I'm a good copywriter, but ... I have no portfolio.

Varg-

This recent thread my be useful for you:

http://www.warriorforum.com/copywrit...-beginner.html

Aside from that, there's an elephant in
the room...

It's going to be VERY tough for you to
charge people any set figure if you have
no idea how good you are...

... and seriously - are you okay with
taking people's money when even you
have no idea what they're getting in
return?

Most good copywriters go through what
John Carlton calls the "shameless whore"
period, where you take any gig you can
get, regardless of price.

The insights you can get in this stage,
even if you're working for free, are
priceless.

Also, don't stop honing your chops. It's
unrealistic to expect any halfway decent
fees if you've only studied the game for
3 months.

Hope that helps

-David Raybould

Wow nice reply David! That also pertains to article/content writing, which I am looking into. Thanks for the link, im going to take a look.

The fastest way to 'make your bones' as a copywriter is to create your own product, write the sales page yourself and keep close tabs on your sales. If you can sell your own stuff, and you can prove the sales, you can do it for others.

Hi Varg,

Here's something you might like to try.

1. Get yourself familiarized with Google Website Optimizer.
It's a free multivariate tool that is fast and easy to implement.

(There are other good MV tools out there. GWO is free
so you can start off with that first.)

2. Contact a potential client and offer to do a free optimization
for his website.

3. Identify a few elements on his sites that may affect
his conversions (e.g. headlines, images, bullets).

Do a few variations for each elements and do a MV test
for him.

With the data in hand...and your copy skill...you should
be able to help him increase conversion pretty fast
(assuming his site's traffic is consistent).

That's a quick way to get results and show your expertise.

Jag

Remember, Varg...

Copywriting is not about writing WELL,
it's about writing that gets RESULTS.

Often, that means writing things that
make "good" writers cringe.

Short, stubby sentences.

One and two sentence paragraphs.

Simple, often colloquial language.

Being a good writer doesn't make you
a good copywriter - being a good salesman
makes you a good copywriter.

I am not saying this to discourage you
or disparage you - I don't even know you.

All I'm saying is that if you want to get in
the game as a direct response copywriter
your eye needs to be on the right ball.

Published author? Meaningless.
Software programmer? Irrelevant.

Those are fine and impressive credentials...

...for a product creator or publisher.

All a copywriting client cares about is how
much money you can make for them...

...and with what degree of certainty based
on your track record of previous successes.

Making sense?

Eye on the prize... RESULTS for CLIENTS.

When you have that, you're a copywriter.

And you can charge whatever you want.

Best,

Brian

Really good copywriting is about good psychology not good writing.

I'm with Brian on this one:

RESULTS!

Also: copywriting is not just knowing the English language - It's something else entirely different.

It's one thing to have good gram-er and another to capture attention...

And another this to know how to entertain and another entirely to persuade and convince.

Here's a fun one...

Write up a sales letter about why someone should hire you!

If that sales letter is good enough on it's own merits that should get you clients at the get go.

Simple!

So go write up a sales letter.

I agree with what the others have said - sorry, but having perfect English and being a published writer are about as far from qualifications as a professional copywriter as you can get. Do you have any sales experience? Door to door, retail, B2B, etc? Have you written collateral before? Do you know what collateral is?? Does the term MarCom mean anything to you?

To be perfectly honest, if you want to make a living from your writing - based on your credentials - I'd become a technical writer. Perfect, professional English and a technical mindset (especially in IT) are prerequisites there.

If anything, being a former programmer will hinder you even more as a copywriter. Not only do you have a technical mind, which can lead to a lot of jargon (just read your above post - I know what C++ and Fortran are, but how many people here do you think understood half of that post?), but you'll be looking for formulaic solutions.

There are none in copywriting. Copywriting is organized chaos with a goal - which will drive most analytical types nuts, unless you're analytical chaos like me and a few others here *cough* Subtle *cough*(a very rare exception, I've found.)

Technical writing is perfectly suited to your abilities, pays well, allows you to have the freelance lifestyle, and your career will actually BENEFIT from having perfect English and newspaper/magazine clips (which I'm assuming is what you meant by being published.)

Marketable writing is completely different from writing for marketing purposes.

Good luck!

- Cherilyn

Hey buddy ... here's the question:

How much would you pay to have someone write copy for your product WITHOUT a portfolio and WITHOUT any proven results?

js

I just noticed your location, too - and being in Denver is a perfect place to get technical writing work. Close enough to work with companies in Silicon Valley without much of a time difference, with plenty of tech firms locally. I'd definitely get my start there, if I were you.

I submit the subject line is an impossibility.

If anything, being a former programmer will hinder you even more as a copywriter.

This statement betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of programmers, engineers and software developers.

I won't drag you through the details but, do you have any idea how many English majors make awesome software developers? Do you know how many musicians are great software developers? Do you know how many blanks and blanks and blanks ...

Stereotyping is silly. We all like to feel we are better than someone else. And I realize that most of us accomplish that feeling utilizing some form of prejudice, but come on! Pick on a dumber group next time.

*Frankly, I'm puzzled. Really, I'm shocked.

Sure studying English and music or art or software engineering won't make you a great copywriter, but I think creativity does make you a good copywriter.

From what I've seen, good copywriters don't just follow the same lame formula with a call to action and tack on a few PS's at the end that every other copywriter uses.

Good copywriters might do that, but they're also very creative people and it's what they add in between the lines of the formula that makes all the difference.

And, for Hopkin's sake. One of the books that I usually see at the top of most of the "Top 10 Must Have Copywriting Books Of All Time" is Scientific Advertising. That's a logician's and statistician's book if I've ever seen one.

Right now I'm enjoying a read of an older book, Successful Direct Marketing Methods by Bob Stone. There's a lot of stuff that I find extremely interesting in that book. (Did I mention I'm a software developer?) I just don't know how I'm able to grasp it all.

*Borrowed from the Copywriter's Book of Colloquially Idiomatic Cliches and Slangisms 2010 edition.

A good salesman can have poor english, what matters is his ability to exchange a product for money

Okay. Then at which point would his poor English affect his ability to sell?

Exactly how poor can his English be?
Does he know how to ask a question?
Does he know how to string words together to make a sentence that means something to his prospect?
Does he put his adjectives before or after the noun?
Does he know what adjectives are?
Does he know the English alphabet?
Does he know how to pronounce the name of the product he's selling?
How good is he without body language? Or eye contact?
Does a good salesman who speaks poor English lose his sales-goodness during phone calls? (Maybe your statement only applies to only face-to-face sales, eh?)
Does he know sales techniques?
Does his poor English prevent him from reading? (sales books, product manuals, etc ...)
Can he listen to a Brian Tracy CD an understand what is being said? (Brian uses some pretty big words and even bigger concepts sometimes.)
Can he give a presentation to a room full of <insert some decision maker title here>?

How bad can his speaking get until his credibility suffers?
Can we pull his tongue out?
Does he need to speak English at all?
Can he just hum or click his way to a sale?

And, er, let's not be too logical about this but, the word copywriter is 60% writer. It's trite, I know -- (but maybe your poor English speaking salesman doesn't know, because trite is kind of a hard word.)

You will never, ever, convince me, never, ever, ever, no matter how poor your English is, that a bad writer is a good copywriter.

Because most of you writing about how good copywriters can be poor writers disprove your own statements with your own writing. (See, the way it works is -- your writing is good, so you damage your own case. There's some more software guy logic for ya.)

Perhaps you need to write more bad-lier. Maybe that convince me it will. (And Yoda will finally let me out of the swamp.)

So, to my fellow software developing copywriter wannabe compadre --don't listen to the naysayers. Technical writers can make a killing -- especially medical writers. But, if your heart is set on advertising and copywriting -- go for it!

(BTW, I do predict that in 5 years C++ coders will be where COBOL coders were 10 years ago -- charging $85+/hour. Because no one is learning C++ anymore and there are a lot of legacy systems running critical systems that will need maintenance.)

Matt - very valid points! Perhaps I should have said more that while being a programmer with perfect English won't qualify you as a copywriter, the two aren't mutually exclusive either.

And you're completely right about Scientific Advertising being a perfect example of how statistics play into direct marketing!

However (and this is speaking from *some* experience - I do know PHP, HTML, CSS & how to develop for MySQL, so while I will not call myself a programmer because that would be completely insulting to you guys (my father was a programmer, I know I'm just a script kiddie ) I do have some experience working on similarly oriented tasks) - the part of my brain that thoroughly enjoys proofreading, writing academic papers, and coding a dynamic page in PHP - it is often different from the parts of my brain that are activated while I'm writing copy.

When it comes to testing copy, formatting the page for web publishing, etc - which is a creative task as well, the formatting - I am completely in my left-brain world, as I am when working with code, proofreading, or writing an academic paper. I'm in my glory, because I'm largely a left-brain dominant person.

And when I'm working on fiction (because every good writer should keep their fiction pencil sharpened, too!), I'm completely in my right-brain world, getting down and dirty with the creatives.

When I'm writing copy, however, I notice it is a whole brain task (that isn't to say that other people aren't using their whole brains, LOL) - you have to use your left brain, the analytical, calculating side to research, format, and consciously remember details about the product, and some of the "rules" and "formulas" that exist in copywriting (like a headline *usually* being a necessity, for example.)

But you have to connect those ideas to the right brain creative side (the part of my brain that would be covered in flowers and polka dots, if one could decorate their brain...) to write good copy, because you have to come up with ideas on how to present the product, how to transform a feature into a benefit, how to appeal best to the target market, etc.

So I will revise my original answer - I won't say it can't be done. The more I think about it, the more I see that I'm an example of DOING IT. University level English (101 & 102 with honors), coding background, logical and analytical mind, rockin it with the copywriting. In fact, the bent sense of humor that most of our kind have does come in handy as a copywriter.

But it isn't easy. And believe it or not, I enjoy doing articles, blog posts, content, and technical writing MORE than writing copy sometimes - because it utilizes the side of my brain I'm most comfortable with.

I still get great results for my clients, and enjoy being a copywriter. But some days I just want to sit down in front of a puzzle and spend the afternoon solving it, instead - you know what I mean?

Feel free to hit me up for a chat some time if you like, I'd love to help.

- Cherilyn

I've heard... from big money IM folks and big name copywriters... that the rules of grammar MUST be thrown out the window when writing sales copy.

Go Google "highest converting sales letters". Then study a few and see how many of them adhere to the rules of English grammar.

The truth is that writing with proper punctuation, and "proper" sentence structure can KILL your copywriting.

Each word is a thought and each thought is itself an image with a thousand words of mental context defining it. (don't believe me? look up a word in the dictionary. How many definitions does it have? Now add to that all the personal memories, stereotypes, and "personal" meanings that each word can have for you or people like you).

Sales is about communicating the value of the product in the most effective manner. Grammar exists under the theory that standard rules of English help society to communicate better as a whole. It is there for assistance, it's certainly not mandatory even recommended when trying to convey a message in the most effective manner possible.

It comes down to this: Each word is an image. A sentence is therefor a series of images, emotions, feelings, value flags. The arrangement of words on the page is not just "information by definition" it's flashes in the readers mind of one emotionally laden image after another. (Similar to the brainwashing scene in A Clockwork Orange). To truly communicate your message of value, you must throw out the grammar nazi and present thoughts, feelings, and images, as a stepping path for the reader.

...even down to each word in a sentence being placed in terms of the order of thoughts communicated, instead of the order prescribed by "proper grammar".

The best sales writing works because it is "conversational" and matches the way people think and speak. The only person I've ever met who thought spoke with proper grammar was my English teacher.

Conclusion: The rules are guidelines like riverbanks guiding a river. Your writing is a river and it will go wherever it goddamn well pleases! The rules may be set in stone, but over time even the stony banks of the Nile crumble under the flow of writers who know better where they want their writing to go. The English language has always been one of evolution, from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales when every word was spelled however the author thought it sounded; to Shakespeare making up hundreds of words which we still use today.

Who knows, maybe your rule-breaking writing will be so effective, and common in the future, that it becomes part of the new standard.

P.S.: The word "copywriting" gets underlined by my computer spell checker. It's "trite" but the fact that our word is not universally recognized as a "word" should tell you something about how important "the rules" are to copywriters.

P.P.S.: The infamous letter that ran in the Wallstreet Journal for 40-50 years... the 12th sentence begins with "And"... and if I remember correctly that's something a "good writer" would never do. It may be one of the most successful sales letters ever!... but, I'm sure there were some pi$$ed off English teachers that vowed never to buy from it simply out of principal.

Oh Alex, you're so cute when you're grumpy...

without doubt- you need to get good...and get some results under your belt.

the amount you can charge though is wide open.

from tiny amounts to big pay days.

it largely depends who you are working with.

higher quality clients with real businesses mean higher fees.

of course -you have to deliver the goods!

You will need to first work on a portfolio. The good paying clients will request to see it before they pay for your services. Also making a nice cover letter or having a resume of other places you have worked, such as working for a newspaper or magazine that will show more experience, can help as well.

Since you do not have a portfolio, it is time to make one. A portfolio does not have to be full of work that you have been paid for. You can go through and make some of your own work and then show others what you are able to work on. Make up a product and do some copywriting on it. Write out a few articles to show others that you are serious and want to help them out. Starting out without any portfolio is going to be pretty much impossible, at least for the high paying gigs.

One thing that you can do is work for some of the lower paying jobs. I know that this does not sound appealing, but if you are just starting out on this kind of job and you just plan to do it on the side for now, this is a great way to start. I am a freelance writer and have been doing this as my full time job for almost three years now. I did not have much of a portfolio at first, but I worked for some cheaper projects to get my name out there and to show that I was serious about the craft. Some of those clients have worked with me for long term and pay a lot more now. I can now charge much higher rates and have clients all over, including freelancing sites and big international companies. This is because I started out slow and built up my professional reputation.

Even though starting out with little pay does not sound like fun, it is going to teach you the steps to making your customers happy. You do not have to do this for very long. Just a few projects with some great reviews, will often be enough to get it on the right track. Do some research on the best prices based on what kind of writing you will do and combine it with how much you think your time is worth. Stick this out and keep looking for some better clients and you will get the jobs that help turn this into a full time job.

I love the idea of going to clickbank and contacting the sellers to offer to edit their sales copy.

But when I go to clickbank and see something that I could work on, there's no way to contact the seller. How do I do that?

I don't mean to be rude but...

... What's your basis for calling yourself a good copywriter?

It's certainly not evident from the writing in your post...