Derek Halpern – Sales Page that Converts

YES. A PAGE LIKE THIS. WITH A BIG HEADLINE. A COMPELLING OPENING PARAGRAPH. AND A STORY TO SHARE. THAT’S HOW I BUILT MY BUSINESS FROM SCRATCH INTO A MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS.

And I’d like to show you how you can create a page like this for your business.

…even if you’re not a writer.

(As a matter of fact, if you’re a “writer,” you might even be at a disadvantage. Writers get fancy. But fancy doesn’t sell).

…even if you’re not good at selling.

And I’ll prove to you that it can work for almost any type of online business.

But first, as you know, these pages are called sales pages. And no matter what you sell online, a page like this is necessary to persuade people to buy your products and services.

Big companies use them to introduce their new products and services:

Small businesses who sell online courses, coaching, consulting, and other services use them too:

And if you look around, you’ll see different types of businesses who use sales pages to persuade people to buy.

Personally, I’ve seen people use sales pages to sell anything from an e-book, to a speech, to a hand-made leather bag, to an online course, to a piece of software…

And a whole lot more.

So, I feel confident sharing this with you:

NO MATTER WHAT YOU SELL, YOU NEED A SALES PAGE.

Hi, I’m Derek Halpern, the founder of Social Triggers…

Most people don’t know that I spent the last 10 years neurotically studying the world’s best sales pages, some of which dated back to more than 100 years ago (back when companies use to send them through snail mail!).

And let me tell you: developing this skill paid off…

Over the last 5 years, I grew my business exponentially.

Here’s a screenshot:

Well…

Almost every single sale was made by a sales page.

I’ve created sales pages that were short and “more visual.” I’ve created sales pages that were long. Sometimes, they were only shared after a “product launch.” Other times, the sales pages were up and running 24/7.

And I used these sales pages to sell my own online courses and software products. I even used a sales page to sell something as an affiliate.

But how was I able to consistently grow my business, year after year, while maintaining healthy profit margins?

Let me share a quick story…

HOW A SHORT SALES PAGE HELPED ME
EARN $6.90 FOR EVERY SALES PAGE VISIT
(THE GRAND TOTAL? $172,560 GENERATED)

I had just created a new online course, and I sold it for anywhere from $99 to $199 depending on which option people bought.

So, I put together a short sales page to sell it…

Get Derek Halpern – Sales Page that Converts at Sendcourse.com.

And let me tell you, this sales page was HORRIBLE looking.

The design was plain…

My writing was just okay…

And I kid you not, after I introduced myself, I actually had a BROKEN IMAGE of my headshot for the longest time.

Here’s a screenshot of the top of the page:

But while a lot of things were VERY WRONG with this sales page, I still ran it. And it worked.

WHY?

I knew the psychology behind how to put together a page like this that would persuade people to buy.

So, I left everything as is, and I began driving traffic to it. I ended up getting 25,671 people in total – and that traffic made $172,560 in revenue.

Think about that for one second…

• It was a plain, single column page, with nothing other than plain black text
• It had a BROKEN image right near the top of the page.
• It only took me about a day to put together

But since I knew the psychology behind how to create a Sales Page that Converts, including the exact order to put everything in (and why), it was a highly profitable sales page.

At first, I thought, “it’s time to buy a big gold watch!” Because, that’s what people who run online businesses do, right? Buy expensive watches, drive fancy cars, and “work from the beach.”

But then common sense kicked in…

I mean, I was excited. Who wouldn’t be?

Nothing feels better than releasing a new product or service and seeing people actually buy the thing.

Especially when you know how it feels when you ask people to buy something and they don’t buy it. Almost no one politely says “No thank you.” And getting cursed out is more common than I could have ever imagined.

“BUT WHAT IF I CAN’T GENERATE THAT MANY VISITORS?”

I have great news: I never said I got all those people to the page all over the course of a few days…

YOU DON’T NEED TRAFFIC TODAY…

You see, one of the BIG BENEFITS of creating a great, high-converting sales page is this:

You can create a sales page once and you can keep using it over and over and over again.

And that’s exactly what I did.

Take a look at the traffic break down over time right here:

As you can see, I put this page together back in December 2013, and I kept using that same page all the way through January 2015.

I didn’t generate that traffic all at once…

I did it slowly, over time.

But step 1 was this: create a sales page, and then step 2 was this: drive traffic to that sales page.

Just imagine how great that feels for a second…

You have a product or service to sell…

You have a sales page that persuades people to buy it…

And then all you have to do is sit back and relax. You don’t have to worry about “selling” anything.

You can focus on what you’re good at, whether it’s teaching, doing, creating, or affiliating.

And the sales page does all the “work” to sell it.

Which leads me to…

WHEN YOU HAVE A SALES PAGE THAT CONVERTS,
YOU CAN TEST DIFFERENT WAYS TO DRIVE TRAFFIC.

At first I wasn’t sure about the “best way” to generate traffic for this specific product…

…So I tested everything over the course of 14 months:

• I ran the typical “product launch,” where I sent some content, and then followed up by “opening” and “closing” my sales page.
• I ran webinars – sometimes automated webinars and other times live webinars – and then after the webinar, I sent people to my sales page.
• I bought paid advertising – sometimes through Facebook, other times through other places like Google – and I sent these people to my sales page.
• I guest posted on other blogs and pointed people back at my website, and my website prominently displayed my sales page.

I truly tried it all…

I saw what worked – and what didn’t work. And I could see it with my own eyes because I could see whether people were actually buying what I was selling!

And that’s when I had the big realization:

THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST THINGS YOU CAN INVEST YOUR TIME IN LEARNING HOW TO DO…

I know that’s a bold claim, but if you want to start – and grow – an online business, you’ll have to do a lot of work. And one of the secrets to success is finding the things that have the “biggest return” on your time investment

Well…

This specific sales page took me about a day to put together. And that day’s work helped me generate $172,560 over the next 14 months.

I mean, yes, other work went into generating those sales – like the different “tests” I did on traffic – but once the page was done, the page was done.

It’s no wonder that the world’s best sales page copywriters charge $10,000 or $25,000 PLUS residual commissions on each sale a sales page makes.

(Yes, there are people who sell “sales page copywriting” for less than a few thousand dollars, but they often aren’t worth it… I know someone who paid about a grand for a sales page and they hated it. They couldn’t even publish it).

But if you learn how to do it yourself, you can do some work today, tomorrow, and the next day… and you can benefit from that same work for years.

I have 5 core products for my business Social Triggers. Each product has its own sales page. And I only ever wrote that sales page once.

• I wrote one sales page back in 2012, and I keep using almost the same version of that page today in 2016.
• I wrote another sales page back in December 2013, and I used it all the way up until January 2015.
• I wrote another sales page back in August 2014, and I still use that page today.
• And I use another sales page that I wrote in September 2014 that I still use today.

AND THIS ISN’T AN ISOLATED INCIDENT…

In the world of “sales page copywriting,” this practice is known as “creating a control.” And that essentially means this: you create a page, and whether it converts good or bad, that’s your “baseline.”

Then, if you want to IMPROVE your sales, you can write a new sales page to test against your control… and see if your new sales page beats it. If it doesn’t, you leave the control in place, and keep moving forward.

But I never did that…

You see, once I created a Sales Page that was good enough – meaning, it converted to my standards, I left it alone.

And this furthered my belief:

Sales Pages = Money

You saw it with your own two eyes. Creating a Sales Page that Converts is a great way to invest your time…

But how do you create one?

Well…