I am looking to venture into the field of seo/copywriting. I am asking for advice, tips, the good and the bad. Thanks for the help.
Strong verbal and persuasion skills. This can take years and years of practice to accomplish. Just ensure that you relate to the person on the first line of your ad copy. If possible try to scare them ... Don't be afraid to trash some other product ... it can even be fake... just don't use product names unless its the product your going to try to sell ) Keep paragraphs short and sweet... Know one likes to read a book... A person will leave your site within the first five seconds if they are not happy or see what they want right away. Don't push it right in there face, don't talk about sales or pricing until the very end... There is so much more... Oh yeah if you can through in "If your not satisfied we don't expect you to pay -- an UNCONDITIONAL X0 MONEY BACK GUARANTEE" Still more that could be done but those are the major parts.
Hi, Good writers practice a lot. Good writers love words, to play with words. A good writer is one who writes to express thoughts, whose words don't get in the way of the message. That is also a great way to describe copywriting. To be a good copywriter, you must be able to write using words that bypass the target consumer's conscious mind. So you have to know how to communicate with all kinds of people, from the person picking up trash along the roadside to the wall street executive to the home gardener, and so on. You'd present a product a whole different way to that wall street executive than you would to the home gardener, wouldn't you? There are two different styles of writing to practice right there! Sell each of them a chair. Dot
I think good grammatical skills are important, but for the most part I think writing is instinctive. People can learn to be good writers, but exceptional writers are born with it.
Here are a two tips 1] Buy/read/use some good dead tree books (Try amazon/ebay, read the reviews before buying). 2] Read some relevant threads in this forum
I'm quite new to copy writing. But what I've figured out so far is that you are keep it simple and interesting. That makes people read your copy from cover to cover. The golden rule. To difficult - they close the page. To boring - the same I'm focused now on reading superb copies by recognized authorities in copy writing. That's the surest way for me to learn. By actual examples
Good for you - this is the right way to start! But don't stop at reading superb copy - write it out in longhand. Three times. Word for word. This embeds the style in your brain and you'll unconsciously apply it in your own writings.
If you can, find sales letters that are already converting at a high level. Carefully study those sales letters and compare them with letters in the same niche that aren't converting well. Find the differences, and you'll know how to craft yours to cause people to be hungry for your product. Most of all, keep the goal in mind. The goal is to make poeple hungry for your product - now. If you can genuinely convince people that you have the answer to a deep, nagging problem and they must have that answer right away, your sales letter will shine. Perfect grammar is important, too. Don't give people a reason to click away. You must keep people engaged and interested. Good luck.
The best way to write good copy is to copy good, income producing ads, sales letters and marketing pieces in your own handwriting. You do this to get the feel of how copy is written. Once you've done a few hundred you should have a good start. Warning: it's extremely boring. It is the best way to really get good at it though. Paul paulmcgraw.com
The advice that Paul gave you is very smart and very valuable. It will give you an education in copywriting more than you will ever know. It programs the flow and rythm of winning ads into your mind on a certain level that will be worth the time.