7 keys to making more moolah from your copywriting

http://eat-healthy-every-day.blogspot.com/

Before you write one single word!

#1: Know what the heck you’re talking about. In other words, do your research. Spend time getting into the mind of your prospect.

Convince yourself this is the best product ever and everyone needs to know about it. Use the product!

I always request samples and use whatever I’m working on (with the exception of the male potency stuff. Doesn’t work for me and my husband swears he’ll never need it).

I want to see and feel a difference the product makes on ME. In other words, I’m convincing myself before I try to sell anybody else!

Many times, I’m so certain the product works, I write my own testimonial in my package!

If you’re working on a product and don’t believe its value -- do yourself a favor and turn down the job. The odds of failure are great — and why do you want to sell a crappy product anyway?

#2: Work with a few clients – and really get to know their business! I’m in my 8th year as a freelance copywriter. And I’ve found the years I worked with just 2 or 3 clients produced more revenue than when I worked for 6 or more companies!

Of the 14 packages I wrote last year, 9 were from one client. They were a variety of nutritional products – but all were going to the same demographics and files! That means I knew immediately whom I was writing to.

I didn’t have to “learn” my market every time – just had to get into the benefits of the product. And because I was familiar with the company, I knew their risk tolerance. That helped avoid a lot of edits from the legal department!

How to handle “writer’s block”:

#3: Stop staring at the blank screen! If ideas aren’t coming to you, get up and do something else. Give yourself permission to goof off. When I’m stuck, I take my 96-year grandmother to Wal-Mart...tackle a new recipe in my favorite crock-pot cookbook...or take a nap. Sounds contrary to SPEEDwriting, doesn’t it? Well it’s not. Here’s why...

Before I enjoy these diversions, I tell myself, “Ok, Carline, you can take a break, but you need to come up with a headline, or lead.” Then I get up from my computer.

What I’ve done is given my subconscious a direct order to start working. While I’m “goofing off”, my subconscious is free to be as creative as possible.

Many times I’ve burned a recipe because right in the middle of cooking, an idea pops in my head. I start writing it down and am usually back at my computer and raring to go!

Don’t believe me? Then read the book, "Psycho-cybernetics" by Maxwell Maltz. You'll discover how to unleash the power of the subconscious mind. Then, try it for yourself. I promise—it’ll work for you!

#4: Never start with a blank screen! You get writer’s block ‘cause you don’t know what to say. Plus that blank page can be very scary!

So the first thing I do when I start writing is to quickly fill up the blank page. For example, you know you’ll need an order form, guarantee, testimonials and other static elements—so go ahead and cut and paste some standard ones into your document.

Then write the words, “Big freakin’ headline goes here!” – Hey, look, you’ve already got at least 3 pages of copy — and you haven’t even written a word yet!

Don’t worry, you’ll eventually tweak your original headline and make it stronger — but at least for now, you’ve got something!

#5: Take rest breaks: Tell yourself you’re only going to write for 15 minutes and then you’ll take a break. That’s easy right? What you’re doing is called “baby steps” – take a huge project and break it down into easy to handle segments.

After 15 minutes, you can take a break. But most likely, you’ll find you’re writing for 30...45...even an hour or more!

#6: Don’t reinvent the wheel: Ask clients if they have standard elements of a package they prefer to use.

For example, one of my clients uses a standard order form for his promotions. Why spend time writing a new order form when it’s going to get dumped and replaced by the standard one?

Instead, focus your time on writing a strong headline for the order form and killer copy for the positive acceptance statement (the “YES! I want to ... section of the order form).

#7: Minimize distractions: When you’re in heavy-duty writing mode, keep your momentum by eliminating distractions.

In the movie, “The Pursuit of Happiness”, Will Smith’s character found out he could save 8 minutes a day just by pushing the button instead of physically hanging up the phone after every sales call. And he saved even more time by not drinking water so he wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom.

What he did was maximize productivity by minimizing distractions. You can too.

Put your phone on mute while you’re working. Contact your client and request any additional info by e-mail only...let your neighbors know you really do have a job and not to “pop in”...and post a sign on your door that says “WARNING: DON’T BOTHER ME UNLESS YOU’RE BLEEDING!” In other words, do whatever you need to protect your writing time!

I know I promised you 7 keys to speedwriting. And I hope these are helpful to you. But a good copywriter always delivers more than promised. So here’s probably the real key to my success...

#8: Love what you do and “niche your passion”. When I first started copywriting, I took whatever job I could get. I needed the money and the experience. But I didn’t achieve real success until I focused on just one area and made myself an expert.

I love the alternative health field and I love writing about nutritional supplements. So now, 90% of my projects are for the nutritional health field.

I turn down projects that push me too far away from my niche. That way, I stay focused on the pulse of my market...and write faster, more profitable copy!

Carline Anglade-Cole

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Dialing for Small-Biz Dollars

In the half-century I’ve been around, I’ve seen arrogance be variously acceptable and unacceptable in mainstream culture.

Three-year-old Rhode Island-based roofing company AS Enterprises had a big, albeit common, problem: not enough customers. Owner Ann Marie Appleton had tried offering free estimates in local circulars and flyers, but her competitors were doing the same, and the resulting leads were lukewarm at best. She considered an ad in the SuperPages yellow pages, a division of Verizon (VZ) spin-off Idearc Media (IAR), because of its large distribution and solid reputation, but the next edition wouldn't be delivered to homes for eight months.

Eventually, Appleton's sales representative sold her on the idea of a monthly agreement for the company's new Pay For Call service, where businesses pay for each call made to their business via SuperPages' online local search results.

Appleton couldn't be happier with her choice. The service costs around $600 a month, depending on how many times her ad is served and how many calls she gets. AS Enterprises totaled more than $240,000 in sales in 2006, up from just $60,000 the year before, and Appleton says a good 70% of that business came directly from her pay-per-call advertising.

Calls Over Clicks

People used to call just for the free estimate, says Appleton, but those who call from SuperPages are ready to do business. Her closing rate on calls went from 25% to between 60% and 70%, and her call volume has tripled. Since the service requires that she bid against other businesses, each call costs about $25, but Appleton says she'd gladly pay twice that. "It pays for itself with just one job, and I get between four and eight good jobs a month," she says.

Princeton (N.J.)-based research firm The Kelsey Group estimates that the pay-per-call market will more than double each year for the next five years, with revenues reaching $3.7 billion by 2010. "Call tracking will live side-by-side with pay-per-click, e-mail tracking, coupon prints, and other measurable consumer actions. For off-line businesses in the service sector (painters, roofers, etc.), calls will have a higher importance than clicks," says Matthew Booth, senior vice-president and program director for interactive local media at Kelsey.

Small-business customers like Appleton say it offers a better return on investment than pay-per-click advertising and suits the needs of businesses that often can't close a sale via the Web only (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/29/07, "Small-Biz Ads: The Year of the Web").

Dropping the Dime

Still, the acceptance of pay-per-call by no means signals the end of pay-per-click; in fact, that market continues to grow. But some small-business advertisers are getting outpriced by their larger counterparts (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/22/07, "The Small Fry Sour on Search Ads"), leading them to look for alternatives.

Most pay-per-call advertising services work like this: First, companies bid for placement on keyword searches. Then their ad is served to the user based on location, and the company is charged each time a user calls; the ad itself is placed for free. When companies register with most providers, their site is assigned a unique phone number that appears in the ad, so that the company can track how many calls actually come through the pay-per-call advertising system. Businesses only pay when someone searching for their product or service picks up the phone and calls them.

Some companies think that the local nature of the product will bring in loads of new advertisers. Ingenio, a San Francisco-based local search advertising company with 110 employees and more than $100 million in annual revenue, is one that's betting that the torrid growth rates of pay-per-click advertising can't continue forever. "Everyone focuses on the 500,000 U.S. businesses targeted by pay-per-click, when there are 13 million businesses not engaged online at all, and 70% of them don't have Web sites," says Ingenio Chief Marketing Officer Marc Barach.

Serious Callers

Therein lies an untapped demand that's making companies like Ingenio salivate. Through their bidding system, Ingenio, like SuperPages.com, has created a virtual market that dictates its own pricing, much like the pay-per-click model. Barach says prices vary across different industries and for different services. Legal-service ads draw higher prices than those from hair salons, for example. And when tax time is peaking, Barach says the price of placing tax-service ads on portals such as AOL (AOL) and MSN (MSFT) goes through the roof.

Barach thinks the advertiser's return on investment more than makes up for the higher initial price of pay-per-call vs. pay-per-click. He says the average conversion rate on a pay-per-call ad is three to five times more successful than a pay-per-click ad in a field like legal services, and that rate grows to eight times for smaller purchases like flower shops. "The reason is that people who are clicking to read Web sites are in the research phase, and people who are calling the merchant aren't doing it for entertainment. Hence, these things convert more."

Get Them Talking

Google (GOOG) is currently at work on its own pay-per-call service, which already works as a part of Google Maps but hasn't yet been offered to U.S. small businesses. In that system, users click on an icon for a restaurant, enter their numbers, and an outside provider connects the user and the establishment. The company has already launched a formal pay-per-call product in India, says Rohit Dahawan, a product manager for Google that oversees the click-to-call and pay-per-call products. And they're working on more such products, to be launched in the next several months in the U.S. They've also started tracking calls as part of their updated small-business AdWords service.

When deciding with whom to advertise, small businesses try to keep in mind the eventual placement of their ads and the amount of traffic that will see it. SuperPages.com had 2.8 billion searches in 2006; Ingenio's network of AOL and MSN reached more than 1.1 billion searches. Says Robyn Rose, vice-president of Internet marketing for Idearc Media, "Having a heritage in the yellow-pages business, we know that about 70% of companies are service-based. Most want to conduct business over the phone."

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Great article in the January 29th issue of The New Yorker titled “What’s The Trouble?”.

It’s primarily a deep deconstruction of how doctors think and make a fast diagnosis under pressure. Which turns out to be dangerously flawed in many cases… especially if they like you.

But the article also makes an excellent cross-reference to how the same kind of thinking can affect business owners. This isn’t about evil or obtuse agendas… it’s about how a very natural way of looking at vast, changeable, and not always clear data can mess with your head.

The result can be frightening for a patient. And disasterous for a business owner.

I love the New Yorker, by the way. It hosts the best writing in journalism right now, and yet it’s on the stands every week. (I have a subscription.) There’s no telling how long this excellence will last — it’s dependent on enlightened publishers, hard-ass editors (who barely exist anymore in journalism), and ambitious, competitive writers who are at the peak of their game.

Learning to write well has nothing to do with grammar. It’s about communicating. And it’s nearly a lost art in America. Molly Ivins died yesterday, one of the last of the truly-courageous Old School columnists and book writers in politics. (Thank God P.J. O’Rourke is still pounding ‘em out.) We won’t see her like again soon… especially since the Corporate Beast discovered how easy it is to use books to coat public discourse with bullshit propoganda and rabble-rousing name-calling nonsense. (Both Al Franken and Ann Coulter fall into this category. These scumballs and their publishers are strangling American political dialogue.)

All this, however, isn’t necessarily bad news for people who care about good writing. And I assume this includes you, since you’re reading this blog.

The need for clear, truthful writing will be filled. If you care to join those of us who work to master the craft (and while it ain’t brain surgery, it does require waking up and facing reality), the rewards are beyond counting.

For business owners, the lack of good writing in your market is an opening you should leap into with guns blazing. Whether it’s honing your sales message, or building up your content and nurturing your list… this is the most important writing you will ever do.

And doing it really, really well allows you to stand out no matter how much better funded, or better situated your competition is. A single good copywriter can go up against Attila The Hun, Inc, and win.

Just remember that when I suggest articles to read.

Sharpening your ability to communicate is like putting money in the bank.

Stay frosty.

John Carlton, http://www.marketingrebelrant.com/

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Age proves no limit for maritime inventor

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If it's in your blood, you're never too old to be an inventor.

Just ask Norton Shores' Larry Gray. He's 77 and in the middle of a relatively successful launch of a new sailing product.

Gray, with his wife, Judy, have created, produced and marketed the TideMinder through their company Go With the Flow Solution LLC of Muskegon.

The TideMinder protects boat dock lines from chaffing due to tide or wave action. A series of balls attached to the loop of the dock line keeps the line from rubbing on a piling, Gray said.

It all began as an idea while hanging out at Hernado Beach's Gulf Star Marina north of Tampa Bay, Fla. Gray has been a sailor of S-2 yachts for years.

The initial idea came in April 2005 and the Grays worked all summer on the prototypes. The first was the use of roller blade wheels but a 3-inch diameter solid plastic ball worked better. The ball is bored to allow the dock line to slip down the center.

"They balls are indestructible," Gray said. "And they float."

For a 12-inch-diameter piling, a set of nine TideMinder balls retail at $49.50. A competitor's product is a small car that runs along a track bolted to the piling and retails for $225, Gray said.

The TideMinder is portable, staying with the boat from marina to marina, said Gray, a member of the Muskegon Inventors Network.

"I like to think it is the perfect invention ... something every boater needs," Gray said. "(As a manufacturer) it's not that perfect though ... it doesn't wear out."

The product was ready for marketing in October 2005. The TideMinder is produced by CamCar Plastics of Muskegon and distributed through Dr. Shrink, a distribution outlet of Mike Stenberg of Manistee, Gray said.

Some 2,000 packages of the TideMinder have been produced but Gray said he cannot say how many of those have been sold. The product was written up in Practical Sailor last June and Gray is working to get the product into the West Marine inventory -- the boating superstore with an outlet in Muskegon.

This is not the first product that Gray has produced. The retired music teacher and choir director also had made a vacuum cleaner accessory for shag carpets that eventually was sold to Clarke Floor Machine.

Larry Gray's TideMinder protects boat dock lines from chaffing.

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