Freelance copywriter Dan Lok has produced 17.3 million dollars worth of sales for his clients. Dan's strategies have helped hundreds of small businesses in different industries to increase their sales as much as 417%. He charges up to $15,000 to write a sales letter.

In this full 2-hour audio interview, Dan Lok will teach you about copywriting, marketing, writing sales letters and landing pages, how to attract clients, and how to succeed as a freelance copywriter.

If you prefer the complete 2-hour text transcript to this audio interview, you may buy it at LuLu.com as an immediate download.

Here is a brief introduction of the transcript:

Dan:
Hi Terry! I’m excited to be with you.

Terry:
Me too buddy, me too. We have a lot to cover Dan, so I think we’ll just jump right into the conversation. Maybe we can start out with your background; how you started out, where you came from and how you got into this marketing business.

Dan:
Sure, I moved from Hong Kong to North America years ago with no money, no connections, and not a word of the English language on my lips. If you couldn’t tell from my thick accent, English is not my first language. Some people say that I sound like William from American Idol. I don’t know, I think I’m better looking than him. But he’s a better singer than me, though. So, I had to learn English from scratch. I started my first business when I was 16 years old with my friend mowing lawns for people in my neighborhood. The business went extremely well except that we didn’t have any clients.

On and off I would start a business and it would fail very quickly. I was in the vending machine business, I was in multi-level marketing, I was in the retail business, and at one point I was importing toys from Asia and I was doing all kinds of stuff. I was losing so much money in my business ventures that I had to borrow money from my friends and family just to survive.

Finally, my family said to me, “Well Dan, why don’t you go out there and get a real job.” And I did. I got a job in a supermarket stocking cans on the shelves. At that time, I had no degree or formal education so that was the only job I could get. Life was horrible. I wasn’t fulfilling my dreams, I was depressed, I was very disappointed in myself, so I started looking into things that most people do; I started reading self-help books, listening to the tapes, going to the seminars… I was a success junkie. I was still freaking broke. I actually think that I was even more broke because I spent all my money on these tapes and books and seminars.

I’m not everybody’s cup of tea; I can be very blunt sometimes, I’m very aggressive, so some of the stuff I say may offend some of our listeners. I might hurt some of there feelings or shake them up a little; I’m just not a touchy, feely kind of guy. I mean, I think that’s exactly what most people need anyway - someone to give them a kick in the butt. Most people become too lazy and too comfortable. My clients either love me or hate me. Some of them send me gifts on holidays, and some of them call me an S.O.B. I don’t pull any punches when I talk to them; I don’t sugar coat stuff or B.S. people. I tell it like it is, whether it’s what they want to hear or not. They still respect me and take my advice to heart because I help them make a lot of money by helping them sell a products and services. Otherwise, there’s no reason for anyone on the planet to put up with a maniac like me. The only reason is that I make them a lot of dough.

Anyway, so I was starting all these companies, and they would go out of business at a faster speed than I could start them. So, I asked myself why some businesses are more successful than others. What’s the secret? Look at myself; I’m not stupid, I work hard, I’m serious, I’m very determined and very dedicated, so what’s the problem? What am I doing wrong? What’s missing? One day I got the ultimate secret to business success. I’ve never seen a company in trouble from having too much revenue. Just like a person who could never have too much money, you can never have too much revenue as a business.

Money can solve a lot of problems. When you don’t have enough revenue in a business, even little problems become gigantic problems. But then you might ask me, “Dan, how do you generate revenue?” Well, the answer is, by creating and keeping a customer. How do you create and keep a customer? Through effective marketing. Some people may ask me, “What is the purpose of marketing, Dan?” The purpose of marketing is to sell more stuff to more people more often for more money. No marketing, no customers; no customers, no sales, no business. It’s that simple. Show me a profitable company and I’ll show you a good marketing company. Once I learned that, then I was determined to get good marketing stuff.

I was reading all the marketing classics: Scientific Advertising, by Claude Hopkins, Tested Advertising Methods, by John Caples, Ogilvy on Advertising, by David Ogilvy. I love all of those classics. I started my one-man advertising agency where I would write ads and sales letters for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Now at that time, since I was just a rookie and I didn’t have any degree or diploma in marketing or anything, I didn’t have any credibility. When a prospect asked me what kind of experience I had in marketing, if I said that I read a couple of books, that doesn’t sound too good. So, what I said to them was, “You know what? Don’t take my word for it. I know you can’t afford to waste your money on some unproven marketing guy, so let’s do it this way: I’ll write an ad for you and if it doesn’t make you money, then don’t pay me. Only pay me if it works for you.

My prospects thought that this was fair. Because of this pressure, I had to force myself to create the most effective type of advertising possible. This is because if my stuff didn’t work, I wouldn’t make any money, and I won’t eat. So I can’t mess around with theory and all that crap. It’s almost like someone holding a gun to my head and saying, “Dan, your stuff better work or I’ll pull the damn trigger.” That was literally the situation. I mean I’m pretty sure if anyone was in that situation, you’ll learn and get smart pretty quickly.

To this day, I’ve sold over 20 million dollars worth of products and services in over 39 different industries. For the 20 million I’m just talking about the money that my ads and sales letters generate. I’m not even counting the increase profits that I’ve helped hundreds of business owners generate through my consultation. I have no idea what the number is, maybe 40 or 50 million, I don’t even know.

So now in my spare time I’m teaching others how to marketing their products and services, but I still spend the majority of my time doing what I teach in the real world. And maybe 20% of my income comes from selling my books and tapes. So Terry, that’s my story about how I kind of stumbled into the business.

Terry:
Beautiful. And what kind of a time line are we looking at from when you started with your advertising agency…

Dan:
About seven years.

Terry:
Okay. So you’ve created 20 million dollars worth of revenue for your clients within seven years?

Dan:
Yea, just through my ads and sales letters. The increased profit through my consultation is maybe 40 or 50 million, maybe more. I didn’t track that.

Terry:
Wow. Now as a business owner, what’s important to learn about copywriting? There’s a lot of information out there about different aspects of the copywriting industry and the copywriting business. What’s really important for us to learn?

Dan:
Well first of all I’ll talk about why you should learn a little bit about copywriting as a business owner. It’s very simple, when you master the art and science of copy writing, you can literally write any sized paycheck as you wish. A sales letter is the most valuable employee you can ever hire. Think about it, a sales letter will never get tired, it will always be there to serve you, it will never complain, it will never ask for a raise, overtime, or Christmas bonus. A sales letter will deliver your sales pitch perfectly to your target market every time. It also works for you 24 hours a day seven days a week. Who knows, someone could be buying one of my products from my website right while I’m talking to you.

The money would just get deposited to my bank; I don’t have to close the sale in person or one-on-one and I don’t have to do any selling except actually writing the letter. That allows me to duplicate myself a thousand or even ten thousand times. It is one of the highest pay activities that I know of. Public speaking is another one. A lot of people say that the number one business skill is sales. I think it’s true, but I might want to add that it’s selling in person and in print. How much money you make in business is determined by how well you persuade other people. This could be in print or in person.

You could hire a copywriter to do it for you, which in most cases I recommend, but a good copywriter can charge anywhere from $7,000 to $10,0000 to $20,000 to $50,000. I charge $15,000 to write a sales letter. There’s no such thing as a good, cheap copywriter; you get what you pay for. In most cases, guys like us are too busy to help you and you might have to wait weeks or even months. If you hire some rookie copywriter, chances are it’ll hurt your sales instead of helping increase your sales.

So, you might be thinking, “Dan, if I don’t have a lot of money, what should I do?” Do it yourself because nobody knows your business, your audience, and your customers like you do. No one cares about your business more than you either. Once you get good at this copywriting stuff, you don’t have to pay the big bucks and wait for months, you can just crank out a sales letter whenever you want it.

Now, Terry, I’m not telling our listeners to become professional copywriters and become as good as I am, you don’t have to be as good as me, you don’t even have to be one tenth as good. It takes too long to be a pro and you have to go through too much pain to be this good. Unless you’re planning on becoming a professional copywriter and doing this as your business, you don’t have to be that good. You just have to be the best copywriter for your own business; you just need to be average or a little bit better so you can crush your competition. Most business owners don’t even to understand copywriting. So that’s why it’s so important as a business owner to learn copywriting. You don’t have to master copywriting, but it’s good to know a little bit about it.... (cont'd)

If you want the complete text transcript to this 2-hour audio interview, you may buy it at LuLu.com as an immediate download.