If you are a newsletter subscriber, you’re going to get an example of sales copy that you can use for your own auctions by merely changing the names and statistics.  I’ll send this out within 24 hours.  For those of you not subscribed to my newsletter, here is a brief description of what your sales copy needs.

Successful Sales Copy Formula

Attention Grabbing Headlines

Whether it be a blog post, or a sales page, the ability to write attention-grabbing headlines is what will set you apart from the next guy.  Headlines don’t even necessarily have to describe your product, just get their attention.

“This blog sucks the life out of me, but it pays me generously for my soul!”

What’d that describe?  Absolutely nothing, but it got the readers attention, and it will keep them reading.

“Awesome PR 4 blog that can kick the crap out of Chuck Norris”

Just rememember, headlines are your friend.  You have to grab their attention, and get them to read further.  Without a great headline, your listing is just one of thousands.

Clincher

How is this site/product/blog going to change their life?

“We all have dreams of working from home in our pajamas.  With this blog you’ll be well on your way.  It already has an established audience, and it gets you one step closer to working from home.  Why start a new blog, when you already have a solid foundation in this one?  Don’t wait any longer, start waking up at noon!”

Remember, when selling a site, you aren’t selling the site.  You are selling a dream.  You have to find the emotional triggers that will allow you the maximum profit for your blog.  Working at home, that’s a dream shared by many - use it!

Features/Benefits

What are some of the features and benefits of the blog that you are selling?  This is the area where you’ll list the statistics, and focus on the good qualities of the blog.  Not all blogs are perfect, so focus on the good.  I’m not saying to be dishonest, but you don’t want to advertise that you can’t monetize worth a crap, or that only one in three thousand visitors subscribes to the RSS feed.  Look at it this way, if you were a car salesman selling a luxury SUV, you’d focus on comfort, luxury, and quality.  You wouldn’t focus on the fact that it gets 12 mpg.  Remember this in your auction listings.  Don’t be deceptive, but don’t volunteer information unless asked.  The goal is to sell your site in as few words as possible.

Call To Action

You’ve got the writing out of the way, now it’s time to get them to take action.  Every piece of sales copy needs a call to action at least twice within the body of the text.  I like to do a quick one in between the clincher and the features/benefits, and then a more in depth call to action towards the end.  This is where you get them to pull the trigger and make the purchase.  It’s also the hardest part of selling anything!

“Are you ready to roll out of bed at noon, work for a couple of hours, and then enjoy the rest of your day?  If you answered yes, it stands to benefit you greatly to purchase this blog.  It’s well on it’s way to making you a full-time living, and it’s only in it’s infancy.  It’s time to pull the trigger, make the purchase, and put the foundation in place for your future.  In order to accomplish a goal like this, you have to get started… are you ready to get started?  Place a bid now, and avoid losing out on yet another opportunity.”

Enjoy the video, and if you noticed, I’ve added random Red Cross banners on the blog.  The Red Cross was the organization that was leading the relief efforts in New Orleans during Katrina, so they’ll most likely be on the front lines of the Gustav effort.  If you can find it in your heart to give, please do so.

PB Formerly Of The Piss Biscuit - Hurricane Gustav from bryan clark on Vimeo.

Intro (these headings are for your benefit, I don’t recommend using them in your auction)

Hello everyone and thanks for taking the time to view my auction.  Up for auction is my wonderful blog xyz.com and I think it’d make a wonderful addition to any investors portfolio.  It’s a site that I started just over a month ago, and have had some great success with.  I’m sad to see it go, but the money is better served on other projects, and in all reality I didn’t have the time to take this one on when I did.

Statistics (you don’t need all these, just give 3-5 that are positive!)

• 203,000 Alexa Ranking
• 24 Rss Subscribers
• $81.39 Revenue (one direct advertiser, two affiliate sales, proof on the right)
• 120 Average Unique Visitors a day
• 390 Average Pageviews per day
• 4.4% Organic Traffic

Traffic

The most popular question in these auctions is generally… how’d you get your traffic?  Mine was a mixture really, with a lot of focus on social bookmarking.  I submitted every post to stumbleupon and Digg, and have received some great results.  I have many people from those sites that are now RSS subscribers, or that comment and follow my blog regularly. Overall it’s been a great success. == Make sure to tell them that you are seeing repeat visitors from social traffic (if you are), because most view social traffic as junk traffic.

SEO

I’ve also done my fair share of SEO work.  I’ve built links by commenting on other blogs, forums, and using software (don’t be specific) to help me increase my Google visibility.  Overall I haven’t had a lot of organic traffic, but those that know SEO know, It takes time!  I’m pretty pleased that I’m up to 4% in such a short time.

Community

xyz.com aslo has a great readerbase with each post averaging over 10 comments.  I have already built a small fanbase, and whoever takes over the blog will be taking a step in the right direction by having a loyal community.

Content/Posting Frequency

The blog received fresh content daily, and has a total of 31 posts.  All was hand written by me, and is 100% duplicate content free.  Check for yourself at copyscape.com!

I’ve attached screenshots at the right, and if you have any questions, feel free to message me here.  I’ll get back to them as quickly as possible.

This is a sample of the sales copy I use regularly at Sitepoint.  All of the headings are bolded, and I don’t recommend actually using them, it was just so you guys knew what to talk about next.  The other things that are bolded need to be changed to fit the statistics of YOUR blog.

Remember, focus on the positives.  As a car salesmen selling a gas-sucking SUV you’d be pointing out the comfort, functionaltiy, and the features of the SUV  — not the fact that it might get 12 miles per gallon, and it crushes little old ladies if you aren’t looking.  I’m not saying to lie, that’s wrong.  But don’t blatantly point out the negatives… if people want to know bad enough, they’ll ask.  Then you can tell them in private.

Good luck!

The hardest part about selling online is that you are a relative unknown.  To combat that, you don’t want to have to answer questions, you want to address them before they are ever asked.  Here are a few examples of questions consumers want to know the answers to, before they purchase.

• How much does it cost?
• How does it benefit me?
• What are the features?
• Can you back that up with proof or a guarantee?
• Who else uses it?

There are several hundred questions that consumers could be asking at this point, but these are the most common.  The key to copywriting is adressing concerns before they are mentioned.  We’ve all seen sales copy from time to time, it’s the never ending slab of text that has highlighted sections, bullet points, testimonials and a “limited time offer” that never actually ends.  Here are a few questions that I see from time to time, that I’m going to answer for you here.

• Why is sales copy so long?
• What is the cheesy “limited time offer” for?  Does anyone fall for that?
• Why do all sales letters look the same?

Why is sales copy so long?

Well, look at it this way.  If you walked into an electronics store to buy a TV, and spent any time talking with the sales staff, you’re conversation would be as long, probably longer than most stuff you read on sales pages.  The reason it’s so long, is because marketers have one chance to capture your attention, and to address all of your questions before you move on to something else.  I’d rather the copy be too long, and give too much information, than not enough.

What is the cheesy “limited time offer” for?  Do people actually fall for this?

Yes!  People fall for it all the time.  Any good salesman knows that they have to create some form of urgency in the prospective buyer, or they’ll think about it, and usually talk themselves out of it.  By using a “limited time offer” such as “Get all this for $47 before the price goes back up to $67″, we are creating urgency and letting the buyer know they need to act now.  Good copywriting is all about a call to action.  You can’t just give the information, you have to give it to them, and then force them to a decision.  While it doesn’t sound glamorous, it’s effective.  It’s engrained in our mentality to screw the sytem whenever possible.  So, if you want a product, and you don’t get it at $47, you’ll be awfully pissed when you see at $67 a week later.  Usually the price doesn’t actually EVER go up, but we don’t like to chance things do we?

Why do all internet sales letters look the same?

Well, the short answer is… they dont’.  The designs are generally different but the format is the same.  Why?  Because it works.  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.  The design will always be tinkered with, but the format has been a proven winner for quite some time, so why change it?  The yellow highlights, the bullet points, these are all proven winners.  Think of it this way, if you ever read the newspaper, they are mostly written the same way… AP (associated press) style.  They generally all have the same formatting to their writing.  Well, this is like the AP style of the web.

Why all the talk about copywriting?

You want to sell some sites don’t you?  When I say “sell” a site, I mean just that.  It’s not as simple as listing an auction and hoping for the best.  This generally ends up getting you mediocre closing prices.  That’s not what we want is it?

Mastering copywriting, or at least becoming profecient at it, will make you a ton of money in this niche.  Hell, it’ll make you a ton of money online in general.  Web selling is all about effective copywriting.

Basic Copywriting Formula

Intro (Clincher) - This should be the part that grabs the readers attention.  These are generally the parts that are all in caps, and are used as a heading of sorts.  “FIND OUT HOW I WENT FROM MAKING $2 A DAY TO $2.50 A DAY OVERNIGHT!”.  Catchy huh?  Anyone wanna know how to make that extra fifty cents?

Body - This should explain a common problem, and how much better life would be if it didn’t exist. “Don’t you wish that you could just quit your day job, and make a whopping $2.50 a day in your pajamas like I do?”

Features/Benefits - These are usually the bullet points, or the ones that are highlighted. The feature is always first, and the benefit second.  You want to name a feature, and show people how it makes their lives easier, or how it’s better than the other stuff out there.

• Extra cool admin panel that allows you to type with one hand, and eat a sandwich with the other.

Call to action - Get them to buy.  Some people don’t need much selling, and they are ready to buy now.  For the rest, you’ll need to keep selling them.  “Are you ready to try out my super system today and start making that extra fifty cents sometime within the next 18 months?”

Bonuses - Throw in some extra stuff here (usually cheap and worthless), or talk about how your competitors product is $2 higher.  “Act now, and you get my free bonus, how to manage the extra fifty cents a day ebook”.

Testimonials - Get all of your nerd friends to create a testimonial here.  “This product made me an extra fifty cents in only 78 days!  That’s amazing”

Price/Limited time offer - Yeah, I suppose some people want to know how much it costs first.  Go ahead and indulge them here.  “You can get all of this, so that you are on your way to making an extra fifty cents a day for the low cost of $7,000.  Act now before the price goes back up to $270,000″.

One More Time - “Wait, still don’t think this will make your life easier?  Sign up for my email list so I can ask you to buy this product at least once a week for the next 30 or so years”.

I wanted to get a quick primer on Copywriting out of the way before I moved on to how to write effective copy.  This is a key to making big bucks selling websites.. so, stay tuned, more to come.

The goal is to register a domain, or to buy a pre-existing website that is undervalued. Undervalued is the word of the day, so say it with me… U N D E R V A L U E D! Good, now we can move on. Blogs sell for a ballpark figure of 10-15x monthly income, although there are often exceptions to the rule. Such as John Cow, who is asking the ridiculously high price of 50k, and he might just get it. I don’t blame the Cow, as you can’t get a Buy-It-Now (BIN) price of 50k, without asking for it… so kudos to my favorite bovine.

So part one of the equation is to buy an undervalued blog. And it doesn’t get much more undervalued than a new domain, which has it’s benefits, and it’s drawbacks, which we’ll discuss in a later post. So essentially, you can buy a $10 domain name, slap it onto a $4 hosting account, and cash out for thousands in 30-90 days. But it’s the steps in between that are going to lose some people. Anybody can handle the beginning (finding a domain, or site) and the end (selling it), but the ones that master the middle of this process are going to be those that make the most money.

The middle steps in this process are the ones that are going to make or break your sale. These steps revolve around creating a visually appealing blog that a buyer will deem worthy of spending their money on. When I say visually appealing, I know most of you instantly thought of fancy themes, and great header graphics, but I was actually referring to statistics. Statistics sell blogs… it’s that simple. If you can’t increase the statistics of an undervalued blog, then you are going to end up selling it for zero profit, or even worse… a loss.

I’m going to be teaching you several ways to make money flipping websites over the next few months, and here are just a few of the methods that you’ll be making money with in no time flat!

• Buying Domains and/or Pre-existing Websites
• Building traffic and increasing statistics
• Increasing revenue numbers
• Writing killer sales copy that will sell your site fast
• Closing the deal

Those 5 simple things are all it’s gonna take for you to start making money flipping blogs and websites. Now, let’s roll up our sleeves, and start mastering these methods to make money flipping websites.