Copywriting in 15 minutes
Lesson 11 of 31 in the course “Million Dollar Sales Course”. Free, with animations and a quiz.
Case: one line saved a launch
In the last lesson, other people started bringing you customers. Now what they see first matters. In “Copywriting Secrets”, Jim Edwards tells how he recorded a course, poured a ton of effort and money into it, and launched ads and emails. Hundreds, then thousands of page visits, and zero sales. The headline was about himself: how he climbed out of bankruptcy. He swapped that one line for “How to gain a positively unfair advantage in business and in life”, and within minutes sales came in from the same people. By his account, the product made six figures that week. Why: almost everyone sees the headline, and only a few read what’s below. Ad legend David Ogilvy wrote that on average five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.
No reason, no sale
Edwards’ core idea: people don’t buy without a reason why. He lists ten: make money, save money, save time, avoid effort, escape pain or worry, comfort, health, praise, feeling loved, and status. Most people write one reason, usually money. He compares copy to a tarp in a storm: tie down one corner and it blows away, tie down four and it holds. Misha’s course honestly gives six: you can take paid editing gigs, a video in 20 minutes instead of two hours, ready presets instead of struggle, no shame over boring videos, comments asking “who edited this?”, and a growing channel. Only use reasons that are real: a made-up reason gets exposed in the very first lesson.
Write so anyone gets it
Remember Fred from lesson two? You always write to him alone, in his words. Edwards points out a trap: you want to sound smart, so jargon creeps in. But a confused mind always says no. When Edwards worked in mortgages, clients were scared by two pages of required disclosures. He boiled them down to one sentence: the company you pay will probably change, and the only difference for you is who your payment goes to. People’s anxiety dropped so clearly that the VP asked him to train the other loan officers. His test: give your copy to someone outside the topic and ask where it’s unclear. Short sentences, the client’s words, one thought after another. Misha had “LUTs, grading and curves”, now it’s “one tap and your colors look like a movie”.
4 headline formulas
Good news: headlines follow formulas you can borrow. Edwards has four groups. “How to”: how to get a result in a timeframe, even if something’s in the way. “Ways”: 3, 5 or 7 ways to do something; in his experience odd numbers sound more credible. “Mistakes”: people have feared mistakes since school, so “3 mistakes that kill watch time” hooks. “Warning”: everyone notices a warning, but don’t overuse it, or you become the boy who cried wolf. Two honesty rules: the timeframe has to be real, and the “even if” must remove a real fear, not promise a miracle. Edwards spends up to half of his writing time on the headline, because without it nobody reads the rest.
Bullets: it, so you can, which means
After the headline, bullets do the work: short points in a list. Almost everyone fills them with features only: “20 presets in .cube format”. That tells a person nothing. Edwards offers a three-part formula: it… so you can… which means… Feature, what it is. Benefit, what it does. Meaning, what it means to the reader. “20 presets so you can color a video in a minute, which means friends will ask who edited it for you.” The meaning is the reason to buy from the previous slide. Another trick of his: in bullets about his ebook he gave the page number, so the promise felt tangible. Tip: write 10–12 bullets and keep the best 5–6. Five strong points beat thirty average ones.
3 formulas for the whole text
Edwards has three formulas for a full piece of copy. One: problem, agitate, solve. Name the problem, honestly show where it leads, and offer a way out. It works well for cold people who don’t know you yet. Two: “if you want X, Y and Z, then check out…”. Benefits only, no pain. It’s for warm people who already want the result. Three: before, after, bridge. How it is now, how it will be, and your product as the path between them. The key about agitating: agitate the truth. “A video without color gets scrolled past in a second” is honest. “Without this course your channel will be deleted” is a lie, and it will kill trust. A formula doesn’t replace honesty, it just puts the truth in the right order.
Swipe file: copy the shape, not the words
A beginner doesn’t need to invent headlines from scratch. Pros keep a swipe file: a folder of ads and headlines that hooked them. Edwards saw “The Grand Theft Auto 4 Secrets You’re Not Supposed To Know” on an Xbox magazine cover and turned it into “The Ebook Marketing Secrets You’re Not Supposed To Know”. By his account, that headline and a $49 product built a six-figure business. The most famous example of a shape: in 1926 John Caples wrote for a music school “They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play!” People have been remixing that shape for a hundred years. Take the frame, use your own words and facts. Then test: two headlines on the same people, with only the headline changing.
Do it yourself: copy in 15 minutes
Set a timer. 5 minutes: describe your Fred, 3 problems, 3 questions, and the result he dreams of. Use his words from the comments. 5 minutes: 10 headlines with the four formulas, keep the best two. 5 minutes: 5 bullets with “it, so you can, which means”. For cold people build the text as problem, agitate, solve, for warm ones as “if you want”. Check every line: is it true, and is it about the reader, not about you? Then show the two headlines to the same audience and keep the one that worked better. You’ll use this copy on your signup page and in emails, and emails are what the next level is all about.
Check yourself
- What should he change first?
Correct answer: Rewrite the headline around the reader’s gain. People land but don’t get past the headline. Just like Edwards: a headline about the author doesn’t hook, a headline about the reader’s gain starts sales with the same people. For example: “How to edit a video people watch to the end in 7 days, even if all you have is a phone”. - Which bullet is strongest?
Correct answer: “20 presets so you can color a video in a minute, which means friends will ask who edited it”. It has all three parts: feature, benefit and meaning. The meaning hits a real reason to buy: praise and status. - Which formula should he use?
Correct answer: Problem, agitate, solve: start with a pain the person already feels. These people don’t know Misha and haven’t decided they need a course. But they already feel the problem, boring videos. That’s where cold copy starts. - What’s wrong with this headline?
Correct answer: It’s scaring people with a lie. A warning only works when it’s honest and rare, otherwise trust is gone. Edwards warns directly: don’t be the boy who cried wolf. You can only agitate the truth. A false threat is manipulation: people figure it out and never trust another email from you.
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