Those Copywriters

I just got done reading a well written, very “conspiratorial” sales letter for a new piece of software. It was for something under $20 but you’d have thought they were selling the original plates from the US Treasury so people could print their own money.

After I was done reading the “you’ve got to scroll down to read all the hype on this page” sales letter, I thought. “Hmmm… sounds good.”

Then I thought….

“Now what the heck does this thing really do?”

I went back to read it again and I think I actually found one sentence that talked about what the product actually DOES instead of the “conspiracy”.

But at least they were complimentary to begin with. They started their letter (I kid you not!)

To start with we are not going to attempt any fancy copywriting techniques to sell you on anything. We don’t need that kind of crap to start with and secondly we know you are smarter than that.

Well after all the copywriter’s tricks that were there despite the promise and having read the sales letter carefully three times, I decided the product might actually have some value.

As I said it’s cheap.

I’ll give it a try. But those copywriters. They have to make everything HARD.

Once only a few products had these kind of long copy monstrosities. Now everything is like that.

Call it the “Democratization of Baloney”