These secrets for copywriting are the same for all content.
This was ‘liberated’ from an email in my inbox.
Harry Dry’s 17 Secrets for Irresistible Copywriting.
Here they are:
A great sentence is a good sentence made shorter.
Writing great copy begins with having something to say in the first place.
Copy is like food. How it looks matters.
Kaplan’s Law of Words: Any word that isn’t working for you is working against you.
You know a paragraph is ready to ship when there’s nothing left to remove. It’s like a Jenga tower. The entire thing should collapse if you remove something.
Make a promise in the title so the reader knows exactly what they’re going to get if they click. Then, deliver on the promise.
The three laws of copywriting: (1) Make it concrete, (2) make it visual, and (3) make it falsifiable.
Make it concrete: Don’t be abstract. For example, say you’re writing about habits. Don’t talk about “productive routines.” That’s abstract. Write about “waking up at 6 am to write” instead. It’s concrete — and much more vibrant.
Make it visual: People see in pictures. This is why instead of memorizing card numbers directly, world memory champions memorize cards by turning them into pictures and then back to cards.
Make it falsifiable: When you write a sentence that’s true or false, you put your head on the chopping block, which makes people sit up in their seats.
When has a falsifiable statement resonated? Galileo was sentenced to a decade of house arrest for saying that the earth spins around the sun. That’s a falsifiable sentence. But nobody would’ve done anything if he’d said that the earth has a harmonious connection with a celestial object.
Write with the delete key. Using fewer words lets you be more impactful with the words you keep.
The job of a sales page is to make a bold claim at the top. Then spend the rest of the page backing up what you’ve said… with a ridiculous amount of proof.
If your competitor could’ve written the sentence, cut it.
Good copy is differentiated. Here’s an example: Elon Musk shouldn’t write “The Cybertruck is the world’s best truck.” Ford or Dodge can write that sentence. But only Elon can write: “The Cybertruck is tougher than an F-150 and faster than a Porsche.”
Some days, the writing comes easily. Some days, it takes sweat. The reader doesn’t care if you wrote for two minutes, two hours, or two days. The ink looks the same.
Great copy reads like your customer wrote it. Talk to them.
I couldn’t say it better, so I did the copy paste thing.
Once upon a time there was a town that had their water supply diverted away from the edge of town to 20 miles away by a Government decision.
The town hall meeting was chaotic until the Mayor announced that two people would be given the chance to supply the town’s water supply, and they would be chosen by drawing the names of those interested from the hat.
Ten people were interested in supplying water at a maximum fee per gallon that the townspeople had agreed was fair.
Tom immediately bought a water truck and began daily deliveries and regularly ran out of water.
Bill didn’t appear to be overly interested for several weeks as he wandered about muttering to himself and measuring things.
Tom bought a second truck and was able to keep up with the demand, but was working himself and his son ragged, and the water quality suffered.
Everybody had forgotten about Bill until he built a water supply station in the middle of the town and connected it to his new pipeline.
On the day the taps were first turned on it was clear that the water quality was better than Tom’s and, since the price was the same, it didn’t take long before Tom was out of business.
Short term money loves speed, long term money loves planning and solid infrastructure.
Sometimes you can get short term money as you build to long term money.
The first step is always to keep a record of the incoming and outgoing cash flow.
If you don’t have that written down you cannot manage anything.
The second thing to do is reduce your expenses to be lower than your income, or add another income stream.
It doesn’t matter which you do really as long as you end up with a surplus every week or month.
Clear all your debts, no exceptions.
Begin using the surplus money to invest.
Clearly I can’t give you all the details in an email, but I can link you to an excellent book on the subject which will make this so simple to follow along you’ll wonder why you never found this before.
In his book: “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, Daniel Pink narrows motivation down to 3 key elements: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
In his book: “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, Daniel Pink narrows motivation down to 3 key elements: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Without a genuine interest in what we do, we will never be proud of it, we will never master it, and we will never feel purposed for it.
In short, if you are not interested, you are not motivated, and without motivation, you will not succeed.
Even if you are motivated to be successful at a task or job, what happens if you don’t have the skills to do that?
Well, with the help of an AI tutor and YouTube you can learn anything.
You don’t have to pay any money for training as long as you won’t need official qualifications for what you want to do.
Basically that means if you’re doing this for yourself you don’t need a university degree.
If you want to be paid by an employer, you will need the paperwork.
Let’s ignore that for now.
If you have no skills, yet, how long will it take to become proficient?
Not necessarily an expert, but good enough to produce good work.
The old saw is that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, but we’re not talking about becoming an expert, we’re talking about becoming proficient.
That time has been quantified through testing and the answer is 20 hours.
If you then continue with deliberate practice you will get better and better until you reach expert proficiency.
I’m suggesting that with the help of an AI tool you can short-cut even the 20 hours.
It’s like having a personal mentor who is there at your beck and call 24/7 without fees.
The trap here is to determine what you want to do and then sticking with it until you’ve reached the proficiency you want.
Far too often we get caught up in some other path that looks interesting and abandon what we were doing.
Stick to one thing for 20 hours – that’s only 10 days at 2 hours a day, before you decide to wander off on a tangent.
Do you understand what this means?
In a single year you could become proficient in 3 languages, writing sales pages, writing computer programs in several languages, build a YouTube channel, build a successful membership, automate a Fiverr gig, learn to cook like a chef, plan a wedding, plan the honeymoon, learn to play the guitar or piano, etc.
You might not want to do all or any of those things, but whatever it is that you want to do you can now because you have access to that 24/7 mentor.
Of course, if you don’t know what you want to achieve, I can’t help you.
But AI might be able to.
Tell it that you don’t know.
Tell it to ask questions to help you decide.
You might have a revelation.
Regards, Brent.
P.S. If you want to do things that require a website, programming, testing apps, testing posts, etc. this will help with a platform.
A free, ad‑free web host gives you a real sandbox with real control, PHP/MySQL, email at your domain, and one‑click installers, so you can ship fast and learn faster.
A free, ad‑free web host gives you a real sandbox with real control, PHP/MySQL, email at your domain, and one‑click installers, so you can ship fast and learn faster.
Here are versatile, high‑impact uses that compound:
Lead capture: Spin up WordPress or Joomla with forms, route to an inbox @ your domain for credibility.
Landing pages: Test headlines, CTAs, and offers with clean pages (no forced ads) to measure true conversion.
Content hub: Publish blogs or guides to rank for long‑tail terms and validate topics before scaling.
Portfolio/CV: Own your brand with a custom domain and fast, reliable hosting for professional trust.
Micro‑SaaS demo: Prototype with PHP/MySQL, gather feedback, and iterate without platform limits.
Community/forum: Trial engagement using phpBB or MyBB to gauge audience appetite.
Documentation/knowledge base: Use MediaWiki for internal/external docs and SEO‑friendly help.
Product previews: Host pre‑launch pages and collect early interest with email opt‑ins.
A/B testing lab: Duplicate pages across subdomains to compare copy, pricing, or design.
Checkout tests: Pilot OpenCart flows to de‑risk your paid stack decisions.
Education sandbox: Practice DNS, FTP, databases, and .htaccess—skills that pay off later.
Press room: Keep announcements and assets in one credible, linkable place.
Event pages: Temporary sites for signups and info that you can archive cleanly.
Client demos: Share live proofs without revealing your premium infrastructure.
Newsletter archive: Host past issues for discoverability and authority.
Affiliate experiments: Build compliant pages with proper tracking and speed.
Localization pilots: Test language variants on subdomains before full rollout.
Because you control everything, you get portability, monetization freedom, and brand credibility from day one, exactly what closed website builders struggle to offer.
To build a temporary funnel where you can try stuff out.
But paying hosting fees for the privilege of running some tests that you ultimately want to trash is not so much fun.
Sure, a free web host will have some limitations, but that’s fine for testing.
Most of these sites will allow you to migrate to a paid service, or a different host, when you need more features, but it’s not based on time, so you could have a free site running for years.
