“this is the book for those lost souls who are passionless, money-hungry, wannabe information sellers.”

That’s me!! Sorta! Nothing harsh there, in fact, it made me laugh. Something I’ve been in short supply of lately.

Tom and others – as to long sales letters, if you’ve seen one, you’ve prolly seen them all. But… sales are a fact of marketing, can’t do without them. Still, I tend to skim through, stopping and reading if a section catches my eye and then I zip down to the cost at the end of the letter.

Have a great day!
Clare

I already have a product that is focused on creating video based products on DVD.ge

I have to agree with Tom about the long sales letters. And in the past, I’ve seen some that told me everything I needed to know above the fold and put a buy link right at the fold.

Another thing about the “formula” sales pages that drives me nuts is they all seem to use the same Times New Roman over-sized font, with the same red headlines interspersed. Where else do you see red Times New Roman used on web pages? Nowhere. It’s cheesy in my opinion.

I suspect people use the formula only because nearly everyone else does. No originality, no guts. However, there are a few very successful niche marketers who don’t follow the formula. Check out http://www.bettafishcenter.com/bcme.shtml for an example. This guy makes a lot of money on small niches and he’ll teach you exactly how he does it. Hint: It’s not by boring readers with long sales pages.

Best to everyone,

Owen

Ade

If there was one product I am willing to invest in then which one would you recommend?

I just wanted to a a little bit about the discussion about long sales letters going on quite a bit above from where you are reading now (you probably passed through there…)

There are some advantages from the point of behavioural science about the long sales letter.

1. You can skim through. Most people will just be happy with and ideas of what they COULD read on the page if they WANTED to. Thez actually don’t do it, but it really helps to place that product into perspective.

2. Lots of people tell how they like the product. We are all sheep. If one sheep starts to run, we all follow suit (just look at Wall Street). If you can make the imporession that the “social vote”on yout product is good, than so be it! People will buy.

3. Time that went into creating the sales page. Obviously making a long sales letter takes way more time than writing a short bit. So there has been an investment (of time). People use this information unconsciously to form an impression about the product. So the thoguth goes: If someone has invested that much time and money in it, it must be good! This is the same psychological effect that makes the same wine for 20$ taste better than the for 5$. Or why the same fruit juice, when its placed in the cooling unit, can be sold for dubble the price. It is because we deduct information from the implicit information we gather about items in our world.

4. People know the format. People willing to spend money on information products are aquainted to the long-sales-letter. In some way you could see this as a brand. So people might feel more comfortable. Ont he other hand they could have been ripped of the last time…but hey…then they would probably not search for information products anyway!

Okay I hope this has shed some light into the psychological aspects of the long sales letter.

Okay…hope you profit from that!

Martin