Smart Copywriters Do This When they Write

In this article I’m revealing how you can crank out winning copy faster. 

You trade your time for money in that your deliverables are the written word.

It makes sense that the faster you can produce a final draft, without sacrificing quality, the more you can make.

This is the difference between being a professional writer and being a hack. 

Before I reveal this winning tactic, I want to share how the same system can be used to accomplish any goal.

A few years ago, my wife and children presented me with the idea of getting some chickens. We live on a couple acres of land on the east coast of Florida in a rural area, not too far from Kennedy Space center.

 What they wanted was baby chicks. Chicks that will grow into chickens.

They told me how we will have fresh eggs. And if society ever breaks down completely, we won’t have to worry about food.

I’m totally against the idea. 

Chickens, like any other animal, require care and attention. They need food and water. And they need space to run around and do whatever it is that chickens do.

Plus, I already have enough to do.

I know, in spite of the many promises by my wife and kids of how they will take care of everything, I’ll be the one doing much of the work to care for the birds. (Any father with kids knows how this plays out.)

One day I come home and notice the door to our laundry room is closed.

Hmmmm…I wonder why.

I open the laundry room door and find eight baby chicks and four baby ducks. All of them inside a big green Rubbermaid bin with pine shaving bedding on the bottom.

I don’t remember any conversations about ducks…

Ok, I think to myself, we have chicks and baby ducks now. 

My wife and children come in excitedly telling the story of how they went to Tractor Supply. While there, they saw these cute little fluffy creatures and just had to get them.

They acted on the old saying, “better to ask for forgiveness, than to ask for permission.”

I wonder where they got this idea from.

No time to contemplate – we have baby birds now! 

And they’re living in a big green Rubbermaid bin in our laundry room. These things can’t stay there long – this is our home.

I now have a new project that immediately becomes paramount.

Get the birds out of the house and into a safe, more appropriate long-term dwelling.

In other words, we need a chicken coop... 

Or learn to live with twelve barnyard birds in our home...better build a coop.

But I’ve never built a chicken coop.

I do some research into buying one.

I search for plans to build one.

What I discover is most chicken coops are small and low. None of these options are going to work.

I don’t want to duck to enter or exit the coop.

Nor do I want to stoop while in the coop or bump my head inside the coop.

I know I’ll be the one taking care of these little feathered creatures for the long haul, so I need to plan ahead.

We have plenty of space to build. I figure I’ll build my own coop from my own plans.

What we quickly come to realize is that baby chicks and ducks seem to double in size almost daily – I’m serious!

The big green rubber bin soon becomes too small for twelve growing birds. Luckily, we have an outside, fenced-in area right outside the laundry room. It has its own outside door. 

I fashion a makeshift roof out and extra piece of fencing and corral them into one end of the area with another piece of fencing. We have hawks and the roof is a preventative measure.

This isn’t a long-term solution...

Better get moving on the plan to build a permanent home for the feather babies.

First, I draw up a rough draft of the whole coop. Complete with dimensions. Then draft each side, front, back, and where the door will be.

Each of the four sides will have cross bracing. And they’ll be bracing around the perimeter of both the top and bottom. And connecting the interior uprights.

We live in Florida and have hurricanes – I don’t want to deal with any “disasters” down the line.

This thing will be built with structural integrity like no other chicken coop anyone has ever seen. 

The coop will be 20 feet wide and 30 feet long. Nine feet high.

12-foot pressure treated 4x4s will be the vertical posts. 

They’ll be spaced every five feet on the front and back and every six feet on the sides. And there’ll be an interior row of 4x4s that span the middle of the coop, front to back. 

The posts will be set three feet in the ground. Making the top nine feet off the ground.

 Plenty of headroom!

The bracing will be 1x6s. A single board for the cross bracing, a single row for the top perimeter and connecting the interior uprights.  

Two 1x6s will surround the bottom perimeter. One above ground level, one just below – so nothing can dig under and get the birds.

The entire coop will be wrapped in chicken wire. All sides, top to bottom, and the open-air portion of the roof. 

Half of the coop will have a closed roof – plywood with metal panel roofing on top.

After my plan is sketched out on a notepad, I make a list of materials needed. From my diagrams of the coop, I count up how many 4x4s I’ll need. The same for the 1x6s, and I calculate how much chicken wire I need to get.

Off to Lowes Hardware.

Once I get back, I do a rough layout of where the coop will be and mark off where the holes need dug for the 4x4 posts. Then I place each post and pack the ground back in around each post.

The next step is laying out all of the 1x6s around the perimeter of the posts. Board-by-board I hold each 1x6 in place, drill a hole, then sink a screw securing the 1x6s to each post.

Soon all of the top and bottom of the coop were lined with a continuous 1x6 border. Now it’s time for the cross bracing. Each board held where it was going to be. Then trimmed to fit. 

Then the drilling and screwing to secure it.

After much effort, I have the skeleton of the chicken coop.

The next step is adding plywood to the part of the coop that will have a roof. After the plywood will come the metal roofing panels.

Now it’s time for the chicken wire. The entire structure is wrapped with chicken wire. Everything except the portion with the metal roof.

The last step is hanging the door on the front of the chicken coop.

By the time I complete the coop the chickens and ducks are nearly full grown. 

The big green Rubbermaid bin that once housed eight chicks and four baby ducks, now can only hold one full grown Peking duck.

It was an effort but the coop is built. 

Now we enjoy farm fresh eggs every day for breakfast.

The ducks and chickens have a mansion of a coop to live in compared to any of the initial options I explored before deciding to build my own coop.

Here’s how this ties into writing sales copy faster.

The one thing that will help you more than anything else is...Have a plan when you write. 

Just like the chicken coop, you need a plan before you set out writing. 

If I didn’t have a plan and just started buying materials...slapping them together as I went...it would have been a disaster. 

The coop would be plagued with problems and I would waste enormous amounts of time and energy.

 When writing, you need to know what you’re going to write before you start writing. 

 Do you need to write an email? 

Are you writing a four page sales letter with one insert and an order form? 

Is it going to be a value build series of emails to sell a product?

Once you have a plan of exactly what you're going to write, there are three things you need to do to ensure success.

1. Gather the raw materials for your piece. You’ll need to have all of your research done. 

Are there interviews form subject matter experts? 

What’s the offer going to be? 

Do you have samples of the product? 

Do you have all of the facts and figures you may use?

Do you have all of the testimonials ready? Case studies? 

Have you tried the product or gone through the deliverables yourself?

Who are you writing to? Why? Why now? 

Who is the message from?

You need to have everything you need to write, before you sit down to write. 

2. The next step is to organize your layout.  Following a proven format will go a long way towards persuasive sales copy. Arrange your basic elements in a doc and fill in the component parts. 

You know you’ll start with a headline of some sort, you’ll have credibility elements, an offer, a call to action, an order device. There are many proven formulas you can use. Put all of the elements in their respective places in your doc. 

Having everything you need approximately where you’re going to use it eliminates staring at a blank page and gets you going a lot faster.

3. The third step is assembly. Weave each part of your layout together to crank out compelling copy.

Mix in relevant transitions and persuasive arguments. Arrange the prehead, headline, subhead, and deck copy. Structure the offer components so they make sense and seamlessly flow right to the order device. Place boxes and sidebars where appropriate and support your main sales message.

You may not get caught off guard by having to build a chicken coop, but you can follow the same process to write winning sales copy.

 Start by having a plan before you start writing. Then follow the simple three step process above to crank out persuasive marketing messages faster.

___________________

James Wolfe has twelve years face-to-face sales experience. He has sold tens of millions of dollars’ worth of products, predominately to people 50 years of age and older.  He now offers copywriting and consulting services to alternative health companies. 

To discover how you can benefit from a copywriter with a dozen years of sales experience combined with a passion for life-long health and fitness, contact James today. https://WolfSalesCopy.com/contact/