TCC Podcast #51: VSLs and Sales Pages with Valentina Volcinschi

Direct response copywriter and video sales letter expert, Valentina Volcinschi, is in the house for episode 51 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira and Rob ask her about how she became a direct response copywriter and how she developed her skills—she’s written a ton of successful promotions including one that pulled in $7 million in 5 months and saved a company that was headed toward bankruptcy. She also talks about... •  how musician Jack White landed her a job in direct response •  the “secret” 1000-page book that helped launch her career •  how she injects emotion into her copy •  her “puzzle structure” for sales pages •  how to get started working in the survival niche •  the biggest differences between sales pages and VSLs •  the EPW writing process that you probably use but don’t know it •  how she researches for her assignments Plus Valentina goes deep on how feeling your customer’s pain can make all the difference in a sales message and how she entertains with her copy (she looks for wacky characters). We also asked her what she charges for sales pages, emails and VSLS and her advice for new direct response copywriters. As usual, lots of good ideas and advice.  Click the play button below to listen, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Jack White Madonna The Ultimate Desktop Copy Coach (no longer available) Ry Schwartz Daniel Sanchez Copy School Ben Settle Valentina’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 51 as we chat with copywriter Valentina Volcinschi about entertaining your customers with your copy, writing with emotion, video sales letters, and what it takes to break through in hypercompetitive markets like survival, health, and sass. Rob: Hey, Kira. Hey, Valentina. Valentina: Hi, guys. How you doing? Kira: Welcome. Thanks for joining us. Valentina: Thank you for inviting me. Kira: A good place to start, Valentina, is just with your story, how you ended up as a direct response copywriter working on VSLs and even in the survival market. How did you get there? Valentina: Well, it’s quite a funny story because I actually owe my debut in direct response copywriting to Jack White from The White Stripes and The Dead Weather. Rob: Okay. This sounds like a good story. Valentina: Yeah, kind of. I started as an agency copywriter. I worked at a local agency for a couple of years, but then I had to switch cities. I moved to another city, so I had to look for a job. I found an internship as a direct response copywriter and I was like, “What is that? I had never heard about that before.” I read about it. I found it very interesting and I thought that is a very good opportunity to learn something new. What I did was apply to that copywriting internship. What I didn’t know was that the person in charge of the applications was the secretary of the company. What she did was check every single person who applied on Facebook to see if they have the same taste in music as her because she had no girls on the team. There are only guys and no one there to, I don’t know, share a common interest with her. She looked at my Facebook page and she saw that I had liked Jack White’s page. She was like, “This girl, I want this girl on my team.” Yes. She went to her boss and she oversold me on the whole thing. When I went to the interview, the guy was so excited to talk to me. I felt like I was Madonna. He was like, “Oh my god. I heard so many wonderful things about you.” I was a rookie copywriter who had no idea what direct response copywriting was, but I got the internship. I didn’t know that they worked with a certain niche, which was survival. I was used to work in an agency where you just worked on whatever account the agency got. I was very surprised that my first copy project was for an info product, an eBook called Survive Apocalypse. I thought it was a joke. I was absolutely convinced it was a test, the kind of test that you get in copywriting interviews here they say, “Imagine we’re in the desert and you’re selling sand to me.” I was absolutely convinced it was one of those tests, like Survive Apocalypse was ridiculous, but then I got an email from my boss with the eBook Survive Apocalypse and another book that was called The Ultimate Desktop Copy Coach by Clayton Makepeace. If you’re not familiar with that book, it’s a great book for direct response copywriters, but it is 1,068 pages long. I was supposed to finish the sales letter not knowing not even how to begin a sales letter or what a sales letter was while reading that book to understand how the process works. I don’t think I’ve slept eight hours in a month, but I managed to do it and it got a great conversion rate. It got like 12% on a first test on a small email list. It was right. I got hired and that was my debut in direct response copywriting in survival. Rob: That’s nice. Valentina, you mentioned that there was a bit of a mind shift for you when you went from your first copywriting job to direct response. Would you tell us about some of the differences that you saw between the copy you were writing before and the copy that you were writing with the direct response opportunity? Valentina: Yes. The agency that I used to work at was the typical super Bohemian place where you just brainstorm the whole day long and drink a beer and worked on very small accounts. The income wasn’t great for me or for the agency. It was a very small agency. When I got to this company, I saw budgets of like a million dollars per month and I was shocked. Everything was super structured. The company was very well organized and even the copywriting process was much better organized and structured than I was used to. I used to just brainstorm ideas and here I had two copy trainers, which was amazing. Each of them had a different style and I was very lucky to get those trainers because I learned how to write copy and edit my own work at the same time, which is very hard for a rookie. It was a mind shift as in I suddenly had to become a lot more organized, a lot more structured in my writing. I went from writing slogans and naming products and writing, I don’t know, 400 word website pages to writing 6,000 words video sales letters. The style was definitely different because at an agency normally you don’t write sales copy. You write stuff for brand awareness. You write advertising campaigns. The mind shift was radical for me, but it was very useful in the end because I got the business end of copy, which helped me a lot in my freelancing career. Kira: Let’s talk about that first month when you’re working on Survive Apocalypse sales letter and you have this Clayton Makepeace book and you’re just figuring it out. How did you download the book? How did you make it happen? Did you have anything that worked, didn’t worked during that time because I think we can all relate to that where we take on a project that’s out of our wheelhouse or a little bit more challenging than what we’re used to and we just have to figure it out within a matter of weeks or days? Valentina: Honestly it was a nightmare. Really it was a nightmare. I never thought that I would actually get the job because when I was working on the project, I was an intern. A future job depended on this sales letter and on the results that I would get. Pretty much all internships are the same like, “Okay. Let’s see how you work. If we like your work and if you’re doing a good job, you’re going to get the job and you’re going to get paid in everything.” I was so stressed because the book was absolutely massive and I swear to god I was reading it during the night so I can apply what I read during the day. I was sitting with like a small flashlight in my bed and I was reading and crying at the same because I had no idea. It is a super detailed book. For a total rookie to jump from not knowing what direct response really is to this is how you write a price justification, I had no idea how I managed to pull that through. I was lucky that I had these trainers that helped me through. I’ve done the job mostly myself, but it was a nightmare. It was horrible. I didn’t understand a word of it. Last year I read that book again and I was like, “Oh, so that’s what it meant. Oh okay. Now I get it,” because back then I had no idea. It’s not a book that I recommend to total rookies when it comes to direct response copywriting. Maybe after a few months, maybe, I don’t know, half a year of experience that would help you get your copy to the next level. Otherwise, it can be overwhelming. Rob: A lot of our listeners are probably googling right now for a link to Clayton’s book so that they can learn lessons that you picked up as you went through the book at night. Valentina: Yeah. I think you can find it in PDF form online. It’s not very heard to find. Rob: Valentina, as you started writing direct response sales letters for this company, how did you learn to use your copy to entertain? How did you inject emotion into the page? Obviously it’s different from what you were doing with your branding copy. Valentina: Yes. Yes. Totally different. The emotional thing kind of comes naturally for me.