Last updated on December 31st, 2025 at 12:56 pm
So you want to learn copywriting…
Good!
Copywriting is the science (not art) of selling stuff with words — usually online through tantalizing landing pages, sales pages, and headlines.
I myself have been copywriting for 7 years. I’ve helped real estate investors, SaaS companies, advertising agencies, eCommerce brands, and even baling wire websites… sell stuff.
In this guide, I’m going to give you my top 6 tips for great copywriting.
Or… cut to the chase and snag all our secrets (for free) below…
Get Our Plug-n-Play Copywriting Templates (free)
1. Collect Use-Cases
If there’s only one thing you take away from this article… let it be this: good copywriting is clear thinking.
I can write “persuasive” stuff all day long…
- You’re going to love this!
- I promise this will be a game-changer!
- Buy this now and you won’t regret it!
That stuff can be powerful if it’s put alongside clear-headed copy… but alone, it’s dry, boring, and unpersuasive.
That’s because…
I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know why I should trust you.
I don’t know how you can help me.
I don’t know why I should buy your specific solution.
So on and so forth.
We’ll talk more about this later, but your job as the copywriter is to grab people’s attention, show empathy, create curiosity, make promises, and drive action.
Here’s the thing…
You can’t do that if you don’t have three absolutely vital pieces of information…
- Who you’re talking to
- What you’re trying to sell
- Why the THING is useful and valuable
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to get that information.
I call them “use cases”.
Before you write a single word of copy, set a goal of talking to at least 10 of the most infatuated current customers — people who love the product/service you’re going to sell.
You’re going to want to get on a call (30 minutes should do the trick) and ask questions.
Here’s the type of stuff I like to ask…
- Why do you love this product?
- Why did you sign up in the first place?
- How has it changed the game for you?
- What was your biggest objection before you signed up (and what line of thinking overcame that)?
- If someone in your shoes said they don’t need it, what would you tell them?
- What are some specific ways you regularly use the product?
- What feature has been surprisingly useful?
- How would things look today if you hadn’t signed up?
A lot of you are going to skip over this step…
(Because it takes time)
But if you actually do this…
Then your copy is going to be better than 99% of your competitors.
Why?
Because when people answer these questions, they’re basically writing your copy for you. You’re going to collect fascinating stories and case studies, tantalizing hooks, relatable phrases, and clear-headed answers to common objections.
Take notes and record your call!
This information is going to be the bedrock for your copy.
Now, I know some of you are thinking… but the product/service doesn’t have any customers yet…
In that case, you’ll need to find people in your target market and ask them similar questions. You might even need to give the product/service to some people for free in order to gather this information before trying to sell it.
Yes… it’s THAT important.
2. Hook With Curiosity
To write great copy, you’re going to have to address a lot of objections, build empathy, tell stories, and create emotion.
But before ANY of that…
…we’ve got to talk about the elephant in the room.
Why should someone take precious time out of their day to read what you’ve written?
That’s the first question you’ve got to answer.
It’s called “hooking” your reader (like a fish).
For example, our answer to that question on our Copywriting Secrets landing page (which is free and we HIGHLY recommend nabbing) is that we’re giving away simple, effective “plug ‘n play” copywriting formulas…
On a product, I sell to freelance writers, my answer to that question is more fear-based — in the headline, I claim that you NEED this before things go wrong…
Notice how the hook doesn’t get too specific?
A good hook just makes you curious to learn more.
How?
By telling you what it ISN’T.
Let me show you one more example.
This is from a product my wife and I sell to amateur fiction writers…
If you read that, then all you know about this product is that A) it’s going to help you write and share the stories in your head and B) you’re not going to face some of the most common hurdles (the blank page & uninspiring writing prompts).
Imagine instead the headline said…
- Daily writing prompts delivered to your inbox for just $5 per month!
Meh…
Not as exciting, right?
The reason is because that headline tells us exactly what the product is instead of making us curious.
If you want people to stick with you long enough that they’re persuaded to buy, then you’ve got to start by hooking them with curiosity.
Make a tantalizing promise. Tell them what your product isn’t. Show them the extreme pain your product will help them avoid. Be SPECIFIC without telling them what your product actually is.
Then your dream customers will have no option but to keep reading.
The next step is to keep their attention.
Get Our Plug-n-Play Copywriting Templates (free)
3. Start With Emotion
Earlier I said that good copywriting is clear thinking.
But that doesn’t mean your copy should only sound logical.
It should also FEEL logical.
People don’t just think with their minds… they think with their emotions. If something doesn’t “feel right”, they’re not going to do it.
A big part of copywriting is using emotion to guide people where you want them to go.
Let me show you an example.
On our 30 Day Summit landing page, Russell writes the following…
- Dear Friend,
- Have you ever thought…
- This whole internet marketing thing has got to be a bunch of BS…?
- I see people online talking about funnels… driving traffic… making sales.
- And it seems like a ton of fun… but…
- “How am I, a complete newbie, with no product, no list, no traffic, and no funnel… ever going to make the kind of money that they say is possible?”
Beldar Conehead wouldn’t approve.
Because that’s not very left-brained.
But it’s true, it’s emotional, and it resonates with our target market.
Great copy combines emotions like passion, fear, pain, and pleasure with cold-hard logic — you connect the dots with the story (which we’ll talk about next).
Here’s another example of emotion being created by Bryan Ward, one of my favorite copywriters, in an email driving traffic to one of his products…
- If you had LIMITLESS energy to improve your finances… how much income would you choose to generate?
- If you had LIMITLESS energy to improve your health… what body-fat percentage would you choose to carve down to?
- If you had LIMITLESS energy to improve your marriage… how many nights a week would you choose to have mind-blowing sex with your wife?
- On the next page, I’m going to reveal a framework ANY man can use to swap out the 5% of modern living that DESTROYS primal energy and drive for the 5% of ancestral living that RESTORES it.
- Once you know the secret, you can enjoy all the benefits of modern living WITHOUT getting skewered by the bad…
- …seizing the massive opportunities modern life has to offer IMMUNE to its dark side… operating with all the primal energy, drive, and fire of our ancestors.
- If you’re sick of operating below your true potential…
- If low energy and drive are no longer acceptable to you…
- If you’re ready to take the simple steps that bring it roaring back to life…
- Grab the 10-minute ancestral stack that unlocks primal energy now
- To your freedom,
- Bryan Ward, founder
See how it works?
The place for the heaviest emotions on your page is right at the beginning and into the middle of the page.
We’ll get logical here soon.
But people — your dream customers — need to feel the emotions of buying before they justify doing so.
Three questions…
- Where are they at now?
- Where do they want to be?
- What does that FEEL LIKE?
Now make them feel it before you show them how to fix it.
4. Tell Stories
Gary Halbert once asked, “do you know what is the most-often missing ingredient in a sales message?”
His answer?
“It’s the sales message that doesn’t tell an interesting story. Storytelling … good storytelling … is a vital component of a marketing campaign.”
The story is vital for good copywriting because, done right, it accomplishes a lot of important stuff all at once…
- It creates emotion
- It reveals the logic
- It proves the results of the product or service
- It shows who the product/service is for
- It addresses objections
- It allows people to have their own epiphanies
When I crafted the copy for my Freelance Writer’s Survival Kit, I wanted to tell a story that resonated with my dream customers.
Here’s how the page starts (after the headline)…
- On the outside, Mason kept it cool.
- But inside, he was panicking.
- He’d just lost his biggest client. One of three. The client that he’d been working with for years… and made up 75% of his income.
- And he had no idea how to find a new client who’d pay him that much.
- Doubts attacked his flank — am I even good enough to keep doing this?
- He fingered his pocket for his phone.
- Scrolled to the phone number for his old boss.
- He contemplated asking for his job back.
- He even typed out the text.
- A thousand emotions flooded his chest.
- He hit send.
It’s emotional, visceral, and relatable… and it’s entirely based on a true story.
After a quick introduction, I then tell the reader about my own story/struggle with freelance writing. Here’s a glimpse of what that looks like…
- Once upon a time….
- I would do everything the online freelance writing “gurus” told me to do to find clients.
- Join Facebook groups or Slack groups, list yourself on UpWork, get active on LinkedIn, stab yourself in the eye with a fork… blah blah blah.
- I spent hours every day sweating over UpWork applications that didn’t even get looked at.
- I wrote LinkedIn posts that didn’t get a wisp of engagement.
- I applied to jobs I found posted in Facebook groups and never got a response.
- It was so silent you couldn’t even hear any damn crickets.
- The lack of momentum made me nervous.
- What would I do if I lost my biggest client?
- Was I really just a few client losses away from the freelance writing dream coming to an end?
- As it turned out, yes… yes I was.
See how I’m crafting a traditional story arc?
I was struggling (with exactly the same thing as my target market is struggling with currently) and nothing was working… and then things got worse…
- I got the email that changed everything while I was sitting in a coffee shop, trying to get some work done.
- “Hey Mike, With the addition of a full-time copywriter and SEO guy we can’t justify keeping 2 of each when we can be pointing that budget elsewhere. This will be the last month we’ll need your help on the copy side of things. Thanks”
- This was the EXACT thing I feared… come stomping down the dark alleyway to consume me.
- It was one of my biggest clients.
- Not just that, but they were someone I’d worked with for over three years.
- I knew they might leave at some point… but I wasn’t expecting it to happen so suddenly.
- I couldn’t shake the emotions…
- Stress. Anxiety. And the unrelenting feeling of failure.
- What was I going to do?
- How was I going to really succeed as a freelance writer if I didn’t even know how to handle losing a single client??
I spend quite a bit more time on that page explaining the challenges I faced and how, because of that struggle, I ended up developing a system for finding freelance writing clients on demand… whenever I needed them.
And that’s the exact system I’m selling.
See how all of this connects? See how the story naturally leads into the product?
Logic — features, price, bonuses, etc. — comes after you’ve created emotion and crafted a compelling story (i.e. after you’ve made them want what you’re offering).
Think of a story you could tell on your own sales page — maybe it’s your story, maybe it’s a client or customer, or maybe it’s entirely fictional. Whatever it is, your story should resonate with your target market and drive them to take action.
Get Our Plug-n-Play Copywriting Templates (free)
5. Use Open Loops
Whew!
You’ve come a long ways.
You’re halfway through this article. But if you stick with me for just a few minutes longer, I’m going to show you the most POWERFUL WAY I know to keep someone’s attention.
I call them “open loops”.
And I just created one.
How?
By promising that if you stick with me for a few more minutes, I’ll show you the most powerful way I know of keeping someone’s attention.
You’ll see these a lot in YouTube videos.
For example, watch the first few seconds of this video…
Trevor Mauch says…
“Do you want more motivated house seller leads as a real estate investor or a real estate agent? Well, we’re going to show you a different way to do it than everyone else is doing it that actually adds more predictability and more sustained results.”
See the open loop?
If you want what he’s offering, you’ve got to keep watching to find out.
I do this a lot on the landing pages I put together as well. Can you find the open loop?
Now… every time you create an open loop, imagine that you start a timer.
You’ve got a certain window of time to talk to people where they’re sticking around and paying attention in anticipation of what you promised to give them, the length of which depends on how enticing your promise was.
If I told you I was going to give you a million dollars if you read every word on this page… of course, you’d do it.
That’s an extreme example but it illustrates the point.
People will stick with you only so long as you…
- Have something they want
And they…
- Trust you to give it to them
It’s like dangling a carrot in front of a horse.
This means that every time you close a loop and give them what you promised, if you want them to stick with you longer, then you need to open a new loop.
It also means that you should be very aware of the ticking timer. If people lose trust or start to doubt that you’re going to give them what they want… they’re going to leave.
It’s often a good idea — in your copy, in your webinars, and on your sales pages — to increase people’s motivation to stick around by opening multiple loops.
The more enticing loops you have open, the more motivated people will be to stick around.
So tell people what you’re going to give them… then use the time in between to tell stories, build rapport, and create emotion.
6. Brainstorm Objections
Wouldn’t it be great if people just bought your stuff without asking questions?
Well…
As it turns out, people have a LOT of questions.
Not just questions about how your product/service works (in fact, those are typically the least important objections)…
… but objections about if they actually need what you’re offering if they should trust you or not, whether your product/service is really worth it…
A big part of copywriting is anticipating and addressing those objections.
First, set aside time to brainstorm all of the objections you imagine your dream customers having. Reframe those objections into questions (so “I don’t trust you” might become “Why should I trust you?”). Here are some common ones…
- Why should I trust you?
- Why is YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE better than other ones?
- Why do I need your product/service?
- Why does it cost so much?
- Why do I need to buy it right this second?
- What bad thing will happen if I don’t buy?
- Why should I risk my hard-earned money on your product/service?
Here’s what I can tell you for sure…
If you don’t have answers to every single one of those questions — really good answers… then your conversion rate is going to suffer.
Humans are risk-averse.
They don’t want to be your test subjects. They want to know that your thing works, that it’s going to help them, that they’re getting a good deal, and that you’re worthy of their trust.
To give you an example of what this looks like in the real world, let’s take some of the questions above and see how they’re answered by copy from Bryan Ward’s fitness program…
- Why should I trust you?
- My name’s Bryan Ward. I’m a husband, a father of four, an Inc. 500 entrepreneur, founder of Third Way Man, and former sufferer of debilitating low energy.
- Why is YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE better than other ones?
- In this course, I show you how to use Ancestral Stacks to unlock primal energy so you can set and crush big goals again… WITHOUT resorting to dangerous drugs, stimulants, or TRT. It takes about 10 minutes a day and is a total game-changer for any man who wants more energy, drive, and vitality.
- Why do I need your product/service?
- If you want a simple, natural way to increase your energy levels… If ancestral living resonates with you… If you’re teachable and hungry for change… Then this thing’s gonna blow your mind because you’re EXACTLY who I made it for.
- Why does it cost so much?
- I know men who drop thousands of dollars on health retreats… Thousands on TRT pellets each year… Thousands on ayahuasca trips to Peru, and more. Why do they do it? Because when it comes to breaking the Male Doom Cycle and getting your fire back… no price is too high. So when you find something 100% safe and natural… a solution with a nearly 200,000 year track record that works in just 10 minutes a day… You don’t blink, and you don’t quibble on price: You pay almost anything because the value is astronomically high. That being said, I’m not going to charge thousands of dollars for this course.
- Why do I need to buy it right this second?
- The fact you’ve read this far tells me you KNOW this course can help and are ready to put it to work in your life. There’s nothing better than a READY and TEACHABLE student. So even though this course is officially closed, I’ve gone ahead and re-opened it for you (twenty-five minutes only). What’s more, I’m giving it to you NOT for the $5,000+ I probably should be charging… …but for the same introductory pricing I offered on the very first launch.
- What bad thing will happen if I don’t buy?
- So for the sake of your family… For the sake of the bigger, bolder life you could be living… …take this small step, pull the trigger, and let me help you unlock primal energy in your life now.
- Why should I risk my hard-earned money on your product/service?
- If you don’t like the course for ANY reason, just send my support team an email within 90 days of purchase and we’ll immediately issue you a prompt and courteous refund.
To be clear, this is just a snapshot lonnggg sales page.
But it gives you an idea of how an expert copywriter addresses common objections within his copy (without just using an FAQ).
Final Thoughts
There you have it.
Those are my top 6 tips – collect use cases, hook people with curiosity, start with emotion, tell stories, and brainstorm objections.
I’m serious when I tell you that mastering those 6 things will make you better than 99% of copywriters in today’s world.
Because copywriting is a science more than an art form.
It’s something you can practice, learn, and master.
So go get started… and keep learning with every new ad, email, or page that you write.