I have about twenty lead magnets live right now.
Playbooks, frameworks, a cheat sheet, a workbook, an analyzer. I pulled the download report last week to see which ones people actually take. Three things in it surprised me, and all three changed how I'd build the next one.
That's what this is. Not a list of ideas. If you want ideas, I already wrote that one. This is the layer underneath. Six structures, the skeleton of each, the headline formula that fits it, and roughly what it costs you to build.
What the Download Report Told Me
My best performer is the most boring thing on the list. It's a LinkedIn profile optimization playbook. No clever name. No promise of a secret. Nobody downloading it had to guess what they were getting, and that turned out to be the whole advantage.
Playbook beats every other word I've tried. I've named things Playbook, Framework, Cheat Sheet, Workbook, Analyzer. Playbook wins, and it isn't close. It promises a sequence you can follow. Framework promises homework.
I ran the same topic in two shapes and got two different results. Ideal Client Profile exists in my library as both a playbook and a framework. So does my sales system material. Same subject, different container, different download behavior. The topic matters less than whether the shape matches what they'll actually do with it.
And one more, which is less a surprise than a reminder. Every single person who downloaded one of these landed on my newsletter list in the same motion. The PDF isn't the point. The list is the point. Build accordingly.
How to Use This
Six structures below. Each one gets a skeleton, a headline formula, a build estimate, and who it suits.
Build estimates are mine, from making these. Yours will differ. The point is the relative cost, because the format you pick should match the time you actually have, not the time you wish you had.
1. The One-Page Cheat Sheet
One page. Not two. The constraint is the product.
Skeleton: A title that names the outcome. Then eight to twelve items, each one a single line starting with a verb. Group them under two or three headers if you need to. No intro. No "why this matters." They already know why, that's why they downloaded it.
Headline formula: The [Noun] Cheat Sheet, or [Number] Things to Check Before You [Do the Thing].
Build time: An afternoon, if you already know the material. Longer if you don't, and if you don't, pick a different topic.
Who it suits: Anyone whose expertise is a checklist in disguise. If people ask you the same "did you remember to" question over and over, that's your cheat sheet.
2. The Audit or Teardown
You look at their thing and tell them what's wrong with it. Except you're not there, so the document has to do it.
Skeleton: A scoring pass, then a fix list. Five to eight things to look at, each with what good looks like, what bad looks like, and what to do about the gap. End with a priority order, because the reader will not fix eight things.
Headline formula: The [Thing] Audit, or How to Tell If Your [Thing] Is Costing You [Outcome].
Build time: A week of evenings. It's the most work on this list, and my best performer, the LinkedIn profile playbook, is built this way. Not a coincidence.
Who it suits: People who sell a service that starts with a diagnosis. The audit is a free sample of your actual judgment.
3. The Swipe File
The one you're reading is a lead magnet. So is the subject line one. So is the cold email one.
Skeleton: Real examples, grouped by the situation the reader is in. Each one gets the full text, one line on why it works, and the variable they have to change. Never fragments. A fragment makes them work, and they came here to not work.
Headline formula: The Ultimate [Thing] Swipe File, or [Number] [Things] That Actually [Outcome].
Build time: A weekend, but only if you've already done the work. A swipe file is a filing job, not a writing job. If you have to invent the examples you don't have a swipe file, you have a guess.
Who it suits: Anyone with a body of real work sitting in a sent folder or a project archive. This is the highest-leverage format on the list because the raw material already exists.
4. The Scorecard or Calculator
They put numbers in. They get a number out. Then they want to talk about the number.
Skeleton: Five to ten inputs, no more. A calculation they could not easily do in their head. A result with a band around it, so a bad score tells them what to fix and a good score tells them what to protect. My profit analyzer works this way.
Headline formula: The [Outcome] Calculator, or What's Your [Metric] Score?
Build time: A day in a spreadsheet. Longer if you want it on the site, and you should eventually want it on the site.
Who it suits: Anyone selling against a number. It's the only format on this list that hands you a qualified conversation starter, because you now know their number before the call.
5. The Template Pack
Not one template. A set, in the order someone would use them.
Skeleton: Three to five templates that belong to the same job. Fill-in brackets, not blanks, and a one-line note under each bracket explaining what goes there. Front-load a single page telling them which template to use first.
Headline formula: The [Job] Template Pack, or [Number] Templates for [Specific Situation].
Build time: Two or three days, mostly spent on the instructions rather than the templates.
Who it suits: People whose clients get stuck on execution rather than strategy. The pack is worth more than the sum of its files because you sequenced it.
6. The Short Email Course
Five emails over five days. Delivered, not downloaded.
Skeleton: One idea per email, and one thing to do after reading it. Email one earns the next four. Email five makes the ask. Keep each under 300 words, because a course that reads like homework gets marked as read and never opened again.
Headline formula: The [Number]-Day [Outcome] Course, or [Outcome] in [Number] Days.
Build time: A week to write, an hour to load. The writing is harder than it looks because each email has to stand alone and also build.
Who it suits: Anyone whose thing takes explaining. It's also the only format here that trains people to open your email, which is worth more later than the magnet is worth now.
Getting It to Them
This is the part nobody plans and everybody gets wrong.
The mechanics are the same in every tool. A form that captures the email. A tag applied on submission so you know which magnet they took. An immediate delivery email with the file or the link. Then the sequence.
Mailchimp does it. ConvertKit does it. I run mine through The Growth Amplifier. The tool is the least interesting decision you'll make here.
Two things that are not optional:
Tag on download. If you can't tell later which magnet someone took, you've thrown away the only useful thing you learned about them.
Deliver by email, not on the thank-you page. A page delivery means you never confirm the address is real. The email delivery is also the first test of whether they'll open you, which you want to know now rather than in six weeks.
And write the delivery email properly. It has the highest open rate of anything you'll ever send, and most people waste it on "here's your download." Put something in it.
Go Build One
Pick the format that matches the material you already have. Not the one that sounds most impressive.
My best performer is a boring playbook with an obvious name, and it beats things I was much prouder of. That's the lesson. Specific beats clever, and the thing you can actually finish this month beats the thing you'll be halfway through in March.
Then watch the report. Not the download count on its own, but which magnet the people who eventually talk to you came in through. Those are different lists more often than you'd think.