What other skills should online copy writers have?

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If you want to get hired as an online copywriter, what other skills should you learn besides copy writing? If you are writing for other people's products, are you expected to design the layout of the page as well?
#copy #online #skills #writers
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  • Profile picture of the author Corey Geer
    Originally Posted by Daedalus15 View Post

    If you want to get hired as an online copy writer, what other skills should you learn besides copy writing? If you are writing for other people's products, are you expected to design the lay out of the page as well?
    No, you're thinking of a completely different job.

    Graphic Designer - These are people who design the graphics for a web page.
    Web Developer - These people basically take the content, the graphics and supply the code to make the site function.
    Writers - Whether it be content writers, copy writers or what have you, these people provide the content or copy for the page.

    You need a firm understanding of the psychology of people and why people buy what they buy. What triggers someone to make a purchase or even be interested in a product in the first place?

    There are two reasons that people buy anything.

    To get away from pain or to move towards pleasure. There's a lot of market research involved and a lot of other factors that go into it as well. Writing copy is basically just selling something. So understanding the basic psychology of people and knowing how to present a service or product is all you really need.
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    • Profile picture of the author Daedalus15
      Originally Posted by Corey Geer View Post

      No, you're thinking of a completely different job.

      Graphic Designer - These are people who design the graphics for a web page.
      Web Developer - These people basically take the content, the graphics and supply the code to make the site function.
      Writers - Whether it be content writers, copy writers or what have you, these people provide the content or copy for the page.

      You need a firm understanding of the psychology of people and why people buy what they buy. What triggers someone to make a purchase or even be interested in a product in the first place?

      There are two reasons that people buy anything.

      To get away from pain or to move towards pleasure. There's a lot of market research involved and a lot of other factors that go into it as well. Writing copy is basically just selling something. So understanding the basic psychology of people and knowing how to present a service or product is all you really need.
      I know they are different jobs, but that doesn't mean that a copy writer would not need to know some of the basics of web developing and graphic design.

      For anyone who has ever written online copy for someone else, how important is it to be trained in programs like Dreamweaver and Photoshop? I feel like you can offer a much better service with these skills, but in your experience do you feel it is more efficient to outsource the work or take the time to learn how to do it yourself?

      I agree that psychology and learning how to sell are important skills for a copy writer to learn. My question is mainly dealing with the technical side of things.
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      • Profile picture of the author Corey Geer
        Originally Posted by Daedalus15 View Post

        I know they are different jobs, but that doesn't mean that a copy writer would not need to know some of the basics of web developing and graphic design.

        For anyone who has ever written online copy for someone else, how important is it to be trained in programs like Dreamweaver and Photoshop? I feel like you can offer a much better service with these skills, but in your experience do you feel it is more efficient to outsource the work or take the time to learn how to do it yourself?

        I agree that psychology and learning how to sell are important skills for a copy writer to learn. My question is mainly dealing with the technical side of things.
        Photoshop and Dreamweaver have some pretty rough learning curves for people who aren't knowledgeable in Web Markup or with graphic development.

        Dreamweaver is just an editor, professionals use more advanced editors that help compile and all kinds of other fun stuff.

        I have to look up Photoshop tutorials when I want to duplicate an effect and I am god awful with the Pen tool. I wasn't much for drawing but to each their own.

        If you want to be proficient in every single one of them, you'll find that becoming the jack of all trades isn't exactly a great business model or plan. Professional clients don't hire one person to do every single job, a hard lesson I learned when I stopped doing web design and development for crap tier clients.

        They hire project managers, developers, designers, quality assurance testers, management, salesmen, human resource personnel. I get you want to offer your client the most services you can but you definitely don't want clients who want to hire a jack of all trades type of freelancer. I would pick one or the other, whether it's strictly Copywriting, web development or web design. Sure, you can play around with the others if you want, but I wouldn't expect to become an expert in every single one of them.

        Web Development - If you want some tutorials on web development, go to www.w3schols.com. It's not too bad and it's newbie friendly. You won't learn how to make a pure CSS Drop Down animated menu but it'll teach you all the fundamentals of most web programming languages.

        Graphic Design - I'm not an expert in this but your best bet is to look up Photoshop tutorials, familiarize yourself with the tools in there and just try to make cool things. The professional designers use the pen tool, they use a drawing pad and have a lot of patience. Also, please don't be one of those $5 Logo designers...

        Best of luck to you
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        • Profile picture of the author Mark Andrews
          Banned
          Daedalus it depends. If you're talking about formatting sales copy for instant online use them most of the top guys here will do this fairly basic task themselves.

          If on the other hand you're looking at full graphic design many of us use a regular graphic designer or website designer to carry out this work. Obviously they would be working to our specification since we're the conversion experts not them. Trick is finding a good designer who isn't going to take umbrage at being given directions to follow.

          Sure plenty of pages look fantastic from a design point of view but great design in itself doesn't necessarily equal a higher conversion rate or lots of sales. Graphic / web design doesn't sell to the prospect in question, the actual wording used i.e. the sales copy, the printed word is what makes this connection to the potential buyer.

          Smoking hot,


          Mark Andrews
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeHumphreys
        Originally Posted by Daedalus15 View Post

        I know they are different jobs, but that doesn't mean that a copy writer would not need to know some of the basics of web developing and graphic design.

        For anyone who has ever written online copy for someone else, how important is it to be trained in programs like Dreamweaver and Photoshop? I feel like you can offer a much better service with these skills, but in your experience do you feel it is more efficient to outsource the work or take the time to learn how to do it yourself?

        I agree that psychology and learning how to sell are important skills for a copy writer to learn. My question is mainly dealing with the technical side of things.
        It depends on whether you have a top-notch web designer you can bring in for projects. Most of the time, I have found it better to deliver the online salesletter properly laid out (with the client's graphic designer having done the header, footer, ecover types of graphics) than to leave to the client to do. Leaving it to the client has created situations where they don't set-up the page online correctly (i.e. centering the entire page including the salutation) and then want to blame me for the salesletter underperforming.

        PhotoShop is useful for times where you need to resize a client's headshot or create some graphic headlines. Being familiar with the core fundamentals of graphic design and typography are also good... if you're going to direct a graphic designer on how to revise the header/footer they created, being familiar with design fundamentals helps a lot.

        Like Mark mentioned, it's far better to work with a graphic designer who can check their ego at the door for the benefit of the client. The harder sell sometimes is convincing your client that they shouldn't try to save a few bucks when they hire their graphic designer. Designers who truly understand graphic design tailored to direct response marketing (instead of the ones who just want to make big pretty pictures) are worth every penny of their fees.

        Best of luck,

        Mike
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        • Profile picture of the author Daedalus15
          Originally Posted by Corey Geer View Post


          If you want to be proficient in every single one of them, you'll find that becoming the jack of all trades isn't exactly a great business model or plan. Professional clients don't hire one person to do every single job, a hard lesson I learned when I stopped doing web design and development for crap tier clients.

          This is solid advice. I definitely think a mistake a lot of people make is trying to do too much which is why I was asking what most copy writers offer when trying to get clients. I know Dreamweaver and Photoshop are very complicated programs and never had any intentions of trying to master them, but I will most likely play around with them a little bit so I can do some basic things.

          Originally Posted by Corey Geer View Post


          Web Development - If you want some tutorials on web development, go to www.w3schols.com. It's not too bad and it's newbie friendly. You won't learn how to make a pure CSS Drop Down animated menu but it'll teach you all the fundamentals of most web programming languages.
          Thank you for the link. I will check it out. I have a little experience in programming in Visual Basic and C, so I am optimistic that I can learn some of the web programming languages fairly quickly if I need to


          Originally Posted by Mark Andrews View Post

          Daedalus it depends. If you're talking about formatting sales copy for instant online use them most of the top guys here will do this fairly basic task themselves.
          This is exactly what I was talking about. I just did not do a good job of wording my question. Is Microsoft word a good program to use to format your sales copy? Are you expected to upload this copy to their site for them?


          Originally Posted by MikeHumphreys View Post


          PhotoShop is useful for times where you need to resize a client's headshot or create some graphic headlines. Being familiar with the core fundamentals of graphic design and typography are also good... if you're going to direct a graphic designer on how to revise the header/footer they created, being familiar with design fundamentals helps a lot.
          Thank you for this advice. I will try to become familiar with the core fundamentals. It is always easier to communicate with other team members if you can speak the same language as them.

          Originally Posted by MikeHumphreys View Post


          Like Mark mentioned, it's far better to work with a graphic designer who can check their ego at the door for the benefit of the client. The harder sell sometimes is convincing your client that they shouldn't try to save a few bucks when they hire their graphic designer. Designers who truly understand graphic design tailored to direct response marketing (instead of the ones who just want to make big pretty pictures) are worth every penny of their fees.

          Best of luck,

          Mike
          This advice will make much more sense to me after I start a few projects and work with a few different graphic designers. I will keep it in the back of my mind for now.
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          • Profile picture of the author Mark Andrews
            Banned
            Originally Posted by Daedalus15 View Post


            Is Microsoft word a good program to use to format your sales copy? Are you expected to upload this copy to their site for them?
            MS Word is as good as any tool we use, it's my personal preferred choice. Others might use NP or OpenOffice or similar programs.

            Upload to their website? Cannot speak for anyone else but typically speaking I don't offer this personally. I'll leave this aspect up to the client concerned. My primary objective is writing sales copy not offering extra add on services.

            Smoking hot,


            Mark Andrews
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            • Profile picture of the author nickstamoulis
              When you decide to hire a copywriter it's because you need someone who knows how to tell a story, add some personality to your brand and get people excited about what you have to say. That's what a great copywriter does. I don't think a great copywriter also needs to be an expert at web development and design. If they know a little bit it might help to ensure their writing "reads" on the page they want it to (it's better when you know how to talk to the people who are actually doing something with your content and do it in their language).

              I would argue that a good copywriter should have a little SEO knowledge so they can optimize the content they write for clients. You don't need to be an expert but just understand how the search engines look at a piece of content.
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  • Profile picture of the author Corey Geer
    This is exactly what I was talking about. I just did not do a good job of wording my question. Is Microsoft word a good program to use to format your sales copy? Are you expected to upload this copy to their site for them?
    Some people prefer you hand over work in .docx format, some people prefer you hand them over in .txt files and some people have very specific instructions on how you format the content inside of Word or whatever platform you use.

    I know a lot of people who directly paste content into Wordpress complain that it puts random symbols and punctuation errors that shouldn't be there so they prefer that you write it in a place such as Wordpress with the spacing set to none and then hand them over in .txt files.

    Some people might even want a PDF file (most people will have different specifications for what they want).

    As for uploading to their site, the majority of people aren't going to give you access to their FTP which is pretty much the guts of their website and root directory. If you're going to be doing the uploading yourself (which is very rare), they'll more than likely make a guest blogger account where you can make posts and edit them.

    Also, I have one client at the moment who prefers that all work is checked with a program called Ginger Grammar Checker (it's free). It tries to make corrections that don't make sense sometimes but it could be useful for catching things you miss.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mark Andrews
      Banned
      If it wasn't patently obvious Corey the OP is asking about copywriting not content writing.

      How you can sit there positioning yourself as the expert when you have all of what, about 3 weeks experience writing sales copy is quite beyond me.

      You've got next to no direct experience in copywriting at all, in fact, I dare say you have next to no experience full stop in this business, this being the case, you really shouldn't be advising anyone of anything at this stage of your business.

      Hell, even your signature link clearly demonstrates where you believe your experience lies, that is content creation for 3 cents a word with no mention of copywriting which business you're now trying to advise other business owners about. Not to mention handing out some bloody awful advice whilst you're at it.

      Don't get me wrong, we've seen some right clowns come and go through this section of the forum many times over the years but seriously, you take the biscuit. You're one of a kind. And throwing out all of this advice you're giving out without any good foundation in the business is just about as plain daft as it gets.


      Mark Andrews
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  • Profile picture of the author Corey Geer
    *sigh* Andrew...

    I've been trying to be nice (believe it or not) but I can't tell if you're deliberately out to troll me or if you believe half of the stuff you're saying. All he wanted to know was, what other skills he should have to learn and I keep hearing you talk about how much experience you have...

    Just out of curiosity, why is your Copywriting services page suspended? The domain isn't available or anything and it definitely didn't expire, but the hosting itself was suspended by Host Gator.

    As far as my experience goes, you have no idea what kind of experience I have in various fields. The whole "Copywriting" for large scale clients is new to me but people who for whatever reason constantly feel the need to prove how superior they are in a field usually are just trying to employ the fake it till you make it method.

    I didn't say that I was talking about "content writing" or "copywriting" but in my experience, people want stuff delivered the way they're used to having it delivered.

    Better yet, let's try this. I don't quote you and comment on things you say, you don't do the same to me. Then I'm sure we'll get along just fine.

    I dare say you have next to no experience full stop in this business, this being the case, you really shouldn't be advising anyone of anything at this stage of your business.
    If that's what you sincerely want to believe...

    My main specialty is actually in being my own little personal detective and finding information about people. I kind of surprise myself sometimes really. It's either a tie between that or psychology which is partly why I got into the IM business and having a severe authority problem. People can keep pretending to be whoever they want on here, and I'm not going to show proof stating otherwise, but please stop trying to prove yourself to me.

    I'm not a client, not even close to a potential client and I'm not that easily fooled.

    Aaaand this is probably yet another thread that has turned into a "WHAT?! SOMEONE DOESN'T AGREE WITH MARK?! WE MUST STICK UP FOR HIM!" "What did the other guy say?" "WHO CARES! QUOTE RANDOM PARTS OF HIS RESPONSES AND TELL HIM HOW WRONG HE IS."

    I always imagine that's how it goes in the battle station up there.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mark Andrews
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Corey Geer View Post


      *sigh* Andrew...

      Just out of curiosity, why is your Copywriting services page suspended? The domain isn't available or anything and it definitely didn't expire, but the hosting itself was suspended by Host Gator.
      The name is Mark not Andrew.

      What on earth you're going on about here Corey I have no idea.

      Website is up and running just fine.


      Mark Andrews
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  • Profile picture of the author The Copy Nazi
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Daedalus15 View Post

    If you want to get hired as an online copy writer, what other skills should you learn besides copy writing? If you are writing for other people's products, are you expected to design the lay out of the page as well?
    Start by using the correct terminology. It's "copywriter" - one word - not "copy writer". And it's "layout" not "lay out".

    Almost as bad as the clowns who insist on saying "a copy". As in "What do you charge for a copy?"
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    • Profile picture of the author davidtye
      Copy Nazi!!!??? - We understood what he meant....
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      • Profile picture of the author Marvin Johnston
        Originally Posted by davidtye View Post

        Copy Nazi!!!??? - We understood what he meant....
        That wasn't the point. In any profession and especially copywriting, the correct spelling and grammar needs to be used... at least to be taken seriously.

        Marvin
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        • Profile picture of the author Mark Andrews
          Banned
          Originally Posted by nickstamoulis View Post


          I would argue that a good copywriter should have a little SEO knowledge so they can optimize the content they write for clients. You don't need to be an expert but just understand how the search engines look at a piece of content.
          Terrible advice. Argue the point as much as you like. You're wrong though. Why? Because the second you start copywriting with an SEO objective in mind, you lose the purpose of what the copy is about.

          Copywriting is about increasing the conversion rate only, getting the reader to take a direct call to action nothing else.

          Typical rookie advice. Not worth the paper it's written on.

          Originally Posted by davidtye View Post


          Copy Nazi!!!??? - We understood what he meant....
          There are enough newbie clowns in this section of the forum at the moment to fully justify Mal making this comment of which of course, quite naturally, he's absolutely spot on the money.


          Mark Andrews
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  • Profile picture of the author davidtye
    This is a good blog thread which may be useful:

    The Ultimate Guide to Long Sales Copy - Part 1

    I think there are 3 or 4 parts to it.
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