by Jonathan Paston

This page, The Retired Millionaire, is worth visiting, I promise you it is; I’m recommending you click this link but not for the reason that you might think!  http://www.theretiredmillionaire.com/

If you’ve followed my Challenge you’ll have seen that I’ve made copywriting a huge personal study over the past year or so. Now each copywriter has a ’swipe file’ - a file of best-selling emails, ads and salespages from other writers! This file is occasionally useful to dip into when looking for inspiration.

How do I make my swipe file? I keep in touch with what is happening in the marketplace, stay on other marketer’s email lists and follow links to promising looking salespages. And that’s how I found The Retired Millionaire.

Now the reason I want you to follow that link is not necessarily to buy the product (I’ll come to that later)! What I want you to do is to read the page - every single word of it. And when you’ve reached the end go back to the top and read it again. Because this is an exercise in emotional tugging the like of which you’ll rarely see.

This is a salespage which incorporates everything that we teach about successful copywriting. It virtually tugs your wallet out of your pocket. Aren’t you just itching to click on that Order Now button?

Well, please don’t. Because although this salespage was obviously written by a consumate marketer, and I take my hat off to his or her craftsmanship, the stuff that’s behind the page in no way lives up to the promise.

Now that doesn’t mean that the collection of software and manuals on the download page isn’t worth the money. It’s just that it is the same old dosh that is served up by a lot of get-rich-quick promotions. Far from being the ’secrets to the opportunity of a lifetime’ all you’ll receive, if you do click that Order button, is a bunch of products to promote and the opportunity to part with more money on buying hosting for a website to sell them from!

You’ll see this sort of technique used on a lot of get-rich-quick sites. Some offer you a website to promote the product you’ve just bought into. Some guarantee to make you wealthy by helping you become an affiliate - for their product. Let me tell you, it is ten times easier to sell your own product, or act as an affiliate in a niche which you’ve researched yourself, than it is to sell just ONE of these programs.

So when you see a page like The Retired Millionaire, do what I did. File it away for posterity in your swipe file. Use it as a prime example of how good copywriting can sell a promise. It’s just a pity there isn’t a real product behind it!