The Collected Letters of John Carlton — both volumes, every page. The private swipe file of the most ripped-off copywriter alive: 35 letters and ads that pulled in millions, each with John's own story of why it worked. Read it. Search it. Steal from it. Start with John's introduction →
“Your own private swipe file of my most sought-after pieces.”
Carlton's first golf ad -- the legendary "one-legged golfer" hook selling Milt Wallace's Triple Coil Swing videos through Dr. O'Leary's just-you-and-me-talking letter, complete with fascination bullets, a wall of testimonials, and a 3-month no-risk guarantee.
file V1-02 02Carlton recounts how he bullied conservative publisher Rodale into mailing his gutsy, blind-bullet-packed 8-page letter for "Sex: A Man's Guide" as written -- a control that slaughtered the incumbent and mailed for over five years.
file V1-03 03Carlton's legendary nickel-grabber sales letter for Chris Clugston's "Combat JKD" videos, which glues a real coin to page one to pull the reader into a Tulsa skinhead-bar brawl story and a no-risk offer.
file V1-04 04Carlton breaks down his famous golf ad about arthritic, overweight betting hustler Darrell Klassen, showing how an incongruous "humiliation" headline plus a 3-swings-or-$10-back guarantee made die-hard golfers unable to stop reading.
file V1-05 05Carlton's contrarian 16-page financial promotion for Phillips Publishing sells Barry Ziskin's newsletter by branding him the mysterious Arizona "human computer," marching readers through ten "Million-Dollar Checkpoint" sections that pile on proof, premiums and a money-back guarantee.
file V1-06 06Carlton breaks down the power-word incongruity hook behind the skinny golf genius who accidentally hits 425-yard tee shots -- and uses the letter's famous wandering-line typo to argue that good enough is good enough -- followed by Dr. O'Leary's four-page letter and the re-priced magazine version with its OHP Priority Order Form.
file V1-07 07Carlton explains the short lift-note cover letter -- dangling a free bonus golf video -- that went out with a remail of the "Skinny Genius" letter to tip fence-sitting customers and mine a responsive list until sales hit bottom.
file V1-08 08Carlton's long-running self-defense promotion — mailed as a letter and run as a magazine ad for over seven years — offers a free military-replica training gun and dares you to have a friend point it at you and squeeze the trigger, to prove combat trainers Randy Wanner and Bob Taylor's bare-handed disarming videos work.
file V1-09 09Carlton dissects his Gregg McHatton golf-video "bonding" package -- an irascible-father cover letter, a hyper-specific 22-minutes-and-17-seconds headline, and a post-dated-check "Free View" offer with a driver raffle -- complete with the "Second Notice" outgoing envelope.
file V1-10 10Carlton dissects a Leo Costa "Hot List" letter that credentializes a forthcoming magazine ad -- handing bodybuilders $20 off insider steroid secrets before the price goes up -- as a lesson in always telling customers about the deal.
file V1-11 11Carlton dissects the long-running "blind golfer" video sales letter where he introduced his famous "four ball guarantee" -- a purely benefit-driven pitch made possible by shunting the expert's credentials into the "Does The Name John Darling Ring A Bell?" lift note.
file V1-12 12A "sworn to secrecy" limited-release sales letter for TRS, personalized to each reader by name, selling a $69 martial-arts video that exploits a "blind spot" in all fighting systems and can supposedly be learned just by watching -- with Carlton's commentary on why boring, inoffensive ads are profit suicide.
file V1-13 13Carlton dissects his “lipstick letter” technique — openly confessing a screw-up to justify an irresistible bargain — through two golf-video letters that turned a botched label and a wind-ruined tape into runaway sellers.
file V1-14 14A doom-and-gloom financial promotion Carlton wrote alongside Gary Halbert selling "The Crime Connection" reports on how drug-cartel cash would rock every market, complete with the famous "stick letter" that arrived with a free 2,000-year-old widow's mite coin attached.
file V1-15 15Carlton softens his hard-sell toolkit for Rodale's new Christian health market in this personalized Dr. Frank Minirth letter offering a free 21-day look at THE SPIRITUAL LIFE GUIDE.
file V1-16 16A TRS "Hot List" letter with a personalized $97 check stapled to it -- Carlton's showcase of creative price-slashing, where depositing the check (by phone) gets you Chris Clugston's uncensored GOLD EDITION Camhrac Bas fighting videos at less than half price before a last-day-of-the-month deadline.
file V1-17 17Carlton dissects three promotions that attached real money to the page -- a dollar-bill-stapled letter selling Delta/Seal combat-training videos, Howard Ruff's penny-topped newsletter pitch, and a golf letter backed by a crisp $50-bill guarantee -- to show that cash is a powerful but strictly one-shot attention grabber.
“More proven letters and ads for your own private swipe file.”
Carlton breaks down the over-the-top story hook behind a TRS self-defense letter from Bob Pierce, in which unassuming 5'5" knife-fighter Felix Valencia tames the deadliest biker bar in LA -- and $30 is pre-loaded into your account to try his two-video fighting course.
file V2-02 02Carlton explains how a decade of outrageous golf advertising earned him permission to make an over-the-top promise -- 50-to-70 extra yards off the tee after one practice swing -- in this Dr. Mike O'Leary letter selling Bobby Schaeffer's "Explosive Power Secrets" video for OHP.
file V2-03 03Carlton's bullet-crammed "free look" letter for Rodale's WHAT WOMEN WANT book -- mailed after nervous executives stripped the personalized headline it was built around, and presented as a warning about compromising the sensational edge of your message.
file V2-04 04Carlton's notorious 16-page "fat cats" letter for Leo Costa Jr.'s Optimum Training Systems -- an industry-exposing rant that sold the SERIOUS GROWTH and CRITICAL MASS mega-supplements and proved bodybuilders will devour long copy.
file V2-05 05Carlton's infamous personalized gang-attack headline for a Paul Vunak self-defense tape offer enraged an entire mailing list -- and the groveling "Bob Pierce" apology letter that followed sold even more product than the original.
file V2-06 06A tiny 6"x4" house-list postcard that drove traffic to a golf client's new website by crediting each recipient's ohpdirect.com account with $20 and dangling a downloadable free report -- both good for just two weeks.
file V2-07 07Carlton's full-page dating ad that pulled like crazy by twisting the market's usual promise -- teaching a self-confessed nerd's secrets of attracting women instead of chasing them -- even though the ghost-censored book behind it got returned by nearly every buyer.
file V2-08 08A personalized lift note from fight trainer Chris Clugston piles urgency onto Jim Curley's TRS sales letter for the "Rosetta Stone" streetfighting video -- only 81 tapes, a $10-just-for-looking guarantee, and a ticking clock.
file V2-09 09Carlton pre-positions the launch of Leo Costa's $69 “Titan Training System” by mailing the full sales letter to the house list disguised as a “press release” with a favor-asking personal note from Leo, alongside the Bob Pierce lift memo that carried the same letter to colder fighting-market lists.
file V2-10 10Carlton's long-running back-cover ad for a chiropractic practice “coach,” built on a CPA-audited $96,485 headline number, benefit-hammering checkmark bullets, and a wall of doctor testimonials aimed at burned-out chiropractors who desperately want to believe it.
file V2-11 11Carlton demonstrates the "piggy back" lift-note play: trusted list owner Jerry Robinson's CONFIDENTIAL cover letter warms up his Health For Life buyers for a four-page Combat JKD streetfighting magazine ad, sweetened throughout with Jerry's handwritten margin notes promising a better deal and a free video.
file V2-12 12Carlton recounts how Gary Halbert trashed sixteen straight drafts of this diet ad demanding more empathy -- and how the seventeenth version, the Dr. Michael Sparti ThermoSlim letter, mailed for almost two years at millions of dollars a month.
file V2-13 13A golf video-course sales letter that meets every kind of golfer -- old, young, chronic slicer, or average duffer -- exactly where he is, promising long-drive champion Mike Gorton's 20-minute lesson on a risk-free, post-dated "free look" offer so the reader can finally look good in front of his buddies.
file V2-14 14Carlton explains his "numbering system" for compressing a complex science story into a few pithy pages, illustrated by a Leo Costa Jr. house-list letter that sells $122-a-bottle Fortis Plus by walking bodybuilders through an eleven-point testosterone-pheromone story.
file V2-15 15Carlton dissects a TRS letter from Bob Pierce selling Tom Proctor's $69 “Lost Art Fighting Video,” showing how handwritten circles, brackets and margin doodles “humanize” long copy and catch the eye of readers who only scan.
file V2-16 16Carlton breaks down the scandal-igniting ad he wrote for Leo Costa, Jr. -- which persuaded six top-20 professional bodybuilders to confess their exact steroid regimens on videotape -- as proof that daring to reveal a market's dirty little secrets can cause a sensation and pay off big.
file V2-17 17An early TRS self-defense letter in which “John Davis” recounts the back injury that left him “vulnerable as a baby” and pitches Mike Goldbach's 3 fighting secrets — vicious skills requiring zero strength, speed or training.
file V2-18 18Carlton breaks down a completely "blind" four-page golf letter that never reveals what the product actually is — it just teases the four "dirty little secrets" pros use to take their perfect range swings onto the course, selling Bobby Schaeffer's "Alpha Zone" video on pure benefit and flirtation.