Copywriting Lessons From The Late Great Gary Halbert
Updated: January 28, 2024 by Bill Burniece
Gary Halbert is legendary in the world of copywriting and marketing.
He was known affectionately as The Prince Of Print.
A copywriting icon who was as unique and wild as he was brilliant.
Gary was one of the most creative minds in marketing and advertising history.
His writing techniques and methods were timeless and still rake in money even today, nearly a decade after his passing.
While many great marketing copywriters has since filled the void left by Gary, he is sorely missed.
Who Was Gary Halbert?
Gary C. Halbert was an extremely talented, well-paid and highly sought-after direct response copywriter.
There are many writers who believe that Halbert was the best copywriter who ever live. I agree with them.
Gary made and lost several fortunes along the way.
In the early 1980s, Gary went to Boron Federal Prison in California for corporate tax evasion and fraud.
Many believe he was railroaded on the charges, but his son Bond says that’s not true.
When he was doing his time, Gary wrote The Boron Letters to Bond. That collection became a book too.
What Others Thought Of Gary
As John Carlton, another legendary copywriter and colleague of Gary’s, wrote after Gary died in 2007:
“He was bigger than life, and could suck the air out of any room he entered without saying a word… preceded only by the shock-wave of his hard-earned reputation. He had a lust for experience, an astonishingly huge appetite for everything available in life, and took great pleasure in being who he was.”
“And he truly was a great man.”
“He single-handedly changed the nature of modern direct response advertising… and through his teachings, spawned three generations (and still counting) of rabble-rousing entrepreneurs and marketers who continue to force the business world to bend to their will.”
As his son Bond stated in a podcast I recently listened too “My dad had this kind of rocky relationship with money. And so, a lot of people don’t know it but his ability to make money was only really eclipsed by his ability to blow it. And he did this on purpose.”
How To Learn Money Making Lessons From Gary Halbert For Free
You can learn so much from Gary just by reading his archived newsletters.
His extensive newsletter collection contains information that you can use to make yourself a very high income by implementing some of his methods.
Gary was charging $195.00 per year for this information (or a lifetime membership for $2,885.00) that you can now read for free on this site.
Trust me; once you go there and start reading you’ll be hooked. Just the way that Gary himself would want you to be. You’ll be highly entertained while getting a education in direct response marketing that can help you break through the income barrier to reach the next tax bracket.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Gary was a believer in promoting high end products which makes his philosophy completely relevant to what we teach around here.
Gary Halbert and Dan Kennedy are the two most influential marketing geniuses that I know of and I believe it would pay you huge dividends to study and emulate their work too. Go there now and pick one article to read and let me know what you think.
“Once someone gives you the invitation that they are interested you wanna jump on them with both feet and you want to do it as fast as you possibly can.” – Gary Halbert
The Best Digital Marketer’s Have Strong Writing Skills
Not everyone enjoys writing.
But I can tell you that having solid writing skills goes a long ways as a digital marketer.
If you market anything online, it’s difficult to avoid doing at least some of your own writing. Whether you have a blog and write articles, write your own sales letters, or write emails to your list it should be something that you’re comfortable doing.
You can certainly outsource your writing to someone else and you should if you absolutely suck at it or don’t have time to do it yourself. But that get’s very expensive.
You don’t have to be a top writing to get your message across and convince people to buy the products and services you’re promoting. If you’re already comfortable writing and want to learn how to write even better Gary is who you want to learn from.
You see, Gary was a master at direct response advertising. Perhaps nobody has ever been better at it than he was. Although copywriting titans like Dan Kennedy may have something to say about that.
Direct response marketing and advertising is designed to evoke an immediate response and compel prospects to take some specific action, such as opting in to an email list, picking up the phone and calling for more information, placing an order, or being directed to a web page.
My Favorite Gary Halbert Quotes
- “Products are a dime a dozen. They are important, but much less crucial to success than finding a hot market.”
- “Everyone wants to climb the mountain, but the big difference between those at the top and those still on the bottom is simply a matter of showing up tomorrow to give it just one more shot.”
- “Motion beats meditation.”
- “The very first thing you must come to realize is that you must become a “student of markets.” Not products. Not techniques. Not copywriting. Not how to buy space or whatever. Now, of course, all of these things are important and you must learn about them, but, the first and the most important thing you must learn is what people want to buy.”
- “HALT stands for hungry, angry, lonely and tired and you should never make a decision when you are any of those things.”
- “It’s a matter of timing. Selling is like seduction. If you ask a woman to go to bed with you, whether or not she says ‘yes’ is largely a matter of when you ask her.”
- “A support system is like a garden and you always need to be on the lookout for weeds to pull.”
- “The most important thing is a hungry market. Not a brilliant burger.”
- “Nothing is impossible for a man who refuses to listen to reason.”
- “I have just finished running the hill five times (4 miles), and I did it in 57 minutes and five seconds. Do you see how this type of personal, specific info bonds the reader and writer closer together?”
- “It has long been my belief that a lot of money can be made by making offers to people who are at an emotional turning point in their lives.” “What I am doing here is taking the reader by the hand and leading him exactly where I want him to go. It seems like a small point and, maybe it is, but is the little touches like this that keeps the letter flowing, the reader moving along, and, it relieves him of the burden of trying to figure out what he is supposed to do when he finishes reading a particular page.”
The truth is that in affiliate marketing it takes the same amount of time & energy to promote a product or service that pays you $500.00 than it does to promote a product that only pays you $29.00. Doesn’t it make sense to get paid more money for doing the same amount of work? Let me teach you how to sell high ticket products and services for high paying commissions.
