When Typos Cost You Money (and my simple fix)

I just received an email from a well-known online marketer. The guy has been in the business at least 20 years and makes significant bank – or at least I assume he does – who knows.

Look, I get it that proofreading is boring. It sucks. Who wants to take the time, right? I’ve probably published more mistakes than anyone.

But… some mistakes can be far more costly than others.

I clicked over from the email to his sales letter which was interesting for more than just the typos (of which there were many.)

His subheadline wasn’t even about the product, it was about one of the bonuses – a stack of old books written on a related topic. I’m going to tuck that little bonus-in-the-subheadline technique away for possible future use.

Scrolling down, there were the typical typos such as, “ahve” for have. “Befroom” and “beddroom” for bedroom. “Podcsat” for podcast. “Soemthing” for something. These are things that are super easy to catch if you pay attention to your spellcheck. And yet, there they were.

Then I got to the one that cost him sales. I’m going to paraphrase the paragraph headline and what he wrote, but you’ll get the idea:

3,000 members on recurring billing at $47 a month. This guy I knew was famous for raising money for bigwigs and doing this and that, but he also ran an online business where he got 3,000 people paying him $38 a month. I’ll show you the exact method he used.

Ouch.

Did you catch that?

My theory is he first wrote $38 a month, but later decided it would look better at $47. He changed the headline but forgot to change the paragraph that came after it.

Which had me wondering… is he making ALL of this up?

Just as bad, there was a ‘testimonial’ from “John Doe,” the name Americans use as a placeholder for a real name. Obviously, this was supposed to be flushed out with a real sounding name and a much better testimonial than the placeholder of, “I’ve taken a few of his programs over the years and have learned a bunch.”

Wow that’s embarrassing. Ironically, I have no doubt this marketer has enough real testimonials to fill a book.

Up until the fake testimonial and the price discrepancy, I’ll bet a lot of people really wanted to buy the product he was selling, too. I know I did. But after those confidence shaking mistakes, why would your average customer believe anything on the page?

Credibility and sales were lost.

You might want to proofread your sales letters like your sales depend on it. Because they do.

TIP: I personally use Grammarly.com (free version) to check my blog posts.