Who invented the VSL? Jon Benson, the “ugly” VSL and the history of the video sales letter

Jon Benson is the person most widely credited with inventing the VSL, specifically the text-on-screen "ugly" video sales letter: words on a screen, a voiceover and no face. He claimed the invention himself in a 2011 episode of the I Love Marketing podcast, describing how he built it to sell his Every Other Day Diet. The persuasion inside the format is nearly a century older.

Who invented the VSL?

It depends on what you count as a VSL. Selling with long-form video is older than the web: in the US, the FCC dropped its limits on the length of TV commercials in 1984, and the half-hour infomercial followed. But the specific thing marketers call a VSL, a sales letter delivered as a video on a web page with an order button below it, is most closely tied to Jon Benson, a fitness and nutrition author and marketer.

In episode 44 of I Love Marketing, published November 14, 2011, hosts Joe Polish and Dean Jackson interviewed Benson about video sales letters. Benson was direct: "So, yes, I am the inventor of that." He was also precise about what he meant. Other marketers were already making sales videos that looked like PowerPoint presentations, he said, but "nobody was just doing words on a screen." Polish's reply was measured: he said he didn't know whether Benson was the inventor, but Benson was the first person he had learned the format from.

That is the honest state of the record. The claim comes from Benson himself and is widely repeated, while even the host interviewing him stopped short of confirming it. The episode gives no date for the first ugly VSL, so this guide doesn't give one either.

Why some people credit Ryan Deiss

In the same interview, Benson said he went to teach the format to marketer Ryan Deiss, who then created a course on it, and added that "a lot of people think Ryan created it." That is Benson's explanation of where the confusion comes from. If you need one fair sentence: Jon Benson is credited with creating the text-on-screen VSL, and, by his account, Ryan Deiss helped spread it by teaching it.

Here is that chain as Benson told it:

Why some people credit Ryan Deiss, by Benson's account

1. 1Benson makes a text-on-screen VSLWords on a screen, a voiceover and no face, to sell his Every Other Day Diet.
2. 2He teaches the format to Ryan Deiss
3. 3Deiss creates a course on it
4. 4Many people credit DeissIn his words: "a lot of people think Ryan created it."

How the first "ugly" VSL came about, in Benson's words

Benson's story, as he told it on the podcast, runs like this. He had been making YouTube videos of himself talking to the camera to sell his books. Each one took hours to produce, they converted poorly, and the feedback from his list kept coming back to how he looked on camera rather than to what he said.

So he took his face out of it. He described the result as a video with "just me and words on a screen" and called it "the first ugly video sales letter." He highlighted the words he wanted to stand out, drawing on his background in NLP, and reasoned that people would take in more if they saw and heard the same words at once.

A short test did so well that he suspected a fluke, so he built a longer version for his sales page. The episode's show notes describe the result as taking his conversion rate "from 1% to 6%." Treat that as his recollection, not an audited figure.

He also described habits that still define the format:

• A pattern break in the first ten seconds, which he called the "snap suggestion."
• One sentence per slide, occasionally two separated by an ellipsis.
• Slides that end on an ellipsis or a colon, to create what he called "forward motion."
• Highlighted key words on screen, and certain words drawn out in the voiceover.
• A buy button timed to the pitch. Benson said he and his programmer created the "magic buy button": when the pitch arrives at a set second, the voice says "Look below this video right now" and the button is there. It's the ancestor of the timed call to action covered in our CTA timing guide.

He also used an "exit splash," a script that showed a message when a visitor tried to leave the page, a forerunner of today's exit-intent prompts.

Why the ugly format worked

Benson's results are his own account, but the reasons the format spread are easy to see, and they still apply.

• Nothing to judge but the message. There's no presenter to dislike and no production quality to be suspicious of. The argument stands alone.
• The video controls the pace. A reader can skim a long text letter, jump to the price and leave. A video reveals the argument in the order it was written, which a text page can't enforce.
• Reading and listening at once. The words on screen match the voice, which keeps the eye on the message and helps viewers who start with the sound off.
• It's cheap to make and fast to change. A new hook is a new slide and a re-recorded line, not a re-shoot. That made testing practical, and testing is how direct-response marketers find what sells.

Benson also said Deiss tested the format heavily and that the plainer versions kept winning. Again, that's his account; the safe lesson isn't "ugly beats pretty" but "production value is not what sells."

From print ads to video: the lineage of the VSL

The VSL didn't come from nowhere. Each era of direct response added something the format still uses.

From print ads to video

Each era of direct response: its medium, then what it added to the format

1. 1920sPrint ads, mail orderMeasured response and testing (Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising, 1923)
2. 1926 onwardPrint adsThe tested headline (John Caples, "They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano")
3. Mid-20th centuryMail-order ads, direct mailWriting to the reader's awareness (Eugene Schwartz, Breakthrough Advertising)
4. 1984 onward, USTV infomercialsHalf-hour selling on video, demonstrations, a phone number as the call to action
5. Early webLong-form sales lettersOne long page, one offer, one order button
6. 2011 interviewText-on-screen VSLThe sales letter read aloud on screen, with a timed buy button
7. TodayPresenter, UGC, mini and AI-assisted VSLsMore production choices, the same principles

Claude Hopkins, who finished his career as president and chairman of the Lord & Thomas agency, popularized test campaigns, especially using coupons to see which ads produced orders, and was a great believer in sampling; Scientific Advertising came out in 1923 (our summary). John Caples wrote "They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano" for the U.S. School of Music in 1926 and published Tested Advertising Methods in 1932 (Caples on headlines). Eugene Schwartz's Breakthrough Advertising taught copywriters to match the opening to how aware the prospect already is (levels of awareness).

Television brought the format closest to today's VSL. Long-form infomercials typically run 28:30 or 58:30 minutes, according to Wikipedia's history of the infomercial. Swap the phone number for a button and the TV studio for a web page, and you have most of a VSL.

What changed: bandwidth, YouTube, phones and autoplay

The principles stayed; the delivery changed around them.

• Video became a normal part of the web. YouTube launched its public beta in April 2005, and Google agreed to buy it in October 2006, closing the deal that November (YouTube's history).
• Traffic moved to social feeds. Paid social ads made the VSL the destination for cold traffic that had never heard of the seller, which pushed hooks to work harder in the first seconds.
• Phones took over. Slides designed for a desktop monitor are hard to read on a phone, which is why many VSLs now use larger type, captions and vertical cuts.
• Browsers changed the rules on autoplay. Starting with iOS 10, WebKit, the engine behind Safari, let videos autoplay without a tap as long as they were muted (WebKit, July 2016). Chrome's autoplay policy, which took effect with Chrome 66 in April 2018, always allows muted autoplay but restricts autoplay with sound (Chrome for Developers). That's why modern VSLs start silently with a "tap for sound" prompt; the VSL autoplay guide covers the details.
• Measurement got finer. Benson judged his VSL by the sales page's conversion rate. Today you can see, second by second, where viewers leave and how much revenue each visitor brings in.

What stayed the same

Strip away the technology and a VSL still does what a mail-order ad did a century ago.

Then and now

The same five jobs, a century apart

Then: the mail-order ad

• Tracking: keyed coupons showing which ad produced each order
• Testing: headline tests in mail-order ads
• Awareness: writing to the reader's state of awareness
• The argument: the long-form sales letter
• The ask: the order coupon at the bottom of the ad

Now: the VSL

• Tracking: click IDs and revenue per visitor by ad
• Testing: hook and headline split tests
• Awareness: choosing an offer-first or story-first opening
• The argument: the VSL script
• The ask: the buy button timed to the pitch

The format is a container. What fills it, a specific promise, believable proof, a clear offer and a measured response, comes straight from the classics. For the full anatomy of a modern VSL, read what a VSL is.

Is the text-on-screen VSL still worth using?

Yes, in the right places. Slides are still the cheapest way to produce and revise a VSL, which makes them ideal for testing leads before you pay for a shoot. They also suit sensitive topics where viewers may prefer not to watch a face, sellers who can't appear on camera, and fast translation.

Their weaknesses have grown with phones. Small text is hard to read, a wall of words can look dated in some markets, and in niches where buyers want to see who they're buying from, a credible person may outperform words alone. Treat that as a hypothesis to test, not a rule. If you use slides today:

• Set type large enough to read on a phone held upright, with few words per screen.
• Mix in b-roll or product shots so the screen changes often.
• Keep the on-screen words matched to the voice, or add captions, for viewers who start muted.
• Cut a vertical version if most of your traffic is mobile.

The VSL editing guide covers slide design in detail, and the VSL presenter guide compares slides with founders, actors, UGC creators and AI avatars.

How to apply this history to your next VSL

Tick each one off as you plan your next VSL; the ticks stay in this browser:

The history, applied to your next VSL

• Start from the viewer's awareness, not the format (Schwartz). Decide whether to open with the offer or a story before you choose slides or a presenter.
• Write your hook like a headline you'd test (Caples). Draft several and plan to test them.
• Key every traffic source (Hopkins). Know which ad produced each sale, and judge by revenue per visitor.
• Make the cheapest version first (Benson). Production value wasn't what made the first VSL work, so test the argument before you polish it.
• Time the offer to the pitch. The button belongs at the moment the video asks for the order, not before.
• Keep every claim true and substantiated. Direct response has always run on promises; today's rules on claims, endorsements and testimonials decide which ones you can make.

0 of 6 done