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This is an excerpt from my just published free report, 12 Astonishingly Simple Ways to Dazzle Your Clients & Double Your Income.
I encourage you to download it now and share it with your friends.
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If you’re like most freelance copywriters, you’re making a grave mistake that costs you thousands of dollars a year.
What is this mistake?
It’s what sales people call “churn and burn.”
That means finding a prospect, turning them into a client, getting paid for a project, then having to find a new prospect to turn into a client for a new paying project, and so on.
Obviously you don’t do this all the time. You probably have at least one or two clients who hire you for more than one project. But it’s likely that you’re churning clients more than you should.
It’s not hard to understand.
Copyright for copywriters: Who owns your copy?
If you write a novel, it’s clear to everyone who owns the work. You wrote it. You own it.
But if you write a website for an employer or client, who owns the copy?
What we’re talking about here is “copyright.” It’s one area of law that you should understand to protect your interests and avoid unnecessary confrontations with employers and clients.
Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and I don’t pretend to be one. What follows is my admittedly meager understanding of basic copyright principles. You should not consider this legal advice. If you have a legal question about copyright, you should consult with a real lawyer who has attended a real law school (not one on the Internet) and works in an office with rows and rows of impressive leather-bound books.
What is copyright?
Today’s copyright laws are based on the Copyright Act of 1976. This act basically says that the moment you fix your work in a tangible form, whether it’s written, typed, or dictated, your rights are automatically activated.
How to write a complete direct mail package
Every copywriter should know how to write a direct mail package.
It’s true that you see fewer of these today because of growing online marketing and the down economy. However, the direct mail package remains the granddaddy of direct marketing.
The knowledge and skill required for the package can translate into every other medium.
So let’s go through what I call the standard or “classic” direct mail envelope package piece-by-piece.
The sample shown is a direct mail package I wrote many years ago for a piece of training software. It includes a 6″ x 9″ outer envelope, 4-page letter, brochure (actually a “broadside”), lift note, and reply or order form.
You can see the complete direct mail sample here.
Are you an ethical copywriter or a marketing weasel?
In the minds of some consumers, people in marketing operate at an ethical level below lawyers and barely above used car salesmen.
And that includes copywriters.
Some of my friends call me the “marketing weasel.” It’s said affectionately, since I make a lot of money for some of them, but it shows that even copywriters don’t have the best reputation for ethical behavior.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to get on a soapbox here. I just believe that this is a subject every copywriter should think about from time to time. Sara Lancaster touched on this last month when she revealed her own standards for accepting clients.
What is your stance on ethics in copywriting?
Many years ago, I wrote a piece for Direct Marketing Magazine where I outlined 4 ways to approach ethics:
7 defensive copywriting strategies to close the sale
I’ve always said that copywriters are actually sales people. They just happen to use the written word to close sales.
In his first post for Pro Copy Tips, Donnie Bryant talks about copywriting in the same way. And he suggests how to look at copywriting in the same way we look at driving.
That will make perfect sense when you’ve finished reading.
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In my hometown, everyone had to take a defensive driving class in order to get their driver’s license.
More than anything else, defensive driving is a mindset you’re supposed to get into before you hit the road. Its purpose is to keep you safe while traveling from Point A to Point B. There are plenty of crazies to watch out for, after all.
Let’s compare driving to selling for a moment.
Traditional sales training dictates an aggressor mentality, a take-charge, “never settle for no” attitude. This kind of salesperson is very similar to a driver suffering from road rage, if you think about it. Driving like a maniac is not wise, and neither is trying to sell with an aggressive frame of mind.
Hype copy that sells and how to write it
Nobody likes hype copy. And it doesn’t sell. Right? Well, many copywriters think that. But it’s not necessarily true.
Actually, “hype” is in the eye of the beholder. And if done right, it works.
Today, Barry Densa debuts on Pro Copy Tips with his unique, wise-ass take on writing hypey copy. (You gotta love a guy who admits he’s a wise-ass.)
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Discriminating consumers love hype copy.
Hypey copy is like a fine wine. It has great legs, a fine body and a rich nose.
Hype excites the emotions, stimulates the buying glands and ultimately converts better than dull, drab, “only the facts ma’am” marcom-style copy.
Marketers and consumers who bemoan the ugliness, the crassness, and the used-car-salesman look and feel of hypey copy are all uneducated and uninformed dolts.
All of the above, whether true or not, is a form of hype copy … of the unrepentant bad kind.
How to differentiate bad hype from good hype
Hype has many guises or nuances. Unfortunately, today, hype has become an indiscriminate catch-all-phrase for any type of copy that anyone objects to, for whatever reason.
Well, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too is hype.
Computer meltdown: 5 lessons for copywriters
Over the last couple decades, I’ve suffered through some serious computer incidents. So when Sally Bagshaw told me her computer died, I felt her pain.
But in typical glass-is-half-full fashion, Sally wrote a fantastic post about it. This is a nice sister post to my computer crash recovery plan I wrote about in January.
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I’ve been a bit quiet lately. Work has been busy, my son has been on school holidays, and oh yes my computer died.
It is completely dead.
Won’t even turn on type of dead.
Turns out a software update did something nasty to my hard drive. So nasty that I’ll most likely not be able to recover any files from it.
Don’t you love that? Technology seems to fail at the most inopportune moment.
Now don’t worry, this isn’t going to be one of those woe-is-me-I’ve-lost-all-my-files posts. I learned that lesson a long time ago so now have thorough back-up systems in place. Even though I lost my hard drive, so far it seems that I haven’t lost any data. But nevertheless, I did learn some useful lessons the past couple of weeks that I’d like to share with you:
