A confession: I can’t diagram a sentence. I mean, I could once. In seventh grade, I was a master. But now…participles, gerunds, modifiers? I’ve got no fricking idea. Here’s the thing about rules of English—which is pretty much the same for any set of rules, really—it’s important to understand them so that you can intelligently break them. Unless you’re teaching English … [Read more...]

Everybody needs a contract, right??? After all, we need to be safe—to protect ourselves!!! But…to protect ourselves from what, exactly? Like the topic of whether or not to bill upfront, the question of contracts comes from the same impulse to “protect ourselves” from nefarious clients. People believe that having clients sign contracts means that they won’t have to worry about … [Read more...]

I get this question a lot—“how many rounds of revisions do I give my client?”—and I understand the thinking behind it. People are worried that clients are going to “take advantage” of them and request round after round after round of revisions until it’s perfect. But here’s the thing: Our copy is supposed to be perfect. (Or, at least, as close to perfect as it can be.) It’s … [Read more...]

If you’re looking for a way to get started with a potential client—or, perhaps, a good piece of value to bring to a potential client to convince them to work with you—landing pages might just be the perfect place to start. Landing pages are where a visitor “lands” after taking an action link clicking an ad, clicking a link, or opting in. Landing pages have exactly ONE … [Read more...]

I first started hearing about this a few months ago. Someone left a comment on a post asking if there was any use in hand-copying other people’s ads to learn copywriting. Then, someone else sent an email through to us. And, after that, I found out that a few copywriting courses make hand-copying ads major pillars of their teaching. Let me make something very clear: No, … [Read more...]

Here’s a short one, but an important one: When we’re writing copy for our clients, it can be tempting to view the project and your copy through your own perspective. After all, that’s the perspective you’ve been viewing things from for your entire life, right? But, when you can’t escape your own perspective, you’re doing your clients—and your career—a disservice. If you’ve ever … [Read more...]

Here’s a hard truth: the average conversion rate for purchases is right around 2%. Of course, it can skew up or down depending on the industry or the product, but 2% is a pretty solid estimate. That means that for every 100 people who see an offer…2 people will buy. Ouch, right? Obviously, one of the best ways to affect that number for the positive is to craft compelling … [Read more...]

Here’s a copywriter’s nightmare scenario: You land a client. You agree on a price and deadline. You work your rear end off, writing, revising, and perfecting the copy. And, when you send it to your client, they reply with: “This really isn’t what I wanted.” Or, maybe even worse, pages and pages of changes they want made. Huh? What went wrong? How did this project … [Read more...]

I hear this a lot: “I’m interested in copywriting, but I don’t want to trick people or force people into buying anything.” And I definitely get that: I know that a lot of people are put off by the idea of capital-S selling and pushing things on people. No one wants to feel disingenuous or pushy. Well, good news: First, that's really not what copywriting is. Copywriting is about … [Read more...]