Friday, January 30, 2009

The First 500 Words

The opening is one of the most critical parts of your sales copy (after the headline), so that's what I concentrate on first. Studies have shown that once a person gets past the first 500 words, he won't stop reading until the 5,000-word mark. So one of your major goals is to get people to read through those 500 words.

Most writers start a sales letter with a lot of "warm up" - getting ready to say what they want to say. You need to be ruthless and get rid of the fluff. To make your copy more powerful, see what you can cut from the beginning of the letter. You'll usually find that your best lead-in will be further down the page. (When doing copy critiques, I often X out the entire first page - or two! - or several of the initial paragraphs.)

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