Written By Loren Woirhaye, June 3rd, 2009
Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes
Perhaps unique to copywriting is the idea of “swiping” sales appeals from winning letters written by yourself or other copywriters. This is not, and should not be approached as, strict copying of others’ work, for a couple of reasons. 1) plagiarism is illegal and will land you in hot water because you WILL get sued if you do it in direct marketing, and 2) there is an art to adapting a proven sales message STRUCTURE to the thing you want to sell and the state of AWARENESS in the marketplace at the time.
That’s another way of saying that running old copy won’t work – it must be adapted.
How to get ideas to create winning copy for today adapted (“swiped”) from yesterday’s winning copy:
Any salesletter written by a A-level copywriter that has the APPEALS in it I need for whatever I am working on at the time. Don’t make it hard on yourself by studying Gary Bencivenga’s food letters (which I believe he still writes mostly because it’s fun) and try to apply the methods to selling info-products.
Get the appeal right. I know this seems very basic and 
Written By Loren Woirhaye, June 3rd, 2009
Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes
Perhaps unique to copywriting is the idea of “swiping” sales appeals from winning letters written by yourself or other copywriters. This is not, and should not be approached as, strict copying of others’ work, for a couple of reasons. 1) plagiarism is illegal and will land you in hot water because you WILL get sued if you do it in direct marketing, and 2) there is an art to adapting a proven sales message STRUCTURE to the thing you want to sell and the state of AWARENESS in the marketplace at the time.
That’s another way of saying that running old copy won’t work – it must be adapted.
How to get ideas to create winning copy for today adapted (“swiped”) from yesterday’s winning copy:
Any salesletter written by a A-level copywriter that has the APPEALS in it I need for whatever I am working on at the time. Don’t make it hard on yourself by studying Gary Bencivenga’s food letters (which I believe he still writes mostly because it’s fun) and try to apply the methods to selling info-products.
Get the appeal right. I know this seems very basic and
