18 How Long Is Too Long?
B
y now you can see that you can make your web site or sales let-
ter pretty lengthy just following the three-step, no-pain for-
mula. This doesn’t mean you want a web site or letter that runs on
forever. But it does mean you can take your time to share your
message. After all, people will read any amount of words on a web
site,as long as they are interesting to them. And that’s the trick that
makes millionaires out of paupers.
Keep in mind that as a general rule,the more you tell, the more
you sell. That means don’t be afraid of long copy (copymeans words
in marketing lingo). Web sites with long copy (lots of words) tend
to do better than web sites with fewer words. But again, they can’t
just be any words. As you know, if you bore people, they will leave
your site in a nanosecond. Boredom breaks the trance.
My own rule of thumb is this:The more money you are asking
for, the more words you should write.
If you are asking people to sign up for only a free newsletter, a
few well chosen words may do. If you want them to buy something
under ten dollars, again, a few well chosen words may be enough.
But if you want someone to buy a $15,000 exercise machine—as
the people over at http://www.QuickGym.com want you to do—
you have a lot of explaining to do. That will take some words. They
better be hypnotic words, too.