David Gerő

Your first sales letter won't be your last.

Even when I'm working on the same product or service, my letter evolves to understand the customer's problems. I hear expressions I would never have thought of myself. I get testimonials I want to use to enhance my credibility.

The Unix philosophy helps write sales letters that are modular, adaptable, and ready to change.

I keep my sales letter modular, so I can easily update it from time to time.

1) Write programs that do one thing and do it well.

In the sales letter, the programs are the sections.

Their job is to do one thing only but do it well, like the refund policy you use to reduce resistance. You can use this standalone section in multiple places in your sales letter.

2) Write programs that work together.

Don't let it spill over into another section if you start with an idea in one section.

This will help you keep the boundaries that make the section more modular. You can reuse topic phrases in different sections to strengthen overall cohesion.

3) Write programs that can handle text streams because this is a universal interface.

There are skim and read streams.

People skim the text and don't read it at the beginning. You need to get them from skimming to reading using headings, images, and bulleted lists. After that, they start reading the sales letter once they get past the skimming stage.

In the reading stage, you can help them by using subheadings like

• "Let me explain",

• "What does this mean?",

• "How does this work?"

Maybe I'm not the only one who jumps into product development right away.

But what if we created a sales funnel first? We collect subscribers and can still help them by offering a product without making one ourselves. That way, we can test different offers and messages until we find the right one.

This is the 3-step product development process I learned from Tiny Little Business.

Instead of building a product, focus on building a funnel first, so you have a working funnel, customers, and insights to bring your solution to market later.

1. Build a marketing funnel first.

2. Sell affiliate products in that funnel.

3. Replace or extend the affiliate product with your own.

Start with a funnel

If you build a marketing funnel first, you can focus on the customer's needs without getting into product development while gathering real insights that you can use later.

You can test different messages to see what works and doesn't while also giving you time to listen to customers and adjust accordingly.

Sell partner products in the funnel

To measure your sales funnel, you need to sell something.

You're not testing their products. You test your funnel by selling an associated product without actually having one, so you don't have to worry about support or other issues.

The goal is to generate enough revenue to cover the cost of your sales funnels.

Replace or expand the affiliate product later

Once you have a complete funnel, you can develop and sell products.

The most important thing is to build your business around your customers. If you know your customers well, you can develop a product they'll want to buy.

• You have a working funnel.

• You have an email list of interested and buying customers.

• And you have the insight you need to develop your solution.

I wasn't particularly eager to use personal stories in my writing.

I found that these stories were just for the gap between topic sentences that no one wanted to read. But I found that personal experiences with the subjects created credibility and a connection that helped the reader and writer find common ground.

In the book "Storyworthy" by Matthew Dicks, I read these 4 questions that always help me find my connection to the topic.

Asking about the best/worst/first/last experiences with a topic you encounter gives you a personal connection and helps you find the arch in the topics.

When I'm working on a new topic, I ask these four questions about myself.

1. What was my Worst experience with it?

2. What was my Best experience with it?

3. What was my First experience with it?

4. What was my Last experience with it?

Let's take a look at 4 experiences with job interviews in software development

• My worst interview was when I applied for a job I didn't want to take.

• My best interview was when I was asked to do a complete spell check based on Wikipedia.

• My first interview consisted of writing code with pen and paper.

• My last interview was professional, with clearly defined steps, and I got a response within 24 hours with the next step.

4 arches with software development job interview

• From my worst experience, I learned that I don't apply for a job I don't want to take because I can't fake my interest.

• From my best experience, I learned that developing challenging standalone applications is a great experience no matter the outcome of the interview.

• From my first experience, I learned that testing programming skills on paper are still a terrible idea.

• From my last interview, I learned that an interview sets a high expectation for the company, and I chose the company based on that good impression.

Reference:

Dicks, Matthew: Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling, 2018.

When a shopper enters your e-commerce site and immediately buys something, it must be a dream come true.

However, that's only 2.17% of visits.

Instead of hoping they'll buy right away, you can help them move forward on their path to purchase.

By keeping your goal in mind at every stage, you can answer fundamental questions at the right time without overloading them with information.

We usually distinguish 3 phases of the Buyer's Journey.

1. Awareness stage

2. Consideration stage

3. Decision stage

Let's look at these stages one by one and consider what the fundamental issue of each stage is and how we can help our customers.

1. The awareness stage is the time when your clients start to become aware of the problem

They aren't yet ready to solve it immediately.

In this stage, visitors want to learn more about the problem area. The goal is to help them understand this space.

For example, if you want to buy a smartphone, you need to know the different operating systems and the advantages and disadvantages.

2. In the consideration phase, the customer considers different options

They can compare the best smartphones on the market and decide which one is best for them.

If you help them compare, they'll be ready for the next step.

3. Decision phase when they compare providers

Now they've made a decision. They have a problem and know what the best solution is for them.

They've decided on a solution and are ready to buy.

As a final step to smartphone shopping, they can compare the price and trustworthiness of different e-commerce stores.

Simply listing features isn't enough to convey the value of your product.

Your customers need to understand the value of the product by seeing how they can use it, while we want to overcome natural hesitation.

Using the Problem - Agitate - Solution (PAS) framework, you can craft your message so that your customer feels your solution's value in their context while making a decision now.

1. Problem: Describe the problem

2. Agitate: What'll happen if you don't solve the problem?

3. Solution: Offer a solution.

Problem - Agitate - Solution (PAS)

They already know it's a problem. By describing a problem, you show that you understand their pain.

We show them the consequences of leaving the problem unsolved by agitating what'll happen if they don't solve the problem. Everything is terrible is excellent here because we want to overcome procrastination, and it's easier to do that with bad things.

You can describe your solution after we've shaken up why it's awful to leave the problem unsolved.

Let's look at how I created my first sales letter for my Shopify application.

My Shopify application creates an XML feed to update their product list on the price and product comparison page. You can share your feed as an XML feed that gets crawled every day or upload it manually as a CSV file.

Currently, they solve the problem by creating an Excel file and manually updating their product list every week, which usually takes 2-4 hours per week, and they can make a mistake. Hence, they have to update it again and temporarily get banned from the site.

1. Problem: Are you still manually uploading your feed every week and hoping you don't make a mistake this time?

2. Agitate: The headache of manually tracking ALL of your product changes on a CSV file PLUS all the time it takes to figure out how to properly format and upload your feed could lead to costly mistakes.

3. Solution: With the XY app, we publish AND update your products daily... On autopilot - forever.

When we add a new feature to our product, we assume that customers will immediately see the benefit of our invention.

Unfortunately, that's not the case.

As owners and founders, we need to help our customers see and feel the real value of the new features. We need to help them by explaining and presenting how it'll help them on their journey.

Let's look at how we can turn our feature list into irresistible messages.

Feature - Benefit - Meaning helps you communicate the real value of your product's feature in a way that customers can easily understand.

To make these messages, we need to answer 3 questions and connect them.

• What's the Feature of your product?

• What's the Benefit of your product's Feature?

• What do this Feature and Benefit Mean for them?

Templates you can use to formulate your message

After answering the questions, use these formulas, in which we'll simply insert your answers.

• [FEATURE] which helps you [BENEFIT] which means [MEAN]

• [FEATURE] so you can [BENEFIT] and that means [MEAN]

• [FEATURE] and how you can[BENEFIT] which means [MEAN]

• [FEATURE] so [BENEFIT] which means [MEAN]

Let's see a real-life example!

The main feature of my Shopify app is to automatically create an XML feed for your products.

Sounds pretty boring, right?

Let's explain the benefits and meaning of this feature.

[Create a properly formatted XML feed of your products] so that [your products display properly every time], which means [you don't have to worry about making a mistake when updating your product feed].

8 years ago, we set up Bitcoin ATMs in Singapore.

At that time, it wasn't such big news as it's now. I learned many concepts necessary to plan, architect, and develop such a system from start to finish. Let me tell you about the first big problem I faced.

"How can I send bitcoin without knowing the recipient's address?" just like ATM, where you get cash without being assigned it for you.

One of the key concepts is that each transaction connects two wallets, so you can't create a new transaction without the sender and receiver wallet address.

If this is a crucial problem and I can't create a transaction without the recipient's address, how can I solve this problem - I asked.

Who can create a wallet in the first place?

You can create a new wallet whenever you want. There's a public algorithm that you can use to create a new one, and you can have millions of new wallets if you wish.

The key is that a wallet address is only added to the ledger when you create a transaction. This means that you add a new wallet to the ledger through the transaction, and that transaction makes it a permanent wallet.

So when you create a bitcoin ATM, how can you send a bitcoin without knowing the recipient's address?

1. Create a new wallet

2. Send bitcoin to this new wallet.

3. Create a QR code from this new wallet address and the secret

4. Give the new wallet to the customer.

5. Forget the secret of the new wallet.

The buying process isn't a one-step process.

Before buying something, we usually go through 3 phases, the Buyer's Journey. Knowing the different stages, you can help your buyers get all the information they need and suggest the following action steps.

We also use other advertising channels when creating ads for the different stages.

1. Awareness stage: Facebook ads are a great example because they show your ads based on your interests and activities.

You scroll and see posts. You don't focus on solving a problem right now. If you're working on a solution right now, you're probably not using Facebook at all.

We need to be clear that your buyers are not actively looking for a problem/pain or solution in this stage.

2. Consideration stage: Google search ads are appropriate here because they're actively looking for a solution to a problem/pain.

When they use a search engine like Google, they actively do something. They're searching for something by typing in their questions and breaking down their problems/pain into keywords.

This is an active phase where buyers want to solve the problem/pain.

3. Decision Stage: Ads on Amazon, Google Shopping, or other price and product comparison sites are suitable for this stage.

In their journey, they've moved past the awareness and consideration stage. They know they have a problem. They select a solution from the possible options and now consider which supplier they want to buy.

This is the final phase of the Buyer's Journey. This is when the actual purchase takes place.

I remember the very first lead magnet I created.

It was a calculator to compare the cost of payment providers based on the average eCommerce shopping cart value. It was a Google Spreadsheet where you could enter your data and it would show the price of the provider so you could find the best match.

I hired an expert to run Google Ads to see how the lead magnet worked.

The first week I'd a lot of traffic and subscribers.

But in the second week, I realized something was wrong. I couldn't figure out how people were finding and subscribing to my content. Weeks later, nothing had changed.

So I realized the project had failed. It's time to move on.

I talked to the expert on the phone. It looks like he saw something different.

I talked to the expert on the phone.

He wasn't satisfied with the landing page. He said that the landing pages weren't working, but we're giving promising ad results. Instead of changing the ads, he wanted to change the pages because the conversion rate is so low.

I'm not sure, but it sounds reasonable to improve results by changing the page.

After I received the invoice, I called him again and immediately canceled the project. The price was much higher than I expected.

I kept checking the same data.

I checked the data again and again, but it's the same.

Then I noticed that there was a small date selector in the corner. I realized that I'd been watching the same week for over a month. After I realized that what the expert said was correct, I should have given the campaign a little more time with the improvement.

That's right.

We were just talking about two different things. But we didn't realize they were different.

I usually summarize what I've heard when I work with my mentors.

This excellent communication technique improves my overall communication in several dimensions. It helps you improve your relationship while getting as much out of it as possible.

Summarize what you just heard to help you and your mentors improve their relationship and create clarity for both parties.

It helps you and your mentors.

Let me break it down to the two parties.

What do you get out of summarizing the advice?

1. When you summarize the advice, you have the advantage of confirming your understanding.

2. You also express the advice in your own words by confirming your understanding, which helps you remember it.

3. Finally, you show that you're listening carefully.

What does your mentor get out of summarizing their advice?

4. When a mentee summarizes your advice, you have the opportunity to correct it if necessary.

5. It's also an invaluable opportunity for you to articulate your opinion on a deep level.

My designs were crap.

But with C.R.A.P., my designs are good enough to present the content I want to get across without distracting people. It helps the reader find the key points and grasp the structure at a glance.

It's a simple recipe you can follow to make your design good.

CRAP stands for Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. These are 4 principles you can look out for and quickly change to improve your design.

This essay is an example of using these principles to improve your design.

Let's go in reverse order!

1. Proximity is about grouping elements together.

For example, this paragraph and the subheading have less space at the top than the subheading that follows. That's one reason why you should add a little more margin to the top of the subheading than to the bottom.

2. Alignment is about aligning groping aspects.

After you've grouped the elements, you need to communicate how these groups are connected.

For example, if you group the main heading and the main text into two groups, you can separate these groups by a large distance.

3. Repetition means using the same design in different places.

It's important to show consistency.

When you use the same design aspect in different groups or elements, you reinforce the sense of consistency. For example, in this essay, the subheading design is repeated in every instance.

It begins with a number, the keyword, and one-line text.

4. Contrast is about using a lot of contrast to see the different parts.

You should make the difference significant enough to see quickly if you want to highlight something.

The heading is the largest part of the text, then the lead heading, then the subheadings, and the paragraphs. There's a structure to the size of the text, and the size is big enough for you to see.

If the contrast isn't big enough, it'll be perceived as an error.

Reference:

Williams, Robin: Non-Designer's Design Book, The 4th Edition, 2014

I read 95 books last year.

I didn't even count the books I read halfway through.

I actually went to college to study literature because I wanted to read all day, every day. And I thought, if I'm going to do this, I need to work with literature and be part of the literary community where I meet like-minded people.

I was wrong, and something changed.

My time is shifted from consuming to creating.

Reading is convenient.

You know where it starts and when it'll end. It's a cover, from the first sentence to the last, and even if the epilog leaves a question unanswered, you feel like you've done your job, read the book, and finished.

I want to read fewer books, but more often

The more I read, the easier it's to forget the details. That doesn't mean I've to remember all the little details or that it's pointless.

Rather, I regret that these great experiences fly away too quickly.

I've cut my reading list to half and instead read books I enjoyed and re-read. It's my way of deepening my experience as a reader.

I want less book, but deeper reflection

When I read my favorite books multiple times, it's easy for me to notice little details that I overlooked or forgot before. It's like making a list of my sacred books that I use every day for practice.

The more I write notes from my highlights, the deeper my reflection practice becomes.

And when I finished my reflection practice, I prepared and edited an essay from my notes and hit the publish button:

I'm one step further in my quest to create and publish today.

Studying poetry was one of my favorite pastimes.

Poetry is the densest genre, I thought. I went into detail and figured out how the different layers worked together to convey the message. The text provides the context and defines the boundaries when you're most receptive to the message.

So I went to college to learn as much as I could about this beautiful world.

At college, I found something completely different.

At the University, we only learned about the history of literature and the current analyzing trend.

They were fascinated by analyzing literature from a one-person perspective rather than narrative techniques or structuralism. I immediately lost interest because I wanted to learn about systems and methods rather than "I feel, you feel, the author feels" triangles.

I found my way out in linguistics.

In linguistics, we focus more on layers, systems, and rules.

I needed to figure out how to communicate with computers to analyze. Since I didn't know how to write code, I'd no choice but to run one Unix command after another until I got the result.

After a few years of learning coding in my spare time, I got my first job as a software developer, working on language-related problems.

As a software developer, I do the same thing I did in the beginning.

Some people still think there's a big difference between working with literature or code. For me, there's no real difference.

I'm still looking for communication patterns in the code. Each part of the system has its narrative and responsibilities. Sometimes they can even have conflicts, as in any drama, or misunderstandings occur, which are part of any comedy.

There's a narrative and messages in all systems, whether poetry or code.

I always admire people with a mission statement.

But I'm not that kind of guy.

I always have a direction, but never a written, SMART, "official" goal with a mission statement for centuries to come. Sometimes I even feel that I'm not creative or smart enough to have the "big mission", so I never achieve anything in my life.

But something has changed, and the result has just happened.

Set your direction by the environment and let the result take care of itself

I've always been interested in working with retailers.

I don't know anything about them. I've no idea why I'd want to work with them. My intuition told me that this is what I should do.

So I set my direction and created an environment.

I created my e-commerce stores, and the results were always terrible.

The "only" problem was that no one wanted to buy anything from me.

I spent all my time constantly solving small, tiny, frustrating technical problems while working on these stores.

The truth is that no system can be good enough if it doesn't sell.

But as I worked on my stores, I became familiar with the problems these people face every day.

I've wrapped up these little, tiny, frustrating technical problems and I'm selling these packages instead.

I'm solving everyday problems and creating a small functional app to solve one problem at a time.

As I listened to other sellers, I realized we all have different problems.

I can't create a store where everyone wants to buy a product from me, but I can solve the technical difficulties one by one and create a specific solution that solves the one thing at the right time.

This way, I finally got to know them a little better and realized why I wanted to work with them in the first place. And maybe, I'll learn how to create a store that sells.

Let's write a list of things we like to do.

Then we'll divide it into two columns.

• The first column is for activities in a community.

• The second column is for solo activities.

Now let's look at why it's important to practice solos in the community, even if you perform them alone.

The best indicator of the success of something is how many hours you practice it.

In life, the best and worst things always happen around people. So joining a community is always scary and rewarding. It can be a positive or negative experience.

• It can uplift you or destroy you.

• You can learn faster or slow down.

• You create quick feedback loops for good and bad things.

Ultimately, you'll get the most out of any activity, good or bad, if you do it in the community.

And if you don’t enjoy the trying part, you’ll never do it long enough to reach your goal. (Bregman 2011)

Join a community to practice together.

My passion is reading, writing, and trading. I love doing these things alone, but I don't mind sharing them with others.

These are all activities that are usually done alone, but that doesn't stop me from looking for communities around these topics to increase my motivation, keep me on track, and get better feedback loops.

• You can read on your own. But I usually go to a reading club, share the books I'm reading online, and meet up with people who also like to read.

• You can write on your own. But I'm writing in a challenge where people like me write 30 essays in 30 days.

• You can trade on your own. But I'm part of trading communities where people share their trades and learn from each other.

Bregman, Peter: 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done, 2011