COPYWRITING CLINIC - "WATCH THIS FIRST!"
Monica Main - Main Way to Wealth / Success For Life
Duration: 47:15
Transcribed: 2026-02-13

---

Hey, this is Monica Main and welcome to our copywriting clinic. And so for those of you that don't know much about how the Copywriting Clinic works, basically what we do is we go over some of your homework to show you kind of aesthetically and otherwise how it works to actually produce and turn in a successful copywriting assignment. Because I've noticed, especially lately, the quality of some of your assignments leaves a lot to be desired. So I'm going to go over, um, an assignment or two, and I'm also gonna show you a swipe file, and I'm gonna show you how the rewriting and aesthetic, um, process works because the aesthetics is the most important part. And this is leading up to what we're gonna be doing next week. So next week we're gonna be doing a group to show you how to partake in some of the copywriting opportunities we have. So this is kind of the precursor to that because if you don't understand how, what we were doing here today, you're not gonna be able to qualify to get paid for any of the copywriting gigs that I'll be presenting next week.

So I just wanted to give you guys kind of a brief crash course on what we look for when it comes to copy. So then that way you guys are not only prepared to participate in some of the copywriting assignments that we have, but also participate in moneymaking opportunities with other companies that are looking to hire copywriters for a significant dollar amount. And so you guys need to start getting into the habit of all of your assignments looking like it's going to be presented for money to a client. And I'm noticing that not a lot of that is happening here. And so I'm concerned because I've had to, um, fail a lot of assignments lately. Doesn't make me happy to do that. But you know, unfortunately I have to because you know, if the work's not done correctly, the work's not done correctly.

Um, so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna show you really quick, let's see, um, hold on one second because I wanna show you the swipe file. So for those of you that didn't get the swipe file yet, um, some of you're just, um, in a constant state of panic because you can't get this swipe file. And so this is kind of a quick and easy way to do it. You can go to my main website, which is Monica main@mainmonicamain.com, and you can do forward slash swipe. And so if you do forward slash swipe, you'll be able to download these two swipe files. There's literally thousands of pages of swipe file materials to take advantage of.

And so one of my favorite ones is part one here. So it's a pretty significant sizable PDF file because there is a lot of, uh, different ads and so forth. But what I wanna be clear about is the aesthetics, because when you look at the aesthetics, that is part of the copywriting process. And it's not just about what the words are on the page. 'cause anybody can spit up a bunch of words on a page, like literally anyone can. Um, the issue is what it looks like when it's on a page.

Like for example, this is a sales piece that I believe was not only on a website, but also was in a direct mail marketing piece as well by Vincent James called the 12 Month Millionaire, which by the way, if you have not read the 12 Month Millionaire, it's probably one of the most spectacular books ever written on the subject of mail order. And, um, I have a lot of people that will degrade the work because, so just to give you a little backstory on what happened with this guy, this guy actually ended up going to prison for, I don't remember how long, like 18 months or two years or something, because of some mail order of law that he broke. Um, but it was, doesn't make sense to me. And he is not very clear about how this happened is normally when you're dealing with the mail, it is a federal offense, but he was kind of claiming that, um, it could have been a state thing, but I think it was probably a federal, a federal offense, um, because it was a mail order thing, and it came down to him in one of his sales pieces claiming that he had, um, clinical trials when in fact he actually did not have clinical trials. And that's literally the only thing that got him in trouble with his multimillion dollar direct mail marketing, uh, uh, company that he had. Um, so he promised that he had clinical trials and he did not. Um, so that's what got him in trouble. So he probably would've never gotten in trouble and he would've continued to make millions and millions of dollars, um, you know, had he, uh, not said that.

So, um, so that's the backstory of Vincent James. And he wrote, he wrote, so right before he went to prison, he wrote this manual out, which if you actually read it, you'd be like, you know, he, he didn't have an editor. He was just like basically banging it out within a couple days before he actually was hauled off to prison for his sentence of a couple years. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of grammar issues, there's a lot of misspellings, but it is hands down the most powerful book I think I've ever read on direct mail marketing. And I've been in the direct mail marketing world for 30 years now. So I could tell you with a hundred percent, um, with a hundred percent confidence that that is in fact true. So if you could ever find yourself a copy of the 12 Month Millionaire by Bits and James, you could probably find some free copy somewhere on the internet or on eBay or wherever. It will definitely be worth your time to read it if you are in fact interested, especially those of you that are part of the Postcard profits mentorship group right now, you would really find that that would be an amazing book to read. Just don't criticize it because it just p****s me off when people, um, when people say, oh, well Monica, you know, he didn't have an editor, so therefore I'm not gonna read the rest of, okay, if somebody gave you a treasure map and it had literally had a treasure map to find a, you know, $3 million in gold someplace, but there was misspellings on the treasure map, would you just discount it or throw it away or burn it? And the answer is no. You just take what you can get out of it knowing how powerful it is. And so that just kind of irritates me sometimes as people focus too much on the wrong things, which is why they don't have success in life to begin with.

Okay, so this is probably one of the best sales pieces. I have a feeling that Gary Halbert wrote it just because it has a triple head. Um, I happen to know that him and Gary Halbert were in on this deal. In fact, here's Gary Halbert's, uh, testimonial there. And so, um, one of the last things that I, one of the last times I actually had any kind of contact with Gary Bert, uh, was right before he passed away. And it was about this Vincent James Guy. And I'm not gonna get into the nitty gritty on what that was, but I was near, I was very p****d about Vincent James at that time in my life. And it was like I said, right before, um, Gary had had passed away. So, um, yeah, I go back with a lot of these, these guys that have been in the direct mail marketing world and the, you know, the marketing world, especially like people like Dan Kennedy and so forth, um, 'cause I've been around a long time.

And so when you take a look at these, um, all of these ads, you'll notice something. And that is that they all have aesthetics to 'em, right? So when we go to some of your assignments, you can see it's missing something very critical here. I don't even need to read anything, like literally nothing. Okay? The aesthetics is completely missing, okay? It doesn't look anything like any of these at all. Um, so these are the types of things that you need to start thinking about when you're writing your sales pieces, is that you need to get the aesthetics down as you're writing. So then that way it's less work for you to do later because you need to see what it looks like on the page to see if it moves the eyes and if it, you know, garners interest and, and pushes and or pull pulls people through the copy. And you're never gonna know that if, if you're, you're putting out stuff like this. You know what I mean?

So, um, that's what I wanted to address today because, you know, I, I know that you guys are all like in a hurry to make tons of money in this business of copywriting, but if this is the type of stuff that you're producing and you're giving this to your clients, you guys are in major trouble. I mean, you're in trouble before you even start. Okay?

So, um, I'm going to show you kind of how to use parts of this since this is a sales letter we're gonna get off of. 'cause these are full page ads. A lot of these are like full page ads. Um, you can use a lot. This is a Gary Hilbert piece right here, probably one of his best pieces he did, um, facelift and a Jar. Um, you can take some of the copy elements of these, but what we wanna focus on is if you are doing a multi-page sales letter that's gonna go in the mail or even go on a website, you're gonna have to take a look at other multi-page sales letters. Like something like this. For example, Gary Halbert, by the way, really loved, uh, using courier font and, and a lot of his work, you don't have to use courier. You can use, you know, times New Roman or whatever. Um, I prefer times New Roman myself. I don't like Ariel. It's just my personal, you know, my personal thing. Uh, courier for me takes up too much space, and usually I try to pack in as much as I possibly can.

So let's just try to do the aesthetics of this, okay? Because like I said, if you're going to get any of these high paid copywriting assignments, yes, it matters what's being said on the page, but what's, what's very important is how it looks on the page as well. Okay?

So what I'm gonna do is show you how to turn this copy that's clearly not anything like this into something that kind of looks like this, okay? And there's a way of doing it, right? So first things first, I always take the layout and I change the margins. The margins have to be smaller and tighter. Looks like this is AI because, um, AI usually does something with the blue and the beginning, that's like their signature thing. Um, we need a triple head. We don't have one here. We only have a double head, which is a no-no.

Um, so let's start doing the aesthetics on this. Okay? First headline is always the smallest, okay? I'm probably gonna do this in times New Roman, maybe, uh, do something like that. Um, I don't like the AI's version of, um, you know, the little dash. So we're just gonna get rid of that. Okay? So again, all I'm doing is I think I like the bigger a is I'm just changing the aesthetics of this whole thing, okay? Because that's just as important as the actual piece itself.

Okay? So you can see already very quickly into this, you know, I'm not really doing anything with the sales copy itself, but what I'm doing is I'm actually changing the aesthetics of it just so it, it looks better. And then we need a third headline here. Okay?

[Monica demonstrates formatting techniques on screen, working with student assignments]

So here's the rule about a triple headline. The very first headline is gonna be your shortest at the top here, and it's gonna be your smallest. The second headline is your main headline, which is gonna be the largest, and the third headline is usually gonna be the longest, okay? But it's gonna be in size between the first and the second headline.

All of this stuff is just not gonna work just the way it is, the way it's laid out. It's like you can't have all these different font sizes in your piece. It just, it will never work.

Like I said, if you wanna get any of these paid copywriting assignments that I'm gonna be going over next week, you're gonna have to deliver something that looks like, you know, that's, that looks like one of these sales pieces in this million dollar swipe file. So if it doesn't start looking like this, something like this, you're not gonna be able to get paid gigs, not just from me, but from anybody, um, who's looking for, you know, paid people to do work.

So this is where the art is, okay? This is a subhead here, okay? So when you have subheads, they have to be, um, kind of like a mini headline. Um, you would never use why this works as a headline. That would never be a headline.

Again, when you're relying solely on AI to do everything for you, and you don't wanna put any of your own, you know, human brain into it, don't expect miracles, you're gonna have to oversee what AI is doing. Because again, this is not a, so all your subheads have to be equivalent to headlines.

Clearly this is something that somebody didn't even want to take the time, effort, and energy to create on their own, at least overlook it. They just slap something together, um, half-assed, like, um, which is unfortunate.

If you ever wanna get into the groove of how to write really well, like this, um, rewrite this whole thing out long hand, if you ever wanna take a pen to a legal pad of paper and take this sales letter in particular, write it out long hand, by the time you get to the end of it, you'll be able to sit at a keyboard and you'll be able to, um, type out something that's relatively close to this and it will be good. But a lot of people are just not willing to put any effort into it. They just wanna use AI to do everything for them. And then they think that they're gonna be paid thousands of dollars per copywriting gig. And that's just not how it works.

You always notice that any sales letter that's well written is gonna have a signature at the bottom. Don't see that anywhere here. Don't even see the person who supposedly is writing the letter.

I know a lot of you are in our mad hurry to be able to make money with this, but the only people that actually make money with this business are people who actually like copywriting. If you don't like copywriting and you're trying to skate through this whole thing and you're trying to do it just to make some money on the side and you're trying to do it the cheap and easy way, well listen, there's millions of people out there who know how to use ChatGPT. It's not just you that knows how to use ChatGPT. So if I were somebody who was trying to hire a copywriter and I'm like, I'm just gonna skate through and try to hire, you know, have ChatGPT do it for me, well then I wouldn't hire you for thousands of dollars to do it, right?

But if I'm an executive of a company and I'm heading up a marketing department and I simply don't have time to do a sales piece and I want somebody who's gonna turn out something good, something like this good Gary Halbert level, good stuff, or Vincent James level, good stuff. If I'm gonna be paying thousands of dollars, I want something like this. I don't want ChatGPT's crap because I could do that on my own for free or for $20 a month or whatever it is. I don't need to be paying you thousands of dollars to turn out something that can take me also three seconds to turn out on my own.

So the key here is not only rewriting what ChatGPT or other AI software gives you, if that's a crush you wanna use or you need a little bit of assistance, I would almost prefer, okay, I would almost prefer that you swipe some of the stuff that's in the swipe file and rewrite it on your own, making it your own and you leaving ChatGPT out altogether. That's what I would prefer because you'll be much more successful in this business even having not a single creative bone in your body.

And if you can take this sales piece and rewrite it in your own words and emulate not only the cadence of it, but you know exactly how the whole structure is from start to finish, also how the aesthetics looks. Everything you can sell this sales piece to somebody who would wanna hire you for this for thousands of dollars. You're not gonna be able to sell anything that you'd churn out on AI for thousands of dollars. That's just never going to work. Okay?

Do you guys see like how this is and why you really need to focus on the aesthetics of the piece? Just as much as you focus on the copywriting stuff.

[Monica continues reviewing sales letter examples and formatting]

I have several sales letters that I need. They each pay thousands of dollars each. And the reason I'm bringing this to you guys who are part of my copywriting group is because there's gonna be several other people, there's gonna be hundreds of people on next week's webinar. And not all of them are part of this group. Only the people that are part of this group in my copywriting group get to participate in these paid assignments. It does not matter if you've not earned your certificate yet. You could still participate.

However, you guys are getting an unfair advantage because I'm sharing with you what I expect this work to look like. I will briefly go over it next week, but I'm telling you that this is why we reject pretty much all of the submissions that we get is because they don't look like a sales letter. This is a sales letter to me. See how the aesthetics are, see how it's in times new Romans, see how it's written, see how it's structured, okay? It has to be structured this way. It has to flow in this kind of way.

If you're not sure what the hell I'm talking about, go through the monicamain.com/swipe, go through the file, take a look, because this is what I expect. Anything less than this will not, you're not gonna get paid. You're not gonna get the assignment, okay?

And it's not just me and I'm not just being a b***h here and trying to make things difficult. You'll not get an assignment with anybody if you're just trying to whip together just AI based crap, okay? There has to be some human element to it if you're going to succeed in this business. All right?

And now I know AI can help you, but you're always gonna have to rewrite because AI does kind of a half as crappy job. So just be aware of the fact that rewriting is going to be required.

Do you guys see like a pattern with a lot of these sales letters? The way they look, the way they're laid out, the way they all have a triple headline, this one in particular, again, times New Roman, the way it's structured, lots of bullet points, um, you know, sub headlines that are technically considered a mini headline, um, bonuses that are added in there, just making it so tantalizing that it'd be an idiot not to get this offer.

So again, this is what I'm expecting. Now, some of these sales letters that we're gonna be presenting next week are gonna be like 16 pages long. I know that seems very daunting and it seems like it's really, really, you know, maybe off the radar for some of you to be able to produce. But you know, if you want the job and you wanna get paid for it, that's what it's gonna be. And it's not gonna be AI.

And I can tell you what AI looks like from 10 miles away and I'm not gonna accept any job that's a hundred percent AI. You can use AI to help you, but you need to rewrite what AI rewrites or writes for you. Otherwise it's not gonna sound good.

One of the sales pieces is going to be for a client of mine and I will be giving him the sales pieces that I get from you guys that I believe are worthy of him even bothering to look at. And then he will select out of one of the many that I get from you guys. So hopefully it's not ChatGPT because I will be able to tell and I will throw it away. I will not even waste his time with it.

So from now on, when you guys turn in your assignments, you have to do it this way. I don't want any more slop from you guys. You have to be a little more disciplined and you have to have some pride in your work when you're submitting things in because you have to get into the habit of doing it like this because this is what your clients are gonna expect.

And um, even if it's just mere homework, you have to start getting into the habit of making it look like a sales letter, a sales piece that you're going to turn into a client or even use for your own direct mail marketing campaign one day. It has to look like something. Um, it can't just be a bunch of words vomited on a page, okay? Um, because anybody can do that, and obviously ChatGPT can do that too, and we don't want that.

We have to sell stuff and you can't sell stuff with just a bunch of words on a page. You have to make it aesthetically appealing. And you have to emulate these sales letters as much as humanly possible down to the font, down to where they bold stuff down to where everything's italicized, down to where they use quotes, down to where they use testimonials, down to where they use pictures, down to where they use, you know, everything, um, bullet points, um, their argument about why their course is so great, whatever the case may be, you emulate it, okay?

That is the quickest and easiest way for you to not only learn how this business works, but also to start making money as a highly lucrative, highly profitable copywriter. Okay?

So any questions before we cut out for the night? Going once, going twice. All right, awesome. So I will see you guys next week. We'll be talking about those paid copywriting assignments, but again, you guys have a definite unfair advantage over everybody else because there will be hundreds of people in that group for next week, and you guys will know the secret to exactly what I'm looking for. All right, everybody, have a good night as Monica Main signing off. I'll see you at the top.

---
END TRANSCRIPT