This will inform your structure. Will people read a 700 word email? Maybe. But is 50 words enough to communicate your entire point and get them to act? If yes, always pick the 50.

Whichever you decide, you must be considerate of the reader’s attention.

✅ Whatever you do, keep it as short as needed to make your point. And not a word longer.

Think minutes, not words. You’ll probably work out word count. But those measures reflect your perspective, as the person who’s actually generating the text. A more reader-centric measure is reading time.

People read ~23 words per minute. This book took about 5 hours of reading, so he had to pack a lot of value so readers make it through. When we can all spend 5 hours doing absolutely anything else, his job is to cram value per second to keep us reading. Same with this Crash Course. Got it?

People read what interests them. Keep it interesting, pack it full of value and intrigue.

The length impacts structure, but both are malleable

You might get given a template, and you might get given a word count. Take each with a pinch of salt. Your primary role is to communicate your point. Do not bend your message out of shape to stick to a word count or a structure. The reader wont know why you’re being weird, they’ll just think you can’t write cleaarly.

Give your writing a clear structure to make it easy to understand.

You can use structure to get your reader to think in a step-by-step with numbered headings, or in a hierarchy, with a top 10. Whichever you pick, it should help communicate your message and take the reader through your point intuitively. Your job is to do this planning, research and structuring up front so they don’t have to piece together your thoughts.

On any brief, I now do the work upfront to understand the point I am trying to make so well, that I can relay it in a simple order. I spend time figuring out if the structure communicates my point or not. If it is difficult to follow my train of thought, I try again.

Even in this course. I had to get clear on the reader, and how to structure the order I’d introduce the books. So here’s my structure and why I ordered it this way.

BOOK ORDER / COURSE STRUCTURE

1. Broad concepts about human psychology

2. Good books on how to write well

3. Specific books on writing Copy

4. Get niche with books on

5. Direct response

6. Writing ads

7. Sales letters

RATIONALE

1. Convince you Copywriting is science

2. Define parameters of writing WELL

3. Combining writing well with psychology

4. Let you flex your understanding in 3 different contexts to hammer home the concepts covered </aside>