What Direct Response Copywriters Know Other Copywriters Don’t

Becoming a direct response copywriter is something everyone in the profession aims for. Direct response copywriting is the best paid of all the types of copywriting. The success of their copy is measured accurately, unlike when writing a brochure or website. Every response is counted and linked directly to a promotion's success.

Becoming a direct response copywriting is possible as long as you are ready to dedicate yourself to studying the craft.

Start with, read all the classics by the world's most famous copywriters. This includes books by David Ogilvy, Joe Sugarman, Eugene Schwartz and John Caples. The lessons they teach are as valid as they were decades or even a hundred years ago.

The second thing is to start a collection of copies of successful direct response sales copy. It's easy to find these online with some quick searches in the search engines. Google images, for example, is a treasure trove of profitable direct response sales letters and adverts. After making a swipe file, examine every sales letter and advert and write down the copywriting strategies used and why it was successful.

Thirdly, practice relentlessly to improve your ability. A time proven method is to write out the adverts and sales letters in your swipe file word for word. It might take a long time, but writing out profitable direct response adverts helps you recognize why the copywriter wrote them the way he or she did. After that try writing your own sales letters and adverts using everything you've come to understand from the last two steps.

Direct response copywriting types

Direct response copywriting covers quite a few different forms of sales writing. Whilst the format and delivery mechanism might vary, what they all have in common is the focused purpose of generating sales.

Direct mail - Another term for this is junk mail. In each case, their goal is to persuade you to reply and confirm your interest in the offer, whether done by phone, email or posting a reply card. Composing direct mail isn't as simple as it may appear. People receive lots of direct mail every single day, so your message must sound appealing to get people to read and respond. Achieving this can be difficult, which is why direct response copywriters get paid a rich sum to write these messages.

Email copywriting - Spamming by unscrupulous marketers has given email marketing a bad name. But if you can compose emails that get opened, read and responded to, then it means you have been able to develop the receiver's interest in your product. This means your message is useful to them, and not junk mail. Achieving this requires a lot of sale writing skill, making it a nicely paid copywriting task.

Writing sales letters - Direct response copywriters are hired to write the very long web pages used to advertise training courses, eBooks and other online products as well as for traditional sales letters. These direct response letters are often sent as an accompaniment with a brochure, or as a sales piece on their own. Direct response letters can span a single page or ten or more for a high value product. Long sales letter writing takes a lot of knowledge, skill and many hours of practice.

Magazine advertorial - These types of sales copy are formatted to look like normal articles in magazines and newspapers. They typically have headlines announcing a miracle breakthrough or startling fact, much like the other articles in the magazine or newspaper. The big distinction is that after commenting on the subject discussed in the headline they subtly transition to a sales pitch, describing a solution to the problem mentioned previously. They are also easy to spot because there will be a response form or telephone number at the end.

So there you have it, you are going to have to practice and learn a lot to be successful at writing the types of direct response copywriting described above. The hard work pays off though, both financially and with the sense of accomplishment when you make a lot of sales for a client. So grab some paper, download some samples of direct response copywriting and start developing your knowledge.

Finding Clients Can Be A Challenge When Starting Out. Here Are Four Ways To Find Them

If you decide to flee 9 to 5 world and to live by your wits as well your laptop as a independent copywriter, the largest challenge you will face is finding clients. It can take months, if not a number of years, to build up a secure customer base to keep your profits at a stable level. So you need to make sure you have sufficient funds to last half a year before you get started and that you never stop advertising and marketing yourself and looking for clients.

Here are four ways of locating corporations able to pay for your copywriting expertise:

Social networking sites

LinkedIn is the alternative to Facebook for business professionals. Rather than party photos, Farmville and posting witty jokes, people use LinkedIn as a professional networking tool to link with people they’ve worked with and people they’d like to. So it's a wise decision to get involved by setting up a user profile and interacting with colleagues you've worked with before and people you want to work with in the foreseeable future.

To give your network a jump start, send link invitations to all the people you've worked with in the past. You may be surprised what businesses they may have transferred to that might make use of a copywriter. You may also use LinkedIn to find enterprises in your local area that might call for your services and whom you can contact for freelance assignments.

Marketing and webdesign agencies always need freelancers

Local marketing and website design agencies can be a goldmine of freelance copywriting work paid at a good rate of pay.. They will also give you access to bigger higher paying clients and brands than you would be in the position to connect with as an individual freelancer. The big agencies probably already have copywriters internally, so it will be sensible to concentrate on the medium sized to smaller agencies who use freelancers to add extra expertise whenever they require them.

Attending face to face business networking functions

With competition for clients on the web leading to rates of pay to drop fast, the best method is to seek out customers in your local region. Folks naturally prefer to work work those they've met in person. With this in mind, you need to be out there shaking hands and speaking to local business owners, face to face, at each chance you get.

If you check with your local council or business support organisations you will likely discover a vibrant business networking scene in your town. Often held in local hotel function rooms or over an early morning breakfast in a local restaurant, networking events are typically fairly relaxed and enable people who run businesses and freelancers to meet each other.

While many business networking events have to be paid for, it’s often feasible to locate free events in your neighborhood. But if you can not locate any professional networking events in your town or city, then why not start an event of your own? You could create the event on a social networking website, like Meetup, Facebook or LinkedIn. Simply start a networking get together and next invite people in your neighborhood business community to attend also to invite their business contacts.

Pick up the phone

Many copywriters are naturally fearful of picking up the phone, and would rather clean the house than pick-up the phone. It can be time-consuming, but contacting local firms which may require a freelance copywriter is far more effective than just email bombing them. Sending unsolicited email messages is unlikely going to get the result you need, unless you want to irritate people and be labelled a spammer. Making the effort to pick up the phone, on the other hand, gives you the chance to speak about your copywriting expertise in a more ethical way that can build a relationship and give you the opportunity of acquiring some freelance work.

As a freelancer you can not afford to sit back and wait for enquries to roll in. So you need to be constantly marketing and offering your copywriting skills so you can build up a consistent salary and make the freelance dream a reality.

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What's Your SEO Plan In 2013?

Everybody would like to be ranked number one in Google. But claiming top spot has always been far from easy. For a long time internet marketers have played a game of cat and mouse with the internet's most widely used search engine. Whether it was link pyramids, stuffing keywords, or using bots to build links with a huge number of sites at the press of a button, they had all sorts of techniques for tricking Google into awarding them page one.

However recently Google is making great progress in not only beating these techniques but also punishing internet marketers that have used them. Its Panda and Penguin updates may have soft and cuddly titles. But the problems they have unleashed onto the rankings, and earnings, of 1000s of online marketers have led to many giving up the battle entirely.

A lot of affiliate marketers continue to use automated software and junk content to infest the online world with links to their websites. But there is a big question mark over how much longer these techniques will work. Ultimately, it’s only a matter of time before Google wins the war, and affiliate marketers bow their heads in acceptance to the new rules of SEO.

<h3>the five pillars of seo </h3>

Google would prefer you not to do any optimisation at all. If you do anything to cheat you can look forward to getting a 'Google slap' in the next algorithm update. Instead, looking natural is the name of the game. How can this be done? Through your content. This is why a copywriter should now be on your speed dial for search engine optimisation services.

These are the new 5 pillars of SEO:

Social Media Links- What other people think has always been a strong measure of what is the best content available on a topic. So Google has started using Facebook Likes, Tweets and other social media signals to gauge which articles and blog posts deserve to be promoted. And how do you think you can garner all these Likes and Tweets? That’s right, through employing a copywriter to write great content for you. These days it’s possible to get just as much traffic from social media as it is from the search engines. One day social media’s influence may grow to the stage where you dont even have to worry about SEO.

Aim For A Wider Range Of Keywords - Not long ago the main SEO advice was to use keywords in your 'anchor text. Unwittingly, this led to website owners committing the sin of ‘over optimising’ and only using the same few high traffic keywords in their links. Instead, you need to have a assortment of anchor text to reflect the many ways in which people enter links to sites. Rather than just having ‘snow plough’ as your link in every syndicated blog post and article, you need to include terms like 'visit our snow plough website', 'we sell the best snow ploughs‘ and more varied anchor text that reflects the different ways people link on the web.

Bounce Rate - Much like a rubber ball bouncing against a wall, this is the number of visitors who abandon your site without visiting more than one page. This means the longer people stay engaged with your articles the more respect you’ll get from the Big G. So to improve your rankings, you need excellent content that keeps them engaged, answers their questions and keeps them hanging around for longer. $5 articles you can buy off freelance bidding sites are unlikely to achieve this.

Guest Blogging - Backlinks from relevant, high quality websites has always been SEO mana. The only problem is that now everyone is trying to guest post. As a result, they will be less than impressed if you send them rehashed content, reheated and handed over as original thought. Instead, blog owners want articles that challenges their reader’s preconceptions or has something new to say. Providing this content takes research and time to assemble such high quality, original guest articles.

Google+ Author Link - Google+ might still be lagging behind its rivals, but Google+ is becoming important to your SEO strategy. If you havent already, you need to start notching up members to your Google+ Circles because it gives Google a clear indication that you have something interesting to say. You also need to add the Google+ authorship link to your website because it lets Google know you write stuff that people read and that you deserve a high ranking in its search rankings.

So the message is clear. If you want to boost your rankings in Google you need to get talking to content producers and/or copywriters. Another benefit you will gain is that along with higher rankings, you will be improving your reputation as a thought leader and an expert on the internet. This of course means that higher website visitors and more enquiries on your website will arise .

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Writing For A Wage From A Home OfficeCan Be Bliss For Some But A Nightmare For Others

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is usually a challenge - I should know because I began my freelance copy writing business from scratch!} Normally it takes months, if not years, to grow your client list as well as be making a well balanced income.

But when you manage it, it can be a rewarding lifestyle, both in terms of work/life benefits along with income. However, as with all career, there are disadvantages of the self-employed way of life you need to consider.

REASONS WHY YOU MIGHT NOT DESIRE TO BECOME A INDEPENDENT COPY WRITER

Loss of social connection - If you like spending some time exclusively by yourself (as many writers tend to do) then freelancing might be perfect for you. But if you enjoy connecting with fellow workers and customers then it may get lonely due to being on your own all the time.. This means you have to find other ways of getting out so you get some human interaction into the day).

The amount of competition that can drive prices down - In my experience, the most financially rewarding supply of clients is people who live in your local area. They'll be happy to pay a good rate to work with an individual they can look in the eye and meet directly.. I always encourage marketing wherever possiblein your local area to discover clients. However there are always businesses where charges are the deciding issue. They are more likely to visit the web to find a copywriter.. On the net your competition is practically unlimited, due to the reach of the internet and since anyone canmake a websitealong with say they are a copywriter.

Changing salary - When starting out, I propose having enough funds to last you six months while you find clients. Even then retaining a reliable income can be a struggle. There will be occasions when the emails never cease flowing and the mobile phone is off hook. Other times you may be staring at your PC nervously awaiting those enquiries to reach. You have to be ready for a fluctuating income in order to be a self-employed copywriter, and the stress that can come with it because the business running expenses don’t stop when your income does.

THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING A INDEPENDENT COPY WRITER

Earning money to write - If you like writing then getting paid to do it will sound like paradise. As afreelance copywriter you will spend your days studying interesting new topics and then writing about them in a manner that aims to be engaging along with persuasive.

Broaden your know-how - To start with you will likely be a generalist, which means you will probably be writing about a variety of products and topics. You may be writing for all manner of businesses on all manner of topics. You could be writing about custom built metal furnishings in the morning hours and high-tech computer software in the evening. So if learning about fresh topics interests you, learning to be a freelance copywriter might be right up your street.

Work/life balance - As a freelancer doing work at home, you don’t have a supervisor telling you what to do. You're able to choose what assignments to work on, and you can also choose to go for a mid morning stroll if you like, and catch up later in the evening. Who would not love that independence? If you get stuck for inspiration at home you'll be able to go and work in coffee shops or the local library, turning your surrounding area into your office.

Income potential - It takes time to get established, but once you've grown your client base you can be prepared to get paid a fairly good amount for your writing. As a freelancer you are able to charge greater pay every hour compared to someone employed full-time. This means you can make a high annual income if you are able to establish a steady flow of work. Providing copywriting for businesses in order to promote their services and productscan be a stressful task. But with your writing ability linked to sales you can expect to make a six figure wage with practice and experience.

I hope, this article has given you an summary of the benefits and disadvantages of the freelance way of life. Good luck in making your step into freelance copywriting a success!

Tips And Advice On How To Start A Freelance Copywriting Business

Think you possess a way with words? Do you enjoy using writing to coerce people to your way of thinking, and also to use words in a manner that helps make subjects intriguing and engaging?

If that's the case, you might be able to build a full time income as a freelance business writer. Having the capability to write effectively is an essential part of the role. If you can not spell properly or know basic grammar then people aren’t going to be particularly impressed with your writing. Nonetheless, you don’t need to have the writing talent of Hemingway or Ogilvy to make a livelihood as a copywriter.

In actual fact, folks that are fantastic at coming up with imaginative stories may well be bad copywriters. Frequently, they are too focused on entertaining people and amazing them with their inventive prose rather than focus on their writing’s critical aim: to sell.

WHAT MAKES A FANTASTIC BUSINESS WRITER

To gain success being a professional copywriter, the most important capabilities you must have is to have an understanding of exactly what provokes readers, to take an interest in an array of subject matters as well as, of course, be able to write clearly as well as concisely. These capabilities are all significant qualities you will need to be an efficient freelance copywriter.

The reason why? Simply because you ought to be have the ability to merge all of them to get results at composing copywriting which will sell. Whether you are writing about birthday cake decorations or business enterprise software programs, you have to be capable to build a comprehensive perception of exactly what the product or service does and in what way it benefits customers.

WHAT A COPY WRITER'S FUNCTION INVOLVES

Copywriting is called salesmanship in print. Its objective isn’t to entertain rather to persuade customers that choosing your service or product is the smart course of action, and generate plenty of sales and profits for your clientele along the way.

You have to be prepared to carry out a lot of research, that may involve reading through all of the accessible product information, meeting with clients and customers as well as looking at the competing products. After this you have to park yourself and figure out the product’s strengths over the other available choices out there. What makes it valuable? What sort of difficulties will it solve? And also, even more importantly, why should people use it.

After you’ve done your research and figured out exactly why people should buy the service or product, afterward you must see how to structure the sales letter or web page in to a strong argument. This demands a knowledge of the things that encourage people, what issues they wish to fix as well as avoid and for what reason are they going to opt to purchase your products.

Then, once you’ve clarified every one of these concerns and concluded all of the preparatory procedures, you need to be seated and create the sales letter or online site page. This is when you earn your pay and explain the large prices that copy writer may charge. Really learning how to place all of your ideas and notes into concise words can be very tough. You may actually spend your lifetime practising the skill of selling through words. Thankfully there's a lot ofcopywriting guides and copywriting courses to choose from that can assist you, and never ever forget that you get out of a career what you put in!

Great copywriting focuses on the customer

SO the question is: what is copywriting? Well, in layman’s terms, copywriting is writing for the purpose of selling or promoting a service or product. Your ultimate aim is to have the customer read your sales page from top to bottom, click on the “buy now” or “add to cart” button or link and buy your service or product. Now, how you will be able to make them click and buy your service or product is all up to you. There’s no one sure way that works all the time. So much depends on who you are targeting. That is why plenty of different types of ads and sales letters can do the trick. The secret is determining which one will work best for the audience you are trying to capture. Check out these four links and learn various kinds of copywriting tactics:

Simple Time Management for Copywriters – Stop Multitasking, It’s Bad For You…

In the US this week they have ‘Single-Tasking Day’. The whole idea is to do one task at a time during day and stop multitasking for once in your life. See the thing is, according to experts, multitasking could well be bad for you. In fact, studies from University of Michigan and UCLA indicate Multi-tasking forces our brains to continually perform “Task Switching” which makes our brains work harder with less efficiency.  Some researchers believe this could even cause brain damage! So sorry ladies, but us guys had it right all along! Now Single-Tasking Day is meant to help us focus on one activity at a time.

http://www.frank-edwards.com/copy-writing/simple-time-management-for-copywriters-stop-multitasking-its-bad-for-you/

Great copywriting focuses on the customer

There?s a lot of bad website copywriting out there. Whether it?s government sites suffocating in unintelligible jargon, B2B websites barking at visitors with corporate claptrap or lazy websites using copy from the corporate brochure, too many websites fail to address the customer in a language they understand and want to listen to.
The fact is that people?s expectations of business websites are changing. They go online to find answers to questions and solutions to problems. Not to hear a shallow sales pitch. In this digital age, it is the businesses providing the best quality content that will attract the most visits, clicks and clients. In other words, websites focused on the needs of the customer.

more website copywriting tips

Great News LIVE From the B2B Copywriting Trenches

I’ve always known it’s a promising field for anyone who likes to write copy for businesses that sell to other businesses and professionals, such as suppliers to the medical industry.

But after reading some just-released info a colleague sent me yesterday, I nearly leapt out of my chair with a giant WHOOP-WHOOP! A new report reveals that B2B marketers are “getting” the value of content as a powerful marketing tool. They’re finding that quality content can attract more prospects to their businesses and turn them into customers. As copywriters, that’s good news for us. Let’s look at the details.

http://www.awaionline.com/2012/11/great-news-live-from-the-b2b-copywriting-trenches/

Copywriting for Semantic Search

A lot of people seem to want to know what the best way is to write in order to maximize the benefit from semantic search. So rather than sit on the secret, I decided to share it here. But first, let’s talk a little about what exactly semantic search is. Semantic Search: There’s a lot of confusion about what semantic search is, strangely enough. Some people seem to want to paint it as some sort of a dark art. They give it new names, assign mystical powers to it, liken it to artificial intelligence… while others over-simplify it, claiming that it’s nothing more than an index of synonyms – that semantic analysis is still out of man’s reach.

http://searchnewscentral.com/20120712326/Content-Development/copywriting-for-semantic-search.html

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules for Great Writing

He's the brains behind FX's hit show Justified. He wrote the novel that became the hit movie with Danny DeVito and John Travolta, Get Shorty. He has 8 million books in print. He's Elmore Leonard, the crime novelist that gets respect in the serious, patched-elbow, pipe-smoking literary world. (My stereotype may be dated, but hopefully, you get the idea.) He's 86 and still writing two pages a day.  I would call that "going strong." So, he's not a copywriter, but he sure as hell knows something about writing.

http://world-copywriting-institute.typepad.com/world_copywriting_blog/2012/01/elmore-leonards-10-rules-for-great-writing.html

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Feeding the internet's demand for great marketing writers

WHETHER you are an aspiring playwright, novelist or screenwriter, or just an avid reader, try copywriting and turn your passion for words into a money-making career as a professional copywriter. With the rapid growth of the internet, the demand for good copywriters who can create effective advertising has risen.  And because a huge number of businesses across all niches require a competitive marketing content, copywriting is a smart career move. Freelance copywriters work from the comforts of their own home, giving them the freedom they need to work on other tasks. Think about what you could do with all those extra hours, not to mention extra money! Click on the four links below and find out how you can participate in this growing industry…

Copywriting Advice: how to communicate with great copy to win business

Copywriting gets the word out about your business. Copywriting helps you to sell in many media: postal mail, email, print, radio, TV, and the Web. Few businesses use all the marketing options available to them. Communicate more, and you’ll sell more. In the past, businesses could restrict their presence to one or two channels - TV and radio, for example. Nowadays, the more channels you use, the more customers you get and the more sales you make.In this Copywriting Advice section of the site, you'll find information how great copywriting helps your business.

http://angelabooth.com/Advice/copy-for.html

Want to Save the Media? Get Ad Writers Who Can Write

People often blame disruptive technologies for the decline of the advertising industry, and the media industry that relies on it. But the real problem, Michael Wolff writes in USA Today, is that ads in every medium have become less persuasive, and Wolff thinks he knows why: "There are no writers in advertising anymore. Johnny who can't write has gone into advertising." According to one media consultant, today's so-called copywriters avoid the written word at all costs, and their attempts at it tend to produce "scary, semi-literate gibberish." Today's ad men seem convinced that all that matters are visuals, but great campaigns almost always revolve around text.

http://www.newser.com/story/155024/want-to-save-the-media-get-ad-writers-who-can-write.html

Web and keyword copywriting news

Writing website content that performs well in search engines but also reads naturally to customers is a challenge. Copywriting for the web strikes a difficult balance between using the right keywords for higher search engine rankings and effective sales messages to make your web site compelling to potential customers. Good design alone won’t convince customers to enquire or buy through your site - it is often the words that compel them to stay on a site or make contact. Companies are generally used to seeking professional advice on the design and coding of websites, but neglect to employ professional web copywriters to adapt their off-line content for a web audience.

http://www.momentumws.co.uk/news/web-copywriting/?page=2

Five Copywriting Errors That Can Ruin A Company’s Website

No matter how brilliant a website’s design, no matter how elegant its navigation, sooner or later visitors will decide whether to take action because of something they read. In the end, the effectiveness with which a website converts visitors hinges on words. If a new website is going to hit all the right notes, its content must be just as well crafted as its design and programming. However, as you might imagine, there are many ways to go wrong with content in a Web development project. The errors discussed in this article have the potential to undo a website.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/06/29/five-copywriting-errors-that-can-ruin-a-company-website/



Creativity, imagination and a good ounce of research and study are among the basic “ingredients” of effective website copywriting. Click here to visit my copywriting site and learn more.

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