What's Your Take on Customer Service as a Copywriter?
Archives of the 'The Gary Halbert Letter' and read
through a couple editions.
I usually gain some new insights by doing this. This
time, however, I came across some info about how
Gary conducted business as a copywriter that I
thought would make for useful discussion.
Here is the quote that spawned this thread...
Back in the old days, when I used to have the time and inclination to take on new clients, my standard fee was an up-front payment of $15,000 plus 5% of all gross revenues I was able to generate for that client. I could have gotten much more than $15,000 up-front from many of my clients however, I didn't feel right about it. You see, in my mind, if a guy paid me $30,000 or $40,000 up-front to write an ad for him... and... if my ad failed to generate a profit, it would create such a feeling of guilt and be of such an emotional cost for me, it would be too much of a burden to carry around. On the other hand, charging anything less than $15,000 up-front would have been foolhardy on my part. Why? Simply because I can always be guaranteed many times that amount of money by putting my efforts into writing a good sales letter to my own in-house proprietary mailing lists. By the way, my deal with clients also stipulated, if my original ad failed to work, I would write a second ad. If that second ad failed to work, I would write a third. After that, we'd call it quits and the client would be out $15,000... and... I would be out an enormous amount of research, time, energy and work I could have spent elsewhere. The few times my ads have failed to work, it was almost always because the client was trying to sell something the public didn't want to buy. Honestly though, there were times I just couldn't come up with a piece of copy which would make everything work. Like I said earlier, it happens to everybody. If you choose copywriting as your career... I want you to know... it will also happen to you. ~Gary Halbert, The Gary Halbert Letter~ |
How do you handle ads that don't make the cut
and what is your rule regarding customer service
and rewrites?
Mike
Atlanta Copywriter, serving clients worldwide.
Write your life.
David Tendrich
Atlanta Copywriter, serving clients worldwide.
Write your life.
David Tendrich
http://www.susannahutcheson.com
http://www.copythatconverts.com
http://www.powerwriting.com