TCC Podcast #442: Hand Copying to Learn Writing Skills with Derek Johanson

What’s the best way to learn copywriting? Could it be hand-writing sales pages and other great copy from expert copywriters like Mel Martin and Gary Bencivenga? My guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Derek Johanson, the writer who created CopyHour, a program designed to help you learn to write by hand-copying great copy. We also talked about getting affiliates, mentoring, and a lot more. If you want to improve your copywriting skills, be sure to listen to this episode (and click here to learn about the CopyHour program). Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Stuff to check out:

The CopyHour Course
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh: What’s the best way to learn copywriting? Would it surprise you that handwriting great copy is possibly the most successful technique? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.

There must be something like a thousand different courses for copywriters to learn how to write copy. And probably another thousand more that talk about content—as if it’s a separate skill set. And there are probably an additional thousand more free videos in places like YouTube that promise to teach you the skills you need to succeed as a copywriter. With that many choices out there, you would think the world would be crammed full of phenomenally skilled copywriters, but it’s not. This should tell us that not all courses or workshops that promise to teach writers how to write copy and content actually work.

So what does work? Is there a course out there that many copywriters talk about or recommend when it comes to writing engaging sales or conversion copy? And it turns out there is. One course recommended by people like Dan Ferrari, Chris Orzechowski, Elise Savaki, and hundreds of others is called CopyHour. Unlike many other courses, CopyHour focuses on handwriting great copy. Does that really work?

I asked Derek Johanson, the writer who created CopyHour to be my guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to answer questions like… why does hand-writing teach copy structure and pacing where other methods don’t appear to have the same level of success? 

We talked about the genesis and evolution of the CopyHour program and what it includes… things like writing great offers, writing headlines and bullets, and how Derek has improved the course over time.

Now I want to be upfront about something… I came to this interview as a bit of a skeptic when it comes to hand-writing copy. I’m all in on studying good examples of emails, sales pages, and other good copy. In fact, I have a swipe file with more than 500 different sales pages that I’ve saved to study… those swipes are part of The Copywriter Underground… But handwriting? I wasn’t so sure… I think Derek may have changed my mind. And if you’re a skeptic on this topic, you may want to hear what he says about the science of handwriting and learning. If you’re convinced by the end of this episode that you