Hey Copywriters,

I'm putting all of the TTP articles specifically on building your copywriting business here in one place on this thread so they're easily accessible.

-John

Yes, You CAN Build a Super-Profitable Copywriting Business!
By Clayton Makepeace

• How big an opportunity is copywriting really?
• What you must read – frequently – to become a world-class copywriter or copy chief …
• The toughest job any copywriter has – and how to do it spectacularly …
• Why smart marketers are beating the bushes for great writers …
• How to convince a reluctant marketer to give you your first assignment …
• How to get paid – handsomely -- to make a name for yourself in this business …
• And much, MUCH MORE!

Hiya, Business-Builders!

Hopefully, you’re well rested and ready to spend the next five days taking your business to the next level!

I’m up to my eyeballs in deadlines for my Response Ink™ clients and things are changing mighty fast here at The Profit Center™, so I know it’s going to be another 100-hour marathon for me – and I can’t wait to get started!

This issue is the first of a three-part series dedicated to bringing young copywriters along and helping direct marketing pros find the great new copywriting help they need.


About a year ago, when we had, maybe one-tenth as many readers as we do today, the great Robert W. Bly interviewed me to get my thoughts on building a profitable copywriting business. And for this issue, I’m turning back the clock and returning to that interview.
… Kinda.

This is where the “altering the past” thing comes in: I’ve taken this opportunity to both update and add significantly to my comments in the interview – so there’s a lot new here.

Whether you’re a copywriter or a marketing pro looking to attract hot new writers and top talent, you’ll want to read every word …

Bob Bly: My name is Bob Bly and I’m interviewing Clayton Makepeace, who is one of just a handful of freelance copywriters in the world who make more than a million dollars a year -- and some years, $2 or $3 million -- strictly as a freelance copywriter.

Clayton is, I believe, the highest-paid freelance copywriter in the world and one of only a handful, maybe half a dozen, that are in seven figures. There’s a bunch of us below Clayton who are earning six figures -- anywhere from $100,000 to $700,000, $800,000 a year -- but he’s in the million dollar category.

So let’s get right into it. When I started copywriting 25 years ago, it was an unheard of profession. There were a few people doing it, but no one knew what it was. But now, it’s sort of a hot thing and everybody’s saying, oh, this is the greatest job going. Is that true? Is it really that good?

Clayton Makepeace: Well, I think it is. I started back in the early 70s, after having worked in television and film for a while. But in ’74, the recession shut down most production, so I found a copywriting job with an ad agency for $15,000 a year.

That doesn’t sound like much, but I had no training or experience and I was a high-school dropout. And after all, $15,000 a year in ’74 is the same as $62,000 in 2005 dollars. So it wasn’t a bad way to start.

Within six years, I was doing close to a quarter million dollars a year in today’s money. Within eight years, I was over $700,000 in today’s money. In the early ’90s, I hit a million dollars a year and never looked back.

Bob Bly: So did you have a mentor or a coach who got you into that? How did you discover how to do this?

Clayton Makepeace: No, that’s the beauty of it. When I got started, all I had were a few books by the great advertising masters to guide me: Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves, Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins, Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples, Ogilvy on Advertising and Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. And then to get the nuts and bolts of the business, I read Successful Direct Marketing Methods by Bob Stone.

Those books – and studying what people were mailing were my foundation in copywriting.

Beyond that, I had to pretty much learn as I went along. There weren’t coaches. There were no e-zines telling you how to do it. And nobody had ever heard of a top writer mentoring copy cubs.

I’ve done that six or seven times now, and each one of those writers is a mid to high six figure writer or a million-dollar writer.

Bob Bly: Can you name a couple of them, or is it confidential?

Clayton Makepeace: Not at all, no. Carline Anglade-Cole came to me in the mid-1990s. She was making six figures a year as a marketing pro at Phillips Publishing, but she was not a trained copywriter by any stretch of the imagination.

Carline asked me if, as a friend, I would help her break into this business. I agreed and her very first year, she made more as a copywriter than she had been making with her six-figure salary at Phillips.

When Kent Komae came to me, he was a five-figure writer just getting started and I hired him to help me with some work I had at Weiss Research. Kent is now a solid six-figure writer. The same is true with Bob Hutchinson. Parris Lampropoulos took off like a house afire and is making seven figures now as a copywriter and has his own copy cubs.

And there are a couple of others. Brien Lundin made enough money as a copywriter that he bought Jefferson Financial from his boss and now runs the New Orleans Investment Conference and publishes several newsletters and trading services. I hired Brien from a radio station, where he was writing spots for local customers/clients.

So of the six or seven people that I’ve worked with over the last five or six years, every one of them has done very, very well for themselves. It’s great.

Bob Bly: So you’re not an anomaly. It can be done.

Clayton Makepeace: Not only can it be done, but these young guys are doing it faster than I did.

It took me a considerable amount of time to hit the million-dollar mark and Parris did it in a matter of just a few years.

Bob Bly: Now, speaking of people who start out younger or are starting out maybe after another career, the guys you all mentioned work for major clients, but for many people listening to this call, the idea of going out and contacting and selling yourself to a major client is very intimidating.

When you started, how did you overcome this?

Clayton Makepeace: Self-promotion was a tough one for me and it still is. Of course, after more than three decades in this business, I no longer have to promote my copywriting or my agency, Response Ink™. We don’t pursue clients; they pursue us.

But when I founded The Profit Center™ and The Total Package™, I knew it meant I’d have to put myself out there: Promote myself, my background, my experience just to get subscribers – and it’s just not in my nature to do that.

The same was true when I was getting started with copywriting. I was extremely shy and had a severe case of stage fright. Fortunately for me, I was unemployed when I went freelance. I had a wife and two kids and an overhead I had to meet every month.

That meant I awakened on the first day of each month with bills to pay and no money coming in. I had no choice but to bang the phone and to contact clients and say, “Here I am!”

Let me tell you: It was intimidating! I’d spent months admiring, studying and learning from promotions a company was mailing -- and suddenly, here I was on the phone with the legendary copy chief who had directed the production of that piece. It was pretty daunting.

But I quickly discovered that major marketers are just as interested in finding new copywriters as we are in finding new clients.

Click here to keep reading about building your copywriting business...

__________________
Build your six-figure Freelance Copywriting Business
And go here to find: Oodles of killer copywriting techniques

Yes, You CAN Build a Super-Profitable Copywriting Business!
PART II
By Clayton Makepeace

• How to negotiate the same royalty rates the big dogs get ...
• How to find clients even when you have no real-world samples to show …
• The 6-step strategy I used to fill my dance card with high-paying clients …
  
• How to get paid to create an impressive portfolio …
• When accepting a $50/M royalty is a DUMB idea …
  
• How to create a world-class swipe file for a song …
• 4 best places to look for high-paying clients ...
• The #1 business blunder new copywriters make ...
  
• And MUCH MORE!

I promised I’d give you the rest of the interview Bob Bly did with me on the subject of building a profitable copywriting business …

… And here it is!

Bob Bly: How would you suggest a new copywriter charge for his or her services?

Clayton Makepeace: Well, if I were beginning today, I would probably begin with an advance plus royalty arrangement. I would probably start out asking for something in the range of a $12,000 to $15,000 advance against a royalty. And I would ask for the same royalty rate they pay their top writers.

Now the advance may be negotiable – years ago, I accepted jobs for far less than twelve to fifteen grand. But in all fairness, the royalty rate should not be different from writer to writer.

There are some clients out there who will say, “We don’t pay our top royalty rate for new writers.”

Sorry -- but that’s just specious. If your copy beats their control, you deserve the same royalty the control-writer got. And if it doesn’t win, your royalty rate is immaterial because the client won’t have to pay it.

Bob Bly: Interesting way to present that.

Clayton Makepeace: Some marketing or creative directors will say -- and this was actually said to me the other day by a good friend, who’s a marketing director – “But new writers aren’t consistent, so we pay the higher royalties to experienced writers and writers that we have a track record with, because we know we have a higher percent chance of getting a control when we work with that person.”

Again, it’s a totally specious argument. If you’re worried about consistency – if you want to mitigate the risk of working with an unknown writer -- cut the advance to the bone. That’s your hard cost anyway! But fair is fair – and if a new writer trashes your precious control, he or she deserves the same royalty the big dogs get.

When someone tells you that the customer you generate doesn’t have the same value to that company as the customer that Gary Bencivenga or I or Jim Rutz or Arthur Johnson generate, I’m sorry, he’s just horse-trading. He doesn’t believe it, either.

Bob Bly: Earlier, you used the phrase “copy chief” – for the sake of less experienced readers, could you define it for us?

Clayton Makepeace: A copy chief is simply somebody -- a mentor, an A-level writer, or a marketing director at a client company -- who agrees to work with you to develop the theme, the headline, the organization and the copy. Their job is to work with you to make the package more successful.

In short, a copy chief critiques each draft -- we call it “critting.”

Dan Rosenthal, for example, is the most famous critter in the universe. The guy is brutal. He takes a sadistic joy in absolutely eviscerating copy and beating copywriters bloody. In fact, his e-mail address is “CopyOgre.”

Now, if you ask an A-level writer or a coach to crit your copy, he or she will typically take a portion of the advance and a portion of the royalty. And depending on your experience level, that portion could be substantial.

Bob Bly: So what’s the best way for someone who is a beginner and doesn’t have a big track record and hasn’t written a lot of promotions to find a copy chief?

Let’s say you wanted to get into the newsletter field and you haven’t worked for a newsletter publisher before. Is your best bet to go find an A-level writer and apprentice under him? Or is it to do as you said, to pick a product from a major publisher, write a package, and show it to them?

Clayton Makepeace: I really think it’s all of the above. It’s like deep-sea fishing. You’ve got to have a lot of lines in the water.

When I launched my freelance career back in the 1970s, I had a six-step program for getting my name out there and finding new clients:

Here’s how I used to do it …

First, I’d pick my targets carefully. I created a mailing list of 400 prospective clients.

Since I was focusing on self-help publishers, I picked all the biggest companies – firms I already knew about – Phillips, KCI, Agora, Boardroom, The Ruff Times and others -- and used the Oxbridge Directory to select the rest.

If I knew the name of the person in the organization who hired writers, I included that in each address on my list. If I didn’t, I called 100 organizations per week and said, “I need to send a letter to the person there responsible for creating your direct mail promotions. Could you please tell me who that is?”

Second, I would get their attention. I wrote a short, one-page personalized letter saying...

Click here to keep reading about building your freelance copywriting business

__________________
Build your six-figure Freelance Copywriting Business
And go here to find: Oodles of killer copywriting techniques

By Clayton Makepeace

• Could YOU Make It as a Freelance Copywriter?
• How and When to Hang Out Your Shingle …
• How to Find Your Best Niche …
• How to Structure Your Rates …
• The Crucial Difference Between Fundraising Copy and Product Sales Copy …
• Are There TOO MANY New Copywriters Today?
• And MUCH MORE!

The other day, Stephen Davies of The Copywriter's Institute (FREE Copywriting Tutorials) called to ask me a bunch of questions that beginning copywriters most often ask me. And because they’re the same questions many of you send to our feedback box daily, I figure the answers will be helpful for you too.

Stephen Davies: Clayton, how did you get started writing copy? Would you advise others to take the same path you did?

Clayton: Well, it would be kind of hard for someone to take the path I did. I had to drop out of high school when I was 16, and took a job at a printing plant to help support the family. The printing plant did a lot of fundraising direct mail, so I’d sit at a folding machine all night long and read the appeal letters I was folding.

After a while, I decided I could probably do a better job writing this kind of thing than the highly paid consultant who was doing it at the time. So I gave it a try. And when they actually mailed my letter, I beat the company’s $300,000-a-year consultant. That was my first indication I could do this thing.

But my first love was film and video production. I moved to LA and I was very active in that for a while. However, in 1974, the freelance film & video industry just about died. There was almost no work there because of the recession.

That’s when I saw an ad for a small direct mail agency that needed a copywriter. I spent several years there, and finally, I think it was 1979, I left and went out on my own.

So I really just kind of stumbled into this. It wasn’t anything I chose to do. I was basically trying to feed a wife, two kids, and the world’s dumbest Cocker Spaniel. The opportunity just to work in 1974 was what drove me into copywriting at the time.

Stephen: How long did you write copy before you actually branched out on your own?

Clayton: I went to work at that agency, I believe it was late ‘74, and I worked with them until, if I remember correctly, probably late 1978 or early 1979.

I didn’t leave the nest voluntarily. There was a dispute over a bonus the agency’s owner owed me, and when I requested payment, he fired me.

So I suddenly found myself with no job, no prospects. But I did have a newly acquired skill from four or five years of agency work, so I immediately began contacting potential clients in the Los Angeles area.

We had BBD&O and several other Big Eight ad agencies there in LA, plus Smith & Hemmings, which was exclusively a direct response agency.

So I formed a small company called Copy Overload and sent a letter to every advertising agency in the area. The premise of the company was that even agency copywriters go on vacation, and whenever you need more copy then you can produce for whatever reason, we are here for you.

My promotion for that company said, “Only a ski mask and a loaded 45 will get you more money quicker than a Copy Overload promotion.”

I immediately started getting telephone calls from creative directors who needed copy done that they couldn’t get done in house. And that was kind of the beginning of my freelance career.

Stephen: How much experience should a person have in the field before becoming a full‑time copywriter? In other words, how do you know when you are good enough to go full-time?

Clayton: When you’re creating winners part-time.

See, a lot of people could tell you how to get clients and how to structure your deals, and how to build your copywriting business. But the bottom line is, can you produce winners?

If you have several promotions in your portfolio that have mailed big numbers or generated big numbers in terms of response, average sale and ROI, you can take that portfolio and, in effect, “sell” it.

Put simply, the decision to go out on your own shouldn’t be denominated in time. It should be denominated in the winners that you have produced.

Ultimately, when someone who has never heard of you is considering hiring you, all they want to know is that you have produced winners for others.

Stephen: Would you define “success” as beating somebody else’s controls?

Clayton: Well you know, “success” is a pretty broad term. Success in life could be just defined as happiness. In this business, success is defined as creating winners for your clients.

You do that by honing your skills, learning to tell the difference between a product that people will want and one that they don’t, and then writing only for products that give you a good shot at success.

Beyond that, greater successes come from learning to avoid situations where you have to try to beat a strong control -- in other words, launch products, or products that have very, very weak controls or no controls at all.

When Gary Bencivenga and I were talking some time ago, he told me that one of the first questions he would ask when he was offered an assignment was, “Did Makepeace write the control?”

It was very flattering for him to say that, but the point he was trying to make was, always try to find out who wrote the control and how strong it was before you go up against it. Otherwise, the odds of winning are going to be much diminished.

Click here to read more career building advice for copywriters...

__________________
Build your six-figure Freelance Copywriting Business
And go here to find: Oodles of killer copywriting techniques

How to Attract Killer Clients Who Will Pay You The Money You Deserve…

My Six-Step Campaign to Get Your Phone Ringing Off the Hook with New Clients

By Clayton Makepeace

Finding clients who'll pay you millions of dollars is NOT impossible.

You just ...

1.) Start with small fish ...

2.) Live like a pauper for years ...

3.) Write your butt off every day of your life ...

4.) Create a legendary winner or two.

Do these four things, and I guarantee great clients will pursue you, huge advances in hand.

... Eventually.

Or, you could do it the smart way ...

New copywriters write me all the time, asking how to get a high-paying gig. A desperate few just want to know how to get any assignment.

Sometimes I have to resist the urge to leap through the computer screen at them. I want to grab 'em by the shoulders, shake 'em till their eyes rattle and shout, "Hey - wake up - you're one of the chosen few: You're a COPYWRITER!

"You've been blessed with the gift of persuasion: The single greatest super-power on the planet. Compared to you, Batman and Wonder Woman are wimps!

"You are a modern-day Obi-Wan, master of the Jedi Mind Trick.

"You are (tatataDAAA) PERSUASION PERSON!!!

"Mere mortals fall helpless, wallets in hand, before your considerable persuasive powers.

"Great clients are mere mortals, too ... so go ahead - persuade them to hire you!"

YOU are the most exciting product you will ever write for!

Throughout my 35-year career, I've been asked to write copy to sell investment conferences and water heaters ... golf magazines and exotic pastries ... investment diamonds and buttless pants ... holy land tours and sex tapes ... rare coins and junk furniture ... tons of books and newsletters on finance, investing and health - and once, an entire company.

The single best product I ever promoted?

Clayton Friggin' Makepeace!

I don't have to do it these days, of course - my name and past successes are well-known and I turn down far more assignments than I could ever accept.

But there was a time when I was a virtual unknown, struggling to make ends meet. I had my chops, of course - I had written some strong promotions for small-ish clients on the West Coast - but I couldn't even get the big boys to answer the phone.

What did I do?

I sat down at my trusty old IBM Selectric typewriter (the state-of-the-art writing implement in 1979) and wrote a sales promotion - about myself!

I mentally put Clayton on the desk just as if he was any other product, and I pulled out all the stops.

Then, I used that copy in a 6-STEP CAMPAIGN designed to make all the best clients call me.

How'd it work? Like a charm. Within a week, my phone was ringing off the hook, and I was schmoozing with the big boys.

Within two weeks, the advances began rolling in.

And a few months later, a major mailer offered me a six figure retainer PLUS 5% of his gross sales, PLUS perks out the wazoo to take him on exclusively.

Keep reading how to get copywriting clients...

__________________
Build your six-figure Freelance Copywriting Business
And go here to find: Oodles of killer copywriting techniques

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.”

__________________
Build your six-figure Freelance Copywriting Business
And go here to find: Oodles of killer copywriting techniques

Hi, This post is very informative, however there are some queries to ask about some specific topic. If someone can help me then please send me a private message. Thanks,


Property Directory|Wholesale Billiards|Wholesale Batteries|Something Directory

I have found through testing that write, read and re-write is the best method. You can’t be long winded for most people so you need to grab they’re attention, and send them to sales page before they loose interest. Have you found anything that really works? PPC is expensive, SEO doesn’t work for all search engines, some prefer plain natural sites and too much SEO can kill your site.

What if I told you, for almost no money, I have 4 listings on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN? What if I told you I have one web site on the first page of Google and MSN and 2 on the first page of Yahoo? What if I told you all these listings and web sites are all linked together and sell the same product? What if I told you 95% of these listings were FREE? What if I told you I haven’t even used forums yet for advertising but I can’t wait too! Have I got your attention yet?

What if I told you I could show you how to apply all the things I have learned and used in the last 6 months to your web site and you could get the same listing and dominate the search engines too? What if I told you it was so cheap you’ll think I should be in a rubber room in the nuthouse?

I know it sounds too good to be true, but I’ll show you proof that I have 35 to 65 % of the listings on the first 2 pages of the top ten search engines for one product. Will you keep trying and doing what your doing now or are you ready to dominate the search engines and REALLY make money online for a change?

Edward M Burke Jr
UPDATE! As of 4-12-08 I now have 3 websites on the first page of Yahoo, selling the same product. I also have 3 on the first page of “Entire Web”, 3 on “all the web”, 3 on “Alta Vista”, 2 on “Dogpile”, 2 on “Web Search” and 2 on “Gigablast”, all on the first page, all selling the same product!


R U Sick N Tired

(Or just copy and paste in address bar)

I have found through testing that write, read and re-write is the best method. You can’t be long winded for most people so you need to grab they’re attention, and send them to sales page before they loose interest. Have you found anything that really works? PPC is expensive, SEO doesn’t work for all search engines, some prefer plain natural sites and too much SEO can kill your site.

What if I told you, for almost no money, I have 4 listings on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN? What if I told you I have one web site on the first page of Google and MSN and 2 on the first page of Yahoo? What if I told you all these listings and web sites are all linked together and sell the same product? What if I told you 95% of these listings were FREE? What if I told you I haven’t even used forums yet for advertising but I can’t wait too! Have I got your attention yet?

What if I told you I could show you how to apply all the things I have learned and used in the last 6 months to your web site and you could get the same listing and dominate the search engines too? What if I told you it was so cheap you’ll think I should be in a rubber room in the nuthouse?

I know it sounds too good to be true, but I’ll show you proof that I have 35 to 65 % of the listings on the first 2 pages of the top ten search engines for one product. Will you keep trying and doing what your doing now or are you ready to dominate the search engines and REALLY make money online for a change?

Edward M Burke Jr
UPDATE! As of 4-12-08 I now have 3 websites on the first page of Yahoo, selling the same product. I also have 3 on the first page of “Entire Web”, 3 on “all the web”, 3 on “Alta Vista”, 2 on “Dogpile”, 2 on “Web Search” and 2 on “Gigablast”, all on the first page, all selling the same product!


R U Sick N Tired

(Or just copy and paste in address bar)