Videos Instead of Sales Letters?

[Bonnie]

What's your opinion on using videos INSTEAD of sales letters?

I know most marketers are doing videos for squeeze pages now; and many have a video at the top of their sales letter... but I haven't seen too many yet that have NO sales letter at all and JUST a video.

Here's an example: AffiliateLaunchBlueprint (disclosure: that's an affiliate link).

That video by Michael Rasmussen is 33 minutes long. There's no text information about his product on that page -- to find out what he's selling, you HAVE to watch the video. (There's no way to fast-forward.) There is no BUY button on that page, either... the link to that is at the end of the video.

I honestly found it annoying. Not the video itself, but the fact that I had to wait 33 minutes to (1) find out the price, and (2) be able to order his product.

Plus, I have to admit (don't tell my boss), I was doing this while at work. During slow times, I check my personal email account, saw an interesting message from Jimmy D. Brown (one of my many online heroes, in addition to Lynn ) talking about his number-one affiliate. He mentioned Michael's name, and that made me follow his link (Michael was my first copywriting client many years ago).

So anyway, I get to Michael's page and its a video. I can't turn the sound on, cuz I'm working in a cubicle cluster and coworkers hear everything. (I'm guessing other internet marketers who have jobs do this sort of thing at work, too.)

Fortunately, it's not a "talking head" video... it's basically a slide show and I could follow it by reading the text in the video.

The video convinced me to buy (especially when I FINALLY saw the price), but if there had been a sales letter on that page, I would've read through it within 5 minutes (vs. 33 minutes for the video) and bought much sooner.

As it was, I barely had time to place my order before shutting down my computer at work and heading home!

Personally, I do like videos on sales pages... but in addition to sales letters, not in place of them.

But I'm not a top-selling marketer like Michael, and I'm assuming he's tested it. It just boggles my mind that making prospects wait until the end of a long video (even an interesting one) to click the buy button is apparently converting well.

I was tempted to quit waiting and just click off. I'm glad I didn't, because his product is just what I need right now, but I suspect many prospects will not be as patient.

Sorry for the long post. But I would like to hear your opinions: Are sales letters being replaced by videos? And is that a good thing or a bad thing?

*** UPDATE ***
Just found out... if you go to the above link and decide you'd like to try to product without sitting through all 33 minutes of the video, you can add /go at the end of the URL to jump to the order page.