This is a sample sales page exercise that I did for an offer that I saw today. I thought it could be tweaked and wanted to write it in the style of a Silent Sales Page.
Did you know that The Cat in the Hat only contains 236 different words?
Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) was challenged to create the ultimate reading book for 6-year-olds and was given a list of 348 words that every 6-year-old should know.
Dr. Seuss chose 236 of them to make one of the most important books in history (I don’t say that lightly).
There is something about someone who can take words, put them on a page, and transform how you view the world.
And for the longest time, I figured this ability was a talent only a few were born with. It wasn’t until my 20s that I realized how wrong I was.
In school, I was good at math. It came naturally to me.
But English? Eh.
I didn’t have the patience for it. Which also means I wasn’t the best writer.
Needed to write an essay? C+ at best.
Had to write a term paper? B- at best and that was only because of pure brute force.
I Wrote Because My Job Sucked
But something happened in my 20s when I started my first blog. I had a job that I absolutely hated. It was my first job out of college.
It sucked. My boss sucked. The work sucked. It all sucked.
So I started to read web design blogs by others because I enjoyed web design. I figured the best way to learn it myself was to create a web design blog and write about what I learned.
My first few blog posts sucked. I tried to sound “professional” whatever that meant. My writing was stiff and embarrassing.
My blogging career wasn’t looking too hot.
One day I came across a blog post that annoyed me. It annoyed me so much that I decided to write a response.
Because I was writing purely from emotion, I threw out all the rules of writing that I learned in school. I wrote from the heart.
And guess what?
I loved it.
And guess what again?
Others loved it as well. My blog blew up.
I started to get people asking if I was taking on design clients. I had been designing for maybe 6 weeks! What was going on?
It took me a couple of months to realize that my writing gave me authority that others lacked. It wasn’t that I was a good designer.
I was decent don’t get me wrong.
But it was the fact that I shared my worldviews on design that aligned with others and through that alignment I started to get clients.
Trust me, there were plenty of designers that were better than me, but nobody knew who they were because they didn’t write. That was the only difference.
I marketed my worldviews through my writing while they hoped that people would land on their portfolios.
My boss told me that I needed to give her my clients or I was fired.
I got fired.
I continued to write and continued to make more money. I was exposed to new opportunities that I never imagined.
I wrote guest chapters in books. Spoke at conferences.
It was amazing.
And then I sold my company and I stopped writing.
I took 5 years off before I decided that I wanted to build a new business and in that time, I thought the Internet had changed.
One Thing Never Changes
Gurus were throwing out new advice. People were showing new paths to success. I tried to keep up with everything, but I couldn’t.
My head was spinning and I was getting overwhelmed. I got so down on myself that one night my wife asked me what was wrong and I explained everything.
I used to be someone, but now I was a nobody. I didn’t know what to do.
“Why don’t you write again?”
Such a simple question. Why didn’t I write again?
I guess I didn’t see that as an option because I felt that the world had moved on to videos and short-form content so I would be wasting my time.
But at least writing was a start so that’s what I did. I started a new blog and began writing.
I won’t get into the details, but in my second month, I got a $10,000 client.
I created another site that at its peak was making $50,000 a month before I sold it.
I wasn’t forcing anything. I wasn’t using the top 10 tricks to whatever. I was writing in a way that I enjoyed and helped connect me with others. I never had the biggest followings or subscriber counts.
Although that stuff looks great it doesn’t matter. What matters is your ability to connect to people.
Everyone is quickly mastering how to grow on Twitter or LinkedIn or TikTok. If we’re being honest, it’s not that hard to grow your follower count.
I could show you how to do that in a single email.
But that only makes you the same as everyone else. We are now living in a world where people don’t know how to write because they don’t see the value.
And I don’t blame them.
But that also makes it the perfect time to get good at writing. Really good at it.
Because being able to put thoughts into the right words that can move people is a dying skill. Not because people don’t care about it. It’s because people believe you need years of training to master it or that you’re just born with this gift.
I wasn’t. In fact, I’ve never taken a writing class in my life.
If you are naturally gifted at it then you don’t need to be on this page. Go write.
But if you weren’t born with this amazing talent then guess what? You can learn it.
You Can Learn Tricks or You Can Move Mountains
The problem with most writing courses is that they teach you frameworks that make you sound the same as everyone else. Now don’t get me wrong, I love frameworks.
They give you direction and boundaries to work within.
The problem is that you don’t learn how to make the framework your own. How to write in a way that when someone reads it, they know it’s unmistakably you.
Almost every movie follows the same storytelling framework and yet most of them aren’t very good. Same with books.
What gives?
There are elements to writing that can’t come from teaching but have to be pulled out from the experiences that you have. You need to write in a way that allows your thoughts and feelings to hit the page and take your writing from cookie-cutter to cookie monster.
Okay, that was bad, but give me the benefit of the doubt here.
The point is that the better you become at writing in the style that you find for yourself, the more power you have to create your own economy.
What do I mean by that?
You get to decide how big you want to grow a business. You get to decide how much money you want to make.
You’re not worried about trends. You’re not worried if this is a skill that will die out.
Writing is at the core of everything that we do and that’s the reason why most of the stuff we come across is terrible. But every once in a while we come across something amazing. Something that moves us.
And it starts with great writing.
From here I would go into the details of the offer and start breaking down why it’s a good or bad fit for the reader. But the point is that the page shouldn’t feel like I’m making the walls close in on you.
You shouldn’t feel fear when I present you with an offer. I should show you what is possible for you. What you can become.
And from there you can decide if that’s what you really want.