TRUTH IN ADVERTISING:
What Copywriting Gurus Never Tell You
By Clayton Makepeace
Dear Business Builder,
I been berry, berry busy lately.
Don’t worry; it’s not your fault. My job is to write one issue of
The Total Package per week. The Redhead and her team do all the rest.
So it’s not you; it’s my agency: Response Ink.
Every working day, “
Team Makepeace” and I create real-world promotions for real-world clients that generate real-world profits.
Like our web-based new customer acquisition campaigns that are generating ROIs of up to 600% and masses of new customers for one client ...
And like our multi-channel customer-file promotions for another client that are making him as much as $1 million in a single week.
The thing is, though, web marketing is a bear – especially when you compare it to the good old days, when we wrote exclusively for direct mail. Back then, we had four to six leisurely weeks to crank out a 24-page magalog or tabloid. I had plenty of time to think and re-think my strategy, theme and tone, and to carefully polish every word until it glistened.
For better or for worse, the web has changed all that. Today, a single web campaign can contain multiple drafts of multiple banners and e-mail blasts … squeeze pages … long-copy landing pages … bump pages … “save” pages … shopping cart copy … and endless autoresponders.
In the last two weeks for example – for just one of the web campaigns we delivered – I wrote and/or edited one marketing plan … 30 drafts of 15 e-mail blasts … a one-hour teleconference script … five drafts of a landing page … and three drafts of a 12-page direct mail sales letter.
To get all that done in just 14 days, I often began work at 3:00 AM – and twice, at 1:00 AM. My workdays have been hectic, fragmented and tear-your-hair-out confusing. Weekends – what in the Sam Hill are they?
Was it worth it? Yep. As I write this, six days into the promotion, we’ve banked more than one million dollars in sales. And that’s only the beginning. Last time I built a campaign like this, we did $5 million in a little over five weeks. This time (knock on wood!), I think we’ll do even better.
… But was it worth it for me, personally? Sure: As the copywriter who generated all those profits for my client, I’m in for a very nice chunk of that money as my “sales commission.”
Now, despite what you may think, I’m not telling you any of this to brag. I’m telling you this to encourage you – and to (once again) answer two of the questions we get asked most often around here:
Q: “Do these copy strategies really work??”
A: Absolutely. My agency and other
top copywriters are producing these kinds of results every day of the year.
Q:
“Can a copywriter really make six figures a year?”
A: Again, YES! If you can tie your compensation to the success of the promotions you create, six figures a year is no problem. In fact, I’m living proof that more than six figures a month is well within your grasp.
Three Big, Fat Lies Everyone’s Telling
About Choosing Copywriting as a Career
So every day, I fall down on my one good knee and thank my lucky stars that I stumbled into this copywriting thing.
It truly is a spectacular way to make a living. It turned me – a penniless high school dropout -- into a millionaire, and it’s doing the same for many other writers I could name.
Click here to keep reading 'What copywriting guru's never tell you'...
And get the truth about
:
Big Fat Lie #1: “If you can write a simple letter, you can be a great copywriter.”
Big Fat Lie #2: “Copywriting is ‘the lazy man’s way to riches.’”
Big Fat Lie #3: “You’ll begin making the big bucks right away.”