The Million-Dollar Blueprint for Writing Web Copy That Sells
A Transcript of a Web Copywriting Mastery Tele-Class taught by
Maria Veloso, Director of Web Copywriting University

You may not know it yet, but in about 10 or 15 minutes, you'll be able to write the heart and soul of your website copy.  The rest is just simply fleshing it out.

Here are the 5 steps of my Million Dollar Blueprint for Writing Web Copy That Sells.  They're in the form of questions.  Once you can answer these 5 questions about any product or service -- guess what? -- you'll officially be a web copywriter.

Go ahead and write these 5 questions down -- and I will explain each one in detail:

1.  What's the problem?
2.  Why Hasn't the Problem Been Solved?
3.  What's possible? - (the promise)
4.  What's different now?
5.  What should you do now?

Let's take a look at these questions one by one:

1.  What's the problem?

All sales, both online and offline, are primarily based on problem resolution.  Your first job is to identify the problem that your target audience has - the problem which your product or service solves.  Earlier, I told you that the first thing you must do before writing a word of copy is to know your audience.  You should also know your audience's.
3 P's -- their pain, their problem or their predicament. 

Then you get to play doctor.  You diagnose their problem.  The mistake  most web copywriters and marketers make is that they shove a solution down their reader's throat even before getting the reader to acknowledge that there's a problem in the first place.  That's like a doctor giving medicine without first diagnosing.  Perhaps you've heard of the saying,  "No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care."  You have to let them know that you understand their problem.

So write down your target audience's problem.  Just a few sentences will do.

Your reader must be able to say, "Hey, this guy really understands my problem -- or this guy reads me like a book -- or this guy knows me so well it's as though he's been eavesdropping on my conversations or reading my mail."  That's why I keep emphasizing that before you write a word of copy, you have to know your audience. 

2. .  What's possible?  - This is called possibility thinking.  This is the big promise that I talked about in last week's class..

Write down what's possible as far as your reader's problem is concerned.  Paint a scenario of the way things will be when your prospect's problems are solved.  Again, a few sentences will do.

When you're answering these 5 questions, don't try to be creative.  Just answer factually. You can get creative later. 

3.  Why Hasn't the Problem Been Solved?

Write down the reason -- or reasons -- why the problem continues, persists or lingers.  How is it that they haven't solved their problem, and why are they still stuck in the rut?  Again, a few factual sentences will do.

4. What's different now?

What's come up that will now change things for your prospect?  This is where you explain who you are and how your product or service can help them - and what's different about your product or service that will eliminate their problem.  This is where your Unique Selling Proposition comes in.  Again, just write a few sentences - don't ramble on.  Write just the substance, not the details.   

5. What should you do now?

State clearly what you want your prospect to do.  This is your call to action.  You simply tell them to respond in some way -- sign up, pick up the phone, register, opt-in, or buy the product or service you're selling - whatever that is.

Okay, when you're done answering those 5 questions, guess what you have in your hands?  The blueprint of your web copy.  That's the meat.  The rest is gravy.  With that alone, you can make sales.  Later, I'm going to teach you how to go back and tweak it so you can make plenty of sales. 

This blueprint, consisting of those 5 simple questions, can be used to create any type of marketing materials from brochures to infomercials to sales letter -- even to your elevator speech.

Let's take a quick look at one of the websites I created:

http://www.FreeStuffForEntrepreneursOnTheInternet.com. 

The product is an eBook that shows how to obtain free money from the government in the form of grants, subsidies, etc. to finance your Internet business.  The target audience is Internet entrepreneurs.

1.  What's the problem?  You need money to start, grow or expand your business.

2.  What's possible?   What if you just had a "rich uncle" who gave you the money for your business?  Or what if you could get a hold of as much money as you need for your business - and you didn't have to pay it back?

3.  Why Hasn't the Problem Been Solved?  Money programs are neither advertised nor generally publicized, very few people know about them. The few who are aware of them lack the specialized knowledge of how to successfully obtain the free money.

4.  What's different now?  The real trick is in knowing how to ask for the money.  Matthew Lesko has developed a completely legal but diabolical secret formula that works every time.   He discovered the secret formula because for the past 25 years, he's specialized in uncovering obscure government programs that most ordinary citizens know nothing about.

5. What should you do now?  Get Matthew Lesko's book that shows you step-by-step how to do it. 

When I first started writing web copy, I would force-feed my brain with all manner of clever, innovative ways to craft my sales proposition, and I usually ended up with volumes of words, pages of research and web copy that I later had to spend hours, sometimes days, chiseling down to a lean, mean selling machine.  I was doing everything in reverse.  Then, I devised this million-dollar blueprint -- and the process of writing copy became simple.. 

I realized that if you start with this blueprint, which is the framework, and flesh out only as necessary, you come up with the same quality of web copy that I've been cranking out all these years.  But the best part is that when you use this blueprint, it slashes 80% of your copywriting time. 

Again, in modeling success, you model the strategy, not the result.  This is one of my most important strategies that you need to learn.

The beauty of this blueprint is that when you put it in writing, you don't have to put on the "writer's ha" so to speak.  You don't have to be creative, clever, amusing or profound.  You just write down the facts.  Then, later, you can make those facts come alive and fill in the details.  And I'll show you the easy way to do that, too.

Okay, let's suppose you've written down the 5 things we talked about - you've identified the problem, you've described what's possible, you've established why their problem hasn't been solved, you've established what's different now, and you've told them what they should do now.

So now, what've you got?  Is this, then, your web copy?  No, but it's the heart and soul, the framework - the springboard for writing web copy.

Make no mistake:  Some people will buy what you're selling just on the basis of your answers to those 5 questions.  As I've said before -- this is the meat.  The rest is gravy.  What you'll find is that the moment you write the answers to these 5 questions, the rest of the copy will practically write itself.

© 2004 Maria Veloso, Web Copywriting University, http://www.WebCopywritingUniversity.com