Copywriters Podcast

Albert Lasker didn't just become one of advertising's biggest names—he helped invent the way modern direct response marketing works. In this episode of the Old Masters Series, we explore the principles that transformed advertising from clever announcements into measurable sales systems. You'll hear the stories behind the ideas that influenced generations of copywriters, from Claude Hop...

Our special guest today didn’t start out planning to be a copywriter, but found his way into it after posting online reviews of his favorite martial arts movies in college, and getting his writing compared to that of Dan Kennedy. He looked up Dan and found what he had to say interesting. But he didn’t become a copywriter or a marketer at the time. Instead, he finished his degree and went from job...

Last week, we did a show on how content marketing is failing direct marketers when you do it the way everyone else does it. Basically, social media encourages you to crave attention and approval, instead of get results. Nathan asked me if we could a completely different version of the show, where we focus on including direct response elements in our content marketing. I thought that was a great id...

Our returning champion today is Kim Krause Schwalm, and she is going to share some amazing and unique information with you. The late Clayton Makepiece, a legend himself in copywriting, said, and I quote: “Kim Krause Schwalm is one of the hottest copywriters alive.” Here’s a little background: Kim was always a marketer who could write copy. Before she launched her freelance career in 1998, she spen...

If you’ve always wondered about content marketing, you’re not alone. It’s a confusing term and there’s no standard definition to describe what it means. It really depends on your point of view. Well, we have a point of view on this podcast, and it is the point of view of direct-response copywriting. Now, to be sure, not EVERY word you write is part of a sales letter, even from our point of view. B...

Social media can be a HUGE waste of time, but sometimes when you’re scrolling you come upon a gem. I did last week, and it led to all kinds of crazy thoughts. I was on Twitter/X, and I discovered this post by lesser known but A-plus screenwriting expert Tom Vaughan, who has written eight films. On Twitter/X, he wrote: I have noticed many younger writers prefer to forgo a romance in their screenpla...

If you’re noticing the advertising landscape changing a lot and changing fast, it’s not your imagination playing tricks on you. Things really are changing. Our special guest a few weeks ago, Mike Pavlish, pointed this out. He noted that “ugly” ads were outperforming “pretty” ones–that is, user-generated content, UGC, homemade ads of a sort, were vastly outperforming slick, polished, high-productio...

People always talk about opening your copy with a story, but most of the time, when you say what kind of story, they’ll look at you like you’re an idiot and say, “Hero’s journey, of course,” like there were no other viable options. Well, the problem with that is, the way the great purveyors of hero’s journey stories, Hollywood Screenwriters, use them is as a macro story. The whole two hour movie i...

Think about these two things: First, learning to write copy, and Second, then actually writing it. Wouldn’t it be nice if those two things, learning to write copy and then doing it, were free of confusion , anxiety, and terror ? That was the burning question that started me on the path of mentoring copywriters. I wanted to make it happen. Because early on, I had such a rough time learning myself....

Today we have the fourth and final installment of our hit Old Masters Series segment, Copywriting 101.  We’ll be talking about the last seven fundamentals. And if that little voice in your head is asking, “What the heck are we doing reviewing fundamentals?! ”, let me remind you of what basketball legend Michael Jordan said: “Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”...

Our returning champion Mike Pavlish has written dozens of VSLs that have brought in $10 million or more. In fact, over the last 30 years, Mike’s copy has brought in over $810 million in sales. And his work is still bringing in the big bucks today. How good is Mike? On his website he’s got testimonials from legends like Gary Bencivenga and Bob Bly. But this one from an eye doctor named David Tavel,...

We’re going through massive and disruptive upheavals all over the place, and of course copywriting is no exception. I’m seeing the need for a complete mindset shift to survive, thrive and even dominate in copywriting. It’s curious to me that the mindset shift is a return to the garden. I know that phrase means a lot of things, depending upon your background. What I mean by a return to the garden i...

As we return to our hit Old Masters Series segment, Copywriting 101, I’d like to let you know that the first edition of John Caples’s book Tested Advertising Methods was published in 1932–that’s 94 years ago! Caples updated the book more than once over the decades–the last edition was published in 1998. But the interesting thing is, over that 60 plus year span, the fundamentals remained the same....

The future for copywriters and AI is pretty clear: AI will not replace copywriters. But… copywriters who know how to use AI will replace those who don’t. Sounds simple enough. However, once you get into it, you realize using AI to create copy that converts sounds easier than it is. And the question boils down to: How do you do it? I’ve been wrestling with that question for a couple years now, and...

Once again we’re back to our Copywriting 101 segments in the Old Masters Series, picking up where we left off a couple weeks ago. This is about copywriting fundamentals. It never hurts to review them, and if you weren’t grounded in fundamentals to begin with, it’s never too late to learn what they are. One of the best sources of an expert list of the fundamentals is John Caples, in his book Tested...

Let’s talk about something small. Very small. Small enough that most copywriters are forced tooverlook it, most of the time. Because we’ve all been trained to think in termsof big persuasive assets. The sales letter… the long-form VSL… the casestudy… the big story that carries the whole argument. And those still matter. But that’s not what most of us are writing mostof the time. Most of the time,...

The big secret of success, whether it’s in investing… in professional sports… or in copywriting, is one in the same: A focus on, and a mastery of, the fundamentals. The legendary basketball player Michael Jordan put it this way: “Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.” We’ve never done a show that just focused on copywriting fundamentals, so what better time than n...

Our returning champion is Clive Cable, who was here a few weeks agotalking about his new book Neurocopy. As Nathan and I got to know Clive a little better, we found out he hasbeen doing a LOT with AI and copywriting that frankly we haven’t seen anyoneelse do. For example, he has a story-lede generator that comes up with a big idea for asales letter or VSL, and then writes a unique story lede to st...

Dante Aligheri was a copywriter kind of guy. Rather than write in the stuffy, formal Latin which is what everyone else was writing in the 14th century, he wrote in the home boy people’s language of Tuscan. Dante’s masterwork was The Divine Comedy, and his last line was “L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle” Translated into English, he’s talking about Love–the kind of love that moves th...

It’s a full-blown crisis. As if writing copy wasn’t hard enough, there’s a new demand falling on the plates of copywriters more and more. And while maybe it’s not fair, it IS real. And it’s important that you know about it, and know what to do about it. Good news. We’ve got just the person to explain what it is and how to come out ahead, looking like a million bucks and being a hero, whether you w...

These days people talk about neurochemicals a lot. Chemicals like dopamine, and cortisol, and the love chemical, oxytocin. I’ve always wondered how these chemicals are affected by copy, and how much it matters. So imagine my surprise when I discovered what our very special guest was doing! His name is Clive Cable, and he’s not only written a book about this, he has a complete system to evaluate co...

We’re really at a crisis point for a lot of marketers. It’s not just that ads keep getting more expensive. It’s that it just gets harder and harder to get and keep prospects’ attention. And with everything being engineered and optimized by AI and CRO, stuff ends up looking more and more the same. And that only works against you. You know you need to stand out–but how? Well, the best way to get and...

Today’s show is for every talented copywriter stuck in the feast-or-famine cycle of business and would much rather get paid well, to reflect the enormous value their copy is bringing to their clients. We have a very special returning champion on the show today, Dr. Harlan Kilstein. He has just released a book called Value-Based Copywriting. Originally presented in a $997 seminar, this material has...

Life must have been at least a little frustrating for our Old Master on today’s show. His name was Walter Weir. He was a very active and successful copywriter and advertising professor, but he must have constantly run into resistance along the way, since so many of his ideas were ahead of their time. Walter Weir was born in 1909 and he died in 1996. He published a couple of books which are nearly...

If you’re involved in copywriting in any way, you know right now we’re at an inflection point. Things have been changing fast over the last two years, and show no signs of slowing down. People who hire copywriters tell me it’s harder than ever to find a good one… yet people who write copy for a living, many of them, tell me it’s really hard to find good-paying work. There’s clearly a disconnect. A...