How did you learn copywriting?

I'm sure that most everyone who responds will have a different story to tell but I got my start about 21 years ago...

I was an Art major in college and worked as a Graphic Designer for a company responsible for creating all of Pacific Bell's "yellow page" ads as well as many other types of marketing pieces.

After a short time, they opened up a new division that would require the designer to not only design the ad, but write all of the copy from scratch too.

I interviewed/tested for the position and was selected. This particular department was very small (only 8 of us vs. more than 200 "regular" designers). They hired a copywriting pro and put us all through one full week of training.

After that, we went to work and in the nearly 2 years I worked in that capacity, I designed/wrote well over 1,000 ad pieces in total.

If you already have a sound background in sales, you will likely do very well. I would encourage you to keep studying anything/everything you can get your hands on and don't just stick to "copy-specific" stuff... you'll want to learn more about persuasion tactics, conversion tactics and testing methods.

Best of luck,
Kevin

PS - I highly recommend the book, "Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive" by Robert B. Cialdini (and Goldstein/Martin)

I started by writing ads on public toilet walls and it went from there.

Thank you scrofford for posting this topic. I was searching the forum for a similar topic.

Me I used to love the biz-op mags... Income Opportunities in particular. God I loved those ads... I'd say the one that really lit my fire was the famous (infamous? -- no I love Jeff and have spoken with him on the phone) "How To Make $4K a Day At Your Kitchen Table in Your underwear" ad and the front end booklet that went with it. I thought Him and DK did a fab job on that. That led me to too many sources to name here.
And I wrote practice sales letters lots of sales letters, got swipe files etc... my first paid client was a 2k per month email writing gig about 10 years ago-- very heady stuff for me back then, lol.

I guess I was too dumb to know that copywriting was different than any other kind of writing. After I created my first product I just assumed I'd have to sell it. So I wrote the sales page and it sold... That's it. Kinda like the Forrest Gump approach to copywriting.

I think I learned it out of need. Once I had a product to sell, I had to find a way to sell it so it took its course that way. Wouldn't say thats the right way.

Everyday I copied by hand for an hour all of the Halbert's salesletters.

The full story is on my copywriting site. The short version is I fell into the industry. My friend who had introduced me to my wife guilted me into rewriting his business's home page. His site's conversion skyrocketed and he immediately referred four other people to me for marketing help. The referrals were unsolicited so I had to quickly come up with a game plan and a copywriting website.

I started learning how to write my own marketing in 1993 because I need to get more clients for my offline massage therapy business. I pretty much every single "classic" marketing book there is during that time.

In 1999 when I turned that one-person business into a massage office/center with multiple therapists, the stakes became higher and other people were relying on me to get them clients. So I had to write better marketing. In 2003, I expanded my business again into a full-blown massage therapy center, it was gun to the head marketing because I had nine other people working for me. Failure was not an option.

I tried more than once to outsource my marketing to lighten my load. Everytime it was a disaster. In 2003-2004, I hired a well-known marketing firm (Y2 Marketing) to take over my marketing. My marketing was 25-30 online and offline marketing weapons created and in action every month. For 8 months they tried to write better marketing for me. They never beat a single control of mine. That's when I knew I might be pretty good at writing marketing.

I didn't read my first copywriting book until 2004 and that was John Caples' Tested Advertising Methods. Of course, studying marketing from people like Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, and more means you still are learning something about how to write copy. The copywriting training books go into much more depth on the art of copywriting than any marketing books or courses I've seen to date.

With a lot of hard work. I've spent the last 3-4 years studying and writing copy pretty much every day to keep improving my copywriting skills. Early on, I spent a lot of time each week marketing my copywriting business. Now that I'm established, I don't need to spend as much time each week... but I still do regular marketing & networking for my business.

Take care,

Mike

Here's my long answer:



-Ray Edwards

For me it was Carlton's book, Fladlien's "3 Hour Ad", and a whole lot of practice.

I try to write about a sales letter, or promotion, a week.

Maybe it's a helpful hint, maybe it's not - try to get as many offline clients as you can. They pay way better, trust what you write, and don't complain about high fees.

I never did learn. So you can imagine my surprise when people actually pay me to write for them.

Self-taught. I have always had an intuitive understanding of sales, and I study a lot of psychology and sociology. I also just enjoy the game of working on people's minds. It's like chess with words, and checkmate means getting the credit card to come out.

I just started reading Robert Colliers Letter Book, and I also have Web Copy that Sells by Maria Veloso. I think this is some good reading to start with.

So far, the Robert Collier book is excellent even though it has to do with sales letters that are mailed to people. I think the principles are all the same though.