, your autoresponder course should ideally consist of a series of useful articles related to your paid offer -throughout which- you can insert tasteful plugs and links to your [paid] offer.

Having the proper follow up system in place can significantly increase your sales. The reason is, most people will NOT order on their first visit to your web-site for a variety of reasons. Marketing is a process, not a one time invent, and therefore repeat exposure is a MUST regardless of what type of product or services you're offering!

Additional Copywriting / Web-Site Creation Information...

Create and make liberal use of a "swipe file"...

A swipe file is simply a collection of killer sales letters written by top copy writers.

Click here to download "Web Sales Letters Supreme", a ready-made swipe file to get you going...Though, you'll want to add sales letters that have had a profound emotional impact on you - ya know, the ones that have compelled you to order the product ;-)

And ideally you'll want to find effective sales letters that relate to what YOU are selling.

If you're searching for sales letter online, it is highly recommended that you *print out* each letter you ultimately select, and put them in a 3 ring binder so that you can easily browse through them to get ideas. Note I said "ideas". Ideas can be copied. But you NEVER want to copy another person's work. Simply use the ideas and re-create them using your OWN words.

Why are swipe files so "great"?

Well, let's say you're struggling to think up a good headline idea...

Simply page through your swipe file until you come up with a headline that fits with your offer, and use that IDEA.

Same with your list of benefits. You can certainly plug in many of the same emotion rousing "action verbs" and adjectives that you pull from your swipe file. Just be sure to plug them into your OWN sentences, phrases, and paragraphs, and you're fine.

Same with your "hook", your guarantee, your p.s., you get the idea.

If you really want to model closely after a specific paragraph or section in a particular sales letter, what you can do is write out exactly what you intend to use, then forward it to the copy writer who's material you are emulating, and get approval to make sure you're not crossing any boundaries. If you receive permission to use the copy, make sure to save the letter or response granting permission.

Use your swipe file in conjunction with my 17 steps above!

Use this site template for multiple pages, and even multiple sites!...

You can use this template for other pages of your site, for example your affiliate page if you're running an affiliate program. When you're finished with a new page, just save it under a different name.

Your home page should be named the "index.html" file. (This template is named index.html by default.)

The rest of your pages can be whatever name you'd like, for example: affiliate.html (You'll always need the ".htm" or ".html" extension as that is the type of file that standard web pages are created and saved as.)

...If your domain is http://www.yourdomain.com (also your index page), your affiliate page address (format) would be http://www.yourdomain.com/affiliate.html.

Inserting your logo in the header above...

You MAY wish to create and insert your own business name/logo in the header image above. You'll need a good image editing program for this purpose. There are all sorts of free image editors available for download.   (Search google.com for "free image editors".)

I recommend REAL-Draw, which you can download free for 30 days here: http://www.mediachance.com/download.htm (You can create quite a few graphics in 30 days ;-) And if you decide to keep the software, it is VERY reasonably priced. Another tip, your HTML editor might come with an image editor, so check that possibility out as well...For example, Microsoft FrontPage comes bundled with "Microsoft Image Composer", a quite powerful, yet easy to use image editor.

Following are step-by-step instructions for customizing your header using REAL-Draw (instructions for other image editors will vary):

Once you've downloaded and installed REAL-Draw, open it up. You'll then need to open up the header you want to modify. To do this, click on File, then Open, then locate and select the "header.jpg" file on your desktop (the header.jpg file can be found inside the template .zip file that you downloaded and unzipped before opening this web page template). Select "Open" to open the header.jpg file inside the REAL-Draw window. Note: When searching for the header.jpg file, you'll need to make sure the "Files of Type" drop down menu (which you'll see as you're browsing your desktop), is set to "Jpeg File (*.jpg)".

Once you've opened the header.jpg file inside of REAL-Draw, you're ready to begin experimenting =) You can start by clicking on the "Aa" graphic...Then click again, anywhere in the REAL-Draw window to open the Text box...You're then on your way to creating a text logo, such as one that pertains to the name of your product, offer, business, web-site, etc.

...Have some fun with this. There are an endless variety of things you can do here. The "Tip of the Day" and the "Help" menu will provide you with just about everything you need to know if you get stuck, so familiarize yourself with those resources in addition to spending some time experimenting.

Once you have customized your header with a logo you're satisfied with (keep it simple and clean), you simply need to save the new version and insert it on your web page(s). To save your new header, click on File (inside REAL-Draw), click on the Export link, click on the Export button, enter header.jpg as the file name, and Save the new header.jpg file over the original one.

...Instructions for the next step will vary somewhat depending on what HTML editor you're using. But all you need to do is replace the existing web template header/image with your customized version. In Microsoft FrontPage: (After opening your index.html file, and/or any other page you wish to modify with the new header...) Click on the current header to highlight it. Click on Insert. Select Image. Browse your desktop to locate your new header file. Select the header.jpg file and click OK. You have now replaced the default header image with your customized version. Make sure to save your changes!

...If you're not satisfied with the results, or if something went wrong, the best thing to do is start again from the beginning. It'll probably take you a few tries at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's a snap!

Modifying/creating links on your web pages...

To modify or create text links on your web pages using Microsoft FrontPage (instructions will vary slightly with different HTML editors): Highlight the text with your mouse, click on "Insert", click on "Hyperlink", change the URL to that of your order page, affiliate page, home page, etc. Be sure to include the FULL link (i.e. http://www.yourdomain.com).

Modifying image links (or converting images into live links) is very similar to above. Mouse over the image, right click, select "Image Properties", and enter the full destination URL in the "Location" bar. (Again, instructions will vary slightly depending on the HTML editor you're using.)

Want additional graphics for your web-site?

If you're looking for a good online graphic designer (for navigation buttons, ebook covers, software boxes, page headers and footers, etc.) I highly recommend MaxCovers.com.

Don't like the background of this page?...

You can change the background of this page to a solid color, or insert a background image, in Microsoft FrontPage or your favorite HTML editor. (FrontPage instructions: Right click on the page and select "Page Properties". Select "Background". Browse for a new background image, or select the solid background color of your choice and save your changes.)

You can find TONS of free background images by searching "free background gifs" (and similar searches) on Google.com.