BillVannot.com

When you first start marketing online and want to learn how to write good sales copy, you study what the copywriting masters have to say. You buy their products, try to memorize their advice and basically learn quite a bit. Eventually you start critiquing sales pages you come across and pick them apart to see what makes some soooo compelling.

"What a fantastic headline!" "I love the way the benefit bullets were worded." "Awesome P.S.

If you haven’t started one already, it’s time to start a swipe file, or two or three. Your swipe file is where you are going to put the examples of great copywriting you run across. These swipes may be from blog posts, sales copy, or emails, and what they have in common is they resonate with you in their wording and/or layout.

Your swipe file is going to become one of your best online friends, because you will be able to reference it easily at anytime, without having to try to remember the URL of that piece you read 5 months ago, that was superb.

But let’s be clear here… you’re swiping words, phrases, headlines, bullets, or whatever in order to learn from them. They are to give you ideas; a jumping off point for your own sales copy. You are NOT going to copy them to your own sales page; that would be plagiarism.

From the get go, consider segmenting your swipe file so you have folders within it. It’s up to you what you want your swipe files to consist of, but consider having one each for headlines, sub-headlines, sales pages (that are so good you want the whole thing), bullet points, blog posts, emails, and email subject lines.

Another swipe file subject can be for sales pages you run across, that are for a product similar to one of your upcoming products. Again, you’re not going to copy it, but you’re going to use it for ideas. How can you make yours even better?

You may be wondering why you should keep a swipe file of bullet points, but it seems bullet points, aka benefits, are one of the hardest things to write. If you have a file going on bullets/benefits then you’re able to keep the flow going as you hammer out your sales copy.

A swipe file saves you time because you can easily find an example of what you’re looking for, when you go to write a headline or sales page. It can also be instrumental in helping you learn how to write good copy. When you open up your folder of headlines, you can critique what makes the headlines work. Is it descriptive words? Is it the hook? A swipe file is like having a resource library at your fingertips.

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