This is part 2 of a two-part article.
If you’ve missed the first part: Click here.
#6 Demand What You’re Worth (and Get Everything in Writing)
In business people will always try to lowball you.
That’s just a fact of life.
And when you start out it can be tempting to take every deal that’s thrown your way.
For example, early on in my freelance days I met a guy who was pretty big on Clickbank.
He offered me $500 to write a VSL for one of his products.
Now I knew this guy was making over $100k every month!
I thought it was ridiculous. And I politely declined his offer.
And shortly after I found a client who paid me $5,000 for my first package.
Look, I’m not a fan of complete rookies charging ridiculous amounts for copy.
There are people out there asking for $10k, $15, $20k a package even though they have no clue what they’re doing.
And you might even get one client to pay you that much.
But if you don’t deliver the goods, they will never hire you again.
But you don’t want to work for peanuts either.
But if you put in the work I lay out in this article (daily practice, writing your own VSL)… you are a serious student of the game.
And you should never work for less than what you’re worth.
Figure out the going rate in your industry…
And make sure you get paid accordingly.
#7 Don’t be creative
One big mistake almost every rookie copywriter makes:
They try to be creative.
They try to come up with crazy ideas… crazy formats…
But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
In fact, you don’t want to be creative.
You want to copy what works.
As Bill Bonner, the billionaire founder of Agora said: “It’s called copywriting for a reason.”
Look at how rich that guy is. You should listen to him.
If you look at winning promos in any market, you’ll notice they all look the same.
They have the same kind of themes…
The same structure…
The same offers.
And that’s for a reason.
Because they work!
I was spinning my wheels for the first two years in this industry.
My first big break came after I swiped a winning lead almost line for line.
Since it worked so well, for the next promo I copied the entire structure of a winning promo…
And it turned out to be a massive winner.
If you put in your daily practice (reading copy, writing copy, idea generation) you will start to notice those patterns too.
Go ahead, rip them off and make money.
Of course you don’t want to steal word for word.
That’s a big no-no and will get you fired if you’re caught.
But you definitely want to take winning ideas… formats… structures…
And then put your own twist on it.
I will go deeper into how that works in a separate article.
#8 Write Drunk and Edit Sober
I used to take months writing a full sales promo.
Now I can go from an idea to a full script in just 2-3 weeks.
And it’s all because of one piece of advice my copy chief gave me.
Force yourself to only move forward – no erasing, no editing.
When you write you write…
And when you edit you edit.
Don’t do it both at the same time.
A lot of copywriters fall into this trap.
They write… and start judging their copy immediately…
Then they start to mess with it before they have even finished writing the script.
You can drive yourself crazy doing that.
And you can waste entire weeks getting nowhere.
When the deadline is coming up and you haven’t written a single word
You want to do the opposite.
Just vomit everything on the page.
Write complete garbage.
Leave placeholders or even skip entire sections.
Just bang out a rough, ugly first draft.
They key is to get it out as fast as possible.
THEN you can start editing, filling in the blanks, moving things around…
It sounds simple but it will make the entire writing process so much quicker.
Of course that means you should have done your research…
You should have an idea…
And you sould have prepared a rough outline.
Once you have these things in place, bang out a first draft quick.
It gives you something to work with.
But you can’t work with something that only exists in your head!
#9 Make Hay When the Sun is Shining
When things are good, you should take advantage…
Becaus they likely won’t stay good forever.
I’ve seen plenty of copywriters… and even entire companies come and go over the years.
One year a company is blowing up, they have a bunch of big winners and are printing money…
The next year, nothing works and they are struggling.
That’s why you should always make hay when the sun is shining.
For example, 2020-2021 were incredible years for online marketers.
Because of the Covid lockdowns, everybody was stuck at home and bored out of their minds.
People started shopping online more than ever before.
And the industry I’m in took off.
The client I worked for went from $80M in annual revenue to over $300M.
My income almost doubled.
I thought things would last forever…
And I figured I can take the foot off the gas for a bit.
But you probably can guess what happened next.
In 2022-2023 the world went largely back to normal.
The markets turned…
And suddenly revenue numbers fell off a cliff again,.
When I think back about how easy it was to make money those years…
And how much harder I have to work now for the same income…
I wish I would have taken more advantage.
I put out a measly 2-3 promos per year when things were good.
This year, I will write at least 5 before the year is over…
And when things get easy again I will take advantage.
#10 Start Building Your Own List
Copywriting can be addictive.
Your promos are always battling it out in the market place against other promos.
It’s almost like breeding Pokemon and sending them into battle against other monsters.
So it’s very competitive.
And you only make money when you win.
But the House – your client – ALWAYS wins.
So you want to start working on building your own offers as soon as possible
Ideally from day 1.
Every seasoned copywriter will tell you this…
They wish they would’ve started their own list earlier.
Because if you can sell products for clients…
Why not sell them yourself – and keep all the money?
So do yourself a favor.
Start an email list today, right now.
You don’t have to “fake it til you make it” or pretend to be a guru.
You could simply write about your progress in the copy game and what you learn along the way.
But get started today.
I wish I would’ve started on my own projects a lot earlier.
And I see a lot of copywriters who will never make the jump.
They make just enough money where they don’t walk away from client work.
And they can get stuck in that mode forever.
Don’t fall for the trap.
Build your own list today.
And make sure you sign up to mine so I can sell you lots of cool stuff. 🙂
