I cut my online teeth as an affiliate with paid ads to strangers. I had no copywriting training. I had the design skills of a color-blind toddler. Yet... I would sell so much stuff: Lil Giant Ladders, Hoodia, Payday loans, online dating services and more... ...that often the affiliate manager or company rep would reach out to me. They'd look at my ugly landers, written in folksy copy, and be flummoxed by how I was crushing it so hard. I even had a few come right out and say, "I've never seen such an amateurish landing page convert so well. You're beating everyone's numbers by a mile." (From memory, they said it slightly different.) There were 2 things I did way different than everyone else: 👉I communicated with my visitors. Back in 2004, I'd put my email address on the lander in big, bold letters. I'd find out stuff other affiliates and I doubt even the company knew about their prospects. When LIVE CHAT came out...I started putting chat widgets on my page. 👉I had the art of PRE-SELLING down pat. The MOST important part of converting cold traffic isn't bigger promises, more testimonials or a mastery of NLP copywriting. And the most important part of pre-selling cold traffic? Finding out what they are absolutely fed up with about their CURRENT OPTIONS to get what they want and give them a new, clearly different and exciting way out. (I put all this and more in my book: Make Em Beg to Buy from You.) 👉Sharing the new, clearly different option in a RELEVANT to their life way by talking like they talk. Writing like a real person. By combining those 3 things: Listening and FINDING OUT what they are already doing, why it's not working and what they are fed up with... And then positioning the offer around THAT... Converts cold traffic. EXAMPLE: I sold a heap of an appetite suppressant called: Hoodia While most landing pages looked oh so professional with doctors on them and spoke in medical-ese... Mine started with...