Secrets of a Successful Copywriter

Hi all,

I've been a full-time professional freelance copywriter and marketer for 24 years and I'm often asked the question... "what does it take to become a successful copywriter?"

It's a fact that many of the world's leading copywriters have had no formal training, tuition, coaching or mentoring. Many do not possess a degree in any subject and many did not even attend college. So, what does it take to become a successful copywriter?

I think it's simply a passion for business, an understanding of people and a flair for communication through writing.

I also think that anyone who has a degree in English, Marketing or Journalism is going to be pretty handicapped in this business. And the reason I think this, is because copywriting is not about use of the "English Language", although the use of good grammar and punctuation are quite important, as far as credibility is concerned.

And it's not about "Marketing" in the sense of creating flashy, meaningless advertising like you see in the TV commercials. And it's definitely not about "Reporting" as you might read in a newspaper or magazine.

But it has everything to do with communicating with the reader. And the only study I would recommend for anyone considering copywriting as a career is to study the masters. A master copywriter does not merely make a very good living at his craft, but is recognised as a master of his craft by everyone else in the copywriting and marketing business.

So, if there is one piece of advice I could give anyone contemplating becoming a professional copywriter it is to "write as you talk". I've said this many times but it doesn't always sink in with some people, and that's because some people find it really difficult to write this way.

Not surprisingly, the people who find this concept the most difficult to grasp are those who have been educated in… you guessed it… English, Marketing and Journalism.

I'm not going to dwell on this issue but instead I'm going to tell you a story…

Before I became a professional, freelance copywriter I was a Garden Designer. Briefly, here's how it all began…

I set up in business as a freelance Garden Designer and I advertised my services locally. I would get a phone call from an enquirer and we would arrange a mutually convenient time for me to visit them and survey their garden. After taking the overall measurements of their plot, I would then listen very carefully to what they wanted in their garden and how they wanted it to look.

My initial question to my potential client would always be, "so how do you imagine the finished job will look?" I needed to either paint a picture in their mind or somehow get a copy of the picture they already had their mind. My job then was to put that picture on paper and get my construction team to bring it to life.

The finished garden design would be the result of understanding my client's exact requirements, and by using my skill as a designer, I would transfer those communicated desires onto paper. I would then have to communicate the contents of this blueprint to my construction manager and create a finished picture of the garden in his mind.

That's how I worked. I relied heavily on a communication process that would ultimately create pictures in the minds of everyone involved in the project in order to achieve the desired result. And it worked like clockwork.

However, after 12 years of garden designing I began to get bored. It was all becoming too routine and I needed a challenge. And I mean a real challenge. Something to get really excited about and something that could make me feel like I really wanted to get out of bed for. So, I wrote a book about garden and landscape design. I self-published it and I had 100 copies printed.

Next, I wrote a sales letter.

I'd never written a sales letter before but I found it quite easy to do. The words just flowed onto the page. Of course it is easy to write about something you already know a lot about. Then I did two things. I placed a small classified ad in a national horticultural magazine and I rented a mailing list of 1000 names and addresses.

Next, I sent out my sales letter.

The Internet wasn't around then so direct mail was the only way to get right in front of my target audience. And the result? I sold all 100 copies of my book in the first week, so I repeated the process over and over. Now what I was learning here was that I had discovered a way to communicate with complete strangers through a letter.

I wasn't duly concerned about the volume of book sales, although it was nice to be making some easy money. However, I was much more interested in experimenting with my writing and promoting other completely unrelated products.

I bought the resell license to a home study course about "Making Money from Direct Mail". Well, I was suddenly very interested in direct mail, so I thought I'll read the course and promote it at the same time. So, I wrote the sales letter, had 100 copies of the course printed, rented a mailing list and placed an ad in the business opportunity section of the Exchange & Mart.

Within a week I had sold only 17 copies.

Well, not only was I feeling a bit bemused but my ego was totally deflated. After a while I thought, how arrogant I was to think that I could communicate with people I didn't know, about something I didn't really know much about, and expect them to buy from me. What a wake up call!

Lesson learnt!

And that lesson became the driving force that led me onto the path of copywriting. I read everything I could find about copywriting, advertising and marketing and from that day on I tested everything.

I tested headlines, sub headers, guarantees, PS's, length of copy, testimonials, font colours, font type faces, length of sentences, length of paragraphs, I wrote sales letters with images and without images. I created order forms and tested them against "priority reservation certificates". I used lightweight paper and heavyweight paper. I used white paper and I used vellum coloured paper. I wrote teaser copy on the envelopes and I used different size envelopes. I personally signed my letters and I used handwriting fonts on others.

I tested and tested and tested.

And today, 24 years later I am still testing…

Only now I'm testing my copy on websites, in emails, in press releases and in articles. And, in all my years as a professional marketer, I've learned never to assume anything, never take anything for granted and never, ever think you will ever know everything there is to know about copywriting.

The best you can hope for is a result.

And with testing and tweaking you can make that result a profitable and viable proposition.

So, let's summarize. The question was… what does it take to become a successful copywriter?

And the answer is, know your product, know your customer, communicate naturally and test, test and test again.

Till next time,

Bill

Knight-Writer.co.uk

VideoAds - The Time Has Come!

Hi All,

If you've been marketing any kind of product or service online then you'll know just how important video is. Websites like YouTube and Yahoo Video make it soooo easy to reach a vast audience, and in marketing terms this just cannot be ignored.

I must admit that I've been a bit slow in embracing the video scene and adapting it for marketing, but all that's about to change. I've just released 2 Powerpoint presentations on video complete with soundtracks. I call them VideoAds.

My team at Anglox are working on some really cool ads at present and they want to build a portfolio because we're going into the ad production business. Well we create and publish just about every other type of media, so why not video ads?

You can see our 2 hastily created offerings on YouTube. See this one first: License2Profit and then this one: eMarketingToolkit.

If you're thinking about creating and distributing videos then check out this website. www.tubemogul.com

More on this subject soon.

BFN
Bill

www.knight-writer.co.uk

My Closely Guarded Secret Is Out

Hi Everyone,

Okay, this is not something I do every day. I am letting you all in on one of my most lucrative income streams...

About 10 years ago I stumbled across an Internet "goldmine". It was a horde of precious products freely available on the Internet and hardly anyone knew about them.

I wrote a book about my find. The title was "FreeDotCom". I sold many copies, but not as many as I would have liked. Still, I had become a self-publisher and because I had access to literally hundreds of thousands of free products, many of which I could legally claim as my own, I started Anglox Pubications.

Anglox is my publishing business and year on year it has grown bigger and bigger without me having to do very much at all. All my colleagues at Anglox are freelance professionals and so we have been able to expand the business into many areas of creativity including web and graphic design.

But it all started out from very humble beginnings...

I can clearly remember the very first product I "created". I say created, but it was already freely available to me. I just tarted it up and made it saleable. It was the text of the Magna Carta. I just downloaded it, reformatted it and changed the font to Engraver's Old English Font. I then designed and printed simple front and rear covers with 120gsm card, placed transparent covers over these and ring binded it all together.

That was my product! And I sold it all over the world. Most went to the US. And want to know something? I'm still selling it to this very day!... Want a copy? :)

Now, after all these years I'm also selling hundreds of other creative products too... and it doesn't cost me one single penny to get them.

That's been my closely guarded secret!

Get this! More and more free products are becoming available almost daily. And there's a huge market for all this stuff. It's all much, much too big for little ol' me to reach, so that's why I can afford to tell you about this.

I just know you're going to be absolutely gobsmacked!... even shell-shocked!

This information will totally blow you away...

You just won't believe that a business can be so easy and yet so profitable.

This home publishing mularkey is the real prize, guys. There's nothing else like it on the planet.

Ans it's even easier to do now than it was 10 years ago. What's more... it has branched into so many other areas. I mean... when I first started in the home publishing business my only option was to produce information products in print. Now there's all kinds of information and entertainment products that can be reproduced in print, pdfs, reproduced onto CDs and DVDs, mp3s and apple iTunes.

The markets are vast! And the money... it's the easiest you'll ever make.

Okay are you ready to learn more about my little secret?

Just go and visit my website and all will be revealed. License2Profit

If you have questions about this truly amazing opportunity, just drop me an email to the support line at: info@anglox.com

Time to live!

Warmest regards,
Bill

www.license2profit.com

An Internet Marketing Solution For Small Business Owners

Hi Guys,

Some small business owners I've spoken to recently have told me they are getting very confused about all the various online marketing options, so I've written this post for them...

Now, every small business owner knows only too well that a well planned and executed marketing strategy will keep them in profit regardless of the ups and downs of the economy. I know some business owners tend to plough much of their marketing budget into offline advertising, like press ads, magazine ads, radio and television commercials.

Whilst others prefer to invest their hard-earned cash in online advertising like pay-per-click and flashy banner ads.

With the trend increasingly in favour of online advertising, simply due to the huge volume of online shoppers, many business owners who are trying to promote their products and services online are obviously facing a few problems.

Not least is the problem of e-confusion.

This embarrassing and uncomfortable condition is brought about due the numerous streams of marketing options now available to all internet based businesses. Anyone who has been soundly educated in the bricks and mortar type world of business and marketing is now finding it increasing difficult to know which way to turn.

Should they focus all their efforts and resources on pay-per-click or have a few banner ads circulating cyberspace too? Well, it would appear that the outcome of this little decision is the very least of their problems. The real dilemma, which is striking fear into all but the very savvy of internet marketers is, where does social network marketing fit into their strategy?

It can't be ignored. There are millions of potential customers frequenting the social sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, not to mention LinkedIn, Bebo, Hi5 and Friendster. And every dedicated businessman and woman worth their weight in salt knows that you have to ply your trade where the masses gather.

It's what's called a marketplace!

As offline advertising becomes more and more expensive and much less effective, many small business owners know they must get a foot firmly on the threshold of as many streams of new media marketing as possible. And herein lies the problem for many, because they simply don't know how to.

New media marketing is not even remotely like marketing in the real world and it goes against everything business owners have come to know and trust. So here lies a big opportunity. Master the many facets of internet marketing and you master the web.

It might sound simple but in practice it takes work, effort, training, learning and a bit of trial and error.

So why is internet marketing so complex?

It's because there are so many options, and a business that wants to survive, grow and prosper needs to explore most of them before deciding on which marketing option is right for them.

The social networks have already been mentioned and come high in the list of avenues waiting to be explored. A search on Google for "social network websites" returns a page count of more than 295 million, which at least suggests its importance. That's certainly a lot of web pages devoted to the subject. But social network marketing is only part of the equation.

Today, the modern savvy internet marketer, AKA online business owner, needs to be conversant with or at least familiar with article marketing, affiliate marketing, referral marketing, viral marketing, video marketing and forum marketing.

Then there are blogs and RSS feeds, search engine optimisation, keyword optimisation plus joint ventures and online press releases to consider.

All these avenues represent the various options, in which a business needs to apply its marketing techniques, strategies and formulas.

So is it any wonder why so many small business owners are e-confused?

Well thankfully a solution is at hand. Myself and my colleagues at Anglox are helping to unravel the many mysteries of internet marketing by producing a complete marketing toolkit, appropriately called the eMarketing Toolkit. It's a comprehensive training programme, which covers just about every aspect of e-commerce marketing.

It's now available as a 2 CD set.



And because the Internet is a global marketplace, we have made the eMarketing Toolkit available worldwide. For businesses in the UK we have created this website: emarketingtoolkit.co.uk and for businesses everywhere else we have created this website: e-marketingtoolkit.com

Having this toolkit in your marketing armoury will save a lot of time and wasted effort. It will also open up many new marketing possibilities. I highly recommend it to any online entrepreneur or small business owner.

More to come later.

BFN,

Bill

Online Marketing Is Now More Important Than Ever!

Hi All,

I went to a seminar a few months ago, which was all about using the Internet to market your business. There were over 100 small business owners there and I got to rub shoulders with quite a few of them.

For me, it's especially nice to make new contacts in the business world because like many writers, I tend to lead a very solitary existence.

Now what really surprised me was the number of people who didn't quite understand the whole concept of Internet marketing. I mean, hardly any of them had used article marketing and only one or two had even heard of viral and video marketing.

There also seemed to be lots of confusion about social network marketing!!!

During the course of the day it became quite apparent that many of these guys are just far too busy running their businesses to find out about marketing on the likes of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

WHAT!

Too busy to find out how to make more money online?

Too busy to find out how to get their products and services right in front of their target market audiences?

I couldn't believe what I was hearing... but I could understand how it was happening.

Okay... so many small business owners and entrepreneurs are very busy. But that doesn't mean they should let profitable marketing opportunities pass them by.

Getting your head down and throwing yourself 100% into your business is one thing, but it's just like putting your head in the sand. The problem with this is when you eventually pull your head back out of the sand you just might find that everyone else has moved on 100 miles down the track and are sharing in a feeding frenzy at the green, leafy oasis.

Get my drift? Ignorance is bliss!

After the seminar was over I started thinking about these guys and I wondered how many more there were just like them... in the UK... in the US... everywhere!

What they needed, I thought, was a whole marketing toolkit that they could study and use whenever they had the time. A kind of portable, self-educational, marketing masterclass. They needed to know about every type of online marketing method, technique, strategy and formula and how they could apply it to their particular businesses.

So, I rounded up my colleagues at Anglox Publications and got them all working on a project to compile the most comprehensive training package ever. I mean a complete A-Z of Internet marketing, suitable for every type of business that has a website and wants to promote any kind of products or services.

The result?

The eMarketing Toolkit

It comprises over 1 gigabyte of data and comes on 2 quality CD recordings, which can be mailed out to anywhere in the world.



I could go on and on about it here in my blog, but I've written a sales letter, which explains everything in detail so...

If you live in the UK go here: MarketingUK

And if you live in the US and anywhere else. go here: MarketingUS

The reason there are 2 websites is because there is an affiliate program for both UK and US affiliates. And apart from a couple of minor differences, the sales letters are virtually the same for both. You'll find the affiliate links at the bottom of the page.

The product pre-launch was very well received and I'm glad I've been able to help the many small business owners who wouldn't otherwise have this information to hand.

Well that's all for now.

Back soon.

Bill

Learn And Earn... Fast

Hi All,

Today I've got some interesting news, especially if you're interested in making money on the Internet. Two of my close business colleagues have decided to get together and teach you how to make some hard cash. These guys have made millions and started with nothing.

Just imagine if you could sit in a room with any multi-millionaire Internet marketer of your choice, and ask any questions you wanted. Questions like...

How do you get started in Internet marketing?

What are the best products to sell online?

How do I get hordes of customers scrambling over each other, eager to buy my products?

Look guys, if you want to know how to make money online you only have to ask the right people. People who are doing it right now.

My two colleagues will not only answer all your questions, they will teach, coach, mentor, guide and steer you onto the path of riches. And what do you have to do?

Just sign up to their programme, then watch, listen and learn your way to a personal fortune.

Their special mentoring programme is about to be launched any day soon and I'll be announcing it right here on my blog, and I'll also provide a link to all the details.

Watch this space!

Warm regards,
Bill

A real and FREE business for everyone

Hi all,

I've always said there's no such thing as a free business but now I'm having to eat my words, which is not an easy task, especially if you're a well-known copywriter.

Well here's the story...

As you know, there are some really good opportunities on the MoneyHarvest website and Maverick Money Makers continues to be one of the very best.

However, I received emails from some members who told me they just cannot afford to join MMM, and for whatever reason some also can't afford to buy any other opportunities either.

So, I started searching high and low to find something that everyone could afford, and with which everyone can earn some cash. Well, I've found it! And the best part is... it's absolutely FREE to join.

It's called Ei42 and you get paid whenever you shop online. But better than that, you get your own shop and all the marketing materials you need to promote it, and better still...

Encourage your friends and family to join and if they buy from their own shops they get a commission... and so do you! That's right! Whenever someone YOU recommend buys something from their own discounted shop YOU get a commission too.

So the more people you tell about this and the more people who sign up for their free shops, the more you could make. And there's no limit to how much you can earn.

It's suitable for members based both in the UK and the US. Just click on your country flag when you get to the website.

I've checked it all out and it's completely legit and all above board. There's no catch and no commitment whatsoever.

There are many well-known brand name companies involved too.

More and more people are finding it convenient to shop online and I'm sure you will want to buy something from your own shop eventually, so why not get it cheaper? It makes a lot of sense.

You just can't afford NOT to sign up.

It's a completely free business, so get over to the website and get involved now...

Click on this link now: my-free-business to find out more and get started right away.

Sign up and start making money. Simple!

My very best regards,

Bill

MoneyHarvest.Com