Sales letters are not easy to write. They require good copy writing skills, which is as much a science as an art. You've only one page in which to convince your would-be customer, and chances are, you're paying for each visitor, so you need to make the most of it.
But with the right offer, a skillfully crafted sales letter can be what you need to turn a huge profit. On it hinges the success or failure of your site.
To learn how to write sales letter copy, study successful sales letters, and learn from them. Pick up copywriting tips. Learn from the experts, the ones who have written highly successful ads in their time. Good books to read are Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joseph Sugarman, Million Dollar Mailings by Denison Hatch, and the classic Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples.
Or you can outsource the writing, but good copywriters are expensive. The very good ones can charge as much as $15,000 for one page.
An alternative is to use systems and templates to help you. Such as those found at InstantSalesLetters.com and BurpiesByBrett.com. Or Johan Mok's MillionDollarWebCopy.com. (Johan Mok was a college student of 25 when he discovered how to write sales letter copy. He made his first million from it within a year.)
Closing the Sale
Once you've convinced your customer to buy, remove all obstacles to his doing so. Make your website easy to navigate so that users don't get frustrated and leave.
Design your website to make it fast and easy for him to order. A site with a difficult sales process will lose customers. So fulfil every order as quickly as you can.
On that note, there is a saying that 'ugly' websites get more sales. In reality, it's not so much the ugliness, as the simplicity of such sites -- the fact that there's only one navigation path from beginning to end without distracting side roads, that channels the visitor to the sale.
The other issue of concern to customers is safety. Give them assurance that their details are safe, and that your payment process is secure. For that, you might want to use a well-known and respected 3rd-party payment processor, like Paypal.
Ultimately, the key to a successful sales letter is to build credibility, trust, and confidence in your customers.
