John,
Thanks for your kind words. Yes, I did write the copy myself. I was lucky enough to be trained by (allegedly) the highest paid UK copywriter (before he put his training prices up out of my reach - now £5K + a percentage of future earnings, I believe). I learned a lot about testing results etc.
I think your friends and myself may be talking about different circumstances. If they are working on say, multi product data feed sites then I can understand their approach. If we are talking about small business sites then we really need to give as much information as we can. We need to use the "what's in it for me?" approach and write it from the customers' point of view.
Paul,
The reason I asked you that is that it's much easier to build sites when you have a clear idea of how you want them to work.
For example, on a couple of my affiliate sites I was trying to sell products straight off the page to new visitors. This year they will be changed to be more low key (less hard sell) and hopefully become more of authority type sites, providing much more information.. The idea will be to have everything biased towards capturing emails and building a relationship with visitors, rather than a one off sale. I hope that makes sense.