How to Become a Master Copywriter on the Cheap

Yes.  I have several courses on copywriting.  But that doesn’t mean you have to buy them to learn this awesome craft.

In fact I’m going to teach you how to get good at copywriting very quickly.  The more hours you put into this process the faster you will see results.  When you buy high priced courses, you get a lot of training that is specific to modern techniques.  That’s all awesome and we have a ton of amazing videos and templates in my course.  But for now, I want to teach you how to learn without cracking open your wallet.

In Japan, students learn complicated characters by writing them over and over again.  To read the newspaper you need to know at least 2,500 letters!  That’s nearly one hundred times more letters than we deal with in English.   I lived in Japan and even taught at schools there for two years.  This process seems boring and brutal, but it’s extremely effective.

Our minds are deeply connected to our bodies and repetitive behavior gets implanted into our minds.  The best way to learn how to fight is to get in the ring with someone.  You can read as many books as you want, but there is nothing like hitting someone who is going to hit you back.  Copywriting is the same thing.  The best way to learn is to actually do it.  The best part is that nobody is trying to hit you in the face.

The best move is to find great sales letters from the past 100 years and copy them by hand.

TECHNIQUE ONE – INFOMERCIAL TRANSCRIPT

A great place to get started is with Youtube.  Run a search for “full-length infomercials”

Find a great infomercial on there and copy the script down by hand.  You should also do this for any infomercials running in your area right now.  They are all around 28-30 minutes long.  The average American speaks around 150 words a minute.  So you can expect your finished script to be 4,000 to 5,000 words long.  It might be possible to just find the scripts, but watching the video while you write is part of the process.

I know this is a rote task but it’s much more powerful than most active learning techniques for copywriting.  Copywriting is a creative task, so it is very difficult to teach the active part of your brain.  Hearing how the words sound while you write will be very powerful.

Do not use your computer.  What you want is a copywriting notebook.  This is a task that you must perform by hand.  Typing degrades most of the effectiveness of this technique.

TECHNIQUE TWO – COPY HEROES

The next move is to find great sales letters from history and add them to your notebook.  One of the guys with hundreds of great letters is Eugene Schwartz.  He was truly one of the greatest copywriters of all time.

Here is an example of one of his sales letters:

This letter has a ton of great elements.  Just copying it over and over by hand will start to ingrain his writing style into your mind.  You can find collections of his ads floating around online.  If you email me directly I can help you find more ads to work from.  Just copying his work for two hours a night will turn you into a master within six months.

TECHNIQUE THREE – THE MASTERS

There are three great masters from copywriting history that are worth studying.  The first is Eugene Schwartz.  His book Breakthrough Advertising is simply brilliant.  It’s a work that I read constantly.  You learn something new and amazing each time you read it.  Even though there is such high demand for this work, it is out of print.  Occasionally you can find a copy on Amazon, but they can be pricey.

A little online research can sometimes help you dig up a PDF version too.  Whatever you have to do to scrounge up a copy will be worth it.

The next master worth checking out is John Caples.  He has several books that are all excellent, including Making Ads Pay.  Another of his great books is called Tested Advertising Methods.  If you grab this book, you want the 4th edition or earlier.  They changed publishers for the 5th edition and there is a big dip in quality.

The third master is Victor Schwab.  His book How to Write a Good Advertisement is at least still in print.

Each of these guys have several great books out there and they are worth reading.  If you just read and really absorb these three books you will be better than ninety-percent of the people out there dumping thousands of dollars into the newest, flashiest courses.

The old methods are sometimes the best methods.  I have my two notebooks in the office with me right now.

Following this simple method you can learn to become a master of the written word in just a few months.  The more time you spend copying by hand the better.