“Can you write a sell sheet for us?”

At first you may think, “Sell sheets. That’s not a very sexy kind of project, is it? They usually don’t pay all that well.”

But writing sell sheets can be fun, interesting projects. I write sell sheets all the time for my clients.

Although they aren’t the highest-paying projects, they can be very profitable to write. The average fee ranges from $500 to $1,000 per sell sheet, with the average around $750.

Stay with me, and I’ll explain how you can multiply your income on sell sheet projects.

But before I do, let me just back up a little bit for those of you who may not be familiar with this unique type of project.

What is a sell sheet?

A sell sheet is like a mini brochure. It’s often a print brochure, but it can be produced electronically as a PDF as well and made available online.

Years ago, the most common type of small brochure was the trifold brochure. You may have seen these in the past — they are the size of an envelope with two folds.

Some companies also produced a bigger, multi-page brochure. I remember writing brochures that were 12, 16, 20 pages long or more. Those long brochures are very rarely produced anymore.

Since then, the small trifold brochure and the large multi-page brochure have evolved into a very short, very efficient format called the sell sheet. It’s typically one 8-1/2 x 11 page printed with copy on the front and back. If you Google “sell sheet examples,” you’ll find hundreds of examples of what they look like.

A sell sheet is by far the most common print brochure style being used in B2B marketing today. They’re especially popular among companies that sell industrial products, technology products, high-end consulting, and training.

Before we dive into tips for writing sell sheets, it’s important to understand the three types of sell sheets B2B companies use in their marketing.