[DISCUSSION] The Se7en Deadly Sins of Direct Response Copywriting
A gifted package is always more valuable than a gifted pen.
Direct response copywriting is lucrative, seductive and one of the most problematic copywriting techniques on the planet.
It’s a hit or fail proposition. Done badly and the copy is excruciating to read. Done well, and the writer can net 10’s of thousands of dollars for a single piece of copy, instantly elevating their status and swatting job offers away like flies.
There is a classic framework for writing long form direct response copy which goes something like this:
✅scroll stopping jaw dropping headline
✅an engaging big promise which sparks curiosity
✅a rollercoaster riding, heart string tugging, pain point agitating, hero’s journey taking, story
✅the solution!
✅why is this the solution?
✅some professionals and happy customers weigh in on how this is the solution
✅are you ready to buy the solution now?
✅buying the solution now does all of these great things
✅not buying the solution now, could lead to………!!!!!
✅it’s time to buy the solution don’t you think?
✅look, we are all like Jo Blow in the story up there. His life reminded me so much of mine. And I remember having the hesitations you do. The only thing I regret now, is not acting faster. I don’t want you to go through an experience you can avoid.
✅there you go, atta boy, buying the solution is the best decision you’ll make.
Lust, avarice, envy, anger, sloth, gluttony and pride are the sins direct response will make you commit….eventually. You’ve been warned.
Forgive me father, for I have sinned.
The Sin of Making Conversions at Any Cost
❓❔❓Why are health and wealth the two most lucrative categories to sell products in?
Desperation.
Desperate for money to pay back debt or stop struggling week to week.
Desperate for the one secret to thinness and beauty, romance and stylish clothes.
Desperate to feel secure, safe, and in control of life.
This timeless quote by Cormack McCarthy, from his novel Blood Meridian, 1describes it perfectly:
“When the lambs are lost in the mountains they cry. Sometimes comes the mother, sometimes the wolf”.
A reasonable person with discernible writing skill and a creative streak can become as seduced by direct response copywriting as their targets. The money and vanity metrics take over a writer’s personality and they find themselves promising anything, insulting anyone, as long as it makes the sale.
Like an unenthusiastic employee lying to cover an absence, the writer digs up stories of grandmothers passing away 7, 8, 12 different times; a beloved cousin has a mystery disease; a best friend is lost to combat.
You, the reader, will never be whole, or complete, or respected or free. You’re a loser, and your life is like one a loser would live.
💸But will you buy this thing, and prove me wrong loser?
💸 Prove your wife and your boss and your neighbour wrong?
💸 Please?
It’s sad, really, what happens to writers taken by the siren song of direct response.
You’d rather be crashing onto rocks. 🪨🪨🪨🧜♀️🪨🪨
The Sin of Making the Easiest sale by Selling it to the Salesman.
Convincing one salesman to sell your product for you is infinitely easier than convincing 100 people to buy it.
Like art, direct response copywriting mimics life. Its a microcosm of the world it reflects, and it has its own 1%, the Course Creators.
Direct response copy at its dirty sweet worst can be found where the courses first find their way online. These are the nurseries of parasites, known as click funnels.
The email templates the Course Creators sell would send shivers down the spines of the great writers in their graves. Copy to make Austin, Chaucer, Joyce and Conrad physically sick.
Ugh.
These emails are bought by the salesman, the man in the middle who hacks off his due pound of flesh from a second hand file as it passes over his computer desktop.
He is encouraged by the course creators to sign up then down load his affiliate link. They cajole him to attach it to the pre-fab email they flog to every willing sap with a PayPal account.
It’s like nailing roadkill to an ikea shed.
He sends it off to his unassuming email list just as the instructions told him to do.
Then, he makes a silent monastic prayer, begging for a click.
He deludes himself into thinking he’s not the same as people who REALLY buy these courses. He’s not a greedy, get -rich -quick hustler, selling digital downloads for 29.99 in a back alley from the trunk of his car.
Unfortunately the salesman too bought the dream of financial freedom. He just chose to stop on a different rung from the others, when he let go of his drive to climb.
The Sin of Covering Up the Truth- Kyle Cooper Doesn’t Exist.
Every story that is used to introduce a piece of long form direct response copy is fake. Honestly.
The long form style is characterized by including an introductory story. 9 times out of 10, The Story will follow the Hero’s Journey story arch:
In direct response, the audience is always the hero, and the writer is always the mentor.
In this interview from 20202 Jim Clair, a deconstructed former copywriter, talks about a colleague who invented a character he used for every long form story he wrote.. The character was an American war hero, a veteran and soldier. The finest specimen ever produced in Mr Sam’s USA. His name was Kyle Cooper. This is a clever moniker, because in the film American Sniper,3 the protagonist soldier’s name is Chris Kyle and he is portrayed by actor Bradley Cooper.
Pictures of Kyle Cooper were Frankensteined together using google image search results in photoshop.
Despite Kyles dubious heritage and suspicious selfie gallery, the man could really tell a story. Kyle was Heroic, a defender of the constitution. Kyle laid his life on the line for our country. If Kyle says we should buy this product, well dog-onit, we’re buying that there product.
The problem being: Kyle Cooper doesn’t exist.
Kyle was pure invention, and the sad truth was people preferred being persuaded by Kyle more than the flesh and blood writer inventing Kyle in the office. That writer was relegated to the role of Cyrano to a non-existent Christian, whispering to the customer, Roxanne.
The writer knew he could never be Kyle, his own stories were too flaccid and his trophy cabinet was too bare. He hadn’t lived a life even close to resembling Kyles.
Kyle was just…better…than him.
The Sin of Blaming the Driver Instead of the Faulty Brakes.
If you ever create a shitty online course, price it in the thousands and you need a way to deflect complaints, take a leaf out of the shitty course creators playbook, and reply to every refund request thusly-
THE COURSE DOESN’T GET RESULTS, YOU DO.
Moonwalk out of everything by blaming the carpenter instead of the tools. It’s Fair enough. A hammer doesn’t build a house on its own.
But when you promise the carpenter that your program will build an 18 bedroom mansion worth a billion dollars FOR him, you can’t blame him for being a bit put-out when your empty hollow promises fail to materialize.
Direct response copywriting doesn’t tie itself down with warranties and refund policies. How will a harrowing story unfurl across the page if an UN-sexy return policy is dumped on top of it, like garbage thrown into a gondola gliding through Venice?
THATS WHAT WE’RE WRITING HERE PEOPLE. POETRY.
It’s not easy, day after day, painting elaborate artworks in peoples minds using words.
No one has the time Janice, or the desire, to listen to your complaints.
Obviously it’s a dodgy course. You bought it from an email click funnel.
What did you expect?
Harvard?
But forever tricksy, agile and slithering, copywriters ooze through the cracks and discover the perfect phrase, adaptable for both making the sale and denying the refund. It appears on the page and rides into infamy-
The sin of buying a personality instead of building one.
Entrepreneurship has morphed into an identity you can buy, like a band t-shirt, or a pair of Air Jordan’s.
Everyone in the entrepreneur crowd needs to calm down. No, you don’t need to invent Uber, or touch screens, or Scrub Daddy. You don’t even need an idea.
The whole point of BEING an entrepreneur is so you can kiss the 9 to 5 goodbye. Entrepreneurship is about leaving the capitalist hamster wheel, not thinking of ideas.
Introducing Plastic-preneur ™️ With Plastic-preneur, Put your entire collection of entrepreneurship accoutrements on the credit card and bob’s your father’s brother.
Some of you might be thinking “Is Plastic-preneurship for everyone?” OF COURSE IT IS. Plastic-preneurship is just as easy as shopping online. Except you do it from our dropshipping site, so I’ve got one thing to say to you dolly:
👨👩👧👧🏠👩👧👨👩👧👦Welcome to the family 👨👩👧👧🏠👨👩👧👦👩👧
💸just because research shows that being an entrepreneur or start-up employee reduces the amount someone earns in lifetime income,
💸And just because the overwhelming majority of start-ups definitely fail,
💸And just because globally, there are less unique ideas overall being pitched to investors
Doesn’t mean you can’t buy a kick-ass 45 minute copywriting course and a digital planner from Plastic-preneur ™️ and plastic-preneur your way to success.
Wear entrepreneurship like a technicolor dream coat and stick it to those haters in the face.
(Results may Vary)
The sin of excessive jargon.
Jeff Bezos would scream if he knew how much jargon was flying around the inter webs in emails every day. Jeff can’t stand jargon, and his 9 rules for high converting sales copy expressly rule it out.
This is a shyster language index…
….to help you decifer what a direct response copywriter is saying.
Use the points system to determine if what you are reading is the gateway drug to a Ponzi scheme buy-in, MLM ground floor or money burning, up-sell, merry go round. If you add up more than 15 points in one piece of copy, make like a shaken wasp nest and RUN.
Protect yourself from persuasion.
0-100
🧢6 figure income stream- baseless income claims from someone who may or may not know how to count to 6. 6 points.
🧢earn 10k a month- don’t earn 10k a month. Well, maybe eventually. 6 points.
A
🧢affiliate is the best passive income stream and no one is talking about it- spend 8 minutes on TikTok. Everyone is talking about it. Affiliate marketing is only slightly less mysterious than day-bright, night-dark. 10 points
C
🧢CopyTHINKING- this is supposed to be an enlightened mind hack. There is no amount of explaining you could do to make this concept less ridiculous. 10 points.
I
🧢it’s a numbers game- every job hunt is a numbers game. A simple trick doctors don’t want you to know: make it less numbers by having a better proposal. Shit proposal= lots of numbers, thick meaty proposal = single number. 7 points.
J
🧢just sending emails- have you ever done the back-end of an automated email campaign? Labour to get it going but the years of life you save with these systems. Glorious. Just Sending Emails is proposing that you become the automation software for businesses and manually manage an email campaign. Insane. It’s a “tech-savvy” job idea for go getter’s in 2002. 6 points.
L
🧢less than 10hrs work a week- do you know who works less than 10 hours a week? School kids. This blog you’re reading took 10 hours to produce. Research, graphic design, writing drafts, formatting. Anyone who says working online is a holiday doesn’t work online. 9 points.
M
🧢mindset- get ready for the flex 💪 my previous business generated $1million PA. I understand how to manage those sums, hire staff, pay tax, the whole schtick. No lender, supplier, employee prospect, or business associate ever checked that I had the right growth mindset before they entered into a professional relationship with me. “Mindset” is a grifter dog whistle. 8 points.
P
🧢passive income- this one is not so bad. With the state of automation software, vending machines, coin laundry’s and so on, real passive income does exist. Just, tread lightly. 3 points.
T
🧢the best skill to secure your financial freedom- honesty, it’s not. If you’re not a writer, practice writing or have never sought writing education before, you’re in for a journey. The unlikable truth is that some people are charismatic on camera, some in song, some on stage and some in writing. If you don’t have it, it can take years of coaching and practice to develop it. You can write, of course you can, and I believe in you and want to help you. I also want to protect you from huge claims made by people who don’t know you or your circumstances. 9 points.
W
🧢work from anywhere on your laptop- copywriting isn’t the only remote job in the world if your current employer doesn’t offer the option. STOP IT. 8 points.
Y
🧢you don’t need experience- technically true, but it would be a certain set of circumstances that would lead me to employ a complete beginner. THE GOOD NEWS is you can give yourself experience. Start a blog. Honestly, start a blog, produce content, build a content and a backlink strategy, create Pinterest pins, network on LinkedIn. You might do the blog so well you don’t need a freelance gig.
The sin of spinning a thick web to hide the truth of your product.
Good products don’t need persuasion .
There is a list as long as the autobahn of brands who don’t worry about SEO. They give no care to sales emails or lead magnets. Their products are already good.
I can’t remember ever being recommended a mindset inner circle course by a friend. Or the “ten secrets to high conversion copywriting and a six figure side hustle” being discussed on morning television.
People don’t suggest or discuss these products because they are bad products.
💥Is the course selling you an idea, or real, specific learning modules?
💥Is the course making promises that sound alluring but don’t pass the sniff test?
💥Be honest with yourself- under capitalism, have you ever heard of a high income earning specialist skill only requiring minimal training to become an expert-no experience, not even a high school diploma?
Are they hiding something to make up for something else?
It’s a wicked game pretending something is when it obviously isn’t.
What is the word? Gaslighting?
Conclusion
If you can only get a product over the line with long form copy, click funnels and affiliates?
**sad trombone**
Your product is a mistake best forgotten Padawan.
Everyone makes mistakes.
It’s better to start again at the beginning than be beguiled by the singing of story arcs, fake soldiers, abstract jargon and a personality for sale.
Thank you for reading.
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❤️💕💗💘💟💝
Amazon affiliate. This is close to being my favourite book.
First uploaded to the Coffeezilla YouTube channel on the 1st of October, 2020. Hosted by YouTube personality “Coffeezilla”, this creator can be found on Twitter @coffeebreak_YT or watch his other videos here. All credit to the content of this video is his. I am using it to explain and present information in a unique way which is allowed under Fair Use laws. For further information or clarification, please email. Thank you Coffeezilla for your great content. Please check out his channel and videos.
Amazon affiliate. The real Chris Kyle, ironically, is a writer now.
Decoupage infographic because I do what I want. You bad ass. I'm a visual artist and I am so captivated by the images you create. It beautifully break up each section and weeps the written understanding. Thank you.