Direct response copywriter and video sales letter expert, Valentina Volcinschi, is in the house for episode 51 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira and Rob ask her about how she became a direct response copywriter and how she developed her skills—she’s written a ton of successful promotions including one that pulled in $7 million in 5 months and saved a company that was headed toward bankruptcy. She also talks about...

•  how musician Jack White landed her a job in direct response

•  the “secret” 1000-page book that helped launch her career

•  how she injects emotion into her copy

•  her “puzzle structure” for sales pages

•  how to get started working in the survival niche

•  the biggest differences between sales pages and VSLs

•  the EPW writing process that you probably use but don’t know it

•  how she researches for her assignments

Plus Valentina goes deep on how feeling your customer’s pain can make all the difference in a sales message and how she entertains with her copy (she looks for wacky characters). We also asked her what she charges for sales pages, emails and VSLS and her advice for new direct response copywriters. As usual, lots of good ideas and advice.  Click the play button below to listen, or scroll down for a full transcript.

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Sponsor: AirStory

Jack White

Madonna

The Ultimate Desktop Copy Coach (no longer available)

Ry Schwartz

Daniel Sanchez

Copy School

Ben Settle

Valentina’s website

Kira’s website

Rob’s website

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

Intro: Content (for now)

Outro: Gravity

Full Transcript:

The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.

Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.

Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 51 as we chat with copywriter Valentina Volcinschi about entertaining your customers with your copy, writing with emotion, video sales letters, and what it takes to break through in hypercompetitive markets like survival, health, and sass.

Rob: Hey, Kira. Hey, Valentina.

Valentina: Hi, guys. How you doing?

Kira: Welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Valentina: Thank you for inviting me.

Kira: A good place to start, Valentina, is just with your story, how you ended up as a direct response copywriter working on VSLs and even in the survival market. How did you get there?

Valentina: Well, it’s quite a funny story because I actually owe my debut in direct response copywriting to Jack White from The White Stripes and The Dead Weather.

Rob: Okay. This sounds like a good story.

Valentina: Yeah, kind of. I started as an agency copywriter. I worked at a local agency for a couple of years, but then I had to switch cities. I moved to another city, so I had to look for a job. I found an internship as a direct response copywriter and I was like, “What is that? I had never heard about that before.” I read about it. I found it very interesting and I thought that is a very good opportunity to learn something new. What I did was apply to that copywriting internship. What I didn’t know was that the person in charge of the applications was the secretary of the company. What she did was check every single person who applied on Facebook to see if they have the same taste in music as her because she had no girls on the team.

There are only guys and no one there to, I don’t know, share a common interest with her. She looked at my Facebook page and she saw that I had liked Jack White’s page. She was like, “This girl, I want this girl on my team.” Yes. She went to her boss and she oversold me on the whole thing.