Copywriting and Affiliate Marketing Secrets from master copywriter Jim Edwards
I recently had a chance to sit down with a true copywriting legend, Jim Edwards, and talk about:
- Writing effective marketing copy
- His excellent book, “Copywriting Secrets”
- Working with Russell Brunson
- Jim’s famous $1,000,000 affiliate marketing launch…
- And a whole lot more!
You can watch the whole interview right here (or read the transcript below):
And by the way…
If you want early access to all of my Expert Spotlight interviews — not to mention funnel hacks, trainings and a whole lot more — make sure you join the free Funnel Momentum Facebook Group.
Expert Spotlight Interview with Jim Edwards
April 03, 2020
Note: This transcript has been lightly edited to remove filler words and stutters, but that’s about it.
Mikael Dia: (00:01)
What’s going on. Everybody say hello in the comments. Jim, what’s up?
Jim Edwards: (00:04)
What’s up? Thanks for having me. I’m excited.
Mikael Dia: (00:07)
I’m excited to have you, man. I’m excited to have a chat. So, for those of you who do not know, Jim Edwards, actually, we just started building a relationship through somebody in my community. Her name is Sarah Pitts, she kept kind of pushing me to contact you and all that stuff. She’s awesome. And now here we are having a chat, but for those of you who don’t know, Jim. He’s the author of Copywriting Secrets and you can see on the other side, he’s got that nice, beautiful two comma club X award right there. That’s offered by Russell Brunson and the ClickFunnels crew for people who sell at least $10 million through one funnel.
Mikael Dia: (00:58)
So Jim knows what he’s talking about. And I’m super excited. And you actually just told me that you were the top affiliate back in the day during John Reese’s Traffic Secrets launch. That was his million dollar day.
Jim Edwards: (01:14)
That was the million dollar day. So everybody talks about the million dollar day. I was the number one affiliate for the million dollar day. And so, you know, if he was Roger Bannister doing the one minute mile, I was cousin weewee out there pushing him to get him, you know, over that line and under, you know, three minutes and 59 seconds.
Mikael Dia: (01:34)
That’s interesting. I want to talk about that. I want to chat about that. But look, I kind of gave a quick overview, but for the people that don’t know. Tell them about you.
Jim Edwards: (01:46)
Is this the part where I do the bragging or is this where we’re at the story part?
Mikael Dia: (01:49)
Do the bragging. I mean do the bragging even though I already bragged for you.
Jim Edwards: (01:53)
Okay. So that over there, that right there is an award for doing a million and the other one’s for doing 10 million through a single funnel. And so I’ve been, you know, I know how to get stuff sold, but you know, this book actually I never set out to write that book, but we sold 20,000 copies of that book in four months, which is pretty good. The average business book sells 1500 copies and then ends up in the author’s garage.
So, that’s Copywriting Secrets. That’s all of my secrets on how to sell stuff that I’ve learned over the last 20 some odd years, because I’ve been selling online since 1997 now for the first four years I was not very successful. It was not great. But I’m not good at bragging on myself. Nobody really is. But anyway, I know how to sell stuff and if you want me to teach you how to sell stuff, I got a book that you can get for shipping and handling that will tell you some really cool stuff about how the sell stuff.
Mikael Dia: (03:02)
So let’s talk about before you knew how to sell stuff, then. Let’s, let’s talk about how you learned how to sell stuff. Because, you know, it’s always fascinating to hear the journey of entrepreneurs because people see these awards, they see the book, they see all of this stuff, and they’re like, I’ve never heard of this Jim Edwards. And all of a sudden he’s huge. People don’t realize that, yeah, you started in the nineties.
Jim Edwards: (03:28)
Back before the turn of the century, when you were like 12, I started selling…
Mikael Dia: (03:36)
11…
Jim Edwards: (03:36)
You were 11?
Mikael Dia: (03:36)
in 1997. I was 11.
Jim Edwards: (03:39)
Wow. Okay. So you’re younger than my daughter. So basically, what happened to me was, I wrote a book and it took me four years to write the book and I tried to get it published and I got turned down by over 40 different publishers. I know it was more than 40, because I stopped counting at 40 and I just threw the manuscript in a drawer and forgot about it. And then in 1997 I was at homecoming and I was drinking beer with a fraternity brother. He and his dad owned an advertising agency. They had just bought a web server. I didn’t even, I mean I’d been online, sort of knew how to use email.
I said, Hey, do you think I could sell my book on the internet. That was asking the least qualified person in the world. I’m asking this guy, but he wanted to sell some web hosting. So he was like, yeah, I bet you could. And so I decided I was going to sell my book. And so I had to learn how to make a website. I had to learn about FTP, HTML, SSL. Being able to take credit cards took an act of God. I actually was processing credit card orders through my aunt’s craft store at the mall. I would sell an ebook and then I’d have to print the thing off. I’d call her on the phone and read her the credit card information and then she would get it approved. And then I would send the people, this is before PDF, so I would send the people a word document with my book in it. And I had to explain to them why their credit card statement was going to say Country Treasures as the charge.
And yet I was still able to get that up to over the course of a couple of years I got up to where it was making me enough money to cover a house payment, Two car payments, and the electric bill. So it was okay. I mean I wasn’t getting rich but I was doing okay, but my website really sucked. I didn’t have a funnel. I had a 40 page sticky website because everybody told you to have a sticky website. You have to giveaway lots of stuff so people stick around. So I was doing okay. But then what happened was I went to a conference in 2001 and I was working for a guy that was paying me $1,500 a month and I wasn’t, I mean it was terrible, but I had low self worth and couldn’t figure out what I was doing.
Jim Edwards: (06:15)
And I saw a guy talk and he talked about one page sales letters and I said, okay, I can understand that. And I basically took that whole 40 page website and I took parts of it and turned it into a single one page website. You’d call it a sales funnel now, and instantly my sales went up 250% overnight. Same traffic. I had gotten really good at driving traffic because my offers sucked so bad I needed to get a ton of people to see it just to get anybody to buy. It’s true. This is totally true. And so what happened was I started selling my book and it was doing okay. And then I got fired from my job because my boss hated me for some reason. And so I was able to to keep body and soul together with this website.
Jim Edwards: (07:06)
And the funny thing is that I was selling this book, it was a book about how to sell your house yourself. And people started asking me, Hey, how are you doing this? Because I had another little product on how not to get ripped off on getting a mortgage. And people were like, Hey, how are you doing this? And I realized that there were really two aspects of a business that I could have. One was the business that I was doing, which was the creating and selling the ebooks. The second was teaching people what I was doing and the teaching people what it was doing, since I proved that it would work, I could probably make more money teaching people what I was doing, but I still had to keep doing what I was doing to prove that it worked.
Jim Edwards: (07:44)
Does that make sense? So like the people who come in and say, Hey, I’m going to show you how to do an ebook. It’s like, okay, well show me the ebook. That’s not an ebook about ebooks that you’ve sold. And so that’s kind of what happened was I started teaching people stuff about how I was doing it. And then that launched me on a journey of figuring things out. So, I made my money for the first 15 years I was online, selling information but then also figuring stuff out, bridging the gap for people.
So first it was bridging the gap of how do I sell an ebook? So I taught people that, and then it was how do I get audio files online and how do I sell audio files? I mean we’re talking way back, you know, 2001-2002 then it was screen capture video. Then it was full motion video. I mean we were doing full motion videos back in 2004-2005 I mean when you were trying to do it with an FLV wrapped in a swift file with different bandwidth things over dial up. And then I started doing CD courses.
I was like video professor, and then we started webinars and then we started doing membership sites. And then what happened was, and I didn’t even realize that I was developing what would ultimately become my super power, was that as I was developing these things and bridging these gaps, what I had gotten real good at was selling the stuff that I was making. I had gotten really good at writing sales letters and emails and info snippets. And you know, we were doing content marketing before it was called content marketing. And so I just had gotten really good at selling stuff.
And then one day I said to myself, you know, I’m doing the same things over and over. There’s gotta be a better way than just using a swipe file to create these emails that I’ve got this formula that I know works, but I have to go through it every time. I need a piece of software that I could just fill in the blanks and it would slam all this stuff into the thing and I could click a button and do in 20 minutes what it’s taking me an hour to two hours to do. And so I started messing around with what ultimately became my wizard software that turned into FunnelScripts, that turned into Author Wizards. It turned into the Jim Edwards Method Premium, all these different things. And that’s when I started focusing on software development.
Because I still wasn’t thinking about teaching copywriting. I never saw myself as a copywriter. I saw myself as this guy doing stuff and I learned how to write copy so I could sell the stuff I was doing. Then finally, one day somebody said, man, you’re like one of the best copywriters I’ve ever seen. I said, I’m not a copywriter. I’m a guy that, you know, I’m an author, I’m anything but a copywriter. I’m certainly not a copywriting teacher. And then we came up with FunnelScripts about four years ago. I’m just like, I guess I need to teach people how to write copy.
So I wrote a book. So it’s like totally accidental that I wrote that book and it’s sold like 24,000 copies in six or seven months. And I still, I don’t consider myself, I mean I’m a guy who helps people figure out how to sell their stuff. If you really had to break it down. The view that I have of myself is that I help non sales people sell whatever it is they want to sell, whether it’s coaching or software or info or services or what have you. I help non salespeople sell whatever it is they do.
Mikael Dia: (11:39)
So man, you’ve gone through a journey. You’ve gone through a lot over there.
Jim Edwards: (11:45)
It’s not over yet and it’s not over yet.
Mikael Dia: (11:48)
And that’s the cool thing. Right? And it’s actually just the beginning when you think about it. And that’s exciting part. I want to kind of take it back to before we talk about copywriting and Copywriting Secrets in general and stuff like that. First off, you wrote a book that was the catalyst right at the very beginning. What made you, because a lot of people are like, even me, like I think about writing a book and I’m like, I know I could, I have enough to share about a book. But like, ugh, that sounds like a lot of work. It sounds like a lot of stuff to do. What made you write a book? How did you go about writing a book? Was the process different for Copywriting Secrets than your first book? Let’s talk about writing books. I’m curious about your thoughts around that.
Jim Edwards: (12:39)
So I wrote the first book to impress a girl, the girl that I was dating who later became my wife…
Mikael Dia: (12:47)
Oh, it worked!
Jim Edwards: (12:47)
Who in another couple months we’ll have been married for 26…27…28… No, 26 Years. Anyway, a while, it might work out. So the thing is, I tried to write a book without doing any research on how one would write a book. So I spent four years off and on screwing around trying to write a book.
Mikael Dia: (13:17)
Right.
Jim Edwards: (13:18)
And so that was not the way to write a book. And originally I wrote the book because I thought I wanted to get it published so that I could have people do work and send me money, you know, live off the royalties. That’s what most people think when they write a book. I’m going to write a book, it’s going to get published and I’m going to get royalty checks forever and be really rich. That’s what people think. That’s not the reality.
And so what ultimately happened, I didn’t start making money with that book until I actually thought of it as a business tool. And I went down to Kinko’s. I had it comb bound, and I started using it in my real estate business. It was a book on how to sell your house yourself. So I went around giving the book away for free to people who were for sale owners that I found in the newspaper. And my pitch was, Hey, I wrote this book. If it helps you, if you wouldn’t mind giving me a testimonial, it might help me get it published. And if it helps you and you sell your house, great, maybe I can help you sell your next house. And if you have any questions, let me know. Now that may not sound like a great pitch, but I ended up taking 50 listings my first year in real estate, which is a big deal.
So, and again, I’m not the smartest guy you’ll ever meet by any means because it didn’t dawn on me of, Hey, wow, you could use a book to build a business as a business tool. It took me like 20 years to go back to that and say, Hey, what if I wrote a book, gave it away for free and used it as a way to develop clientele. So that was the book. Now is that the way I wrote this book? No. The way I wrote this book was I taught a bunch of live classes to my existing best customers. And then I had those lessons transcribed, went through, edited the crap out of them and turned them into the chapters in the book. That process, that process to do this book took about a year.
Jim Edwards: (15:17)
Because I wanted to make sure it was perfect. Now there are other ways that you can create a book too by doing it as an interview that if you just want to have a book that has your name on it and it’s got good content that’s your content, you go do an interview and have it transcribed and about a good two hour interview turns into about 150 page book, and that is a perfectly legitimate way to create a book. So there’s a ton of different ways to create. You know, I like to tell people that my first book took me four years and one of my most recent books took me 76 minutes to create the content. And that’s because I did a 76 minute interview. So, you know, writing a book is not difficult if you use strategy and tools to do it. And it depends on your purpose in writing the book.
Mikael Dia: (16:15)
Yeah, as you say, look, if your goal is to be a number one bestseller or to make a bunch of royalty checks from a book it’s not going to happen.
Jim Edwards: (16:29)
It’s a crap shoot.
Mikael Dia: (16:31)
Yeah. And being a number one seller is not what’s going to make you money. Right? You have to understand that it’s just the front end of a business. It’s a way for you to put yourself out there and to build authority. But at the end of the day, you still have to have a business on the back end.
Jim Edwards: (16:50)
Absolutely. And most people don’t or they don’t understand. They might have a business, but then they don’t write the right book to support that business they already have running or they write a book and then don’t think through what a business on the back end of that should look like.
Mikael Dia: (17:10)
Yup. That makes sense and we’ll come back to your book because I do want to talk about it. I want to understand you know, what you cover inside of the book and I really want people to grab a copy of this book so we’ll push people towards getting a copy. But I am curious about the million dollar day. I am curious about John Reese, how you became the number one affiliate. I mean, a million dollars in a day. I’m sure there were a lot of affiliates, but that was probably a nice day for you too, if you were the number one affiliate
Jim Edwards: (17:39)
And I made enough money, I like to tell everybody that I made enough money in that one day to buy one and a half Hummers.
Mikael Dia: (17:46)
Wow. One and a half Hummers. How did that come about? How did you, first of all become a big affiliate? And right now your at the time of this interview you’re kind of pushing the traffic secrets book for Russell Brunson and you are the number one affiliate right now.
Jim Edwards: (18:08)
With three days to go, I’m, I’m in the number one spot. We’ll see if that sticks. It’s been a three week contest, man.
Mikael Dia: (18:19)
It’s pushing. Three days. Got to keep going.
Jim Edwards: (18:22)
So, I’m old man. 52 I can’t run for three weeks straight.
Mikael Dia: (18:28)
How did you do it? How did you, first of all, like get into this affiliate game? I mean, we could talk about affiliate marketing too. Like I could take this conversation in so many places. I’m curious, but let’s start with John Reese. Let’s start that million dollar day.
Jim Edwards: (18:44)
First of all, it’s not the affiliate game versus your own product game. It’s having a target group of people that you develop a relationship with by creating and providing consistent value. So it’s the old thing of you gotta dig your well before you’re thirsty. So you can’t be a big time affiliate like that without having a loyal tribe of people that are following you. All right? And nobody’s born with a list.
Nobody’s born with a Facebook following. Nobody’s born with a bunch of Instagram followers. So a lot of people immediately shut down into, Oh well you’ve got a list Jim. People know who you are. You’ve been around since 1997 since before the turn of the century. Okay. But I mean, nobody’s born with the list and I’ve had ups and downs and stuff, but it’s the old thing of you gotta dig your well before you’re thirsty. I would rather have a thousand or 2000 people that know me like me and really trust me and look forward to what I bring to them than to have a hundred thousand people on a list who don’t even remember who I am because I use some kind of a fancy Facebook trick to get them onto a list and they don’t remember who I am.
So it’s all about relationships. And so that’s the first thing. So the way that I won that contest was by first having existing relationships with people. Dug my well before I was thirsty. All right? Number two. I didn’t just show up on that day and say, okay, y’all need to go buy this thing from this guy. You gotta warm people up. I always look at any kind of promotion in three parts. It’s here it comes, here it is, there it goes. So it’s always in three acts. So the first act is, Hey, here’s what’s coming. Hey, this guy’s going to be doing this thing. He’s going to be releasing this product. It’s called Traffic Secrets, and it’s going to teach you this, this, this, and this.
Jim Edwards: (20:48)
I’ve been through it. I know this guy. I can vouch for him. You need to get this and I’m going to make it worth your while to do this. Right? So that’s the first part. You got to set it up. Then on the day that it launches, you got to come out strong because it’s a game of momentum and you’re trying to get the fastest reactors the fastest. So you gotta have a reason for them to buy from you as opposed to anybody else. That’s why you see people with these crazy bonus things like the thing for traffic secrets now, I mean, I’m giving away like $11,000 worth of bonuses and I’m getting ready to launch a contest where I’ll write a sales video sales letter for them and all kinds of crazy stuff. Not for everybody. There’s one person will win this.
Jim Edwards: (21:43)
But you know, you got to lay on the value and people are like, Oh my God, that sounds like too much work. Okay. Right there. You’re shot. So you’ve got to have a reason for them to buy from you. Everybody’s got to feel like a winner. You have to incentivize people almost to the point where they’re like, you know, I got this, I bought this, so I could get all that stuff from Jim, you know, that’s cool. But I mean, you got to give them something. So what I did was, and it’s also gotta be relevant. So, like one of the things that, you know, when John Reese was doing the original Traffic Secrets thing, I mean, the majority of people in this country were still on dial up. I mean, there was, there were all these different considerations.
Mikael Dia: (22:21)
What year was it again?
Jim Edwards: (22:26)
I don’t remember honestly, I think it was 2004, 2005. It was, it was not any later than 2005. So, you know, I had bonuses that were relevant and one of them was a cool little piece of software that would let you put an opt in box inside of a one page sales letter. Because when someone opts in, literally they hit the button and it takes them to a new page. They’re gone. But what we did was we developed a piece of software. It stuck the code into your, and it still works today, but it sticks it into your page. People fill out the form, hit the button, and it says thank you right there. But they don’t leave the sales page. So that was one of the big bonuses. And at the time it was a real breakthrough.
So we just had better bonuses and I did the better buildup. And what was different about his thing was that it was just for that one day as opposed to it was opposed to three weeks. So it was a little bit different. But then, you know, I’ve won other affiliate contests like Russell’s 10X. I was number one affiliate for Ryan Deiss’ continuity blueprint. I won a Rolex and a whole bunch of other stuff that I just told him. I already got two Rolexes. You could just send me the money. But the key is you’ve got to give value. That’s more than just, Hey, go buy this through me. Kind of think about it like this. If you and I were hanging out, tell me which of these sounds better. All right?
Hey, dude, they’re having a party down the street and it’s at 123 Maple. It’s going to be an amazing party. Amazing party. There’s going to be beer and snacks and music and hot women and you know, and they might even be given away a free car. The car they stole from the neighbor, I don’t know. So you go down there, go down there to 123 Maple and tell them I sent you. Okay. And they’ll let you in.
As opposed to like,
Hey dude, it’s Jim. We’ve been pals for awhile. There’s going to be this great party down the street. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. I’m going to come over to your house. I’m going to pick you up. I’m going to take you over there. We’re going to walk in that party together. I’m going to introduce you around and I’m going to show you the people that I really think you’re going to be friends with. I’m going to buy you beer and I’m going to make sure you have a safe ride home whenever you’re ready to leave.
Which of those invitations to the party would you rather accept?
Mikael Dia: (25:18)
Yeah, of course. The latter.
Jim Edwards: (25:20)
Right? So that’s what you do if you really want to make it as an affiliate and people think, Oh, well that’s just for a launch. No, it’s not. It doesn’t have to be for a launch. It could be for an ongoing thing. You promote something and say like for Funnelytics if I said, okay, here’s the deal, Funnelytics is great. You can go over to Funnelytics right now and sign up, but I want you to sign up through me because I love this so much. I want to give you a bunch of additional value, so here’s what I’m going to do. I’m also gonna make sure you can go sign up for a free account.
All I ask is you just sign up through me, but I’m going to give you my complete guide to split testing. I’m going to give you my top 100 best headlines to split test. I’m going to show you my perfect landing page in a day formula. I’m going to give you three software wizards to build that landing page in a day and I had a special interview with the founder of Funnelytics for his top 10 insider tips and tricks for getting the most out of it. And you can get all of that when you sign up for Funnelytics through me today. Now does that sound like a better offer? You’re going to sign up for your own stuff through me.
Mikael Dia: (26:31)
Yeah! Like wait a minute, how do I sign up for Funnelytics right now?
Jim Edwards: (26:35)
Right. But see then that’s why I said this isn’t the affiliate game this is the sales game. Because people don’t even do that with their own crap. It’s like, Oh I got this thing and you should buy it because it’s amazing. And I threw on these bonuses of this PLR crap that I got from somewhere and these other bonuses that make absolutely no sense. And I’ve been guilty of it too, because I sold like a thousand copies of my book in four days before Russell content and was like, Hey dude, we’d really like to help push that book. And I said, well you know what? I think that’s a great idea. So I sold 800 copies of my book in four days and I sold like 3,500 copies of his book myself.
Mikael Dia: (27:18)
That’s hilarious. You pushed his book harder than your own book.
Jim Edwards: (27:21)
Right. And I had better bonuses for his book than I did for my book. Now that’s changed. It’s cool,
Mikael Dia: (27:28)
…and you made more money for your own book. That’s hilarious.
Jim Edwards: (27:31)
But that’s just kind of human nature. So you gotta understand what’s the bonus stack? What is the stack, you know, it’s the hook, story, offer. What is the offer? And you gotta make a really, really good offer, which is most people in the field is like you should buy from me cause I got my link here and you should just click it and buy.
Mikael Dia: (27:52)
Yeah. Here’s my Facebook post about this thing, just click the link.
Jim Edwards: (27:55)
Right?
Mikael Dia: (27:56)
Because I’m the first person ever to introduce you to this thing. That’s what people think right. It’s like, you’ve obviously never heard of Traffic Secrets. So you’ve got to buy through my link.
Jim Edwards: (28:05)
Exactly.
Mikael Dia: (28:05)
No, that makes perfect sense. By the way, if you see me looking down, it’s because I can write on my table and I can erase it, which is pretty nice. So I’m just writing notes down here. That’s why I’m like writing stuff. I really like what you say that here it comes, there it is, and then there goes. And I think one of the things too, like people need to understand that if you’ve ever done launches in general, the here it comes and there goes is where all the action takes place, right? Nobody cares about there it is. And I’m sure that’s what’s happening right now over the last three weeks you’ve been pushing hard, but like for sure the launch got you the most and now like the next three days are going to get you…
Jim Edwards: (28:56)
The next three days are the ones where you’re gonna be knocking people off of the branches. Yeah. Like you ever seen those machines when they get the almonds off of trees in California. Have you ever seen that? It’s funny, you look on YouTube and it’s like these things, they hook around and they go [tree shaking noises] and all the almonds fall off and stuff. It’s like tree abuse. That’s exactly what happens at the end.
Mikael Dia: (29:21)
So people are sitting there and they’re sitting on the fence and I think…
Jim Edwards: (29:25)
…Well yeah, maybe it’s time for me to do this. I guess it’s almost over.
Mikael Dia: (29:31)
And I think it’s important to understand because a big part of that is human psychology, right? If you want to sell anything, you’ve got to realize like you’ve got your eager early adopters, but if you don’t warm them up properly, right? That here comes kind of timeline and then that peak of like, okay, it’s here. Those people who are all amped up, they’re the ones that are going to take action. But if you don’t have that, here it comes and you’re just like, it’s here. People are going to be like, What’s here? What do you mean?
Jim Edwards: (30:03)
Exactly. And why do I care?
Mikael Dia: (30:05)
Yeah. So you have to have that ramp up and then you have to also like okay, there it goes. And like, okay, it’s gone. So take action right now. Right? So, That’s a massive part of something I’ve learned over the course of scaling and growing these online businesses. So let’s, let’s talk about copywriting. I mean, I think that’s a core fundamental to copywriting. It’s understanding human psychology, understanding the buyer journey. But what are you sharing in copywriting secrets to dive deeper into this? Like, like how’s your book structured? Because copywriting is such a big task. There’s so much to copywriting. So how do you structure it? How do you think about copywriting? How do you turn your skill into a one page framework?
Jim Edwards: (30:56)
Right. So the way that I created the book was, and I often do this with anything I’m doing, I think back to who I was back before I knew what I know and when I would have really needed this. All right. And then I think through what are the things that I need to know in what order? Because if you go buy a book on copywriting or you know, of course on copywriting It’s like, Hey, we’re going to teach you how to write a sales letter. Hey, we’re going to teach you how to do a video sale. We’re going to teach you how to make this thing. But it assumes that you know a whole lot of stuff already either implicitly or explicitly or they just don’t care because they can do it themselves, but don’t know how to teach it to somebody.
But what I tried to do in the book is walk you through a logical progression of how to do this. So, like the very first secret, and I do it in a way that you can skip around that they’re not interdependent, but the very first secret is actually what is copywriting. What is it and why does it matter? And then the second secret is my story. You know, the journey that I took through copywriting, now what does that do and actually shows you what copywriting is, and copywriting is more than just sales letters. It expands your horizon with it. And then since you might not have a context for what copywriting is, then when I share my story with you, my story can become your story because all of us are on the same journey. We’re just at different points along the road.
And then the third secret I teach is not how to do a headline, but it’s how do I identify the top 10 reasons why someone would buy anything and which of those applies to what you’re doing. Because I can tell you the top five reasons why anybody buys anything is to make money, save money, save time, avoid effort, or escape pain and escape pain is divided into two, which is physical pain and or mental pain. So you know right there, just understanding this is why people buy and if you tie different reasons to your product, then you can tie people down. Because most people are like, Oh it’s a make money product, it’s a make money product, it’s a make money product. Well, okay I guess, but there’s other things. I mean, your product, Funnelytics is just about making money. Was it really? But isn’t it about saving time?
Isn’t it about saving a lot of time, isn’t it? Avoiding the pain of, you know. Now all of a sudden when you understand the different reasons why people buy. You can tie your product to multiple reasons and knock more almonds out of the tree. So then the next one. I explained, the first thing people do when they start writing sales copy is they make it all about them. And I explained that nobody cares about you. They only care about themselves. So it goes through a progression. So then I started teaching you about headlines and bullets and calls to action. And once you understand that, then you can start writing some emails. You can start writing a sales letter, then you need to be able to Polish your copy. Then what do I do if I don’t have any testimonials yet?
It’s this whole progression that people go through mentally as they start going down this journey of creating copy and then ending up with, you know what if you do try and hire somebody? How do I hire somebody? If you are going to hire somebody, you better know how to do these certain things before you hire somebody because that’s the only way you’re going to know whether what somebody gives you is any good or not. So it’s not set up like a textbook of here’s how to become a copywriter. It’s, here’s how to use copy to sell your stuff, to get more clicks, to get more sales, to get more profits. And I’ve had a lot of people, I mean, I’ve had a lot of people contact me and say, you know, this book changed my life, now I finally understand how to sell online or offline.
I mean, I have one guy who told me he uses some of the techniques in here. He’s a bellman at a major hotel in Las Vegas and he uses the, some of the techniques that I teach in here to out earn every other bellman, I mean, he’s making money hand over fist, whereas other people can’t even get anybody to let them take their luggage.
Mikael Dia: (35:26)
That’s amazing.
Jim Edwards: (35:26)
Yeah. I mean it was humbling to hear him talk about how he’s using it.
Mikael Dia: (35:32)
That’s really cool. Where can people get a copy?
Jim Edwards: (35:34)
Ah, well, interestingly, you can go to copywritingsecrets.com and we actually are giving the book away for free. You just have to pay shipping and handling and we’ll send it out to you. It’s under 10 bucks. It’s like it’s under 10 bucks in the U S and it’s under 15 bucks if it’s international.
Mikael Dia: (35:54)
Nice. Awesome. copywritingsecrets.com. I want to touch on one more thing specifically around one of the things that you said, because a lot of people here in the funnel momentum community are marketing service providers. And you mentioned about hiring somebody to do copy for you. Let’s talk about it from the other side. How do you sell copywriting services? How do you position yourself, because like there are copywriters that can charge $10,000 per sales page or whatever it is. Right?
Jim Edwards: (36:29)
300 bucks an email.
Mikael Dia: (36:30)
Yeah. And then there’s other people who really can’t do that. They just don’t know how and how to position themselves. So I, I know you no longer do services but you used to. So how do you do it? What was the difference between, Old Jim, who but didn’t actually know how to position himself and if you were to do it now and you wanted to sell copywriting services. How would you go about it?
Jim Edwards: (37:00)
Okay. First thing is I never sold copywriting services. I’ve never written copy for other people. I know people who do. I take that back. I wrote a couple sales letters for a real estate buddy of mine back in like 1999. Okay. Nothing, you know, anything like that. But I can tell you, I know many of the most successful copywriters, and I can tell you what they do because we talk about this. And basically you can’t just hang out your shingle and say, Hey, I’m a copywriter. Okay? Think about a doctor. Who is the highest, you’ve got a doctor who’s a general practitioner and you’ve got a brain surgeon. They’re both doctors. Which one of those doctors do you think makes more money?
Mikael Dia: (37:59)
Well, yeah, of course, the brain surgeon.
Jim Edwards: (38:01)
Right? Or the ear, nose and throat guy. The specialist. All right. So number one, you gotta be a specialist. One of my buddies, he specializes in writing sales copy exclusively for Amazon e-com sellers. His whole shtick is, I will write you a listing that makes sales. He gets like $3,000 to $5,000 to write an Amazon listing because he has proof that he has written listings that have generated millions of dollars. So he’s a specialist in that. I have another buddy of mine who’s a very successful copywriter who specializes not in a genre like we would say the Amazon thing, but he specializes in serving a group of people. So he helps people within the funnel hacking community. He’s built a reputation in the funnel hacking community. I know another copywriter who has built a huge reputation inside of the financial services community.
The people that sell the reports and like the Motley Fool type stuff. So you need to specialize. If you just say, Hey, I can write copy for this. I can write copy for that,you either need to specialize in an industry or you need to specialize in a group of people. That’s the number one thing you need to do. Then the second thing that you need to do is you need to go out and prove that you know what you’re doing. So go into Facebook, go into groups, find people who are having a problem and say, Hey, you know, somebody saying, Hey, I’m having trouble making any sales. I’m having trouble with this. Say, Hey, this is what I do. I’ll be glad to take a look at what you’re doing for free. What’s your URL? And I may have some suggestions for you.
And then you just start building your reputation wherever your target audience is. And in a very short order, you can become the go to person as long as you’re doing it right. You’re specializing in either a group of people or in an industry. That’s, that’s how, that’s how the people I know that have done it and done it really well have done,
Mikael Dia: (40:33)
Yeah, Just touching on that, everyone I’ve ever hired, I’ve hired people who will charge a hundred dollars for a thing or then they’ll charge per word. And then I had people that charge thousands and thousands of dollars. And it comes down to what you just said. It’s the niche and understanding who am my specializing for. And a lot of times it’ll also be what is the type of specialization. So I’m really good at email copy right? And I’ll write your soap opera sequence. But that’s it. Like I’m only gonna do that for you or I’m going to write a sales page for you and like that’s it. Or I’ll write a VSL for you. But it comes down to, again, specializing and being super focused.
Jim Edwards: (41:23)
Yeah. And the thing that I would tell you though is that everybody’s in this outsourcing thing and I love how things come and, and come and go. People were talking about outsourcing back in 2001. This ain’t nothing new. Building your team and you know, pushing things off your plate and all this other stuff. Again, it’s a three to five year cycle. The eBooks. We’ll be back next year. I mean, you can see it’s the same thing, you know, here it comes. There it is. There it goes. It just keeps coming.
It’s like a sine wave. The one thing I will tell you though is that even if you’re thinking to yourself you know, I’m this, I’m a software developer. I’m not a copywriter. Great. You do however, need to be able to recognize good copy when you see it because you can’t just take the word of the copywriter that you hired or you’re looking at their work. You’re looking at their samples that they’re sending you. You gotta be able to tell, Hey, look, is this a good hook? Are these bullets just features or do they have benefits or do they have meaning? Are there calls to action? Are they circling around? Are they salting? You see what I mean? There’s stuff you need to know so that you can know if you’re getting something good or not.
Mikael Dia: (42:43)
Yeah, it’s just principles, right? Like you said, it doesn’t matter if you’re a software developer or if you’re a business owner for a local gym at the end of the day, the question is, do you want to sell more? Do you want to sell yourself more? As a software developer, guess what? You’re selling your resume, you’re selling yourself. You’re selling. You know, so understanding the fundamentals of sales, which is what your book really teaches. Even though it’s Copywriting Secrets, it’s the fundamentals of selling something at the end of the day.
Jim Edwards: (43:18)
Right, online without actually talking, most time, talking directly to someone and their entire purchase or subscription or click decision is based on words that are coming out of your mouth in a video or words displayed on a page. You don’t get a chance to interact with them like we are here and listening to them and asking them what their objections are and overcoming them right there.
Mikael Dia: (43:41)
Yeah. But even even so just like that, that bellman even if you do get the chance to interact, those principles are applicable at the end of the day. So yeah. Number one, everyone needs to go to copywritingsecrets.com and get yourself a copy of Jim’s book.
I have my little stack here, although Traffic Secrets is downstairs. I need to have the same stack that you have. So I’m going to go and get my copy to sit on top of this. But Jim, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. What else do you want to leave people with? If you could leave people with one thing, what is that one thing?
Jim Edwards: (44:29)
I would say the one thing is to get really good at hooking people. And what do I mean by that? Well, you know, back when I got started, it’s like the old thing of we were walking five miles uphill through snow in the middle of summer and you know, uphill both ways from school. There were a lot of technological hurdles that we had to overcome just to get a fricking page up on the internet to show somebody. So to some degree, if you mastered the technology, you were ahead of everybody else. And just by the fact that you could get a video up, people would go watch because there weren’t a whole lot of videos to look at.
Now we’re in a situation where we’re in this feed mentality where everything is coming by so fast. It’s literally called your feed. It’s your Facebook feed, it’s your video feed, it’s your RSS feed, all this stuff. So what you have to do is get really good at stopping the scroll and getting people to pay attention. So if you just got really good at hooking people and hooking people means headlines, it means pictures, it means captioning, pictures, it’s whatever makes them go ‘wait, what? What is this?’ You’ve got to get good at making people literally say, wait, what? What is this? And if you can do that, you can immediately impact your business.
So that would be the very first step that anybody would need to take is getting really good at hooking. I ain’t talking about the kind of hook and where your mind already just went. I’m talking about hooking people to hook them and get them to stop the scroll. It’s the number one thing you need to get good at.
Mikael Dia: (46:22)
And I assume you dive deep into that into in Copywriting Secrets.
Jim Edwards: (46:26)
Well, you know, funny enough.
Mikael Dia: (46:27)
And that is the hook for you to go and get Copywriting Secrets.
Jim Edwards: (46:31)
Yeah, I’m trying to think what the, what the thing is, but there’s, I should have these memorized. But yeah, we, we talk a lot about hooks and we give you examples of hooks and headlines and stuff. Absolutely.
Mikael Dia: (46:44)
I’m going to go grab a copy myself because I have a lot of books on copywriting here and I love this stuff. I’ve studied marketing for a long time. You know, it’s refreshing and it’s always cool.
Jim Edwards: (47:02)
Just one idea, that’s the other thing it’s just one idea, like the idea that one page sales letter changed my life.
Mikael Dia: (47:09)
Yep. Absolutely. And like just one little bullet all of a sudden and stepping out of your comfort zone sometimes, even though this is not really stepping out of your comfort zone, but you may not think of yourself as a copywriter, you may not think that you want to be a copywriter. Just pick up the book, read a couple of things, and then all of sudden it’s like, Oh, there’s, there’s a million dollars. Right there just because your wheels start spinning with, Oh, I can position it this way. One final question for you. The unicorn, the dabbing unicorn on your shirt and the unicorn in the back. Tell everybody about it.
Jim Edwards: (47:49)
Okay. So you may remember we’re getting ready to do this again. But about four years ago, we had a bit of a contentious election in this country and everybody was, everybody was posting all this political stuff and I was like, I found something I thought was funny as crap. I mean, I was just like, this is great, so let me post this. And everybody’s, everybody’s jumped me, man. I said, Whoa, why is it okay for everybody else to post political stuff? And I got jumped hard. So I said, okay, I got you. So let me go figure out something that would be like the least political. And I did it as a, as a goof to be sarcastic. It was totally a sarcastic play. I said, what would be the cutest cuddliest sickly, sweetest, eating honey straight out of the jar with a thing, just make you want to puke.
It was so sweet and I thought of kittens and that was already done. So I said, okay, unicorns. And so I went on a 60 day unicorn challenge and I said every day for 60 days I’m going to post just the simply sweetest unicorn meme I could find. And I started doing it and everybody started like, Oh, these are great. And I was getting all these likes. And then three weeks later I had somebody send me this unicorn mug and then I had another unicorn thing and people started saying, Hey Jim, every time I see a unicorn I think of you and I went, Whoa, okay, well I can work with this. And so I went and did a little research on unicorns. Did you know that the unicorn is the national animal of Scotland?
Mikael Dia: (49:30)
I did not.
Jim Edwards: (49:30)
It’s absolutely true, dude. It’s in their coat of arms. Okay. So the unicorn is actually like a really cool and powerful mythical, rare, mythical beast. So I said, okay. So I took that brand and I put it with, you know, being a copywriting unicorn so you can be, you can lead and it’s okay to be alone and you can figure it out. And it was enough of a spin that I just went with it and then whataburger came out with one that had a dabbing unicorn. I was like, I need my own. So I had my graphic artists, I hadmy daughter draw this and there we go.
Mikael Dia: (50:19)
That’s amazing. Oh man. I appreciate you taking the time. This was a lot of fun.
Jim Edwards: (50:26)
Thanks for having me.
Mikael Dia: (50:26)
Again, copywritingsecrets.com everybody needs to go and grab a copy. I’m going to go grab a copy. Yeah, just one idea, right? It doesn’t matter if you’re not a copywriter. In fact, if you aren’t a copywriter, even more of a reason to do it.
Jim Edwards: (50:42)
I tell people all the time, my job is not to teach copywriters the finer points of copywriting because professional copywriters want to take issue with everything that I say.
Mikael Dia: (50:51)
Yeah.
Jim Edwards: (50:51)
I didn’t write that book for them. I wrote that book for the average everyday person that wants to get more clicks, sales and profits. That’s, that’s who the book is written for.
Mikael Dia: (51:00)
Amazing. I love it. Thank you so much for taking the time and yeah, man. We’ll, we’ll catch up soon. I appreciate you.
Jim Edwards: (51:08)
I Appreciate you too. Thank you very much.
