Dramatic Sales Writing

The first assignment of the Basic course is
the restaurant letter.

Close to the end of the first (though very
long) lesson, we're told to write a letter to
Michael Masterson to convince him to visit our
favorite restaurant.

I hate to confess this, but I didn't take the
assignment very seriously.

First of all, since I started out getting my
lessons one at a time, I didn't realize that
it was the ONLY assignment except for the
vitamin letter assignment. I wouldn't have been
surprised at having to turn in one per month.

I wrote mine on Taco Bell -- might as well be
honest. That's where I eat out the most, and
there're certainly no sit-down restaurants
where I currently spend time.

I did work pretty hard at it, and got a
score of 32 out of 40. But by the time I
got it back I was thinking of so many
other copywriting issues that I didn't
pay much more attention to it.

Late last year, I noticed some threads in
the AWAI forum that mentioned doing rewrites
of the restaurant assignment. I checked with
AWAI and they said yes, send it in again. So I
rewrote it and sent it back and improved my
score to 36.

But I still did not go to the trouble that
some AWAI students I see posting in the student
forum do. They write long, elaborate letters.
I don't know what their score is.

Though at least one person has mentioned taking
the letter they wrote to the restaurant and
getting some kind of assignment to write copy
for them.

And one new student scored a perfect 40.

I'm jealous, but I'll get over it. I'll be
satisfied if I get a 98 on my rewrite of the
vitamin letter :)

The reason I sent my vitamin letter assignment
and fundraising spec assignment in at the same
time is that it was really the second
vitamin letter assignment.

I sent the first one in early February, but
it was never graded because it was so long
nobody would even read it.

First, I thought that since the course said
that copywriters often write the premiums,
that I was supposed to write the premium.
So I wrote a 30 page free report to go
along with the product.

I thought I might score some bonus points
that way, but no!

Also, my main sales letter was too long. So I
cut it down and removed the premium and
sent all that in late in March, and that's
what Kieran Doherty graded.

I read the fundraising course and did that
spec assignment in March, while fruitlessly
waiting for my first vitamin letter assignment
to be graded.

All this does indicate the advantage of taking
the Basic course directly from AWAI. You CAN
find used copies of it on eBay -- but then
you don't qualify for support from AWAI, for
assignment grading or to participate in the AWAI
student forum, which is slow right now but
is helpful for students with questions,
especially while going through the basic course.

It's been a long time since I posted on this
blog, but not because I haven't been
thinking about copywriting.

Sometime back, I got my AWAI vitamin letter
assignment back, so I've been busy
re-writing that.

I'd like to say my score was high, but it
wasn't -- a disappointing 71. I thought I'd
done better, but the evaluator disagreed.

I was lucky that my letter was sent to Kieran
Doherty, who's one of the big name copywriters
on the AWAI board. He gave me a lot of help to
understand where I fell short, and I'm pretty sure
my second score will be much higher than the first.

I also appreciate that he did it so fast. Based
on how long it took my restaurant assignment
and re-write to be evaluated, I wasn't expecting
my vitamin letter to come back until this,
month -- or even July.

In fact, I sent my fundraising spec assignment
in about the same time as my vitamin letter,
and I'm still waiting for the results of that.

One fairly well-known AWAI graduate who's been working
with and for a prominent online copywriter puts on
her website that her vitamin letter score was a
"whopping" 94. Now I'm wondering -- was that her
original score or her score after the re-write?

Not that is really matters much. It's like high
school -- good grades there count just enough to get you
into college, and then nobody cares. It's how well you
keep performing that's important.

What is important is how well I've learned
the lessons. So I am anxious to learn my final
results, and I do feel a certain competitiveness
to get a high score.

But if I don't, I'll just keep on going.

And I'm not waiting. I have the Masters course and have
started on that.

My business cards are on order from Vistaprint -- should
be ready to start handing out within 2 weeks.

Last night I finished main draft of my letter for
myself, to go on my web site. I'm going to let it
"cool" today (one reason for writing this blog
instead of re-writing it), then will do a final
read and re-write tomorrow and get it into HTML
format and loaded upline.

Then I'll have my shingle hung out and ready and
open for business. I can't wait!