Last week I had “the new clothes bug” so I took a trip to the local Hermès store. As soon as I walked through the door I saw that a set of ties selling for $250 a piece.

“Holy smoke,” I thought. “For the price of one tie I could go home and start 10 new websites. If I work extra hard I can write every sales letter for all of them within three weeks.”

And that’s exactly what I did.

In this article I want to share an ultra-simple system for building websites (from scratch) quickly, efficiently, and with big profits.

Let’s get started.

How To Find Products You Can Review (And Get Paid For)

Finding things to sell is easy.

Simply think of a problem that you had and the product you used to solve it. This is really straightforward and (if you’re actively trying new things) something that you’ll be able to do with natural ease.

• Buy home gym equipment? Review your purchase.
• Get a new office chair? Explain how poor sitting habits cause back pain and then plug a seat that can fix this.
• Read a good book? Do a write-up on it.

Starting a little affiliate marketing business isn’t rocket science and you don’t have to wrack your brain. Every niche site I’ve ever started has been the result of having some problem and then finding a product that solved it.

I’ll even give you a personal example of this:

On a trip to Tokyo I got lost in the airport and couldn’t find my flight.

The people who worked at airline help desk had super thick accents which made it difficult to understand them. Additionally, all the departure information I saw was written in Japanese.

For a good 10 minutes I was in full-blown panic mode, terrified of missing my plane. But, as soon as I calmed down and found my departure gate, two ideas popped into my head:

1. I’d buy a course to learn basic Japanese so that I’d never get lost on another trip.
2. Other travelers faced the same problems I’d just experienced, meaning I could use the what happened to me (and whatever language course I bought) as effective sales material.

(If you’re going to learn a new skill you might as well get paid for it)

As soon as I got home I bought a copy of Rocket Languages Japanese (big fat affiliate link) and a domain name.

I basically get paid to learn another language, plus have a cool little creative outlet to write about Japanese stuff (Did you know their sushi bars serve food on little conveyor belts?).

If you have a hobby, starting a “problem, product, solution” site is an easy way to make some extra cash.

How To Find Popular Keywords With Nothing But A Pen And Scrap Of Paper

When it comes to SEO I know diddly-squat. I’ve never bothered to look up what a “SERP” is, or a “content silo,” or any of the other nine million pieces of dorky jargon.

In fact, all of my keyword research is done on a scrap of notebook paper, using a ballpoint pen. I think out every question a potential buyer might search for and then write them all down.

You might think this sounds silly or ineffective but it’s worked surprisingly well for me. As a friend of mine once pointed out:

Doing a search for [popular product] shows the first result as Amazon and the second result as one of your sites.

It’s better to focus on buyer psychology than to worry about cramming a bunch of “alternate spelling variants” into some meta tag.

Even if you don’t hit every major search this way, you’ll have enough material to get decent traffic and make a few extra bucks.

Here’s an example:

In early 2015 I got an idea for a little Amazon niche site. While the thought was still fresh in my mind, I grabbed a pad of paper and scribble out a dozen or so article ideas based on searches that (I figured) potential buyers might make.

This took me all of 15 minutes. And writing each article took about an hour or so. In other words, I had a whole site completed over the span of a weekend.

This “stupidly simple” method of finding keywords or coming up with ideas to write about will generate you a decent about of traffic and sales.

Case in point, my little weekend website that I built earns about $1,000 every 12 months. That’s the same as getting a 4% annual return on a $25,000 stock investment.

(About $1,000 a year for a weekend’s worth of work)

In less time than it would take to binge watch Game Of Thrones you can raise your yearly income by at least a thousand bucks.

The Fastest Way To Write Articles

Are you ready to hear my advice for writing articles quickly and efficiently?

I hope so, because here it is:

Take a long walk every afternoon. Go walk around your town or city, and pay attention to what people there are doing. You’ll see all kinds of crazy stuff. Funny mishaps, horrible accidents, sentimental family moments, fights, weird sex stuff. The list is endless.

Once you’ve gotten your fill of people watching, go to the park and run around as fast as you can until you get exhausted. The take out the notepad on your phone and start writing down the very first idea that pops into your head.

What you come up with doesn’t necessarily have to relate to whatever your site is about either. Oftentimes (when you’re editing what you’ve written), you can use a quick transition sentence to tie the two subjects together.

I’ll give you an example:

In Vietnam there are always old ladies out selling mangoes and oranges off the backs of motorbikes.

Let’s say that you run a website about starting your own business. And let’s also say that you wrote an article about buying mangoes from one of these street vendors.

Your transition could look like this:

Isn’t it amazing that these clever fruit sellers took something that was right in their own backyard (the mango trees) and turned it into a successful side business?

Well you can too, of course your business doesn’t have to be about selling fruit.

With [Product X] you can learn to turn skills you already have into your own continuous source of recurring income.

Believe it or not, but those transitions work well (there’s a book called DotCom Secrets which explains the science behind them) and you can oftentimes take an interesting story and tie it in with whatever you’re trying to market.

Closing Thoughts

Building a profitable website is easy. With a little critical thinking and some interesting life experiences, you can whip up successful niche sites in very little time.

The key is to:

• Have a problem you’ve suffered from, and a product that solved the issue
• Think about what questions your potential buyers might be searching for when they come across your site
• Go out and find interesting and engaging ways that you can use to pitch your product to the reader.

P.S. If you want to know how to write an article that makes money, be sure to check out this post on creating big-money sales letters.

This article is about why it’s okay to be average.

It isn’t a trick article either. Sometimes it’s better to under-perform than to get too ambitious or try too many things at once.

In 2015 I was offered a position as the lead copywriter for a seven-figure project.

Over lunch I was pitched the product and sales strategy.

The client had never run a business before and was selling jewelry (for about $50 per piece).

They wanted to market themselves by building a concept store, hosting expos around the world, and doing other grandiose events.

To make matters worse, the client hadn’t even sold a single piece of jewelry yet and had done zero testing to see if the product would do well. They wanted to gamble millions of dollars on something that was completely unproven.

After lunch I thanked them for the offer but politely declined the position. I suspected their plan would flop. And, unfortunately, I was right.

A project that could have been done for peanuts (there are housewives who run jewelry businesses in their free time) ended up costing a small fortune and becoming a huge clusterf*ck because the person in charge was doing too much at one time.

Sadly, I’ve witnessed this type of event numerous times. Someone gets excited to run a business, they get carried away, and pretty soon they’re left with nothing but frustration.

Because of this, I wanted to share a few tips on how you can build a “boring” business that makes pretty good money.

Make Your Business As Basic As Possible

Your business should be as simple as possible. The less stuff you have to do, the easier it is to make money.

If you’re smart (which you are) you can start a business for less than $10 and be turning a profit within days (or even hours sometimes).

A lot of lucrative ventures have zero initial time investment. You can make an ad or talk to the right person, and have your business off the ground right away.

To give yo an example of this, I have a little side hustle where I charge $25 to read someone’s sales letter and give them a few suggestions on how they can improve it. This whole process takes me about 10 – 15 minutes total (I usually read short copy like emails or flyers) and gives the client with a lot of useful feedback (if you’re selling a product for hundreds or thousand of dollars, spending $25 is no big deal).

There are all kinds of other profitable but unremarkable ways to make money like this. They have zero risk, zero time investment, and are pretty easy to get into.

Off the top of my head, here are three super simple businesses you could do right now:

1. Buy an expensive book and rent it out for $5 per day (I do this with my copy of Breakthrough Advertising)
2. Go to the library, read 10 “how to” books on a subject and take notes. Sell your notes/summary for $1 – $2 per report (Boardroom, Inc. has made billions doing something similar to this)
3. Take something that you’re already skilled at and do freelancing for one hour a day (Example: if you’re a computer programmer, do some coding on the side after work)

None of these things are mind-blowing, but they’ll put money in your pocket and give you some great business experience.

A Really Easy Way To Drive Traffic To Your Site

(By giving away a free eBook I was able to double my site’s readership)

If you’re looking to boost your site’s readership, and sales, there’s a very simple way to do so.

Write a short book and give it away for free. When I started 30 Days To X, I had no clue how I could get readers. While I didn’t know much about running a website, I did know that a lot of blogs has some sort of free eBook that they offered their visitors.

(Free eBook I made for this site)

I ended up going to Walmart, buying about $15 worth of vegetables, and then writing a little recipe book about all the different juices that I made with them.

After this I formatted everything as a PDF, put it on my site, and then posted “Free Juicing Ebook” (and a link) to various forums.

If you have a website and are struggling to get traffic, go write up a short eBook. It doesn’t have to be anything long or complex either, even something like a 1,500 word “special report on                ” will often work.

No Mailing List? No Problem!

In general, most websites only have a free eBook If they are trying to get someone to join their mailing list.

When you go to their site, you have to exchange your email address for a copy of their free book. While this is fine, you can still offer a free eBook even if you don’t have a mailing list or opt-in.

Lots of websites simply don’t need a mailing list. For example, if you sold home ice cream makers through Amazon Affiliates, you probably aren’t going to have a newsletter. However, you can still benefit from having a free eBook or special report.

Use your book to provide useful content that the reader can benefit from, and then tie that information back to what you’re selling. This way your site gets free traffic and you turn a profit as well.

How A “Dud” Venture Can Still Make Money

Most guys spend their weekends watching Netflix, getting drunk, and playing video games. Yet when it comes to starting a website or building a business they’ll fret over whether or not their idea is “a waste of time.”

If you try something and you learn from it, you’ve invested you time wisely.

When I started 30 Days To X, I knew nothing about sales, marketing, copywriting, or even how to find a product to sell. I was 19 and had zero business experience at all.

While my first year of writing this site wasn’t profitable (I earned less than $1,000 total) here are some things I learned to do:

• Buy a domain name
• Choose a web hosting package
• Write blog posts that ranked well in Google
• Review books and products
• Set up an Amazon Affiliates account
• Write an eBook
• Hyperlink webpages
• Pick a website theme
• Build up readership
• Make a site run on mobile devices like iPads and smartphones

Even though these things weren’t profitable for my own site, I was able to take the things I learned and make money with them elsewhere. I wrote blog posts for other people, helped do web design for local businesses, and even had a little consulting business.

You can always use what you learn to make money. In a worst case scenario you could post a Craigslist ad saying “For $25 I Will Make Your Site Mobile Friendly” or “For $10 I Will Help You Pick A Memorable Domain Name For Your Business.”

Learning a new skill will always open up great opportunities for you.

Final Thoughts

(Fun fact: I wrote this entire article on my phone while I was sitting in the park)

You don’t have to do anything fancy to run a successful business. There are plenty of straightforward ways to make money quickly and easily. If you’re willing to do a little thinking, you can easily come up with some fantastic ventures.

Lastly, as long as you try something and learn from it, you’ve succeeded. Just by taking that first step you’re ahead of 90% of the population. Even if things don’t pan out exactly as you wanted, you’ll still get valuable experience.

And you can always take what you’ve discovered and use it to create something even more profitable.

P.S. A mediocre job that gets done is better than good intentions never implemented. Case in point: I wrote this article in one draft on my phone and posted “as is” (spelling mistakes and all). Over a thousand people have already read and enjoyed it.

Running a profitable website pays about the same as owning a rental property. Even better, you don’t have to deal with annoying tenants or unclog and backed up toilets.

Sadly, like investing in real estate, there is a lot of BS surrounding online business.

There are countless gurus, “sure fire money-making courses,” and $97 eBooks. There’s also lots of jargon about cold conversions, lists, and other nonsense that really isn’t that important (at least when you’re getting started out).

Below are the three most important aspects to building a successful website. If you can do all of them you’ll make a lot of money.

Start Off With A Niche Site

(Comparing traffic to profits, every unique visitor is like me getting $0.50)

When it comes to starting a business, most men make the mistake of thinking too big. They think they have to write a book or develop some killer new product. As a result, they sink countless hours into a project that might not payoff.

The easiest way to make money online is to find a product that you use or like and then build a small niche site around it.

There’s very little investment cost (maybe $150 for hosting and your domain as well as $200 to test some products) and you can easily earn a few thousand dollars a month.

Over the summer of 2015 I bought some products, tried them out, and spent 20 hours building a niche site around them. This little project pays me more than someone working a minimum wage retail job would earn all year.

(Start-up costs for a website can be as little as $60 or $70)

Instead of spending months trying to write an eBook or develop some new product, find something that already exists and start selling it. There’s very little risk and you can collect a few thousand bucks a month without too much effort.

The “Buying Mood”

(From Great Leads: Niche sites target customers who are in a “buying mood”)

30 Days To X generally receives 1,000 to 2,000 visitors a day (more on weeks when I publish something new). It also makes very little money (maybe $10 to $20 per day).

This is because the majority of people coming to this site are not looking to buy anything. As a result, 99% of visitors will never spend a cent here.

In comparison, my flagship niche site gets between 150 and 200 unique visitors a day. On average, it sells between $300 and $500 worth of goods during a 24 hour cycle.

How can a site with very little traffic be profitable? The answer is visitor intent.

If 100 people looking to buy something visit your site, you might get 5% of them to buy. That’s five people. Five $75 to $100 sales is going to give you a nice little profit.

Likewise, having 1% of 1,000 people buy a $9 to $25 Amazon book (this is what happens on 30 Days To X), means you’re only getting about $5 – $7 per thousand visitors (Amazon commissions are only 4% – 8%).

Side Note: Good Looking Loser has an awesome post that goes way deeper into conversion rates.

(I have a niche site that outpaces 30 Days To X by a ratio of about 4:1)

Even with low commission rates (like Amazon’s) you can still make decent money as long as you attract customers who are looking to buy something from you.

If you can sell ten $40 products a day through Amazon (that’s one sale per 2.4 hours) at a 7% commission rate, you’re still making $800 per month.

The quality of your traffic, and whether or not they’re looking to spend money, is far more important than the quantity.

Focus On Selling (Not Giving Away Free Stuff)

(If you want to learn how to make a complete sale in 30 minutes, watch infomercials)

Now that we’ve talked about getting customers who are in a “buying mood,” it’s important to understand why most people never manage to do this. The majority of folks make the mistake of trying to “raise awareness” rather than focusing on selling.

Here’s how the average website operates:

1. Spend two to three years building up high levels of traffic and “gaining reader trust” by putting out tons of free content
2. After years of giving stuff away and answering tons of questions (for free), create a product
3. Get 1% – 5% of your audience buy, in the meantime continue putting out more free content and answering more of those exciting questions!

(When you give something away for free the Communists win)

That’s great if you want to publish thousands of blog posts and answer hundreds of email and comments. However, it is not a very good business model if you want to actually make money.

Building up a big “authority site” would be like opening up a restaurant that only hands out promotional flyers for the first two years before they finally start serving food. It makes no sense!

Most of the stores and business you shop at are able to sell you a product in less than 30 minutes. It doesn’t take you three years to pick out a pair of shoes or a new computer. Shopping on the Internet is no different.

You can pitch a product, demonstrate its value, and build up trust with your customer all within a span of minutes.

If you sell a quality product with benefits that are easy to understand, you don’t need to spend years building up trust with your buyers.

Closing Thoughts

The concepts above cover about 80% of everything you need to know about running a successful website. If you use this business model with some basic copywriting skills it’s virtually impossible not to make money.

P.S. In business it is crucial to think for yourself. While you build your site, take one month off from reading any blogs or websites (including this one).

Thinking is the highest paid activity in the world. One new idea can generate trillions of dollars in revenue and change the way people live.

Unfortunately, most people are copycats. They look at something that is already successful and try to mimic it.

Every year I get a handful of emails from men who have decided to quit their jobs, or drop out of school, to “make money online.” Almost all of these guys end up failing and at least one ends up in financial ruin.

This happens because they try to copy successful websites and businesses without adding any new ideas to the mix. As a result, they never come across as anything more than a poor imitation. And nobody wants to do business with them.

When you follow someone else’s lead you are always one step behind.

If you want to be successful you need to think for yourself. To help you with this, I’ve prepared two easy tips that can help you to create your own original, and profitable, ideas.

Do The Opposite Of What Everyone Else Does

( In The Dip Seth Godin explains why you can’t blend in with the crowd)

The easiest way to stand out is to simply do the opposite of what’s popular.

When people race to copy what’s popular they all blend together into a murky blob of mediocrity. Additionally, because there’s nothing new being offered, potential customers take one look before saying “Who cares.”

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to avoid getting lumped into the pile of “who cares” copycats. Don’t follow their lead.

As Earl Nightingale famously put it:

Whatever the majority of people are doing, under any given circumstance, you do the exact opposite. You will probably never make another mistake as long as you live.

When you go against the grain two things happen: (1) You get free publicity because of your unusual stance, and (2) you will capture an audience who the mainstream doesn’t appeal to.

To give you an example of how this works, I’ve come up with a few generic article headlines as well as their opposites. Read through them and think about which version sounds more interesting:

“15 Tips For Carb-Free Dieting”

vs.

“Why Doughnuts, Beer, And A Cigarette Are The Perfect Post-Workout Meal”

“Why Saturday Night Is The Best Time To Meet Women”

vs.

“Why Saturday Night Is The Best Night To Stay Home And Play Video Games”

“How To Make Money Online”

vs.

“Starting A Website Is The Dumbest Way To Make Money, Here’s Why:”

Each of these opposite headlines makes a bold proclamation that stands out from the crowd. Even the most die-hard health nut would be hard-pressed not to click on an article proclaiming that cigarettes are healthy.

A recent example of a business using “opposite thinking” is Cards Against Humanity’s “Buy Nothing From Us For $5” sale. They earned $71,145 and didn’t have to ship a single product.

If you’re ever in a creative slump, try going against the grain.

Combine New Things

(Adding horses to a dating simulator is pretty weird)

If you do the same things as everyone else, you are going to end up with the same results as everyone else. And those results will be average at best.

In order to succeed you need to step outside your comfort zone and try things that no one else in your field is willing to do.

You don’t have to be Steve Jobs to be an innovator either. A lot of businesses have made a fortune by simply combining existing products or processes and turning them into a “new invention.”

In the 1950’s the Celentano Brothers combined the “flash-freeze” method of preserving food with their popular line of homemade pizzas. Their invention, the “frozen pizza,” became a huge success and created an entirely new industry. Today over 5.3 billion dollars worth of frozen pizzas are consumed each year.

Another example is the “cocktail” boom of the 1950’s and 1960’s. American soldiers stationed in the Pacific came home and opened Asian themed bars in the United States. They took existing drinks, like the Singapore Sling, and combined them with Western bar culture.

One of the easiest, and least expensive, ways to inject new ideas into your business is to go on Reddit every morning and click the “Random Subreddit” button. Once you end up on a random topic, spend a few minutes reading through different posts.

Reading random forum posts about strange subjects has given me tens of thousands of dollars worth of good ideas. My all-time highest performing sales letters (selling $400 worth of orders last Friday alone) came from an idea I got while reading about a topic I was previously unfamiliar with.

Oftentimes you are one interesting story, cool fact, or little-known statistic away from success.

Closing Thoughts

Copy someone else and you never come across as anything more than a poor imitator. People will describe you as “so-and-so but not as good.” And that’s a description no one wants to have.

In order to do well you have to separate yourself from the herd. And the easiest way to do this is to think and act unlike everyone else in your industry.

When all your competition is doing one thing, try the opposite. It will save you from being lumped in with all the other clones and knock-offs. And being original will give you a unique platform of your own that naturally grabs people’s attention and gets them excited to do business with you.

P.S. If you’re interested in reading more about creativity I’d highly recommend checking out A Technique for Producing Ideas. You’ll enjoy it because it shows you exactly how you can become a great thinker who comes up with all kinds of clever concepts.

If you can write a sales letter you will make a lot of money.

Learning how to write sales letters, or copy, is easy. I started in 2014. Within 12 months I was putting out bestselling eBooks, building profitable niche sites, and running a successful freelance business. I also visited two different continents and learned a bunch of new skills.

While copywriting is great, there is a lot of misinformation about the subject. Hucksters sell bloated $997 persuasive writing courses, and weirdo “gurus” pollute the Internet with stupid marketing blogs that are full of bad advice and stupid jargon.

To save you some time, money, and frustration, I’ve created a quick little guide to teaching yourself the art of copywriting. If you follow the steps below, you will see noticeable improvement as both a writer and a businessman.

Read One Book Every Week

(A $12 book often contains $120,000 worth of advice)

The easiest way to learn about copywriting is to read books by great copywriters. Silly as it may sound, but most people are unsuccessful in their ventures simply because they take their advice from bad sources.

Numerous studies have shown that the average person is more trusting of advice given by their family or friends than they are of expert information. To put it more bluntly, mediocre people are mediocre because they get all their advice from other mediocre sources.

When you want to get better at something, listen to someone who is already a master. Their advice can take you to levels you’d have never even dreamed of.

Stay away from copywriting courses and ClickBank eBooks. Most of these are pretty skimpy in terms of information. And, at best, you’re just getting content that’s been rehashed from a better, and more in-depth, book.

While this post isn’t “show and sell,” and I have no intention of talking your ear off with various book recommendations, I do have five great sales book suggestions to get you started:

1. Triggers by Joe Sugarman

2. Selling 101 by Zig Ziggler

3. Web Copy That Sells by Maria Veloso

4. Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy

5. This Book Will Teach You To Write Better by Neville Medhora

If you read each of these books and apply what you learn, you will become better at sales. You’ll also discover a lot of “trade secrets” that can significantly boost your income. Web Copy That Sells and Triggers have both helped me to launch several successful websites, and both books have paid for themselves a thousand times over.

Write 1,000 Words Every Day

(Hand copy great authors to master their style)

To become a better writer you must be willing to write every single day. Otherwise you aren’t going to improve.

A good goal is to write one thousand words a day. Doing so will teach you how to fully develop your ideas and how to articulate them to your readers.

There’s an old joke that goes: “Everyone wants to be a writer but nobody actually wants to write.” Not only is this true, but it’s also really silly. Compared to other jobs (being in the military, mining coal, etc…) writing isn’t that hard. It takes about one hour to write a thousand words. That’s not a lot of time. Even if you have a busy schedule you can still meet your word count.

On top of writing original content, you should also hand copy great literature and ultra successful advertisements. Do this for an hour every morning and quickly learn how to write like one of the greats.

There’s a website called “Swiped” where you can freely download famous sales letters. Go there, pick out one advertisement a day, and write it out by hand. You’ll expose yourself to a lot of great ads and sales techniques.

On days that you don’t want to copy ads, find a classic short story and write it out. A lot of selling is done through storytelling. While you can read theoretical books on story structure or pacing, copying out an existing tale lets you experience these skills firsthand.

Start A Website

(Victor Pride helped me out with some web design tips)

Launching a website is pretty inexpensive. A handful of domain names and hosting costs less than a dollar a day. Even if you didn’t make a lot of money, you could easily cover your start-up costs.

While I won’t tell you what you should write about or who you should sell to, I will give you a few pieces of advice:

• Focus on selling a product instead of giving advice away

• Women buy more than men, this is true in almost every single niche

• Your site should be themed around a subject (i.e. “Best Watches Under $50”)

• It’s easier to sell fun (video games, jewelry, etc…) than it is to sell information (books)

• Selling physical products is infinitely easier than trying to promote eBooks or digital goods

• When selling to men, choose a niche where your customers will be making $100,000 a year or more

• If you try to sell to the “average man,” you’ll have nothing to show for it but a headache (it may sound like I am belittling men, but they are the hardest, and least profitable, demographic to sell to)

My final piece of of advice is on web design. When you start your website, make it crisp and easy to navigate right from the get-go. When your site gets to a certain point, redesigning it can be tough.

A few months back, I tried to change the theme here. Unfortunately, I had so many plug-ins and widgets that my new design would constantly break. With my new sites I use a high-quality theme right out of the gate.

Ease of navigation does have an impact on your profits. While the difference isn’t huge, it does add up over time.

If you don’t have a website or hosting yet, I’d suggest ordering through BADNET (no affiliate link). The owner, Victor Pride, gave me some design tips for my own sites and it has had a pretty big effect on my earnings over the course this year.

(Buying the Genesis Framework really helped my sales)

If you do already have a website, I would suggest investing a measly $59.95 into the Genesis Framework. This is what I use on my niche sites. Once you buy the theme, you can install it on as many of your sites as you’d like. Additionally, you can use your purchase as a tax write-off, making it practically free.

Set Realistic Goals

(Small money can add up quickly)

In all honesty, there’s very little chance that you’ll ever have a smash hit. You probably won’t build a website that makes you famous, or write a timeless book. However, you can still do well for yourself without ever becoming a household name.

Back in November I decided to write some product reviews for a little SEO niche site I had started. I bought some products, wrote sales letters about them, and then added a few Amazon Affiliates links to my content.

Building the site and writing product reviews took seven hours total. So far I’ve made about $200 profit from my endeavor, and I’ll continue earning sales commissions all throughout the year.

(My Amazon Affiliates earnings from this morning)

Instead of paying to learn copy, or reading sales books and never implementing anything you’ve learned, why not start some affiliate sites? You’ll hone your copywriting skills and get paid to do so.

After a month or two of reading sales books and studying great advertisements, find a product and start selling it. You’re going to get a lot of “hands on experience” and you’ll gain an incredible amount of insight into how consumers think.

Lastly, set a measurable goal for every sales letter that you write. “Bill yourself” for the work and try to make back the amount you set. When I started writing sales letters, my goal was to make $15 from every piece of copy I wrote. This small but doable goal gave me something to work towards.

As the old saying goes,“what gets measured gets done.” Giving yourself a reachable goal will do more for your progress than unfocused writing ever could.

Closing Thoughts

In order to become grow as both a writer and salesman, you need to constantly work on bettering yourself. Read books on selling. Write one thousand words a day. And build websites where you can challenge yourself by testing your salesmanship skills.

Start teaching yourself copywriting now and stick with it for a full year. Your writing style will improve drastically and your profits will soar through the roof. Following a program like this a tiny investment to make, but the payoff is enormous.

P.S. To learn more about sales, check out “How Much Do Independent Authors Make?” and “How to Make Money Online.”