Outside of a 1-hour swim I took with my daughter in the lake last night, I’d spent probably 30 of the last 48 hours, holed up in my office working on a massive project. In fact, for the five days previous to that, I was probably working close to 12 plus hours every day on this same project.

I was writing copy for my new business at LOTurnaround.com, and at this point, the fruits of all that labor mean I am now 50% or more through all the work that needs to be done.

There’s a point in time when you’re writing a sales letter, where you’ve got through the bulk of the creative part and you sort of “sense” the direction the rest of the letter is going to take — Halbert said when he got to that point he knew he’d “broken the back” of the letter.

That’s a great description since you’re putting such a tremendous surge of energy into such a small period of time to come up with a working long-form sales letter / free report.

For instance, when you’re running an entire project you don’t just need headlines for the sales letter itself, you need a title for the free report, you need proprietary marketing system names, and you need headlines for your display ads and tearsheets.

Some people say they write 25, 50, even 100 headlines for a project, but I don’t usually do that. In fact, I just went back and counted all of them for all three separate pieces (the free report, the display ad, and the proprietary marketing systems), and I had somewhere just north of 40 headlines.

But really, there was closer to 15 headlines formulas, and the other 25 headlines were subtle variations of these first 20 formulas.

Here, let me give you an example of what I mean by “formulas.” Let’s take this one, for example, which is one of the many formulas I used:

Don’t Even Think About ___ Until You ___!

Let’s say you’re selling guitars — why don’t we look at a few different ways you’d be able to use this formula.

Don’t Even Think About Buying A New Guitar, Until You’ve Read This Message!

Don’t Even THINK About Buying A New Gibson or Fender Guitar, Until You’ve Read This Free Report: The Axeman’s Guide To Saving A Bundle!

Attention All Guitarists: Don’t Even Think About Buying Your Next Guitar, Until You’ve Listened To This!

So you see, even though these are three different headlines, in reality they are subtle variations of the same headline formula.

Remember, it’s never “how many” headlines you wright, it’s “how close” do your headlines match the biggest concerns of your prospects.

Got it?

Good. And don’t forget, if you want to participate on the Q & A Call this Wednesday, simply click on this link to register: <#7_Link-Consulting Day Teleseminar#>

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. Discover the 4 steps you must take to research your topic, before you write even one word! They’re on pages 4 & 5 of this month’s Seductive Selling Newsletter — test-drive it free for 30 days and get 15 REAL bonus gifts at http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl

Oh, and there are less than 30 days until the kickoff of our
ARMs Marketing Program for Loan Officers. Join us at

Comments? Leave them here on my blog — I want to know what you’re thinking:

And for all the King’s products, go to http://www.kingofcopy.com/products