Writing Video Sales Letters is an art. It’s not enough to simply record someone reading a regular sales page. They depend more on stories and keeping listeners engaged because you can’t afford to lose your viewer’s attention. In the 436th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with Svet Dimitrov about this challenge and he shared why you need to take a different approach when writing VSLs. We covered a lot more than that, so click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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Full Transcript:
Rob Marsh: If you applied for 200 different projects or jobs, each time sending a new cover letter with your pitch, I imagine you would learn a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t work in the application process. That’s what Svet Dimitrov, my guest on this episode of the podcast, did. But that’s not even the reason I asked Svet to join me on the podcast.
I heard another copywriter talking about how Svet is one of the best VSL copywriters in the world today—VSLs are video sales letters and they’re different from regular sales letters because you can’t afford to lose your viewer’s attention ever. We talk about that in this episode and what you can do to improve your own VSL writing skills. If you want to write VSLs, don’t skip this episode.
We also talked about Svet’s contrarian advice that copywriters—especially copywriters who are just starting out—should not have a website. Obviously, that’s not the way most of us think. Websites are there to build credibility and help clients see the various ways we can help them. But Svet argues, and I think I agree, that there is a better approach that connects personally with your prospects. You may want to stick around to here what Svet does.
As you might expect, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. I’ve completely rebuilt the content vault to make it more useable and useful and in the process I’ve added more than 70 differnt workshops to it. And there are even more coming. Workshops taught by expert copywriters like Parris Lampropoulos, Joanna Weibe, Stefan Georgi, Jack Forde, Chanti Zak, Laura Belgray and dozens of others. And it’s not just copywriters, we’ve got marketing experts teaching how to build funnels, how to market using tools like Linkedin and Pinterest, how to put yourself in the right mindset to succeed and so much more. And that’s just the workshops. There are dozens of templates, a community of like-minded writers holding each other accountable, and monthly coaching with me. It’s time you joined us inside. Learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu
And now, my interview with Svet Dimitrov…
Svet, I’m thrilled to be able to chat with you. I’d love to start just by hearing how you got where you are. How did you become a copywriter? Before we started recording, I mentioned that I’ve heard your name because people have said you are one of the best VSL copywriters in the world right now. So how’d you get there?
Svet Dimitrov: Thank you first for inviting me, Rob. It’s a pleasure to be here. And yeah, my story goes back, I would say, probably Probably by the time I was doing my master’s degree actually, I was really struggling. That was 2009-2010 to finish my master’s thesis. And I did read, so this was in the era when you couldn’t find a lot of stuff on Google. So I had to sift through a ton of pages, I think I went to like the 10th page of Google, which probably nobody goes there these days, just to find, just to do research. But I think that’s when I really started to understand that research is really important. I appreciate it, love the game, although I was struggling to find a good way to express my thoughts in my master thesis. And I think I sift through like maybe 10 physical books. Then I mentioned research on Google. I think I probably went through more than 100 PDFs that I found online and all that stuff.
And it was kind of a crazy couple of months just doing research and research and not getting anywhere, which was frustrating. But then there was this mindset shift that I said, hey, if I’m going to say, hey, I can’t do it, I won’t be able to do it, right? But when I said, hey, I need to do it and I will do it, things started to get better. Um, so after I finished my master’s degree, I started applying. It was actually in European policies and politics. So I started applying for different positions in the European Union related to politics, management and all that stuff. And I couldn’t land any, and I probably sent like more than a hundred different applications. Most of those applications were not only consisting of a CV, but also a cover letter.
So I wrote a ton of cover letters. And later, like years later, I realized that has helped me a lot to master my skills in writing and also in persuasion, because when you’re writing a cover letter, you have to convince the other party to hire you, right? So I realized that that has helped me a lot, but I needed a few years to really understand that I was not cut out to be an employee for first of all the European Union’s different institutions. And I also realized that writing all those cover letters and stuff was really helpful to put in the reps, because I was probably writing every single day. I was changing stuff here and there. Obviously, I wasn’t writing a completely new cover letter, but I was constantly trying to change and see how it’s going.
And then a few years later, I had an office job which was not related to what I was studying, and I didn’t enjoy it at all, so I quit it after a week and a half. And since I had some money saved, and just like a month before I quit my job, I actually met a Chinese girl at a hotel while I was traveling with my family doing a European trip. And I met a Chinese girl and I chatted with her a lot and then she invited me to go to China. Long story short, a few months after that I went to China and I really enjoyed it there. And I was like, hey, maybe I can start learning some Chinese and find a job in China. I still wasn’t 100% certain I was going to do a freelance career, and I had no idea what copywriting was. But since I’ve already studied and learned English and then French, I was like, maybe I can start studying some Chinese.
Obviously, I wouldn’t master Chinese because it’s a completely different, much harder language. But still it would help me to land a job and a few months after that I landed unpaid internship although it was. It was a full-time job, I would say, in China. And while I didn’t enjoy it very much when I went there, because I realized it was very, very different from what it was supposed to be, I enjoyed living there. I enjoyed connecting with the people. And there’s a saying in Bulgaria that one year abroad is like two years at home. Well, I would say that when you go to China or probably another country in Asia, since they’re so much different from, let’s say, Europe, Western Europe and the US, I would say that one year in China is like three or four years at home.
So I spent only three months, but it felt like a year or more. So when I came back, I was like, I definitely don’t want to find a job, but since I had so many different experiences and impressions from China, I decided to create a website to write about like a travel blog, although I was also writing about lifestyle, healthy living, healthy eating. And since I knew that I wouldn’t be able to support myself with a new website, a new blog, I also started looking for content writing jobs first. But I use my website as a portfolio. Obviously, it’s not a necessity nowadays to have a website. And I would probably even advise people not to create a website at first. This is my experience, and I used that, and I think it actually played quite well. And I started lending a few jobs here and there about content writing, and then, I’d say a year and a half later, I started exploring copywriting and I realized it’s not just like copy and pasting words on a google document is completely different and it requires a lot of persuasion. Most of the time it’s much better paid than writing articles for other companies. That’s the short story in like five minutes.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, how you shifted over. So let’s go back to just the experience of writing these hundreds of cover letters. I’d love to know what you learned from that experience or what tips you have for writing a good cover letter. And the reason I ask this is there’s been over the last few months, a little bit of a move for some copywriters to try to find a real job, either a part-time job or a full-time job, so that they have some steady income as the economy’s been a little less predictable, things like AI and some of the layoffs that have happened over the last couple of years. So, uh, but they’re struggling. They’re struggling to find those jobs just as much as they’re struggling to find freelance work. It’s hard to make those connections. So what did you learn from that experience that really helped you sell yourself when you were reaching out with cover letters to resumés?
Svet Dimitrov: Well, I would say that I learned how to get to the point as quickly as possible. So in the first one or two paragraphs, I would try to grab their attention and then also try to share what are my biggest strengths and why they should hire me. Obviously, I wrote very, very bad cover letters at first. And some of them were starting with a very weird question and some of them were like trying to express my wealth of vocabulary, which I think is something that you should never do when you’re writing copy, unless you’re writing for, let’s say, Harvard Professors for example probably they would appreciate flexing your vocabulary.
But I think, yeah, definitely, I learned that I have to be very succinct and concise and straight to the goal, straight to the point when I am writing a cover letter. And it’s probably the same with copywriting, when you’re writing an email or even a VSL, which is a very long postal time, or at least 1500 words or more, which is probably longer than most cover letters anyway. You have to go straight to the middle of the action. That’s how I actually was able to land an internship. It’s called an elite VSO internship with Fran Reirengil. Probably you’ve heard of him. You’ve been in the game for very long. He’s one of the best VSO writers in the world and one of the It was a very elaborate process to hire those co-copywriters for his internship because it’s free but you have to pass through different phases. And one of them was to hand copy a whole VSL, which was 8,000 words and it took me like 14 hours.
And the second thing or part of that phase was also writing a cover letter, which had to be between 750 to 1500 words. And yeah, that cover letter was I used a lot of storytelling and I got straight to the point in the middle of the action. So that’s what I learned from writing so many cover letters. So yeah, that’s a good tip for beginner copywriters, but I would say for most copywriters, because I would see sometimes even Those copywriters that are a little bit, let’s say, old school or that have come from a different generation, they would rely on different, I would say, they are not accounting the changing environment of the new generation where we have, I would say, lower attention span. So sometimes they will start with a paragraph or two about just kind of like fluff. And I think it’s better to just go straight to the point, grab the attention, grab them by the eyeballs, and then move on.
Rob Marsh: So a quick follow up on that, you mentioned stories and I think that a lot of cover letters in particular, as I think about the structure for them, you know, usually saying, hey, I want this job and here’s all the reasons that I should get the job and you list out your qualifications and if you’re doing it Well, you’re trying to match the qualifications in the job description, but almost never have I thought through that that’s a great place for a story. So are you telling your story or are you weaving this in a framework that made it into a story in some way? It feels like you’re doing something a little bit different from what most people do.
Svet Dimitrov: Yeah especially for this one that because i’m very very very proud of those i was the only non-native copywriter that landed or kind of got hired for that internship and fran also told me i had the best cover letter out of all the three that were the last the last three three people that got accepted. So I used my own story and then tried to tie it in with the VSL that I had hand copied. And it was a very beautiful transition because it made a lot of sense. For example, I haven’t shared this with a lot of people, but I have a physical problem with my gut, where the esophagus or the food tube is very narrow before it goes to the stomach. And this means that when I eat very solid food, for example, bread or meat or something fatty, it can get stuck in the esophagus. And I had to go to the hospital every, quite a while actually, I went to the hospital last week to do this, they insert a tube, and there’s also a balloon that has to be pumped so it makes the esophagus wider so I can swallow better.
I call this process deep throating because it goes really, really deep, like 20 inches deep. And I used that story because I was copying a cover of the video sales letter about the product so it tied in very beautifully with that story. And the first line of that cover letter was that. I was puking every single night for three months, which is a true story. I was 11 years old. So I didn’t say, hey, this will be a story about, well, I just started, I was puking every single month. So it’s like, what the hell is going on? This is a cover letter and he’s talking about puking. This is how I grabbed his attention and then I tied that in with the VSO as well, because I was talking about the deep throating and then ED and all that stuff. And then I mentioned that I can tie in different elements, which is very helpful not only for VSOs, but also for emails, for example.
Rob Marsh: I’m glad I asked that because what you are doing is a massive pattern interruption from all of the other kinds of cover letters that would be out there. And so I think that this is one of those ideas that anybody who’s listening and thinks, yeah, I am going to apply for a real job, you know, in air quotes. to use stories or to do something different so that the hiring person, the creative director, whoever it is, will actually notice you. And then at that point, you can at least have a conversation where you can talk about your skill set and hopefully make that personal connection. So you also mentioned, and I want to follow up on this before I forget, that you don’t actually recommend that a lot of copywriters start with a website. Why not? I mean, I know there are lots of places where you can connect with people without a website, but a website tends to be a really good place to share success stories, build trust, that kind of stuff. So why do you think that it’s not necessary, at least at the beginning?
Svet Dimitrov: Because it’s a waste of time in the beginning, I would say, because you can just open a Google document, you can create your own portfolio. You can even add some design elements, maybe on Canva and then try and transfer those to Google Doc or just create your portfolio on Canva. But both of those applications, I would say, are free and they don’t require any crazy amount of no knowledge compared to when a website because if you’re creating your own website and if you’re using let’s say a wordpress.com sub domain, then it wouldn’t be a very, very, very good website. If you’re creating that on Wix, for example, it’s going to be an ugly website. So if you want to create an eye-catching website, you’re going to spend a lot of time. You’re probably going to invest some money into buying a domain. You’re going to invest some money into a designer. And it’s going to take you hours. Instead, you can just go create a Google Doc. You can add those images of people saying Google stuff about you. You can be a little bit more creative. You can even have a cover letter. in front of your portfolio. This is how I usually do it. And I’m not even sharing my website anymore. I’m now rearranging the website.
I’m probably going to share it anyway soon. But this took me like four or five years. I haven’t updated my website and I haven’t shared it anywhere. And people that have paid me five figures for VSLs and for other copy projects have never asked for a website. They just want to see a Google document. And what I would do is I would just write like, I don’t know, like a few paragraphs, something like, hey, and I would try to personalize it. Hey, Mark, below you, you’re going to find my most recent portfolio. But before that, I want to share a few benefits of working with me. And if I really like the person or if I really like the opportunity that’s presented to me, I would probably even have a cover letter in a way that I would probably touch upon things that I have found on his or her profile.
For example, I kind of created a very, very short cover letter in front of the portfolio for a person that wanted to do a rev share project with me. And he really appreciated it. He was like, oh, my God, nobody has done this before. And it took me like five to ten minutes. You just go to their profile, you just do some research. That’s what we are, what that’s what that’s what Coca-Cola operators are for. Right. So you do research, you try to find something that you have in common, maybe, or just something that can draw the attention and say, OK, this guy went to my website or went to my social media or whatever. and include that before the portfolio and then you just and you can even do that with most prospects you’re speaking to because you have that as a Google Doc, and then you create a copy, then you change the name, then you change some of the benefits. Maybe if it’s a person, for example, if most of my clients are in the US, and I always say that I’m based in Europe, which means that I am like 7 to 10 hours ahead of them, which means that they’re going to get their copy in the morning much, much earlier.
So that’s kind of a benefit if they are based in Asia and would try to come up with something different but these are like very small things that add a lot of. value to your portfolio because they would just expect a Google Doc with one or two samples, but then they get a lot more. Sometimes I would even include a picture of me doing something crazy because it adds this element. And sometimes I would even shoot a short, long video which would talk about my experience and I would probably just open the Google Doc and just go through it and say, hey, this is me. But then they would also see my face and it would be a very cool experience.
Rob Marsh: I really like this idea. I mean, in some ways it is a website, but it’s not, you know, the typical website, right? But what you’re really doing here that I think makes the difference is you’re personalizing this message or this site that you’re creating with a Google Doc to the person you’re talking to every single time. And even though it may be based on a template, the communication is one to one which is not the typical website experience this feels unique in some way that I think is your really big advantage.
Svet Dimitrov: And it’s one hundred percent free it just takes very little time and also money but if you are, as you said, I actually didn’t even think about that if you send them to website is not gonna be that personal obviously, and this is very very unique and then you cannot even just talk to that google doc to make it a little bit more humorous and spicy in a way so people are like oh this guy has a sense of humor this is great.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. No, I mean, you mentioned doing it with Google Docs. I can imagine people could do the same thing with a Notion template. There may be two or three different kinds of ways to do this, but it’s a great idea. Virtually free, like you said, and personal. Yeah, this is definitely something I think, especially with beginning copywriters, but even experienced copywriters can use this kind of an idea to their advantage.
Svet Dimitrov: Yeah exactly, I actually started using one with a little bit more experience because I think I got even more confident in a way that I can use that. I also see sometimes when they’re hiring for a senior copywriting position, they always want to see a long video. And even if they don’t ask for it, I would sometimes still shoot a long video and find some stuff that makes sense. Sometimes I would just try to provide some free value in advance even, and say, hey, I imagined this and that, or I checked your website and here’s what I found that can be fixed very, very quickly or something. So these two things, something very personal in whatever you’re using, whether it’s Canva, whether it’s Google Doc or Notion, as you mentioned, probably Notion is even sexier in a way than Google Docs. And then if you even include a long video, then it’s like, oh, my God, you’re going so much. You’re doing so much more than the average person who is applying. So it sets you apart.
And I think people are saying that competition is getting fiercer and fiercer these days. And it kind of is true that there are more people that are calling themselves copywriters or that are still copywriters. But at the same time, they’re getting so lazy with AI, they’re just sending irrelevant stuff, and sometimes they would even make a small mistake in the outreach, they would sometimes spell my name because sometimes I have hired junior copywriters and content writers for some of my own projects. They would spell my name Sven or whatever, something, which is probably sometimes like an auto-correction maybe? But still, that doesn’t make sense when it’s like, hey Sven, and it’s like, okay, come on.
Rob Marsh: That should be the first thing you catch is the person’s name. But we’ve all seen the email that goes out even with the first name block without names. Stuff like that. So you started writing copy… how did you become so well known for VSLs and writing in the health niche? How did you move in that direction?
Svet Dimitrov: Well, maybe I could start with the second part of this question, how I started with the heavy health management. And probably it would make a lot of sense because as I said, I had this health issue with my esophagus and to curb the I wouldn’t say it’s pain, but it’s a lot of the discomfort and happens most of the time when I’m stressed and especially when I’m eating sunny food. So I had to learn to eat more slowly, which is actually better for your health. And anyway, I’m going to enjoy the food more. But I also started eating in a much more healthy way as well. Like I would avoid sugar. I would eat a lot of fruit and veggies and lean meat and all that stuff. So it kind of makes sense because I’m also very active physically or used to be a little bit more now that I have a very young daughter, it’s a little bit harder to find that time to go out and do a workout every day. But before that, I was very active. I was working out almost every single day for at least 10 to 15 minutes, sometimes twice a day, and eating in a healthy way. So it just made sense to be arriving in the health niche. I know a lot of people say it’s the most competitive niche right now, and it probably is. But at the same time, if you’re good, there’s always this hunger for the best of the best, right? And it doesn’t matter if it is getting better and better. People say that I will. Replace copywriters and I say. Copywriters who can use a i will replace other copywriters this is this is so i am always saying to begin with you have to learn. Or you have to master co-op writing very, very quickly, or at least master the fundamentals, and then start using AI. And you wouldn’t have any trouble finding work. But if you’re a beginner and your English is not great, or your co-op is not great, you’d have to work much, much harder than it used to be before. But once you get to a certain level and you start using AI, you won’t have any problems. You will actually be having probably more work than ever. So I think I lost my train of thought.
Rob Marsh: I was talking about… Yeah, I think as far as connecting with, you know, health clients in the health space.
Svet Dimitrov: Yeah, this is one of the reasons why I started then. I had… Yeah, I had one guy who was running an agency got referred to me and the first He was mostly active in the health space and I wrote a few ads for Facebook and a few landing pages for some of his health clients. And I actually really, really enjoyed it because I was already writing a lot of content for my website. As I mentioned, it was not only about travel, but also healthy living, healthy lifestyle. And the health niche is very specific in a way because you have to do a lot more research and they have to support every single claim of yours with very credible sources. Otherwise, you would get into a lot of trouble. You cannot be saying this would increase your testosterone levels by 25% unless you have prove from a credible source like the national center of biology or whatever it’s called, or Harvard University or some university, it doesn’t matter what university, it has to be from a university or from a very credible source. And I think that’s where my love for research, which materialized probably as i mentioned during my master’s degree around fifteen sixteen years ago really kicked in because right now i’m actually doing another health project which involves a ton of research and i’m actually even having a little bit of a hard time because i was i did probably like 30 hours of research this month just on a project that is not even certain But I kind of enjoyed it a lot because it just got me back to my roots, just like going, exploring like the first, at least the first two pages on Google, which nobody goes to the second page anyway. And yeah, health, as I said, even when I was writing content for my website when I was quoting something I would always look for a credible source and nowadays I’m also the co-op chief for a Brazilian DR company. And the copywriters who write all the vsl so we say hey where did you get that idea from you have to like have the source you have to have the source we need the source i have to see the source i have to double check if it’s true the fd and fdc are more. Stringent than ever these days so every single claim we have it has to be substantiated otherwise you will get into trouble.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, the laws around that in Europe and the U.S., the law in the U.S. is called DSHEA. Yeah, there’s all kinds of rules there about not saying that something cures or mitigates a disease. You know, there’s limits. You can talk about ingredients, you can talk about the research that’s been done on ingredients, but just because something includes an ingredient doesn’t mean that the thing can do what the ingredient does. So writing in this space can be a little tricky, and it’s good to know or to have writers who understand this kind of stuff. How important is showing that kind of knowledge to a copy chief or to a company that’s hiring writers? Or is that the kind of thing that they say, well, we can train you on that. We’d rather have you be a persuasive writer.
Svet Dimitrov: I would say the second part being a more persuasive writer is more important, but the ability to combine those two and also to really know how to do research well and really know to distinguish between a thing That’s really worth researching more and more. It’s gonna really help you and I think I’ve probably got a little bit rusty in the last few months because as I said, I spent so much time on research. But I finally started digging some gold and I think I actually had an email to my address this morning that’s—if you remember the ad by David Ogilvy—about Roll Royce, sixty miles per hour is the only thing you hear is the clock or something? Yeah, the ticking of the clock. Yeah. So he said that he spent, or he at least could claim that he spent, I think like three weeks digging through different papers to find that kind of exact quote from somewhere. And this was the most successful ad of Rolls-Royce, I think, all over the years.
So it pays off to do a lot of research. But sometimes you can get lost in a lot of research. So I’m not saying I’m the best researcher in the world, but knowing how to do research, how to do it somewhat fast and how to especially find the best big ideas. Because the big ideas are what really sells and make a promo go to seven figures or even eight figures is the big idea that nobody has found. And this big idea has actually to be. It doesn’t have to be completely new or alien, but it has to have this And I remember this when I was part of Copy Accelerator and we had a live event in Tampa. And Stefan had a presentation saying that this new idea or new mechanism has to be 10% different. Because people have to have heard of it in a way, but it has to be a new Just just a little bit otherwise if it’s very very new nobody’s gonna believe that right.
Rob Marsh: Yeah people are looking for things that are familiar but different enough that they notice them if it’s too familiar they don’t notice but if it’s not familiar enough it’s seen as strange and weird and we push those things away. Yeah, exactly. So let’s talk about writing VSLs, this thing that you do mostly now. How is it different from sales pages? What are some of the things that we need to consider in addition to finding that big idea as we start to structure a VSL? And just in case anybody doesn’t know what a VSL is, video sales letter. So it’s really a sales message in a video format. Yes.
Svet Dimitrov: Well I would say the big idea of the mechanism which are a little bit different but let’s let’s say they are there the same for the sake of this argument so the big idea of mechanism are kind of. Like when you’re looking for them whether it’s a sales a sales letter or text sales letter or vsl you are probably have the same approach but when you are writing a vsl. It’s kind of different, it’s harder in a way, because with TSLs or the text sales letters, you have the headline, and then you have subheadline, bullets, and all that stuff. And people can skip and skim, and then they can stop and see, oh, okay, this sounds interesting.
With a VSL, Most of the time, you can’t skip ahead. So it has to flow much, much better. Obviously, the sales letter has to also flow very, very well. But with VSL, if you lose the reader for just a couple of seconds, they’re just going to leave and that’s going to be it. With the text sales letter, it’s a bit different, obviously. If you lose the reader a few times, even with your subheads or the bullets or the primitive design, they’re still gonna leave. But the VSL has to flow very, very, very well, especially in the first part, the lead. The good thing about VSL is that the headline is not that important as with a text sales editor, because with text sales editor, you have to grab their attention A headline that is a very sometimes it’s very elaborate there’s like a few lines of the main headline there and there’s the sub headline and there’s something else with a vsl it’s usually a very short headline but then you have to be. You have to be very very persuasive in that lead in the first i would say at least. 30 seconds, maybe even five to 10 seconds, and then the next 30 seconds, so they really want to pay attention to the rest of the VSL.
Rob Marsh: And I know there’s a lot of training and books about how to write great leads. Do you have a favorite as far as what you’d like to start with, or is that determined entirely by the research, the idea that you come up with?
Svet Dimitrov: I would say it’s more it more depends on on what the research and what the market is and I would most of the time when somebody hires me to either write leads or a whole vsl i would ask whether they want a particular kind of leads or they want me to send my ideas for example last year. A person who is very well known in the help me to write a few days and ask them and I sent him a few ideas I think like four or five ideas for leads. with the Loom video and said, hey, I have these four ideas or five ideas, which do you like the best? So because he wanted to like just two leads and he said, OK, go with this one and this one. And that’s how I wrote those leads. So I would usually prepare a few more than they are asking for, at least the ideas. And sometimes if it’s like a new client. Probably and especially if the lead is not very, very long, I would probably deliver at least another lead, or maybe, for example, a new health client hired me recently to write three Facebook ads, and I delivered four, just to make sure I’m over-delivering, but also not over-delivering by a crazy amount. Because if they hire you to write two leads and you deliver one more lead, that’s kind of too much. If it’s like a short phase book and you deliver one more, that’s fine, I would say. So there has to be a fine line between over delivering and then delivering way too much that the person can then abuse you in a way.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah. You open yourself up to when you start breaking those boundaries. Yeah. There is a fine line between over delivering and and, you know, giving up basically everything that you’ve got. So yeah, I agree.
Svet Dimitrov: And so but that said, I think with leads, I would say the most or the ones that I really enjoy writing are the ones that I actually that you mentioned this so-called pattern indeed interrupts, where you would say, for example, there’s a story that I shared about my deep throat experience was a kind of a pattern interrupt. So I think those perform very, very well. Sometimes it will be like, take a look at this weird object or something that’s completely not related to, let’s say, the health niche or the Pro pro pro pro state neutral doesn’t matter it has to be something completely alien to what the market has heard of. I think those always like almost always convert very very well of course you have to like it’s not only the lead the offer has to be good. But if you can do a great, great job with the lead, and the offer is good, I think that’s a win-win situation.
Rob Marsh: I really appreciate what you’re sharing about the fact that a VSL has to flow in a way that a normal sales letter doesn’t. As I’m thinking through this idea, a lot of copywriters, you know, we get caught up in features and, you know, mentioning, you know, the bullet points in a sales letter. And I hadn’t really considered how much that would get in the way of a video sales letter and how much more important a through line, a story that you can weave the entire time. So as I’m thinking about some of the best VSLs that I’m that I’ve seen, they really it’s almost like one story after another story after another story. It’s, you know, open loop. almost don’t close the loop before you start the next story to close the loop. And so it’s in some ways like dialing up the persuasion, almost every paragraph.
Svet Dimitrov: Yeah, I actually didn’t think that the VSL has to flow that much, but I recently read it somewhere and it makes so much more sense because I actually enjoyed it. I thought before I started writing VSLs that they’re so much more difficult to write. But then when I started writing, I guess it was more a more natural process that it has to flow better. And every single sentence has to flow with the other one. That’s why it’s really important to read the copy out loud a few times, because that’s where you spot those weird transitions or clunky flow. and you can fix it if you don’t read it out loud there’s a very high chance at least some of those paragraphs or sentences wouldn’t flow that much and if you don’t like rereading or listening to your voice you can just copy and paste the whole vsl into an app and it can read it out for you maybe Probably it’s even better because you hear it from another person or it doesn’t matter if it’s like AI voice or not. But it’s really helpful to hear it. And actually I think that’s also when I was doing my bachelor’s degree and my master’s degree because a lot of my exams were oral and I have to present them and talk, I would always, when I was studying the course materials, I would always read it out loud and it would help me a lot more to memorize it.
Rob Marsh: Okay, we’ve mentioned AI a couple of times. How are you using AI in your business? And I know you’re probably not just saying, hey, chat GPT, write me an intro or whatever. Have you set up various agents to help you, you know, or these super prompts that you’re feeding into it all the time or examples of your work? Like how do you use AI to get good copy or at least good ideas out of the system?
Svet Dimitrov: Yeah, that’s a great question actually, I just shared on my Facebook just a few hours ago that I was using AI probably since 2010, but it wasn’t there—it wasn’t Chat GPT or Claude, but it was google chat on translate because we will translate also kind of fall on fire and. Before I started getting into freelancing and copywriting I was doing a lot of translations. And when you just copy and paste a lot of text into Google Translate, especially back then, 15 years ago, it would give you a very, very bad translation. But if you copy and paste just sentence by sentence, it would give you a much better translation. So my point is that right now it’s similar. Obviously, AI is much more advanced. And even the first version of ChatGPT or Gemini or Cloud would give you a much better result with a very bad prompt. The more elaborate your prompt is, the better it will be. If you can provide it with a very good brief, it will give you a much better output and result. But what I found is, let’s say if you give a prompt to whatever you’re using and say hey can you write me this video even if it’s the biggest. Brief that you can imagine if you say right the whole video or the whole sales letter. It’s not it’s not going to create a great video but if you do it section by section and you give it great examples that say hey this is a great lead from.
Whatever this this has grossed eight eight eight million dollars you can follow this lead closely just change whatever. it’s going to give you a very, very, very good first draft. And then you have to just edit it very, very slightly. And if you do it section by section by section, it’s going to give you a great output. Obviously, the more elaborate and your own prompt is the better. But in my experience, if you do it, just do it by parts. And I also saw a post or actually a video of David Garfield, he was also mentioned that he was using the same approach. He would just do it section by section, and the result would be 10 times better.
So this is kind of my approach. I also use it for research. Though I found that using AI for research can be great, but it also can be a double-edged sword because it will give you, especially for the health, naturally it will give you sources that don’t exist, so you have to double-check them. Sometimes it will give you, sorry for that, it would give you ideas that are great but there’s no claim that there’s no source for those claims so you have to be really vigilant about those sources and claims. And you have to be very, like, it can give you a lot of ideas very, very quickly. And I have found some great ideas. But then I would see an idea and I would go to Google and do my own research. And then I would use AI again to distinguish between what is the strongest, strongest idea, for example. But I wouldn’t ever rely 100% right now on AI just to give me ideas. It can give me ideas, I would then consider them, do my own research, and then start writing.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense. So I want to ask you a different kind of question here. There is a belief, and it’s probably true, that it’s very difficult to make a living as a copywriter as a non-native speaker. And, you know, there are a couple of exceptions to that rule. You are one of them. What advice would you have? Well, I guess, I mean, you’ve proved that you can survive because you’ve done very well as somebody who didn’t start out speaking English. But what is what advice do you have to those who maybe are English as a second language? They want to be copywriters. They want to be able to connect with clients with good work, high paying work. How can they go about developing these skills like you have in order to succeed?
Svet Dimitrov: That’s a great question. And I think I get this question almost every single day by somebody following me on social media.
Rob Marsh: That’s interesting. Yeah.
Svet Dimitrov: Yeah. Well, probably not every day, but at least a couple of times per week, because obviously they can see I’m not a non-native speaker of English. and they would see that I’m somewhat successful. Obviously, I can be a lot more successful and I strive to be successful every single day, at least by 1% as James Clear writes in his book. But yeah, I think the most important thing is to really practice copywriting every single day. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time at the beginning, but if you say, I’m going to write just twice per week. It could be more time, let’s say two hours per week during the weekend. You could write for 10 minutes every single day, which would be less than two hours. It would be probably 70 minutes, right? But it would be better because you would be practicing your craft every day.
So I advise that people devote, let’s say, that doesn’t have to be a time frame. It could be like 300 words, 400 words, 500 words, even less every single day. And once they see it’s getting easier and easier, they can ramp up that either the time they spend on writing or the number of words. So I would say, Practicing every single day is the most important thing. The second most important or their kind of equal is to read good copy or read any kind of copy every single day. Obviously, the better the copy, the better. And then the third thing, and probably the most important if you want to grow really fast is to hire a coach or a mentor who would help you go there. I think that’s, I actually don’t think, I believe that’s what helped me really increase my income by maybe like six or seven times between twenty twenty and twenty twenty three. And now probably even more in the last few years is when I started investing in courses in my masterminds. As I mentioned I was part of Copy Accelerator for a few years and meeting those people who are more experienced than you, you will learn more about copywriting—how to write better copy, but also because those people are successful and the people you surround yourself with are very very important. Factor in your success because if you’re just around people who are struggling to get there or haven’t done it. you will also struggle obviously you can’t surround yourself only with people that are super successful because if there’s a very big difference between their level and your level you will probably get demotivated in a way so there’s like there should be people that are a little bit lower at a lower level than you, but also people at a much higher level, so we have this incentive to just become better and better and better. So I’d say, just to sum up, write every day, read every day, and write every day, or write, or hire a mentor so we don’t write in a vacuum.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I asked about non native speakers, but all three of those things apply to native speakers as well. If you want to copywriting, you should be doing all three of these things. So there’s, there’s not, there’s not a secret sauce to any of this. It’s put in the work, put in the reps, get feedback and do it all over again.
Svet Dimitrov: Yeah, so for non-native speakers, I would say that they shouldn’t like, for example, with me, it was very different because I came from an academic background. I had my master’s degree. I did a lot of research. I was trying to impress people with my vocabulary. And when I started my travel blog, and my travel and lifestyle blog, I would try to flex my vocabulary, which I think was working against me when I switched from content writing, which is probably fine, but still, you don’t have to learn English at a superb level, you have to understand the nuances, but you have to write really basic copy. It’s better to write very, very basic copy at first, no less, say, a thousand words or less, than to have a very rich like a very rich vocabulary but then you want to be trying to sound very very weird and not conversational so for example probably. You want a lot of people on this. while listening to this podcast episode would recognize Evaldo from Brazil, Evaldo Albuquerque, I think it’s.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, he’s the one exception most people mention when they say, oh, anybody can make it if Evaldo can make it.
Svet Dimitrov: And yeah, the idea is like, especially because Fran told me, because he’s a friend with Evaldo, his English was like five words, like 10, 15 years ago. So the thing that really helped him write a very good copy was his limited level of English, because he would have a very limited amount of words to use, and he had to make the best use of them. And I think there’s a lot to be said that where you write very common conversational copy, most of the time it would work, where sometimes people would just write this very long sentences very long leads that are like this first sentence is like twenty five words or fifty words or whatever life i’ve seen very different cases. This is gonna work most of the time against them because the market most of the time is not. Sophisticated at all so we have to write at the very basic level between the fifth and sixth grade sometimes even lower. So every single job jane or john can understand.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This has been great learning from you. I’ve got a couple of ideas, especially around the personalized website. I just think there’s such a great idea there to share. So I appreciate you sharing all of this stuff, Svet. If people want to follow you and see what you’re up to, where’s the best place to go?
Svet Dimitrov: I would say they would follow me on Facebook. Maybe they can also go to my website, copywriting.com, and I have a few links there that they can follow me on social media. But if they type my name, Svetoslav Dimitrov, or Svet Dimitrov on most social media, most active on Facebook and X, You and I actually connected on LinkedIn. I kind of quit LinkedIn, but I’m still checking, but I’m not going to be posting because I just don’t see the value in it right now. Maybe I will come back later with a better strategy. But yeah, these are the most the places that I’m most active on.
Rob Marsh: I’ll link to those in the show notes for this episode so that people can connect with you easily. And yeah, I appreciate you sharing everything that you have. This has been a fun conversation. So thanks, Sven.
Svet Dimitrov: Yeah, it was my pleasure, Rob. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Rob Marsh: Thanks to Svet for sharing his story and his path to becoming a successful copywriter. As we were talking, Svet mentioned that he doesn’t have a website. Obviously, that was a big part of the initial part of our conversation. His old website doesn’t talk about his current business at all, and he doesn’t refer people there. And he instead uses landing pages customized specifically to each prospect that he’s vetting in his discovery process.
Naturally, I wanted to know more about this. We talked a bit about it here, but to see what he’s sharing with his clients. Can’t really do that on a podcast. So this thing that I’m calling the no website website, I asked Svet after we finished recording, if he would share this idea, this no website website with me. And he sent me a couple of examples to look at. It’s so simple. And I think the no website website idea is one that more copywriters could benefit from using, especially copywriters who are just starting out or who are doing a lot of pitching and want to personalize what their prospects are seeing on their website. So I asked Svet if he would share that exact template that he uses and walk through a couple of examples for the members of The Copywriter Underground.
Like I said, this idea is simple, but the real power of the No Website website is that no one else is doing it. So it stands out, which is a huge part of getting clients to pay attention to you. If you want to see how to use this No Website website strategy to land clients, jump into The Copywriter Underground before March 12th, and you’ll see what Svet does and how you can use this strategy to land your own six-figure clients. You can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
