The #1 Copy Secret That Takes You From Good To Great!

As the Founder and Publisher of Money Map Press, I oversaw the creation of hundreds of multi-million dollar promotions. Most grossed $5 to $10 million.

Some hit $15 million, $20 million… even $30 million.

All told, we generated close to $1 billion in sales — and a big reason why is what I’m about to share with you.

This might be the most important secret in all of copywriting.

It centers around a strange word most people have never heard of: Phenomenology.

Now don’t let the word throw you. Every copywriting technique you've ever learned — every headline tip, every body copy trick — is ultimately trying to do one thing:

Create a phenomenological experience for the reader.

Once you truly grasp this, you’ll realize:  This is the core idea behind every promotion that works.

It’s what allows you to make the kinds of subtle writing decisions that separate good copy from great — and that can earn you millions in royalties.

So what the heck is it? Let me explain.

Think back to a moment when you were so deeply absorbed in something — painting… playing music… digging a hole in the backyard — that you lost all sense of time.

You “came to” later, stunned at how much time had passed.

For myself, I can think of an experience doing just that: painting a picture. And being so absorbed that I had no idea where I was, only to “come to” two hours later, look at the clock, and go “holy shit.”  I’ve actually been somewhere else, some other “place” for the past two hours and it felt like two minutes. 

Think of an experience like that for yourself.  It’s pure joy. Pure absorption. There is no “I.”  There is no ego.  There is no self-consciousness. There is no thinking at all beyond what you’re absorbed in.   No thoughts. No distractions. No sense of self.  Just flow.

That, in simple terms, is phenomenological absorption. And your job as a copywriter is to induce that exact state in your reader — and hold them there until you trigger the sale.

If you think about it, all the language we use around great copy ties back to this:

We talk about “fascinations.” We “shock” readers with headlines.We make them “imagine” wealth… feel “fear,” “awe,” or “greed.” We bombard their senses with facts, charts, visuals, and voice.

But the real test is this:

Did you absorb the reader so completely that they stopped thinking… and just felt?

This is incredibly hard to do.

But once this becomes your guiding goal, you start to notice when it's happening — and how to make it happen on demand.

Let me give you an example.

A few years ago, we created a promotion at Money Map called Alpha 9 — for trader Tom Gentile.

Tom had developed a one-of-a-kind trading system that scanned historical stock charts to find patterns right before stocks popped.

Incredible system. But let’s be honest — historical charts aren’t exactly sexy.

So how do you turn that into a phenomenological experience?

Like always, we started with the core question: “How are we going to sell this?”

That led to our mantra — the one I drilled into every copywriter on staff: Take the viewer somewhere they’ve never been… Show them something they’ve never seen before.

That’s how we approached Alpha 9. Instead of leading with charts or Tom’s track record. We opened with a mysterious location: Tom’s Command Center — a locked-down facility only 12 people had ever seen. So secure, you couldn’t break in with a battering ram.

Here’s how it opened…

This is a screen grab of the HTML version of Tom Gentile's Alpha 9 Promotion

That one promotion went on to make $20 million+.

That’s the power of inducing a phenomenological state.

And once you get good at it, you’ll be able to wield every tool in your arsenal more effectively:

• How to create tension between expectation and surprise

• Why being super literal stokes imagination

• How to structure emotional flow

• How to write in “phenomenon” copy blocks

• How to build a Big Idea with a single question

• The “Geiger Counter” method for knowing when you’re off track

• How to sell without ever “selling”

• When to use reason to punctuate emotion

• Why abstraction kills absorption

• How to drive deeper using prediction and “future thought”

• Why you should never telegraph your next paragraph

In total, there are 43 proven ways to create this experience in your copy — and over the coming weeks, I’ll walk you through every one of them.

I’ll break them down. I’ll give you real examples.  I’ll even show you how to combine them with AI to produce better, faster copy under deadline.

And I’ll do it all free — because this is what I love to teach. There’s no cost or anything. Just click here if you’d like me to send these 43 principles to you, one per week.

Let’s take your copy from good… to great.

Talk soon, Mike Ward