Internet marketing is growing up. We have our own set of shibboleths. The steadfast belief that writing out the sales letters of successful copywriters in long hand will somehow make you a copywriter is a wonderfully absurd example.
It’s like magic.
All you have to do is find a successful sales letter and write, write, write until the mantric qualities of those mystical words permeate your consciousness to open the door of copywriting enlightenment.
People are actually selling this nonsense. Worse yet, people are actually buying it.
Go figure.
Analysis?
What’s that?
Sentence structure?
That’s for egg-headed English teachers.
Rhetorical questions?
Ewwwwwww. That’s just plain scary.
No, there’s no need to actually learn anything — you can become a master copywriter quickly and easily by brute force rote repetition. Don’t think. Do.
Welcome to the the Zen School of Copywriting — the next business in a box.
If it works for archery, it has to work for copywriting, right?
Wrong.
Just so wrong.
If you want to learn copywriting, study good copywriting; its form, its structure. Figure out why it works. Analyzing good writing sentence by sentence, even word by word, has real benefits.
Copying it out by rote is an exercise in futility.
Repeatedly copying the words of Gary Halbert will no more turn you into a copywriter than reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets will turn you into a poet.
