A client of mine emailed me recently, and told me you’d like to hear about this…

He thought you’d find it valuable.

This is the guy who created the EMP-resistant backup solar generator.  The one we sold over a million dollars of, on the strength of one promotion.

I should note: The exact numbers I’m about to lay out are estimates.  I don’t want to go digging into my books to come up with the exact amount.  “Close enough” works to make the point.  I tried to be conservative.  And of course, you mileage may vary.

But it’s a proven principle.  It stands to make you a lot of money, IF you apply it.

Rewind a bit…

A few years ago, I’d just completed one project with Lee.  It was a success.  I’d created a new control for his front-end newsletter subscription.  And then, not much happened.

Now, I’ve known Lee for a while.  And I’ve always found him to be very busy.  He’s running a successful business, and he writes a lot of his own content and copy, so keeping his attention is tough.

Even if he likes you and genuinely wants to work with you, you can’t leave it up to him to find the best fit.

(Honestly, this is true of most good clients — they’re so busy that you need to take initiative to get and hold their attention.)

Even though I’d just created a big breakthrough promotion for him, not much was resulting from my gentle nudges that he should hire me again.

Then, I decided to do something about it.

What I’m about to tell you breaks all the freelancing rules, but it made me $45,000…

I knew at the time that Lee had written some editorial content around EMPs — electromagnetic pulses.

I also knew a little bit about them — and the danger they pose to the Electric Light Parade of our modern life.

I didn’t even realize at the time though, that Lee’s best back-end offer was this EMP-resistant solar generator.

What I did next was part hustle, part auspiciousness, and part blind luck…

I’d just read an article about a Russian satellite called Object 2014-28E, put into orbit under suspicious circumstances.  Basically, it was undeclared at launch (with three other satellites) and looked like a piece of space junk, until it started behaving like a potentially-militarized satellite and setting off national security alarms.

I had an idea.

What if this satellite — or one like it — was launched under similarly-covert circumstances, and was used to detonate a nuclear device and execute an EMP attack from space?

I did a little research on the plausibility of this idea.  Turns out, it’s pretty dang plausible.  Likely?  Who knows?  But absolutely plausible.

From a technical perspective, it’s scary how well it would work.

I ran the idea by Lee.

He seemed interested, but it was the same as before — nothing came of it.

Then, I did exactly what most freelancers would tell you NOT to do…

I did FREE WORK for the client!

I’d told him the idea and it didn’t turn into a project.  So I decided to adopt an attitude of “show, don’t tell.”

I actually wrote the headline and lead I thought would work best to convey this big idea, and capture his core audience’s attention.  Maybe the first 1,000 words or so.  With no contract, or even promise of, “If I like it, I’ll hire you.”

I just did it.

It was like I created my own spec assignment.

NOTE: at the time, I was only thinking of this as a newsletter promotion.  I wasn’t even thinking of it in terms of selling generators.  Lee hadn’t done a great job of featuring the EMP-resistant case of the generator, so I didn’t even realize it was the perfect product for this big idea.

I sent the lead to Lee, with a note to the effect of, “If you like this idea, I can run with it and I think you’ll have a new newsletter control.”

He turned around and asked me to write the promo — but sell the generator.

He paid my fee on the spot.  At the time, it was $10,000 per project.

And I went to work.

I put a ton of work into presenting the idea — but when it came time to pitch the product, I basically edited his copy to fit my pitch…

I’d come up with the big idea.  He had a proven market he was selling these to, and a proven offer.  He told me I didn’t need to mess with that.

(In fact, it was in the earliest conversations around this promotion that I encouraged him to boost the price, doubling his profits-per-sale and adding $500,000 to his annual profits from a 5-minute conversation.  That’s the offer we were using.)

What I did was turned my big idea — basically a variation on the prediction lead formula — into the first 7,000 words of sales copy.

Then, for the remaining 5,000 words, I mixed his words and mine to present the product in a way that I thought was a perfect fit.

Not necessarily a cake-walk.  But it wasn’t too hard, either.

I had a great idea.  I had an offer that worked.  I just had to crank out the best presentation of my idea, and loop it into the proven offer.

This was before I tracked time, so I don’t know exactly how long it took.

What I do know though is that the actual writing process wasn’t that long.

Then he tested my copy, and the sales started to roll in!

It was the best copy that’s been written — even to this day — to sell the generator.

Over the course of a couple months, over $1 million in solar generator sales rolled in.

My split on the deal was 3.5%.

I’m pretty sure when all was said and done, I made over $35,000 in royalties.

So, conservatively, I’m pretty sure that one idea netted me somewhere north of $45,000.

That came from having a big idea, pitching it to the client, and being able to run with it…

Like I said, Lee wrote me recently.  Told me I should write to you about it.  That maybe you’d get value out of this.

In fact, Lee said there’s probably an entire market for copywriters who simply go from client to client, looking for proven pitches that would fit a new big idea.

Then, rather than pitching your copy services, you take a couple hours to do a rough lead for a big idea you come up with.  And sell them the idea as an opportunity to make more sales.

It won’t always work.  I promise you.  And some potential clients that look good from the outside won’t be great from the inside.  And even if you get in, you’ll have to deliver.

I was fortunate that everything with Lee worked out so well.

But I’ll tell you what: doing this is far more fun than countless hours pitching your copywriting services to client after client, and having them not believe that you can deliver.  Or, spending the same few hours you could spend working on a lead sitting on your hands instead, waiting for the phone to ring.

If you’re not slammed with work, it might be worth trying out.

And if it works, maybe it’ll lead you to your own $45,000 payday!

Can I help you increase your odds of success with this?

Late last week, I published my new High-Velocity Copywriting training for BTMSinsiders members.

I haven’t mentioned it before today, because I had some other obligations earlier this week that prevented me from getting the copy that describes it out and published.

Earlier today though, the description went live, and now you can learn more about this new copywriting training here.

Here’s why this is especially relevant.  In this training, I broke down the three big ideas that lead to breakthrough copy in competitive direct response markets.  Then, I explained how to structure the rest of your sales argument to turn that idea into copy that grabs attention, builds interest and desire, and gets your prospect to take action and buy.

If you want to be able to crank out winning promotions for direct response marketers like Lee, this training will absolutely help with that.

And, like all the other training I’ve released recently, it’s included with BTMSinsiders membership.  You get instant streaming access when you join.  You can try it for 30 days at no obligation.

Plus you get streaming access to the entire catalog and all new training as it’s released, as long as you maintain your membership.  (Including a line-by-line analysis of the Object 2014-28E promo, originally recorded as a bonus for the Story Selling Master Class.)

Considering the investment in the entire BTMSinsiders training catalog is just $37 per month, a win like I got with Lee would pay for 101 years straight of membership!

Click here to get started with High-Velocity Copywriting.

Now that’s a pretty compelling idea.

Yours for bigger breakthroughs,

Roy Furr