In a relatively short period of time the world of marketing turned on its head. Today's copywriters need to be familiar with various online platforms such as WordPress and Joomla as well writing for radio and television. A lot of copywriters who were kings in the days of rolling out direct mail or buying newspaper space are no longer able to compete in the age of video and email marketing.

However, it would be a serious mistake to consider offline marketing dead. Today, direct mail may be more effective because so few people are using it. Text marketing may be effective today but it may be saturated tomorrow.

When building a business, it's important to start with the most obvious questions. Where are your customers located and who is your ideal customer avatar? Unless you have the information at hand, chances are you may be wasting much of your marketing time and energy.

My name is Harlan Kilstein and I'm considered one of the top copywriters in the world. I interned with the top copywriters in the world and today my students are considered to be the "A team" of online copywriting.

The purpose of this website is to introduce myself and share with you my views on the evolution of copywriting. I've seen earthquakes of copywriting in just the past few years. I think you will learn a great deal from this site.

As you go through my site and see my client list, you may want to consider working with me.

Please go through the site first so you can understand my process.

Feel free to contact me

A number of top internet gurus have largely abandoned the sales letter. Some of them are creating extremely long videos instead of long sales letters. Is this the wave of the future? We are going to address these issues here in this post.

First, the attention span on the Internet is way down. Studies now show that a visitor to your website makes a decision to stay or go within the first 6 seconds. Whatever you have on your site has to hook them so they will stay and dive into your content.

But a lot of people are creating long videos but not measuring how long people watch them. Do people watch a 60 minute video selling them a product? Even infomercial experts have discovered that 20 minutes is about the limit so they repeat the content every 20 minutes.

If you video it, will they stay?

The answer is not clear or obvious. My thought is that if the 60 minute video is of a talking head, people rapidly learn they don't need to watch. They can just listen in. Essentially what these people have done is take a video modality and turn it into an audio modality. They are training people NOT to watch their videos.

On the other hand, if the video is fast paced and attention getting, there's a good chance in getting a visitor to your website to stick around longer.

Even though I'm known as a copywriter, I'll be bold and claim that good video combined with a sales letter will out-perform a plain sales letter. Furthermore, good video alone will often out perform a bad sales letter. However, bad video may be the literal kiss of death. If people won't stay for the video, chances are they won't hang around and read the sales letter either.

Today, a large amount of the work I do is creating video scripts and actual videos for clients. The process involves a great deal of research into the demographics of your market and discovering the visual imagery that is most appealing.

If you'd like to discuss your video needs with me, please visit me on my Contact Us Page

I went to the Big Seminar and went to hang out in the bar the night before. There by himself was Frank Kern. I went up to him and introduced myself. I told him that the Underachiever set was the best online purchase I had ever made and that I felt it had the most value of all the products I had bought.

Frank thanked me and asked, "Did you write that sales letter for Stephen Pierce about blogging? That headline blew me away."

I had no idea Frank knew who I was but he knew my writing. He asked me if he could call me about writing for him. I said sure.

Frank called me to tell me about a seminar he was doing but before he could talk about it, I had to sign an NDA. The seminar was called "The Serializer Seminar." Frank wanted to charge $10,000 for the seminar and wanted 44 people to attend.

The first challenge was to understand the concept of "The Serializer." Once I did, the letter almost wrote itself.

The headline was:

It’s an exclusive look behind the scenes at the personal money making system I’ve developed but…

You can’t attend this seminar unless you promise not to tell anyone what you learned or that you even use this system.

No kidding.

This material is so valuable you will sign and notarize your signature agreeing to keep this material “hush-hush” in the presence of my attorney before you set foot inside the seminar room.

You can use these systems, you just can’t reveal them.

I’m setting aside the first rule of Fight Club for just 37 people. No. I haven’t lost my mind. But you’ve never been exposed to…

“The Serializer Method”

One of the biggest challenges Frank had was going public with his material. Frank had presented publicly about one of his niches at a live seminar and he was blatantly copied. Frank was concerned about people stealing "The Serializer Method."

I suggested Frank bring in a lawyer into the seminar to supervise the signings of the NDA. In fact, he loved the idea and it set the tone of the seminar.

My favorite line of the letter was:

I’ll come after you with everything I’ve got. Your lawyers will need lawyers to defend against my full court press.

The Serializer seminar sold out in 11 minutes flat. It was Frank's first experience with Mass Control. People couldn't scroll through the letter fast enough to sign up. Frank ended up making $110,000 a minute!

Following the succes of The Serializer, Frank and Ed Dale hired me to write a letter for their Ultra Underachiever Program.

Frank was entering the world of copy himself at that time and wrote a version of the sales letter he called "Regurgitated Vomit." I was able to use some of Frank's concepts in the letter but his copy had a long way to go.

The Serializer Even was the first public use of Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula. Even though Frank was fairly unknown at the time, he was able to send a $10,000 program. Walker's Product Launch Formula would go on and redefine Internet marketing by creating high demand for products.

The Ultra Underachiever Program sold very well and I became a featured speaker and Frank Kern and Ed Dale's events. They are two of the brightest online marketers I know.

The next call that I got from Frank was insane. Frank wanted to beat John Reese's Million Dollar Day. And he wanted to avoid all of the hassles of dealing with affiliates. Frank and his cousin Trey Smith approached Neil Strauss who has just published "The Game" about the pick-up Seduction world. They wanted Strauss to create a product called "The Annihilation Method." Neil agreed.

Frank wanted to sell a DVD set for $997 dollars and sell a thousand of them. I told him the value was much higher. He was incredulous. "You think you could get people to buy a DVD set at a higher price?" I suggested a price tag of $7000. We compromised at around $4000. It would be the highest priced product to ever hit the market.

This launch was all Frank. He went wild with emails and built Neil a huge list. One email was "The Black Mirror Technique." It was so over the top with magic techniques that it drove people insane. They HAD to buy the product.

I wrote the letter live in front of a seminar audience. It took me about 90 minutes to write the letter. After the letter was written, Frank's cousin Trey made some adjustments to the letter that in my opinion killed the letter. I called Frank and begged him not to run with Trey's letter. In the end, Frank made very few adjustments to my letter. The letter sold out in about 19 minutes. It was the fastest million dollars made online.

From that point on, Frank began running launches himself and doing his own copy. He moved to video where he showed mastery of the techniques involved.

If you'd like to discuss working with you on a project just like I worked with Frank Kern, please visit me on my Contact Us Page