Posted by: Daniel Levis
June 25, 2008
Issue 445

It Wasn’t Until I Stopped
Thinking of Myself As a Copy “Writer”
That My Income Exploded!

Dear Web Business Builder,

Whether you’re an established or aspiring freelance copywriter looking for an edge … or an independent entrepreneur trying to hone your copywriting chops and light a sales bonfire under your business … you’ll never reach your full potential in sales, profits, and personal satisfaction until you wrap your head around this:

Killer Copy = 20% writing, 80% strategy

Creating the conversion breakthroughs you’re looking for as an online marketer … or making your career take off like a ballistic missile if you’re a freelance copywriter … begins long before a single word hits the page … and ends well after the first sale is made.

It’s a process. And because most copywriters don’t understand this process, they end up blowing it. Freelancers get bullied by fee-balking, dumb ass clients who neuter your copy with endless revisions. And do-it-yourselfers throw up their arms in frustration because their copy falls flat.

So let’s cut to the chase, and I’ll give you that process … 

Successful online marketing and copywriting is nothing more than effective communication. It’s simply a matter of positioning the right person … communicating the right message … to the right audience … at the right time … and in the right way.

That’s it.

If you’re struggling with your marketing … if you’re not having the success you deserve selling your products online … if you feel you’re not making nearly enough bling bling as a freelance copywriter … it’s because you’re missing something in one or more of these five areas. 

Either you’re targeting the wrong market … your message is wrong … you’re not positioning yourself properly … you’re saying the right things in the wrong order … or your copy is boring, confusing, and people just don’t believe it.

If you can systematically strengthen a promotion in these five areas, it almost always leads to blockbuster results. I call that my 5R System.

Suppose you’re a fledgling freelancer copywriter. I want you to STOP RIGHT NOW and ask yourself something:

What Are You Doing
to Snag Your Next Gig?

(And listen, if you’re not writing copy for paying clients and don’t plan to, please don’t tune out. The same principles apply to finding new customers for YOUR business, whatever it might be. Trust me.)

If you’re like most copywriters trying to break into the biz, you’re cutting your teeth approaching big time marketers who do a lot of promotions. 

And at the first nibble, you’re sending out samples … offering to do spec assignments … quoting low fees … or making consignment offers where your compensation is based entirely on results. After all, that’s what the gurus tell you to do, isn’t it?

Well how’s it working?

… Probably not as well you’d like, or you wouldn’t be reading this. 

If you had my 5R system you’d know why. What’s more, you’d systematically alter your approach and watch your dance card fill up so fast it would make your head spin … until you’re beating cash wielding clients off with a stick!

How do I know? Simple, I’ve been following this system for years — long before I started marketing online actually — and it’s made me a bundle. And it’s made my clients much more …

Before I started using it, I was a flat broke and disillusioned commission sales rep. I was pounding the pavement, burning up shoe leather, facing rejection after rejection – going nowhere fast.

When I discovered it, everything changed. My sales ballooned, and I quickly became successful. 

Since then I’ve used it to sell face to face … from the stage to groups … in direct mail and print advertising, and of course, now, on the Internet. 

So this is definitely not some kind of fancy pants Web 2.0 theory. It’s a systematic application of timeless, unchanging principles of human nature that can be adapted to virtually any theater of persuasion.

I’ve used it to sell a wide variety of products and services online – including my own copywriting services. And I’ve proven its power in hundreds of high traffic scientific split tests that have allowed me to continually refine it into a well oiled, snarling, rip snorting cash piling machine!

And because I know what it’s like to be financially frustrated, it’s become my passion to share this powerful knowledge with other conversion-obsessed copywriters and marketers like you. 

It AIN’T just about writing. It’s about strategy. And giving yourself the most reliable, repeatable and predictable system for creating conversion breakthroughs in your marketing … from media selection, to targeting, to messaging, to the mechanics of your offer, and everything in between …

You can use it to become a MUCH more productive copywriter … a MUCH more effective marketer of your copywriting services … and a whole lot RICHER!

So here it is:

The Secret To Getting All The Plum
Copywriting Clients You Can Handle …

Listen, if you’re approaching prospective clients in this day and age on the phone … or through the mail … or advertising your services with Google AdWords, or in trade magazines and directories like most copywriters do, it’s no wonder you’re less than thrilled with the money you’re making.

You’re not positioning yourself as the right person. And by extension, you’re not communicating the right message, at the right time, or in the right way. You’ve got at least four of the 5Rs totally ass backwards …

You can send out all the darn samples you want. They could be
written by Gary Halbert himself and it wouldn’t matter.

Sure you might get lucky and hit the jackpot with this approach. And yes, you’ll probably pick up some work — piddly ass little jobs here and there if you’re persistent enough.

But almost nobody who responds to this kind of marketing is going to give you the respect you deserve.

Nine times out of ten they’re going to haggle you on fees … put you in a creative straightjacket … bungle the implementation of your copy … and generally make your life miserable. Why?

Because you’ve given them all the darn bargaining chips with your marketing!

You’ve got a big “sucker” sign on your forehead that says,
“please hire me, I’m desperate,” just like every other copywriter
out there schlepping for business this way.

The same goes for just about any hyper-competitive service provider business you care to name. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling copywriting services or pruning shrubs. When you’re chasing customers, they’re mentally backing away from you.

By contrast, my 5R Web Conversion System teaches you how to use Web media to position yourself magnetically in the locus of power … as the kind of person your ideal prospect would gladly crawl naked over broken glass to hire. How?

Here’s the million dollar secret: When it comes to selling professional services, it’s the person who is perceived to be in HIGH DEMAND and low supply that people want to work with. It’s human nature, pure and simple.

People want what they think 
they can’t have. Ya dig?

Now I ask you: If you’re actively spraying and praying for customers … sending them direct mail … calling them up on the blower …  or advertising your services directly to every Tom, Dick, and Harry you can on Google and in trade mags and directories — does it look like you’re in high demand? HELL NO!

Why on Earth would any copywriter worth his or her salt do any of these things? Scrounging around for customers in the dirt like that is the epitome of dumbness. It’s downright masochistic!

Listen, if you want all the high paying copywriting clients you can handle … falling all over each other to hire you … begging you to work with them … throwing money at you for a spot on your dance card … and doing what you tell them to do with their marketing so you make the royalties you deserve – it’s really pretty simple.

Become your own best customer, and create the demand.

Allow me to explain …

When you’re a competent freelance copywriter
and someone hires you, what happens?

Suppose you write them some killer copy. They take that copy into the marketplace and it sells millions of dollars worth of product. They pay you a tiny multiple of those sales. And then they shop the promotion around to other copywriters who try to beat your results. If one of them is successful, your royalties dry up.

If you hire yourself to write some killer copy for your own high margin product and it sells millions, what happens? That’s right, YOU keep all of the profits!

Which would you rather have, 
5% or 10% of the profits,
OR 100% OF THE DAMN PROFITS!?

Stay with me here, because with the leverage available to you online, selling your own products is easier than you think. 

Let’s say you decide to create an information product about FX trading. Just for example. (It could be anything you have an interest in and can find a lucrative market for.) You build a highly profitable kitchen table business selling to that market. And you put dirt cheap automated systems in place that allow you to spend just a few hours each day maintaining and growing that business.

Then you start a second business showing other people how to grow their businesses. (Doesn’t have to be in the same niche you’re in, could be anything.)

You give away free information to quickly build a list of followers … you sell a portion of them more detailed information … and you reluctantly sell a few of those buyers copywriting services to help them still further.

What are you doing?

You’re selling the same services that every other freelance copywriter is trying to sell, but your positioning is totally different — infinitely superior. Because you’re publishing information, people view you as a trusted expert.

You become a revered celebrity in the niche(s) of your choosing, and plum prospective customers bond to you like super glue. 

Now who’s in the driver’s seat?

RESULT: Instant respect … clients chasing you … freedom to pick and choose the ones you want to work with. They pay whatever you ask. And they do things your way — or hit the highway.

This is exactly the way I work. 

More to it than that — of course …

• You have to know the secrets of targeting the kind of customers you want to work with …
• You have to get your messaging right, so they’re coming to you in the right frame of mind …
• And you’ve got to plant the right suggestions between their ears at just the right time in the sales cycle, and in just the right way. 

All of the 5R principles apply, just as they do in selling any other product or service.

See the power in what I’m saying here?

The vast majority of freelance copywriters are struggling like bloody starving artists, and there’s simply no need for it.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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4 Comments »

1. Comment by John C. A. Manley | Healthy-Conversions.com — June 25, 2008 @ 9:48 am

   Good timing. This month I made the big switch to info-marketer 75% of my working hours. Got tired of seeing clients make a mess of my copy (e.g. trying to make money on lead-generation!).  Now I’m "hiring"  some of my old client to provide information content for products, and I’m paying THEM a royalty (e.g. 10-15% of gross – like a traditional publisher).

   Thanks for the timely advice and confirmation. So true. Only way to go, I feel. Especially with the added freedom of your own business. I know someone who did the same with drop-sell products and I don’t they’ll have have a client again.     

2. Comment by — June 25, 2008 @ 11:42 pm

   Daniel:

   You’re rock solid right on …

   Last year I hit the 10 million dollar mark with 3 controls and several other high conversion direct response emails …

   For other people’s products … for a nice fee and royalty … or so I thought at the time.

   Then I became my own client …  and have banked over $400,00 so far and counting. So you’re correct. !00% of the damn profit IS way better than 5-10% that can go POOF faster than you can say "another copywriter’s control".

   Oh, by the way, I would add 2 more R’s … Rich and Richer!

   Cheers,

   David Grebow
   KnowledgeStar

3. Comment by Susan Connors — June 26, 2008 @ 8:40 pm

   Thank you ..this is exactly what I needed to hear! I have been fumbling in the dark, looking for a light switch, in a cave, where there is none! This is so dashed true Tony! I am paying myself to work for myself.

   The biggest thing I have is with this network "What do I out on the sites?" You know, where do I get this info, products etc.. That is my biggest thing to date and I will continue developing my ebooks that the other publishers I have talked to in passing are interested in.

   I used to settle for third or second best..no  more!

   Thank you again

   Sue in Aus

4. Trackback by Copywriting Kid — June 27, 2008 @ 8:33 am

   Simpleton?…

   It really seems like different copy addresses different parts of your brain.
   Daniel Levis wrote It Wasn’t Until I Stopped Thinking of Myself As a Copy “Writer” That My Income Exploded! .
   And having just come from Carline Anglade-Cole’s ……