Here are some tips to put in your copy by Adam Waxler.


"Writing good sales copy is not an art, it is a science. There is no reason to get creative here. You want to follow the formula that has been proven to work. Nevertheless, I am always surprised at how many sales letters on the internet can be improved upon."

Catch it @ http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/ar...nt/001070.html

I thought these were good and to the point tips? What do you think? Have you used any of these tips on your website? What other pointers have you used that have worked on your site?

Those are good tips. However, this person is speaking solely about sales letters? We need to keep the target audience in mind and write with benefits in all other types of copy as well.

I personally hate this tactic and am offended by it

Well, it's probably not all that bad, but it's really funny when you go to a site on the 1st and the "good" offer ends on the 9th. Then when you go there on the 3rd, the good offer ends on the 11th. Hmm.."date()+8" ?

I think most users see right through something like this. I also don't like how the price is usually crossed out..I guess I should try it and see if it ups my not-so-impressive conversion ratio. Maybe then I'd be singing a different tune.

Has anyone ever heard of a lifetime guarantee with software? I've toyed around with the idea of offering one for my product. I had a marketing teacher a few years ago who sold videos about customer service to businesses. When they began offering a lifetime guarantee their sales quadrupled and their returns? They remained the same.

After reading your posts from yesterday (not in this thread, but hopefully it will be clear why I replied here) about articles that position higher in other search engines than in Google but that don't mention Excel vs. articles that mention high in Google because they mention Excel I got to thinking...

Why would I search for an Excel personal budgeting system? I could imagine searching for a "personal budgeting system" or "get out of debt" or even "help me I'm broke!" (Well, maybe not that last one, but you never know.) You've done the research so I'm guessing that you know people are searching for the word "Excel" but...

How many of the people searching for Excel personal budgeting systems are 1) your competition, 2) just expert enough in Excel to think they can copy your system themselves instead of buying it from you, 3) looking for information on Excel rather than on personal budgeting. After reading through your Web site, I still wasn't sure what benefit Excel would have for people looking to manage their budget.

I mean, I know that having a system that uses Excel means I won't have to buy another program... and I won't have to install that new program or try and figure out the crappy manual and then buy another book because the manual is so crappy and then finally take a course because I can't figure out the book either... I can use the same familiar spreadsheet I already know because I use it at work... But my question is, will the person searching know? And if they do know, are they your target market? (see above paragraph.)

But for the person who doesn't know what Excel is for (and isn't really sure if they have it on their computer), how will they understand the benefits? And will those benefits be important to them? I love the way your site focuses on getting control of your money, getting out from under your bills and debt and getting ready for retirement. Those are benefits I think your readers would relate to... and what would convince them to buy. When you tell me that for $19.95 I can get control of my finances, do I care if it's in Excel or anything else? And what if I don't have Excel? (By the way, there are many Excel-compatible shareware packages available you could offer links to so even people who don't have Excel could try your system risk free.)

As for the guarantee... well, as with everything else I've said, this is just an idea and you can do with it what you will, but... What if you offered not only a lifetime guarantee but also lifetime upgrades? I don't think your returns will increase (although I haven't tested this) because your price is so low that people just won't bother to go through the hassle of asking for their money back. The real advantage here is the lifetime upgrades... it doesn't cost you any more to offer it (you'll be making sure your templates stay compatible with Excel as Microsoft evolves their product anyway) and this is the ultimate incentive for people to keep their e-mail address on your list and to keep that information current. You will immediately increase the loyalty of your list... they'll stay subscribed and they'll read what you send... and with the cool add-ons you develop, that's like getting an immediate raise!

When I first decided I would try and sell the budgeting system my wife and I had been using for several years, I wasn't even sure anyone would even purchase an excel spreadsheet. My thought was, "well, they could just make one themselves." I looked around on the net and found plenty of spreadsheets being sold. This helped me believe there was a market.
I guess I targeted 'excel' searches because I thought those searches were mainly from people looking for a budgeting program in Excel already made for them. I never thought about those searches being competition.
I have thought a lot about someone just copying my system. I guess the reason I'm not that worried about it is because the system is a lot more complicated than most people could manage. I've spent hundreds of hours coding and writing these spreadsheets, so if someone wanted to just make them? I guess they could. Now if they started selling them? That would make me a bit upset
Are you suggesting I target a broader keyword search, such as 'personal budget' or 'personal budgeting software' ? My fear in doing this was that those people would NOT be looking for an excel spreadsheet system, but for actual stand alone software. Although if I were in the top 10 for 'personal budget' I certainly wouldn't mind
As far as my copy goes, you make very valid points again. Does it sound like I'm pushing Excel as a benefit? I hope not. I'm going to have to re-think it then. I mainly mention excel because of the seo aspect of the copy..perhaps it's not subtle enough.
I also never thought that people wouldn't know they had Excel on their machines...
My spreadsheets are easy enough to use that even if you have never used Excel before, you can learn very very quickly so I think I have that concern pretty covered for the moment.
What I'm going to look into the most is my copy. From your comments, it sounds like I am really pushing the excel aspect of the purchase, which is really just not good. Excel is boring. The system is what is exciting.
Thanks so much for your comments! Please provide further guidance if I've missed your train of thought and am heading down the wrong track.

I didn't find you were pushing Excel too much... I actually found you were not pushing it enough for some people, or I wondered why you were mentioning it at all. If you are using Excel as one of your SEO terms, then your site doesn't go into the detail I would have expected if I was searching for something about Excel.

If you want to sell to people who use Excel, I would suggest a different approach. Now, you're going to think I'm nuts here, but what if you told people how to build their own personal budget system using Excel. The reason I'm saying this is because it is very complicated to build a system like you've made. It would take days, months even... and that's if you're an expert in Excel. If you explained how to do it, you would have a chance to discuss all the features you've put in your system and then you could say "You can do it yourself, in about 10,000 hours, or for only $19.95, you can buy the system and subscribe to updates for life."

That would appeal to the person who is actually looking for a spreadsheet in Excel. Think of it this way... if they actually build their own personal budget system in Excel, they weren't looking for a personal budget system, they were looking for a hobby working in Excel. They don't care that your system is so easy to use, and they're not going to be able to catch up with you in terms of a complete system, so I don't think you really need to worry about them "stealing" it.

I would even take this a step further... offer a technical ezine for the people interested in discussing the finer points of developing personal budget systems in Excel. I'd bet that what would happen is that those people would follow your instructions on how to build a system up to a point... once they had mastered Excel, they would be bored with following your instructions. Then they would be very interested in developing addons for your product and would be more than happy to make them available to you, possibly for a percentage of sales, etc. These people are only interested in pushing the boundaries in programming, not in marketing and not in copying you.

It could be interesting to make your public site focus on people who want to get out of debt, get a handle on their money, etc. and private section (it wouldn't need to be password protected or anything, just separated) for the Excel gurus you would attract.

Just some ideas...

I really like the idea of setting up some kind of tutorial for people "Make your own Personal Budget system in Excel" - I wonder how in depth I would need to make it. would I explain how to sum rows (click here, then highlight these cells), or would I simply talk about the principles of setting it up? Obviously the more detailed it became the longer and possibly more liked by the SEs it would become.

I'll have to really think about this because it would be a great addition. Thanks a lot for your input. You've also got me thinking I might need to expand my adwords keywords a bit to not just capture 'excel' type budgeting queries.

I'll keep you posted!

Would it be completely crazy to write a tutorial on how to make the exact system I sell? It would take me forever to get it all down...
For my newsletter subscribers I've been thinking I could possibly start some type of story where I would write a chapter every 2 weeks (issue) that would keep them interested. It would outline how a fictional family got their finances under control.
But, maybe I should consider including a tutorial piece w/ each newsletter that would start out with the very basics on how they can make the YNAB system for themselves? Hmm, it seems odd but somehow intriguing.
Basically, I would be explaining to people exactly how I made the system...giving away the farm?
It sure would provide a lot of content. And I wouldn't have to keep thinking up new subjects for content for a good year or so. I'm liking this...what do you think? (and any others who want to chime in

And neither do target markets, necessarily. I'd love some input from some of the other members of the forum... but I think the approach that first bugged me and started me thinking about this hasn't changed.

What I mean is, what I originally thought wasn't quite working in your Web site won't be fixed if you combine your "how to make an excel budget management system" content with your "finally get control of your finances and get out of debt" content.

I like the idea of a book on how to make a personal budget system. You could actually sell it as a product on its own. "Master Excel and build your own professional quality budgeting system." Your book would teach someone to be an Excel power user and programmer while showing them how to build a personal budget system that is as complex as yours. Whether they want a personal budget program or not is beside the point. The advantage is that everyone COULD use one, so they'll be happy to learn Excel (which is really what they want to do) while not completely wasting their time.

You could write a different book on how an average family got control of their finances. It would focus on the motivation that got them started (being afraid to answer the phone because they knew it would be bill collectors, maybe?) And then you could explain the steps they would take to get control using, of course, your personal budget system. I would make that more of a workbook that uses examples they can work though in the actual product. Then I would sell the book and the system as a package deal at a special price. Of course, you can also sell the book by itself to your current customers.

Now, that's a lot of writing! Is there a way you could make this easier? Just an idea... but if you have a good autoresponder, you could allow people to subscribe to different ezines, or different versions of the same ezine... here's what I mean...

You write three articles (per week, per month, whatever frequency would be standard for you) and then allow people on your list to choose to receive one, two or all three of the articles. One article is a story about your fictional family and an adventure they have using smart financial management and your personal budget system to solve a financial headache. The second article would be tips on how to use Excel, but aimed at the newbie... these would be articles that would show how to select groups of cells, add columns of numbers, etc. The third article would describe how you programmed a particularly tricky macro or how you figured out how to make an installation program so that even people who don't know how to use Excel can install your system. This would be aimed at the advanced developer.

Why three articles? Two reasons. First of all, people are able to customize the content just for them and will be very interested in reading what they've selected but won't have to wade through the stuff aimed at another target audience, and the second reason... if you wrote these articles bi-weekly or monthly for the next two or three years, at the end of it all, you just collect them all, edit them together and your two (or three if you wanted to do a Beginners Book on Excel and a Masters Book on Excel) books are written! Of course, you could write them faster than that and just load the articles into your autoresponder... and at the same time you'll be finished your book(s) that must faster.

I think what's important here, and I'd really love to hear the opinions of some of the more experienced copywriters in the forum on this, is to not try and lump the different target markets together. The way the search engines work, if you make a page (or pages) for advanced Excel users on your site, when people search for Excel, they'll be referred to those pages.

I wouldn't put any effort into positioning the other pages for Excel. People who have money problems don't care how you solve them... they just want the problems to go away! Your keywords for the rest of your site, including your home page, should be things like "get out of debt," "pay bills," "retirement planning" and so on... that's what these people are worried about.