Dave and Jay - Crazy Web Entrepreneurs

With my recent foray into online publishing, it’s become increasingly obvious that with new products, it’s a real challenge to convince buyers to actually click on the “buy now” button without having testimonials on the site.

When you think about this, don’t assume the product is complete BS, but think of a well thought out product that was written after much research from experienced sources.

You see, when writing sales letters, it’s very difficult to project yourself or your product as someone knowledgeable about your chosen subject - especially if you’re a nobody in the field.

Common sense would argue that to appear knowledgeable, you should structure your letter to talk about things in the field that only someone who is an expert would know, however in doing so, you lose the ability to tell a story or keep the majority of your viewers interested enough to keep reading.

So for the average publisher, we’re left with two very unappealing options: either we write the sales letter as pure copy and hope the buyers simply assume we are knowledgeable, or we’re forced to use fake testimonials to convey how “good” our product is, and simply plan to replace them with real testimonials as we receive them…

I was recently speaking with my sales letter writer on the topic, and her suggestion as an alternative was to visit a number of forums dedicated to the topic of the product. This would be done for the purpose of soliciting opinions about experiences that have to do with using professional services related to your product… and then use those as stand-ins.

However, I feel that’s a rather morally gray area in and of itself, as you’re obviously going to have to remove some text from this opinion in order for it to be relevant… and if someone puts a company’s name in the “opinion”, that has to be removed, and so at the end of the day, you’re still left with a “testimonial” which isn’t based on your product but could be construed as being about your product… At which point I ask, how is it any different than me writing up a bunch of fake testimonials?

Unfortunately, the only way to get around this issue is if you already have a name that’s easily recognized or are well-known as an expert, so that you can use actual reviews about your service.

My question to anyone reading this is… How can a morally right person tell people how good their product is without having to resort to such tactics? Any ideas out there?