Writing Copy for Fun and Profit

by James Palmer

If you’re a writer looking for ways to make more money from your writing, I’d like
to clue you in on one area you may not have thought of, let alone heard of: freelance
copywriting.

Copywriting is, basically, salesmanship in print. Copywriters create marketing pieces
for individuals and companies designed to sell their products and services. Copywriters
produce sales letters, websites, press releases, e-mails, white papers, case studies, articles,
books, and a wide variety of written materials that help companies sell and make money.

Copywriting can be very lucrative, depending on skill level and the kind of copy being
produced. The top sales letter copywriters, for example, make $10,000 to $50,000 or
more to produce a single sales letter. These fees are rare for most copywriters, however,
but a good copywriter can still expect to make $2,000 to $8,000 or more per sales letter.

Copywriting offers a lot of work flexibility. You can work as much or as little as you
want, from wherever you want. Whether it’s by the pool or at your cabin in the woods,
as long as you have a computer with Internet access, you can write copy. This flexibility
also gives you the time to spend working on that novel if that’s your thing.

What kind of clients and companies will hire you? The usual suspects include newsletter
publishers, mail order companies, direct response advertising agencies, marketing
consultants, and Internet marketers. I’ve written copy for authors, coaches, consultants,
and even other copywriters who outsource their client work to other writers.

What do you need to get started? You should have an interest in nonfiction and
promotional writing. If it isn’t fun, you won’t do it. You should also have a firm grasp
of language and a knowledge of, or the willingness to learn, copywriting. You should
also learn all you can about sales and marketing, because you will not only use those
tools in your client work, but in marketing yourself to potential clients and getting them
to hire you. You also need a good computer with word processing software and Internet
access. If you’re going to be working away from home you’ll need a laptop.

If copywriting sounds interesting to you, I encourage you to learn all you can about it.
Here are a couple of books to get you started: The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman,
and Secrets of a Freelance Writer by Bob Bly. These are arguably the best books in the
field on getting started as a freelance copywriter.

Good luck!

James Palmer is a freelance copywriter who has written websites, e-mail promotions,
books, and other marketing materials for Bob Bly, Jill Lublin, Early to Rise, Dr. Al
Sears M.D., and a wide variety of businesses large and small. For a free copy of his e-
book “21 Steps to Starting and Running a Six-Figure Freelance Copywriting Business”
visit www.jamesmpalmer.com/thesuccessfulwriter.htm.

Make This My Year: 12 Questions to Prepare for the New Year

Editor’s Note: I thought this would be a great time for all of us writers to start prepping our 2011 goals.  Hope this article by coach Elizabeth Grant helps.

–

Can you feel it coming … a fresh start around the corner? It’s natural to feel excitement about the new year and want to look back on the current year, assess it, and look ahead to what’s possible in the year ahead.

One of the most important gifts you will ever give yourself and your dream is to have a plan. I don’t mean a detailed project plan or to-do list. I’m talking about your internal plan and your external plan for making your dream a reality. Without a plan, even the most brilliant idea or passionate desire will end up on a shelf, gathering dust with all of your other unfulfilled desires.

Below are 12 questions you should consider asking yourself as a first step in the planning process.

1. What were your intentions for this year? What were the things that were most important for you to accomplish?

2. How would you say you did in achieving those? Which parts came together and which ones didn’t?

3. Where, if anywhere, did you fall short (we all fall short sometimes … just be totally honest with yourself without putting yourself down)?

4. What were the things that came easily to you this past year?

5. What things were your greatest challenges?

6. What would you need to do differently next year to reach your targets?

7. What do you most want to have happen in the coming 12 months? In other words, where do you want to be in one year? NOTE: It’s really important to set a target that, with a little help from the universe, is BELIEVABLE for you. Don’t set a target of making a million dollars if you’re currently making $50,000. Look at your capabilities, the time, energy and resources available to you, and your level of faith, and set something that’s a bit of a stretch, but also realistic for you.

8. Why do you want this? Be very specific.

9. What do you anticipate will be your greatest obstacles?

10. How will you overcome those obstacles, specifically?

11. Who is at least one person you can rely on to support you unconditionally?

12. How are you going to hold yourself accountable for the promises you make to yourself?

Your Dreaming Big! Creating Reality Assignment This Week:

Take an hour, and journal the answers to the above questions before you take any further action toward making your dreams or desires a reality.

Elizabeth Grant, “The Quantum Coach,” is a spiritual mentor and personal coach who specializes in helping people let go of the struggle. Clients learn how to integrate day-to-day the power of now and universal laws to achieve ease of life, deep happiness and effortless attraction of what they desire. More info: yourquantumsuccesscoach.com. To schedule media interviews email info@thequantumcoach.net.

© 2010 Elizabeth Grant. All Rights Reserved.

Ditch the Outline

By Catharine Bramkamp

Many writers and educators and books  offer various ideas and methods to organize your essays.  There are rules, the authors and experts explain; writers should make meticulous outlines, create notes, organize, shuffle, and double down.

You remember these rules?  Or have you cleverly blocked out all that ponderous and repetitive advice on how to create a long essay?

Let me remind you then: A long time ago, in a land far, far away, the good essay – the essay that earned the A in the class – was the one written with an outline. The outline was a closed system; there was no room for creative interpretation. Outlines were all about the rules.

In the perfect outline, each topic was labeled with Roman numerals I, II and III.  Each sub-heading was listed with a capital Arabic letter A, B, C.  Then the sub sub-headings of the topic were created with those i , ii and iii, then if there was more to say, the lower case a., b. and c. I’d tell you what was supposed to be listed under a., b. or c. but I never, ever drilled an outline down that far.

The complimentary method to the elaborate outline was the three-by-five index card.  Each separate thought was to be written on those index cards. Then apparently, with the help of the cumbersome outline system, you shuffled the cards; labeled them with letters and roman numerals and voila your essay is complete. Now all you have to do is type it up.

The key word to this whole process and system is type.

The inherent problem with the outline/index card system is that it doesn’t address or acknowledge the reality of the current technology. The above ideas are linked to the technology of the typewriter not to the computer or even word processor.

Creating a final paper on a typewriter is fraught with drama and more often: frustration. There is one opportunity to get it right on a typewriter, to do so, all the required information needed to be complete, accurate and available. Even the most advance typewriter had limited back space/white-out capacity. It was possible, mind you, to use liquid white out to delete and re-type whole paragraphs, or so I’ve heard. But at that point, the whole page needed to be retyped.   Think of that, retyping a whole page, not just cutting and pasting to a new document.

Fortunately things have change. Correction fluid dabs much more smoothly on a computer screen.

In light of the current technology, to suggest that you work out your essay using three-by-five cards is analogous to suggesting that you catch fish using a spear. You can do it of course, and some people prefer to catch fish with a spear because that’s what they know (or you are part of the aboriginal spear-caught fishing movement where all fish needs to be killed by spear because it tastes better and is more humane for the fish. Movements like that always seem to start up in the Bay Area); but a modern fly-fishing system is more efficient and has different tools.

You have permission to dig out the last of your index cards and throw them at the fish.

Ninety nine percent of all writers compose on the computer – and if they don’t directly compose, they are just working on drafts in long hand, not organizing a final paper in long hand.

Composing on the computer is faster and more fluid. You can write as fast as you can and then arrange the paragraphs in the order that makes the most sense – there’s your outline.  You can pull your quotes and sources and cut and paste them into separate pages or paragraphs and store them in a labeled file on the desktop – there are your index cards and your notes.

So before you beat yourself up and worry that you never could figure out how to create an outline, know that you can compose without it.

And you can relegate the roman numerals to Super Bowl announcements.

—

From Don’t Write Like You Talk: A Smart Girl’s Guide to Writing and Editing (3L Publishing)

Catharine Bramkamp holds two degrees in English, published  hundreds of newspaper and magazines articles, a handful of novels and two essays in the Chicken Soup for  the  Soul anthologies. She is an adjunct professor of writing for two colleges and is a successful writing coach.    Visit her at www.YourBookStartsHere.com

Previous entries |