This is the first in a series of articles I have written specifically for the copywriting section of DP. I thought it would be good to help people out who want to write decent sales letters, and this article should help people. I am an experienced copywriter currently looking for clients, head over to writing.w-montanaro.com to see my new site. I hope you enjoy this article and you find it helpful, the more you learn, the more your article writing will improve and thus the more money you can make! To make the most of your website sales letter you need to understand the Internet, its culture, and the people who use it on a regular basis. It’s one huge smorgasbord of information and opportunity -- one that grows larger every single day. New websites are being launched at an enormous rate. You can find just about anything online including the good, the bad, and the utterly tasteless. The choices truly are mind-boggling. For the consumer, it’s a rich resource of information and a way of bringing the world home, via their computer screens. For businesses, it’s a dirt-cheap tool for reaching previously inaccessible customers and markets. Many offline businesses have an online presence as well. It’s just another tool in their respective arsenals. Still, other businesses are being created exclusively for the web. It’s also a chance to add convenient at-home shopping to virtually any product or service. With millions of people already online and more added daily, it’s not surprising that new sales-oriented websites are popping up at an alarming rate. For the consumer, this means even more choices, making it more challenging to spend a limited amount of cash. For businesses, it means increased competition. Despite the growing competition, setting up a sales-generating site has massive appeal worldwide. It seems that everyone and their cousin already has at least one website. Yet, some of the simplest sites are among the most successful. Yes, it is possible to succeed with a ‘mini-site’ -- if you do it the right way. Marketing online is about gently wooing prospects – ‘pulling’ them inside your site, as opposed to ‘pushing’ a product upon them. Doing business online means selling in a ‘virtual’ environment. Buying and selling online is a totally new concept -- a major shift from traditional shopping. Since most people naturally resist change, you face an added challenge when marketing to the unseasoned online prospect. The most effective way to win over new online prospects is to make your offer more tangible, real, and credible. Make it easy for buyers to envision exactly what they’re getting and let them know when they’ll get it. Create an ordering process that’s fun, easy and natural – one that simulates buying from a catalogue, direct mail piece, infomercial, or the shopping channel. Give your audience something they can touch – something that makes the whole process of buying online more like the real world they’re used to. Traditionally, the lure of the Internet has been due to the vast resources freely available to anyone with a telephone line and computer. Surfers quickly get used to this unlimited accessibility to massive amounts of information, free of charge. A fair amount of it is useless junk, but for many, the lure of anything ‘free’ is too tempting to resist. One approach is to tap into this tradition and provide helpful information on your site in addition to your sales copy. You don’t have to give away the store by any means… but by feeding the frenzy, you’re apt to be more accepted in the online marketing world.