In fact, the headline is the most important element of your salesletter because it’s key to grabbing your readers’ attention — and keeping it! And you only have a matter of seconds to do this. If you don’t instantly excite, inspire and intrigue your audience, they’re unlikely to read on. So a headline can have a HUGE impact on sales.

But here’s a professional copywriting tip to help you grab your readers: Certain "power" words and phrases consistently outshine other words, and you can tailor these to the needs of your target audience — and have them scrambling to find out more!

When you sit down to write your next sales letter, try incorporating the following power words…

1. Do You Struggle With…
2. Discover…
3. The Untold Secrets to Making…
4. Who Else Wants to…
5. 10 Ways to…
6. Learn Exactly How…
7. 7 Amazing Strategies to…
8. Boost Your…
9. A Guide to…
10. Why Aren’t You…?
11. If You Had Just One Opportunity to…
12. If You Want to Learn How to…
13. 7 Sure-Fire Tips For…
14. How to Attract More…
15. Uncover…
16. How a "Regular Guy" from (Place)…
17. Want to…?
18. READ THIS: If You Are Truly Serious About…
19. Do You Wish There Was An Easier Way to…
20. Tips on…
21. 8 Deadly (Insert Topic) Sins…
22. Learn How to Start…
23. How to Make Your…
24. Are You At Risk of…?
25. 3 Direct Reasons Why You’ll Be Kicking Yourself if You Don’t…
26. Double Your…
27. More Tips to Improve…
28. Exposed for the First Time Ever…
29. Learn the Secrets to Becoming…
30. How to…
31. Instant Strategies Anyone Can Use to…
32. How to Find…
33. 5 Big Reasons to…
34. 10 Steps to…
35. Tired of…
36. Techniques That Enable You to…
37. Watch This "Shocking" Play-By-Play Underground Video…
38. 5 Action Ideas to Get…
39. Discover the "Insider" Strategies That…
40. How to Make a Life-Changing…
41. (Insert Topic): 3 Things You Must Know…
42. The 7 Secrets of…
43. Skyrocket Your…
44. The 5 Ugly Lies About…
45. Finally Revealed!
46. Uncover…
47. Get an Instant 20-50% Increase in…
48. Discover How We…
49. Proof That…
50. The Truth About…
51. How This Surprising Little Secret…
52. 10 Simple Steps to Catapult Your…
53. Discover How YOU Can…
54. How I (Insert Accomplishment) in Record Time…
55. Learn How to EXPLODE…
56. Three Quick-Start Tips to…
57. Discover the *Secret Formula*…

If you can attract the attention of your market with your headline, you give them a reason to keep reading the rest of your sales letter… all the way to the sale. But don’t take my word for it. Try them out for yourself, then test your response.

Does the thought of writing make you want to dive for cover?

If so, there’s a good chance you’re being held captive by memories of rigid grammar rules and a ruthless red pen.

Hey… it’s time to let go.

When you’re writing for the Web, there’s only one hard and fast rule you need to remember…

Write how you talk.

That’s right. Forget all the nit-picky rules your English teacher told you about. It’s okay to end your sentences in a preposition… or start them with "And" or "But."

Because on the Web, people read differently.

Hyper-correct formal writing actually STOPS people from reading… and if they’re not reading, they’re not buying.

Let’s take a look at four writing myths you can toss out the window when you sit down to write your next content article or salesletter…

Myth #1:
Sentence structure has to be sophisticated

Reality Check: Simple sentences rule in the online world.

On the Web, people want information — and they want it fast! And they DON’T want to have to work at deciphering it.

Keep your sentences short. They’re ALWAYS easier to read than longer ones.

Avoid complex sentence constructions. On the Web, "ing" words are the enemy!

Don’t say, "By following this program carefully, taking supplements religiously, and drinking lots of water every day, you will lose weight."…

… say "Follow this program carefully. Take supplements religiously. And drink lots of water every day. You WILL lose weight."

Remember, you’re not writing an academic thesis or applying for a government grant.

You want your readers to be able to grasp your main point quickly… whether it’s why they should sign up for your newsletter, trust your opinion over Joe Blow’s… or buy YOUR product.

Myth #2:
Writing has to be formal

Reality Check: Keep it real.

Readers respond best when they feel you’re talking to them personally. So write as if you’re talking to someone you really CARE about and…

Use a casual and friendly tone. Imagine that you’re talking to a friend or family member. To help your readers identify with your words on a personal level, use "you" as often as possible.

Mimic the irregular cadence of speech. Go ahead and write in sentence fragments. Feel free to start sentences with "and," "but," and "or." It’s simply how we speak, whether Miss Manners approves or not.

Use contractions whenever possible. "It’s" sounds way more natural and informal than "it is." And it’s an easy way to take an unnecessary word out of your sentences.

(And it is our opinion that you will sound stilted if you do not use them.

It’s okay to use slang. Just make sure the slang you use is appropriate for YOUR target market. If you run a surf shop, calling your readers "dude" is, like, totally appropriate.

Check your writing with the Flesch-Kincaid grade level assessment tool in Microsoft Word. (Set this up in the Spelling and Grammar tool in Word.)

Aim for a grade 6-8 level. (Shocked??? That’s what most newspapers aim for.)

Myth #3: Use proper punctuation

Reality Check: Use informal punctuation to mimic regular speech.

You know how your teachers always warned you against using dashes, ellipses, and bullet points, because they smacked of lazy writing?

… Here’s where you get to thumb your nose at them and say, "Phllllbt!"

When you write for the Web, you are writing for the LAZY READER.

(Well, not so much "lazy" as "bombarded by a relentless onslaught of information, and constantly pressed for time.")

So make their job as easy as possible by breaking up long sentences.

Dashes — like these — create white space between your phrases so each phrase stands out more.

Ellipses are a great for separating items in a list. Maybe you want to give the reader a set of options… Or create a sense of time passing within the sentence… Or build anticipation before getting to the "big reveal."

Use ALL CAPS to highlight the words you’d emphasize while speaking.

Put lists in bullet points so they’re easy to read. Bullets say "Hey look, here’s a list!"

Myth #4:People will read every word

Reality Check: People SCAN for the most important information.

Ever noticed how a single word can make your ears perk up when you’re half listening to a conversation?

Reading on the Web is just like that!

Certain words jump out at you to let you know when to pay closer attention. Format your text so your most important content leaps off your pages:

• Use a "choppy" structure that mixes up paragraphs of different lengths.
• Write your most dramatic ideas as stand-alone one-sentence paragraphs.
• Use subheads to pique curiosity and drive eyes down the page.
• Use bolding to highlight your most important ideas.
• Try to place the MOST important idea at the beginning or end of the paragraph where they’ll be noticed most.

If you’re not used to this kind of writing, hear the words in your head as you write. This will keep you from reverting to stiff formal writing! Then, read your work out loud when you’re done. Any stumbling blocks will become immediately obvious.

If you write the way you talk, your readers will "listen."

So you’ve found a niche and a blockbuster product for it, written your salescopy, and built your website…

… Now you’re ready to start counting your money, right?

Not so fast!

Before you do anything else, do this quick five-second test to make sure your site is EASY to use!

Just how important IS website usability?

For an e-commerce site, it’s CRUCIAL. If people can’t follow your navigation scheme, they won’t be able to find your products…

… And if they can’t find your products, how can they BUY them?

In fact, according to market research from the Gartner Group, more than 50% of web sales are LOST because visitors can’t find what they’re looking for!

With results like these, I firmly believe EVERYONE should test their sites for usability.

And with the five-second test I’m about to show you, you can find out key information very quickly: Your visitors’ first impressions

Major roadblocks in your site navigation

How well your web page communicates its MOST important content.

Don’t think five seconds is long enough to learn anything useful?

Well, that’s roughly how long the majority of web surfers spend deciding if YOUR site has what they’re looking for! (The maximum is 10 seconds.)

Here’s what you do…

The Five-Second Usability Test

Step 1: Find several people who fit your target market and ask them to be your focus group.

Step 2: Give your users a focused goal. Let’s say you sell computer software tutorials. The goal you give them might be something like, “Find tutorials relevant to your skills and interests.”

Step 3: Display your homepage for five seconds, then ask your focus group to try to remember everything they see.

Step 4: Once you’ve removed the page, ask your test subjects to write down everything they remember about the page.

Step 5: Ask two relevant questions to see whether your page allowed them to find what they were looking for.

For example, “What kind of tutorials does my site offer?” or “Did you spot a tutorial that fits your current skill level?”

If any of your subjects AREN’T able to recall the most important elements on your page, make adjustments to your layout… then re-test.

That’s it!

(Still in the planning stages of building your site? All the better to find out valuable info BEFORE you invest time and money in it…

… Just do the test using a sketch of your homepage.)

I’d love to hear the results of YOUR Five-Second test when you’re done.

Did you: Learn anything new?

Get unexpected results?

Wish you’d skipped the whole experience?

Of course, everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but people who dismiss long salesletters because they "contain too much hyperbole"… "they’re too salesy"… or "they’re just too long!"… are missing the point.

A well-written long salesletter is the ONLY thing that can make up for the lack of face-to-face sales time between you and your online customer.

Think about it: If you sell your product from an offline store, you can personally approach a customer who enters your store. You can greet them, answer their questions, and demonstrate the benefits of your product and how it can solve their problem.

And your customer can use this face-to-face contact to assess your product knowledge, decide whether they trust you, and check out the product itself.

Of course, you can’t do that on a web site….

But you can get pretty darn close.

With a long sales letter you can you can mimic all the elements of a face-to-face encounter so your potential customers get everything they need to make the decision to buy.

That’s why a long salesletter is often perfect for selling a single product or service (or a group of very similar products).

And there’s a proven formula to writing an effective salesletter that converts targeted visitors into paying customers. So all YOU have to do is simply follow it!

I mean, I could go on for ages about how to make the most of this formula, but in a nutshell, you just have to:

• Create a problem: Nobody’s looking for products online. They’re looking for solutions to their problems.

  Figure out what problem your target audience faces, and show how you are able to solve it with your product or service.

• Establish your credibility: Explain to your audience what makes you an expert in your particular field — and make sure to include testimonials form happy customers.

• Tell a story: How did you develop or discover your product? Tell a story to build interest, add a human touch to your site, and help your target audience relate to you.

• Provide tons of benefits: Show your visitors exactly how what they stand to gain from using your product.

• Overcome their objections: Try to anticipate the key sticking points that your customers will have questions about… and address them before they need to ask.
  
• Ask for the sale: If you don’t come right out and ASK for the sale, you won’t get the sale. At the end of your salesletter, you need to flat-out ask.

Of course, there’s a lot more to writing a successful sales letter ( in our "Insider Secrets" course we spend nearly 100 pages on this subject alone).

But this formula WORKS.

If you still don’t believe me, you can ask Paul Jerard of Yoga-Teacher-Training.org. Paul won a site review from IMC that included a rewrite of his salesletter.

This is what he had to say:

"We went from $3,000 a month to $9,700 the following month by rewriting the salesletter. Now, I spend about one hour a month making small changes to see if I can increase sales."

So, to the doubters, I say test a long salesletter against your current salescopy and see if it works for you. I’m willing to bet you’ll be VERY pleasantly surprised!