Aspiring copywriters, you’re getting it wrong!
The P.S. is a widely known tactic when writing a sales letter. I’ve done countless copy critiques for product owners who write their own copy… and they almost always have a P.S.
What that usually means is that they’ve seen others doing it and assume it works.
Is that a logical assumption? Yes.
Especially since Michel Fortin and Eric Graham use them consistently, and they test everything.
There’s another avid tester who does NOT use them, however. That’s James Brausch (or Diego Norte).
I assume he doesn’t use them because either 1) he finds it a little unethical to pretend like you forgot to say something in the message, or 2) he hasn’t found them to work.
James often tests different parts of the sales letter against “nothingness.” Meaning some visitors might come to his sales letter and see the PS sections, while other visitors would come to his sales letter would not be able to see the PS section.
And whichever version of the letter gets the most sales wins.
My guess is that if James did test PS’s, he found them to hurt sales. That would match my test results with PS’s written by non-copywriters.
In my experience, if you’re new to copywriting you might as well just leave the PS section out. Most tests I run with other people’s copy, the PS is either beat or statistically tied by the blank variable. In fact, that’s been the case with every test for other people’s copy.
Sometimes the PS is actually far behind the blank variable, meaning the PS was actually hurting sales. So if you’re a beginner, you might as well just leave them out.
The PS’s I write do often convincingly beat the blank variable. I employ these “3 Quick Rules” for writing the PS section, and they work when done right.
08. Feb, 2010 
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