If you're like most Internet marketers, you wouldn't hire a copywriter for most of your projects--and for good reasons, too. First, you know that most of your projects are simply too small to bring in a high-powered copywriter and pay them $50-100 per page.

And second, few others know your product and your market as well as you do. No matter how hard you try to convey important points about your product to the copywriter, you know you'll lose something in translation.

So what can you do? Your first option is to continue to write sub-par copy for most of your sales letters; and simply hope that it will do the trick.

However, if you're more realistic with yourself, you'll probably quickly see the problem with doing this--namely, that you're leaving hundreds or even thousands of dollars on the table every time you create a sales page that converts 1%, rather than 2% or 3%.

And this is precisely why you must learn the art of copywriting: it will not only save you money, but it will also ensure that you have a master copywriter working on every project you initiate.

Above all else, mastering basic writing skills is important. No matter how persuasive you are verbally, if you cannot put those words into clear, thoughtful, grammatically correct writing, your arguments may prove more off-putting than enticing.

And this is precisely why I recommend developing your basic writing skills before you try to delve deep into copywriting and other forms of sales writing.

When it comes to copywriting, no one is going to be impressed by your good grammar. In fact, no one will notice your grammar at all unless it is bad. And this is precisely why it is important to think about good grammar being the starting point for any sales letter--not a lofty goal to achieve.

If you have a weak background in writing, there's a good chance you are frequently making grammatical errors that most readers perceive as a poor reflection on you. For instance, you might use sentence fragments often; or you might have subject-verb agreement issues. Either way, you are probably repeating these mistakes again and again without even noticing it.

In fact, writers make these mistakes all the time. And when they do, it not only makes them look bad, but it can even confuse the reader by providing the wrong information.

So what can you do about it? You can start by identifying your areas of weakness; and then practicing grammar drills to improve.

Doing "grammar drills" isn't on the top of the list of the things you want to spend your weekend doing, but if you truly aspire to be a MASTER copywriter--not a mediocre copywriter--you must start by mastering grammar first.

As with most things in life, your time is probably best used concentrating on your problem areas. So, rather than re-learning English grammar in its entirety, you should eliminate your weaknesses.