Web Copy That Sells

CHAPTER 11 THE LUCRATIVE BUSINESS OF
WEB COPYWRITING

The preceding chapters of this book have shown you one of the most important skills on the web, and that is writing compelling web copy. Once you master this skill, you can parlay it into a lucrative web copywriting career, should you choose to do so.

The copywriting principles, building blocks, and psychological and involvement devices presented in this book should help get you started and steer you in the right direction. However, should you wish to seek advanced education on the art of web copywriting, you can choose to enroll in the Web Copywriting University (www.WebCopywritingUniversity.com) or seek accreditation as a Certified Master of Web Copywriting. You can also refer to the “Directory of Resources” section later in this chapter to obtain additional copywriting resources.

Back in 2002, when I became a freelance web copywriter, I had no idea how to find clients. Using the strategies I present in this chapter, within 60 days I was able to get more clients than I could handle, and within two years I became one of the highest-paid female web copywriters in the world. It is my hope that you will meet with the same good fortune in your copywriting journey.

HOW TO FIND WEB COPYWRITING CLIENTS

There’s an abundance of potential web copywriting clients that you can find online. The ideal ones are those with websites that sell excellent but poorly marketed products. Here are just a few companies and individuals that are good prospects:

Companies that sell perennially popular products or services such as weight loss systems, hair loss remedies, and credit repair

Authors who are looking for ways to market their books

Health and wellness companies that sell nutritional supplements, skin care products, or health gadgets

Companies that have effective brick-and-mortar marketing but have lackluster online marketing (such as those that sell products via TV infomercials or products sold through multilevel marketing)

High-tech companies or independent software developers that sell outstanding programs that no one knows about

Internet marketers that have courses or products to sell (but poor copywriting skills)

Professional companies or individuals that offer a specialty product or service, such as the following:

A financial company that sells subscriptions to an investment newsletter

A stock-trading expert who sells a stock-picking service

A chiropractor who specializes in curing acid reflux

An elder-law attorney who offers a self-help kit for families caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease

An individual who helps laypeople qualify for Medicaid to cover the expenses of a nursing home

These represent only a small cross section of the diverse array of enterprises that need good copywriting services. You can begin your search for prospective web copywriting clients simply by typing a keyword or phrase into a search engine for the type of product you’d like to write copy for. For example, if you’re interested in writing copy to sell investment newsletters, type the keyphrase “investment newsletters” in the search box of Google, Bing, or another search engine. The search results will display a variety of investment newsletters, and you can view the sales copy of each investment newsletter to see if it’s a candidate for a copy overhaul. If so, you can send the newsletter the template prospecting e-mail in the next section of this chapter.

An even better way to prequalify your prospective web copywriting clients is to identify only those businesses whose websites already get considerable traffic. This is the beauty of the web copywriting profession. You don’t have to settle for the clients that happen to come your way—you actually get to choose your clients. And if you’re going to choose your clients anyway, you might as well pursue those that have high traffic, the ones that are already making money, the ones that are already spending money on advertising. Why? Because those companies are likely to understand the value of good web copy, able to afford professional web copywriting services, and probably accustomed to hiring copywriters.

How do you go about finding these prospects? One way is by using Alexa and Quantcast. Go to Alexa.com, a website that helps you find and evaluate businesses worldwide with its free web analytics. Let’s suppose you found an investment letter called ValueLine from your Google search. You can type in ValueLine’s website address in Alexa’s search box, and it will give you Site Details, such as the following:

Alexa Traffic Rank: 149,664

Traffic Rank in U.S.: 39,853

Sites Linking In: 880

Thereafter, go to Quantcast.com, which enables you to cross-reference a website’s profile and see the site’s audience reports for free. If you type Value-Line’s website address in Quantcast’s search box, you’ll find that the website gets 59,599 monthly U.S. visitors. It’s ranked number 25,502 among websites, based on the number of people in the United States who visit the site within a month.

Based on the analytics from Alexa and Quantcast, ValueLine.com appears to be a great web copywriting prospect because of the website traffic it gets and its traffic rank.

Another way to find prospective clients is to click on the “Top Sites” tab at the top of the Alexa.com home page. This displays the top 500 sites on the web (based on Alexa’s traffic ranking). Click on the By Category tab to choose a specific category of high-traffic websites. If you click on Health, for example, subcategories ranging from Addictions to Women’s Health appear. In this way, you can zero in on just the websites you’d like to write copy for. Likewise, on QuantCast.com, you can click on the Top Sites link to obtain similar information.

Yet another way to find an unlimited number of prospective copywriting clients is at ClickBank.com, a marketplace where thousands of publishers of digital products (such as e-books, downloadable audiobooks, videos, and courses) offer their products to ClickBank’s network of over 100,000 affiliates. At Clickbank.com, click on the Marketplace link and you’ll arrive at a webpage where you can choose from categories of products that are available for sale. If you click on the Self-Help category, for example, you’ll arrive at a webpage where you can sort out all the Self-Help products by order of popularity. Click on the dropdown menu under Sort Results By and select Popularity. The first page of the results will display the most popular products in the Self-Help category. It’s reasonable to assume that the sales copy for these first-page products is effectively converting prospects into customers. The way to find out how well any given product’s sales copy is written is by clicking on the product name (e.g., Panic Away—End Anxiety and Panic Attacks). This takes you to the product’s sales page. It’s also reasonable to assume that since the product is selling well, the sales copy is probably performing well, and that means the product owner (or website owner) may not be motivated to have the sales copy rewritten.

The trick is to scroll down to the less popular products—that is, those that appear on page 3 or beyond in the popularity search. Why? Because there’s a high likelihood that those business owners or website owners feel the 3 Ps (pain, problem, and predicament) most. They probably think their copy needs improvement, but they don’t know whom to contact to get it done. They’re looking for help in generating more leads, sales, and profits.

HOW TO CONTACT PROSPECTIVE CLIENTS

Once you’ve identified the online businesses that you’d like to pursue as web copywriting clients, and you’ve obtained the names of the key contact people and their e-mail addresses, it’s important to approach them in a manner that will make them take notice.

In Chapter 3, I presented the Formula for Mathematically Measuring the Selling Quotient (SQ) of web copy. Most business owners and website owners would be interested in knowing their website’s SQ. People are always interested in getting their “score”—especially when you explain that the SQ is the predictor of a website’s sales performance based on its web copy.

You can plug the formula into your prospective web copywriting client’s existing web copy and determine exactly what kind of a selling job the website is doing. Remember: To avoid having to manually add up your worksheet score, you can go to www.WebCopywritingUniversity.com/formula.htm. That webpage enables you to simply plug in the numbers, and the CGI script automatically calculates the total for you.

Once you’ve calculated your prospect’s SQ, all you have to do is send the following prospecting e-mail. Note: This is the only piece of e-mail that I ever sent out to obtain web copywriting business. When you see how it rivets your prospect’s attention and how helpful your constructive comments can be, you’ll understand why it works so well.

SUBJECT: Your website’s score . . .

Hi [Business Owner/Website Owner’s Name],

My name is [put your name here]. I am an experienced web copywriter who specializes in converting web traffic into sales and converting your prospects into customers—and I can prove it at virtually no out-of-pocket cost to you.

I just came across your website at [put prospect’s URL here]. I am impressed by your outstanding [put name of prospect’s product or service here] and its potential for generating an incredible amount of sales. Therefore, I took the liberty of running your website through the Selling Quotient Formula and found out that it scored [put score here]% out of a possible score of 100%.

This means that your website is getting only [put percentage here]% of the potential sales it could *easily* be making. When you apply a few web copywriting techniques that are scientifically proven to increase sales by 340% or more, your website could be maximizing its sales potential.

I realize that you may have put in a lot of time and money to create your website, and it is not my intention to point out its shortcomings. I simply want you to know that since I know what works and what doesn’t work online, it’s easy for you to change and improve your website so that it can sell more of your [put name of product or service here].

Just off the top of my head, here are 5 things that could be improved easily and immediately:

1. Your website doesn’t have a benefit-laden headline that stops people dead in their tracks and compels them to read on. DID YOU KNOW that adding a headline (or changing one word or phrase in your website’s headline can account for up to a 1,700% increase in sales—even if you didn’t touch one word of the body copy?

2. No emotional/psychological triggers or involvement devices are employed to ensure maximum sales. DID YOU KNOW that applying just 1 or 2 of these triggers or devices can compel your prospect to buy willingly without any resistance?

3. You have no unique selling proposition. DID YOU KNOW that if you don’t differentiate your product or service from those of your competitors, you have little or no chance of making a sale?

4. You have no highly visible mechanism for capturing web visitors’ contact information. DID YOU KNOW that if you don’t employ an irresistible opt-in offer to get your web visitors to give you their e-mail address, you’re missing up to 90% of your potential sales?

5. You have no effective order form. DID YOU KNOW that the right wording on an order form can increase your sales by as much as 32%?

These are just 5 of the [put number here] items I’ve identified in your website that need to be corrected right away if you expect your website to sell effectively. I hope this brief evaluation is useful in helping you improve your website.

If you’d like a more in-depth evaluation with specific advice, or if you’d like me to rewrite your website copy, I’d be more than happy to help you get it to 100% Selling Quotient.

With all the time, expense, and energy that goes into creating your website, you can’t afford *not* to have it be as persuasive as possible—and I strongly believe I can give you valuable, response-enhancing recommendations.

Please reply to this e-mail if you’d like me to work with you to optimize your website in order to sell your [name of product or service here] more effectively.

All the best,

[Your Name Here]

WHAT TO CHARGE–AND HOW TO ENSURE THAT YOUR
CLIENTS PAY YOU

When your prospect has expressed his or her willingness to hire you and has agreed to your price, send an engagement letter that summarizes the scope of the work. This letter details the copywriting tasks you’re going to do, the price for each of the tasks (including the total), the terms, and the anticipated date of completion. You can find a sample of an engagement letter that you can use as a model for writing yours here: http://www.webcopywritinguniversity.com/EngagementLetter.htm.

Experienced direct-response copywriters who work on a freelance basis charge between $125 and $235 per hour—or $3,000 to $12,000 to write a sales letter or sales page. By contrast, the full-time yearly salaries of junior and senior copywriters in the Los Angeles area are as follows:

Junior copywriter—$37,420 to $61,607 (Median: $46,724/year,
$22.46 per hour)

Senior copywriter—$59,599 to $96,280 (Median: $75,560/year,
$36.32 per hour)

The median salaries for copywriters in smaller urban areas are approximately 11 to 12 percent less than those in major cities like Los Angeles.

Clearly, experienced direct-response copywriters who work on a freelance basis command much higher rates (about five or six times more) than salaried copywriters. You can use these rates as a springboard for establishing the rates you’re going to charge for your copywriting services. You have the option to charge by the hour, on a project basis, or based on a percentage of the sales generated by your copy—or a combination of two or more of these.

If you’re a new web copywriter who’s looking to hone your skills while building your portfolio of business, it is advisable to charge low copywriting fees initially—between $2,000 and $3,000 for a sales page, which may be all that a small business owner can afford to pay. You could also offer to charge a small up-front fee, with a written agreement that if your copy generates a certain level of conversions or sales, the client will pay an additional flat fee of $2,000 or more.

Intellectual Property Licensing

There are also opportunities for you to write web copy on a performance-based compensation platform. That means you do not receive any compensation up front, but if the copy you write generates sales, you’ll earn a substantial percentage of the sales generated by your copy. This type of arrangement is entered into by copywriters who feel confident that they can rewrite a prospective client’s sales copy and reasonably expect their copy to make a significant difference in the client’s sales and profits.

When you enter into this type of agreement, you’ll be writing the copy on spec (or “on speculation”) in the hope that your copy will prove to result in higher conversions, higher sales, and higher profits than the client’s existing copy. In this scenario, since you’re writing the copy at no cost to the client, the copy is deemed intellectual property that belongs to you. It is also your responsibility to prove, through market testing, that your copy converts or generates more sales than the client’s existing copy.

I’ve entered into many of these types of performance-based intellectual property licensing agreements, and they’ve always proven to be profitable. Whenever I license to a client any copy I’ve written, I stipulate in the agreement a royalty of between 5 and 10 percent of gross revenues less marketing costs. Each one of this type of intellectual property licensing deal earns a six-figure royalty on an annual basis, so they represent an ongoing passive income stream for me. Many A-list copywriters prefer to enter into intellectual property licensing deals rather than projects that pay on a flat-fee or per-project basis.

A template for an intellectual property licensing agreement can be found at http://www.webcopywritinguniversity.com/agreement.htm.

Entering into a joint venture with a prospective copywriting client is another variation of the performance-based copywriting model. This usually happens when a client who has an outstanding product, but no budget to pay for copywriting fees, meets a copywriter who’s willing to write the copy without getting paid up front. The copywriter earns nothing until the copy he or she writes generates revenues. In this type of arrangement, there’s always a risk that the copywriter could spend a substantial amount of time writing the copy and the client never implements it. Therefore, a client must agree to implement the copy within a set period (usually 30 calendar days) and spend an agreed-upon amount of money to advertise the website in order to measure the copy’s performance.

DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES

Books and Courses

Copywriting

Bly, Robert W. The Copywriter’s Handbook, Third Edition: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Copy That Sells. New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2006.

Lewis, Herschell Gordon. Direct Mail Copy That Sells. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984.

Nicholas, Ted. How I Sold $400 Million Worth of Products: The Ultimate Swipe File. Indian Rocks Beach, FL: Nicholas Direct, Inc., 2011.

Nicholas, Ted. The Million Dollar Copywriting Bootcamp: A Home Study Course. Indian Rocks Beach, FL: Nicholas Direct, Inc.

Sugarman, Joe. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs. Las Vegas, NV: DelStar, 1998.

Marketing, Advertising, Sales, and the Art of Persuasion

Caples, John. Tested Advertising Methods. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998.

Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Revised ed. New York: Collins Business, 1998.

Girard, Joe. How to Sell Anything to Anybody. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978.

Godin, Seth. Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Hopkins, Claude C. My Life in Advertising. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936.

Hopkins, Claude C. Scientific Advertising. Reprint. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2010.

Levinson, Jay Conrad. Guerrilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business. 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

Levinson, Jay Conrad, Mitch Meyerson, and Mary Eule Scarborough. Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet: The Definitive Guide from the Father of Guerrilla Marketing. Irvine, CA: Entrepreneur Press, 2008.

Ogilvy, David. Confessions of an Advertising Man. New York: Atheneum, 1988.

Ogilvy, David. Ogilvy on Advertising. New York: Knopf, 1985.

Reeves, Rosser. Reality in Advertising. New York: Knopf, 1961.

Ries, Al, and Jack Trout. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Schwartz, Eugene. Breakthrough Advertising. Des Moines, IA: Bottom Line Books, 2004.

Schwartz, Eugene. The Brilliance Breakthrough: How to Talk and Write So That People Will Never Forget You. Instant Learning, 1994.

Scott, David Meerman. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007.

Sugarman, Joe. Triggers: 30 Sales Tools You Can Use to Control the Mind of Your Prospect to Motivate, Influence and Persuade. Las Vegas, NV: DelStar, 1999.

Resources for Creating Online Marketing Videos

Stock photos: Dreamstime.com and iStockphoto.com

Stock video clips: iStockvideo.com and Revostock.com

Online voice talent companies: ProVoiceUSA.com and VoiceTalentNow.com

Music clips: MusicBakery.com, BeatSuite.com, and RoyaltyFreeMusic.com

One-stop shop for online video production: ViralVideoWizard.com

This service provides everything including writing the script,
assembling all photos and video clips, producing the video, and
uploading it to 35 video-sharing sites, 12 social bookmarking sites,
6 blogs, and podcast directories.

Video editor: Post job on Elance.com or type “video editor” in craigslist.com searchbox