
What is the cost of NOT hiring a copywriter?
There has been some discussion lately about the costs of hiring a copywriter, and most of you will know it should not be a cost at all, it's an investment, in the truest sense of the word.
If you're thinking you're a cost which needs to be justified to your client, it's time to get out of that mindset and start focusing on the client's return on investment.
If you're in what John Carlton calls "The Shameless Whore" stage of your copywriting career, you may not be able to pick and choose jobs, but many of us here won't take on a job, or a client, if we don't think we can create enough sales to make them back our fee and then some.
I mean, if I charge $5k for a sales letter, and the product is a $29 ebook, it's got to either be the best ebook in the world, or the guy has to have a hot list of 100,000 buyers, or what's going to happen, is I'll write a great letter, and he won't be able to get the numbers to make back my fee.
Sure, I get some cash, but royalties will be few and far between, if any. And, I've been a COST to this guy, doesn't matter if it's not my fault he doesn't have a huge list, that's his perception. So getting more work from him gets harder. (And this time he might be selling a brilliant $1,000 product...and I miss out)
Truth is I'd work on his copywriting strategy, and turn that $29 ebook into a much higher priced product, plus get some more people to send it to, but the fact is, most people will write their own copy in this situation, rather than hire a copywriter. Which is great, nobody is in as good a position to sell your product than YOU are, but there are certain drawbacks to this:
1. Writing a good sales letter takes time. Writing a great sales letter takes even longer. Clients want to run their businesses, and get a sales letter from their copywriter after a couple of weeks.
2. Writing a great sales letter takes years of experience, and the ability to SELL.
3. A copywriter is leverage. For a bit of cash, you can have a marketing system which you can use for as long as you sell that product, you can turn it up and down, on and off, like a tap (Or a faucet, if you're in the US). What did Halbert say? - The answer to every business problem is a good sales letter.
Pay once, cry once, get your custom marketing system and you'll have that flexibility and power at your disposal, while the competition is scribbling away at their half-assed sales letters and trying to bear the load all by themselves.
What do YOU think?

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