I’ll be straight up with you. Halbert wrote this bestseller when he was locked away in prison, serving time for some serious mail fraud. Does that mean you shouldn’t read his book? No sir. That just means he was good at what he was doing but just made some unfortunate decisions that led him south.
Now that you’ve decided to read, let’s dive right in!
Waking up and doing an hour of “hard work” is the perfect way to begin your day. Walking, biking, or jogging-30 minutes out, 30 minutes back, six days a week is the perfect routine. This purifies you, slows you down, clears your head, increases your thought ability, and gives you a strong high that sticks with you during the day. The reason we’re talking about this routine is the book: it mentions that writers need to stick to a proper schedule in order to produce work.
Essentially, discipline is key. That, and taking care of yourself. So if you’re not eating right, sleeping on time or meditating, you won’t be able to get much done. Stay focused and stay disciplined, and you WILL get what you want.
Here are some other useful tips you’ll find in this book:
- Rely on your own power, rather than on sympathy from anyone else. And just being stern is not good enough; you have to be tough. You have to be so tough that you just shed all criticism right off.
- Significant money will pour in when you show considerable excitement. And perhaps most critical of all is always keeping a positive disposition.
- Act like a student of marketing. Not products, strategies, copy writing or commercials. All of these are important but you have to know what customers want to buy before you start reading theories. Have an eye on what they do so you know what they want
- Offer what you would want to buy to people. This is a very simple, but largely ignored rule. Keep an eye out for long periods of advertisements and direct mails running and make sure your campaign is effective
- Always custom tailor your ads. People want to buy stuff that is personal to them so make sure you’re getting your message across in meaningful ways
- Use attention grabbers to grab your consumer’s eyeballs as soon as they stumble across your content! You’ve probably heard about ‘click-bait.’ Well now you need to utilize it and write shocking headlines that will grab people’s attention. This is the only way you can direct them to your content!
- Don’t write copy that has difficult or complex words. Always stick to the simple, short and direct approach. People will gravitate towards things they understand so you should keep your content accessible
- Always read your copy to yourself, out loud. This will help you understand how it will come across to someone else who’s reading it
The Summary
Overall, I loved this book! Not only was it a proper guide to better selling, but it had concrete strategies I could use to see results. There were plenty of personal anecdotes that had me hooked while I was reading. This is one of the few books on copy that I think everyone should read!

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