Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing, and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood.

Audio Recording

In Episode #14, I try to demystify the “six figure launch” and explain what it actually means.

 

 

Written Transcript: What “I Wrote A Six-Figure Launch” Actually Means

Hey guys. Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing, and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood.

In this episode, I want to demystify something that gets passed around on these shared copywriting webs, where we see everyone talking about these really crazy results like, “Hey, I did a six-figure email sequence,” or “a seven-figure product launch.”

And I want to explain why it’s actually way less impressive than it sounds.

The purpose of this is not to detract from anyone sharing impressive-sounding results by any means. It’s not to take away from them and say, “They didn’t write great copy for that,” because they probably did.

Rather, what I want to do is explain it so that you, as someone who has not done a six- or seven-figure product launch, understand that there’s not this massive gulf of skill between you and the people sharing these results. It will make a little more sense as we dive in.

But essentially, it all kind of boils down to this: What ultimately determines how well a product sells is not copywriting, it’s product/market fit and it’s audience size.

If you have a huge audience and you’re selling something that has a great product/market fit for that audience, you’re going to sell a ton. It doesn’t matter if you have objectively shitty copywriting, unless the copywriting is just so unclear—unless the clarity is just to the point where people can’t even tell what’s going on, they can’t even understand the basics of the product/market fit—you’re going to sell a ton.

The copywriting can help increase the number of sales. It’s sort of like an election where everyone focuses on the swing-vote states because those are really the only votes that ultimately matter to what happens in the election. That’s a small percentage of votes that swing the election.

In the same way, as a copywriter, you’re mostly focused on the people who are on the fence, the people who are going to need a little more of a push—that’s where copywriters can make an impact. But the bulk of the sales are going to come down to audience size and product/market fit.

When you see someone who said, “Hey, I just did a six-figure launch. I’m a God,” what they really mean is they just worked with a business that had an audience capable of a six-figure launch and a product they were selling to that audience that was enough of a fit for a six-figure launch. In most cases, unless that thing just barely cleared $100K or whatever, that copywriter’s involvement was not necessary for it to be a six-figure launch. If you had something that made $200,000, I could have probably traded out the copywriter who did that with someone in their first or second year, and that launch still would have made $150k. That’s just basically how this works.

That’s why when I’m trying to educate people on copywriting, I’m mostly focused on clarity, even well above persuasion, because again, you’re just trying to make it clear what the product/market fit is rather than trying to persuade people to purchase it in the first place.

What should your takeaway from this be? The takeaway here is that if you want to have really impressive results from your clients, you need to be working with clients that have big audiences and have good product/market fit. Those are the types of clients where you’re going to be able to have these impressiv...