Archive for the ‘Copywriting’ Category

Don’t even acknowledge ridiculous, cut-rate pricing

May 14th, 2012

In my business (which is copywriting), there is a subset of copywriting services that offer ridiculous pricing on copywriting. Prices that are hard to believe, quite honestly. Like “$5 for a 500 word article” pricing.

To be clear, I’m not talking about “regular” competition. We all have competition – I understand that. But certain businesses, especially creative businesses, have a subset of competition that must live in mud huts, because their prices are sooooo ridiculously cheap. Web designers go through this. So do graphic artists and marketing people. And, like I mentioned, us copywriters go through this.

Here’s what I’m up against in this respect: like I mentioned above, there are companies out there that will produce a 500 word article for $5

Five dollars.

I’ve written a LOT of 500 word articles. Depending on the topic, it’s anywhere between one and three hours work. Sorry, but like most professionals and/or business owners, one to three hours of my time runs into the hundreds.

To me, there are only three ways this can happen: a machine is copying existing articles and changing a few words to pass plagiarism checks; a third world person is writing them from the high speed connection in their mud hut; or the company “crowdsources” and has hundreds of wannabe writers “compete” for a “chance to be published” (which these days means “on a blog somewhere”). And in the fine print, the writing is property of the company, so they always have hundreds of articles that they didn’t pay for. Personally, I think it’s more #1 than anything. I think a lot of copying/editing/pasting is going on.

So how do I handle this? Simple – I don’t even give them the time of day. If a client brings up “hey, I can get this done for $5″, I say “go ahead”. Fortunately, the writing is sooo God-awful, only the most desperate person would do such. I won’t even acknowledge the price in a negotiation – no “let’s meet in the middle” stuff. It’s so out of the norm (and the writing is pretty bad too) that it doesn’t even exist on my radar.

In other words, I sell / negotiate on writing quality that’s on a par with my writing. And I’m a damn good copywriter. Given sufficient visitors, I will raise sales every time.

THAT’S how you handle that kind of competition folks – you don’t even give it the time of day (well, save perhaps writing a blog post on it.) And good clients are ok with that (unless they are living in mud huts themselves, I suppose.)

Posted in Copywriting, Home Business / Entrepreneural Stuff, Websites and Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

Article Writing – Dan’s e-mail exchange w/ a potential client

March 26th, 2012

There’s no type of copywriting that has more price differentiation than writing articles / SEO articles. Because there are writing services out there that will literally write 500-word articles for $5. I’m not kidding. (more…)

Posted in Copywriting, General Marketing, Success, Uncategorized, Websites and Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

Online, you have to have quality leads

March 9th, 2012

I recall some website writing I did for this one company. They advertised on Google adwords, and had a budget of $2 a day. For their business, that meant 2 clicks. Two whole clicks a day, and they were done. And they complained after 3 days that my writing wasn’t bringing in business… well, it’s kinda hard to judge from a whopping 6 visits (to be fair, I didn’t know their PPC budget when starting the job – I just assumed they would deliver eyeballs.)

I told them they had to get more “interested” people to the site. So they changed their keywords, and made it so their $2 budget would bring in 10 people a day. No effect – now the problem was the keywords were awful. Yea, they were cheap keywords… and they were useless. The client actually expected the web copy I wrote him to “make up” for the fact that the leads were lousy. That’s not going to happen.

On the internet, you have to have quality visitors. Period. You need people who want what you do.

You can’t fool around on the fringes with your Pay Per Click keywords. The fringes are great for filling out your marketing, but you cannot expect copy to make up for bad leads. If you are a local carpet cleaner, you need to have “{your city} carpet cleaning” as a keyphrase. I don’t care how much it costs. If you design websites for florists, you need to have “web design for florists” as a keyphrase. You can’t omit these in favor of, say, “flower seller internet design” because the latter is cheaper. You won’t get the same quality visitor.

It’s this simple: No writing, no expensive design, no nothing will help you until your site is visited by people who want/need what you have/do. I can write the best copy in the world – but even with that, if you sell shoes and you get visited by people who really aren’t interested in shoes, well, there’s not going to be many sales made.

Great web copy can work magic with the right visitors. I prove it every single day. Give me people who are interested in your product and service, and I’ll sell them. It’s what I do. But you do have to deliver those eyeballs.

Posted in Copywriting, General Marketing, Home Business / Entrepreneural Stuff, Websites and Web Marketing | 3 Comments »

A quick story showing the power of website conversion

February 2nd, 2012

This is excerpted from Do the Web Write (which I wrote), and shows the awesome power of website conversion. Truthfully, raising your website conversion rate even one to two percentage points can be huge for your business.

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A client once came to me and wanted me to help him write a few Google Adword ads – he wanted to bring more traffic to his site and increase business (he sold financial products). A quick chat about his site revealed that he already had exceptional traffic – he was getting close to 1,000 visits a day from interested prospects (he advertised heavily on Google.)

He was getting perhaps 10 inquiries a day, meaning he was converting at 1%. His goal was to get 20 inquiries a day, so he figured that if he increased his advertising enough to bring in 2,000 interested prospects, he’d reach that goal.

I looked over his site and recognized right away that I could help him by not increasing advertising, but by increasing conversion – his site was not very well-written, nor was it user friendly. So I told him “why not try and get more out of the traffic you already have?” We talked, and he agreed with my assessment and hired me.

I wrote up a quick plan for what to do: the first step was to change the page order a little, and get the most important information clicked on first. The second was to change the copy. Under my direction, he had his web designer do the first part, and then I rewrote perhaps 4 pages of copy. Then he put up the new site and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long – from the very first day, with the same amount of traffic he always had, he started getting 30+ inquiries. This kept up consistently for weeks, and then months. All told, his new conversion rate jumped to 3.5% – I more than tripled his business.

But here’s the really neat part – had he upped his advertising to raise business, he’d be paying increased advertising fees month after month after month. But because I instead used the traffic he currently had, he instead had a ZERO increase in advertising.

Now, some of you may be saying “That’s great, Dan, but he had to pay YOU”. And yes, this is true. But my total fee was less than one month of increased advertising. So after the first month, that part becomes irrelevant. But it gets better – based on how much he makes from a sale, I actually paid for myself in one week. After that, it was pure gravy.

And here’s ONE MORE “even neater” part: This new conversion rate (3.5%) will almost certainly hold true even if he DOES decide to eventually increase advertising (as he obviously was willing to do before I changed things.) So he could feasibly be getting 3.5% on 2,000 visits if he so chose. ANOTHER doubling of business.

Nice little story, huh? And trust me, things like this happen all the time. Conversion is that powerful.

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To buy a copy of Do the Web Write, visit its page here on my website.

Posted in Copywriting, General Marketing, Uncategorized, Websites and Web Marketing | No Comments »

Copywriting 101 – How long does Copywriting take?

December 12th, 2011

I always have a lot of people e-mailing me about copywriting: “I want to be a copywriter, how do I do it?”… “I’m starting a copywriting business – do you have any advice?”… How much do I charge for copywriting?

Etc etc.

So I figured it might be useful to post some thoughts on copywriting, how I do it, what to expect, and so on. I’ll start today with how long something takes to “copywrite”.

To begin, there really is no hard and fast rule. I have written a 900 word article in an hour, and I’ve taken three hours to write one half as long. I’ve taken a full day to write one webpage, and other days, I’ve banged out a six page website. It all generally depends on the topic / industry, and the intent of the writing.

I mention “intent”, and it’s something that’s very important. The intent of the writing matters a LOT.

What I mean by intent is “what do we want a reader to do / think?” If we want the reader to contact / buy, well, that’s infinitely harder than just “well, we just want some articles for SEO”. But it goes even deeper than the piece itself. For example, take a five page website for an accounting firm – every page has to at least give the reader the feeling of “yes, these folks are the ones to contact”. It very different than just throwaway articles for SEO.

This is why there is such disparity in copywriting prices. “”Cheap copywriting” firms from India and the like bang out mindless SEO articles or pages of web copy for $15 each, because they literally take a few minutes to cut and paste together (don’t think they do it any other way.) But to write one that gets 100 comments on the Huffington Post (or converts at 5%)? That might take a few hours (hint: those are the kind I do.)

Everyone is different, but here are my “general” times for pieces:

Web Copy – Assuming “normal” sized pages (300-500 words), I can count on a page of good web copy taking anywhere from an hour to four hours. Each. I realize that’s a big gap, but it’s accurate. Just the other day I spent 4 hours writing a 400-word landing page.

Letters – Depending on the topic, a one-page letter will take me anywhere from one to three hours. Letters are usually (but not always) a little easier than web copy as the intent / audience tends to be more focused.

Articles – “Easy” articles on common topics can take an hour. Anything in depth will take longer (for example, I spend a half day each week ghostwriting a Huffington Post article for a somewhat famous client.)

The time taken to copywrite anything is something I cannot negotiate. I write like I write, and that’s that. To be honest, I think the times listed above are pretty common for most professional copywriters. I’ve been doing this for a decade, and I don’t see anyone writing a results-getting webpage in a half an hour. Even if you are just starting out, the times listed above aren’t going to change too much.

Now, this does not mean you are tapping keys for four hours. The other day, when I was writing that 400 word / 4 hour landing page, I took a walk for a half an hour to mull over an idea or two. I realize nobody wants to pay me to take a walk, but that’s what’s involved (and it’s why I don’t bill by the hour – more on that in another post.) Writing professionally is hard, time-consuming work – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Writing actually hurts.

Anyway, I hope the above is useful to anyone wondering about copywriting and how long something takes. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

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Money never sleeps

October 21st, 2011

“Money never sleeps” is an old saying – it essentially means that money is made around the clock. And while I’m not a huge fan of a “business 24/7″ mentality, there is a definite truth to the thought, especially for businesses like mine (copywriting / website writing / etc), and similar (web design, marketing, graphic design, consulting, etc). Let me explain: (more…)

Posted in Copywriting, General Marketing, Home Business / Entrepreneural Stuff, Websites and Web Marketing | 8 Comments »

Prices on your website?

August 17th, 2011

One thing I have struggled with over the years is whether or not to put my copywriting rates on my website. There are two conflicting schools of thought here that battle it out in my head:

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Trapped by the words you use

August 8th, 2011

I’m a big believer in the power of words (being a copywriter and all!) This goes both ways, though – words have the power to do good, and words can have a detrimental affect on what you do. And sometimes the damage is very difficult to undo.

Now I’m not talking about saying bad things or sending an angry e-mail and such. I’m talking more about unintentional damage. Damage where the words you used actually undo (or harm) your message or intent.

I’m going to use the phrase Global Warming as an example.

The big mistake the environmentalists made was calling it “Global Warming” to start with. Why was it a big mistake? Because it pigeonholed them. All it takes is a cold day in May for people to say “yea, where’s that global warming I’ve been hearing about?”

In other words, the argument gets completely caught up in being about the word “warming”. “Global Warming” is a definitive name. “Climate Change” (which is what they are now starting to use) is MUCH less restrictive.

See what I mean? “Climate Change” doesn’t have an easy, built-in opposite at the ready.

I came across this example because I am somewhat a believer in the phenomenon. While I’m not sure of a lot of things, I am pretty convinced that we, as a species, have some effect on our environment. But whenever I’m in a discussion about it, the “cold day/week/winter” argument always arises.

Side note: this is just an observation on words – I don’t want you to think I’m some environmentalist nutjob. I’m not (nor am I against such, either… listen, I’ll happily recycle the bottles, but I’m not going to lose my mind over losing a species of insect. Nor am I buying a puny little electric car…)

Truth be told, I think Global Warming is probably inevitable, and will be nature’s way of thinning us out a little… ok, back to the business part of this post.

Another aspect of this is business names. Naming your business “Bills Bug Killing” prettymuch limits you to killing bugs. Which is fine if that’s all you do. But most guys like this also handle other pests, like rodents. Naming your business “Bills Pest Services” is much better.

There are exceptions to this. But they are usually due to popular conventions. For example, I expect “Joe’s Pizza” to have Calzones (and a guy named “Joe”.)

And speaking of which, it’s time to eat.

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Do SEO Keywords work? An SEO Keyword Test

June 16th, 2011

The results of my SEO keyword test are in, and I think you’ll find them interesting – especially if you are of the opinion that keywords can help you rank.

In short, it’s my opinion that while you DO need to have them, they do not really help you rank high. Assuming you have any type of real competition out there, all they do is give your site the bare basics for Google (et al) to find you. They just are not all that important beyond those few basics – other SEO stuff counts for WAY more than keywords. Let me explain by showing you my test results:
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Posted in Copywriting, Websites and Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

Godzilla and Gamera Drink Bourbon to Settle Their Differences

June 8th, 2011

Yea yea yea… Godzilla and Gamera drinking Bourbon is a pretty silly topic for a post. Those of you who read my old blog will know I’m doing a simple SEO test with this (have to do a new one for the new blog), and those of you reading my blog for the first time are likely saying “hmmm, this Dan guy is a little strange… no self respecting businessperson would blog about Godzilla and Gamera.”