My strong recommendation is to never send out a letter of any kind without including a P.S. This includes personal letters. Make it a habit from which you never vary. So when you are writing to your mother, father or friend, end the letter with a P.S.

Tip: When preparing a P.S. for a sales letter, a good formula to follow is to simply restate the biggest benefit of the product, the guarantee and the offer. How about a second P.S.? So that's P.P.S. - Or even a third - P.P.P.S.

11. Writing Like You Were Taught To Write in High School Composition.

High School Composition has Absolutely-Nothing-TO-DO with effective sales letter writing. Oh no! I can't capitalize Absolutely Nothing in the middle of a sentence - and there's no rule about bolding whats-ever - and TO-DO certainly is not all caps! And my GOD what are all these dashes! Hey, only the G is capitalized in God. And what am I doing starting sentences and ending sentences with prepositions - Ohhhhhhhh - I got an F.

Get it? Most people's writing is boring and stuffy at best! Most people are not boring and stuffy. Write like you speak! Punctuate for effect not to follow rules!

Tip: Want to write a great sales letter! Sit down with a good friend and a tape recorder and tell him why you and your product are so great. Transcribe the tape - add the #1 Benefit at the top in a headline - and restate the biggest benefit, guarantee, and offer in the P.S. - You're done.

12. Trying to Do Too Much

You are not going to sell a house with a post card. But you may get someone to raise their hand and say I want to find out more about that house with a post card.

You should also try to do one thing and only one thing. If you want them to call you, everything should lead to them calling you. If you want them to send back a post card to get the free DVD, everything should be about getting the DVD.

Tip: Determine what you want to accomplish and be sure everything in the letter supports that one thing.

13. No Double Readership Path and Poor Cosmetics

There are two types of 'readers' who will read your sales letters, post cards, print ads, etc. - skimmers and readers. If your headline does its job (see rule #1), then the readers will read every word that write. Skimmers, will NOT. You want skimmers to be able to make a buying decision by just reading:

• The Headline

• Subheads

• Captions

• Order instructions

• P.S.

While they may not make the buying decision based on the 5 bullet points above, if you've told your story well enough with your headline, subheads, captions, order instructions and P.S. they will often go back and read the entire letter.

With that said, we can enhance the sections above, and our copy with cosmetics.

Cosmetics can be bolds, underlines, italics, CAPITALIZATION, a different font, SIZE, Colors, etc.

Cosmetics enhancements are used to increase readership among skimmers and help readers follow along. Cosmetics are used to cover key points and they make long copy seem shorter to the reader, and thus increase readership.

Tip: After you've written your sales letter, go through and use cosmetics to enhance your key points. The key points being your offer, reason why, guarantee(s), testimonial(s), deadline, and call to action. Then, have someone read just your headline, subheads, captions and cosmetic enhancements. If they can repeat your entire story just reading those areas, you've got yourself a double readership path with great cosmetics!

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