Hey all, and thanks for your time. I am a content writer, mainly specializing in football (soccer, for all the Americans out there) although I can write about pretty much anything. I used to be one of those writers that did the $0.01 word articles (in fact, spent my whole summer churning out 500-word articles at a measly $2 each), however after coming on here and being (thankfully!) swayed by the talk of the pros I now command a relatively higher wage. Anyways, a little bit of help for a relative newbie, please . I've written mainly content, be it for websites, newsletters or similar projects, however would like to branch out; write other types of pieces as I feel they would look better on a portfolio. I've written a couple of eBooks that I feel have been relatively good, and now would like to 'learn' how to write different forms of writing- particularly sales letters and press releases. Now bear with me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of the two is that a sales letter is the writing you see on various landing pages- ie on the sites that sell the various 'Get Rich Quick' eBooks on the Internet, aiming to be persuasive and encouraging visitors to buy something while a press release is more like a commercialized news article, aiming to inform people about the release of a new product/start of a new company. Please correct me if I'm wrong, as that's what this thread is asking for, of course Anyways... how do I 'train' myself in writing something like the two mentioned pieces above? I'd imagine (well, not imagine, know) they'd require a different style to the standard articles used for content, and would appreciate some help on the matter. Thanks for your time
I wouldn't say I'm a "DP Esteemed Writer" but I can help answer your question. I'm sure you'll get varying advice, so read through it and put together a plan that makes sense to you. Visit your local bookstore. Find books on writing press releases and sales letters. Read up. Start collecting examples of press releases and sales letters - compile good examples and bad examples. Study them. Print them out and write all over them. What makes the good ones good and what makes the bad ones bad? What could make them better? Spend a few months studying. Try your hand at a few mock PRs and sales letters. If you want to have one or two samples reviewed, I'm sure some of us at the AllFreelanceWriting forum would take a look. Don't expect to have your hand held, though. After that you can start offering your PR and sales letter services to various clients. Start out on the lower end of the payscale (lower, not cheap). As you build experience and expertise you can start increasing your rates, about every six months to one year depending on how quickly your skills and demand for your services increase.
They're both highly specialized areas, and without solid credentials you won't be able to command top dollar for either. With copywriting (sales letters in this case) in a marketing capacity, you need to not only know how to write, but you have to have a solid marketing background and a decent understanding of psychology to understand what motivates people to act. With press release writing, there are tons of unqualified people writing them, and they only get the work because not many PR professionals have pushed into an online market yet. If you want to go that route, you really need to understand them, and not fall victim to the crowd littering the Web with junk releases for backlinks. You can certainly use the e-book in my sig as a starting point. But ruthless self-promotion aside, learn about PR and communications theory, media relations, and social media. If you don't understand those things, you'll never write releases as effectively as you can. Understand that they're NOT articles, that they should follow a news writing style, that they shouldn't be directly promotional, etc. Also, most people will expect you to be able to effectively guide them on distribution when they buy a release from you too. If you want to be taken seriously in this niche, that doesn't mean offering to do basic online submissions to a bunch of distribution sites for them. It means that you understand paid distribution vs. free distribution vs. newswires vs. manual targeted distribution, and you give the best advice on a case by case basis. You'll also likely be asked to offer guidance on the pitching process to journalists, and you should have your own media contact list and connections with editors and journalists before getting into it. That's not to be discouraging... just encouraging you to do it right if you're going to do it instead of simply joining the mass of content writers providing terribly poor releases. And as Latoya said, you're certainly welcome to join us in the writing forums. We do have some copywriting folks, and I'm always more than happy to look over a press release draft, running a PR firm myself. Be forewarned though... I can almost guarantee that I'll tear it to shreds. Just know that I do it to help you learn and not to be a bitch. I've done a few samples that way here on DP as well, so if you search you'll probably find some. Jenn
I'm esteemed only on Mother's Day, but I agree with the others. The first step will be to research what is available in both print and online resources. Read, read, read. See what the "experts" say, and then see what's new and developing. It's always best to know the standards and be preparing for the future. Then practice, practice, practice. To sell copywriting, you need proof your material works. So, you've got a few ebooks already prepared, fine-tune them, throw up a sales letter and track your conversions. Then you have a history when a potential client asks you for one. Another thought - if you find you don't really like those forms of specialized writing, don't force yourself to do them. There are others out there you might enjoy more - technical writing, white pages, ghost writing, etc... Money isn't everything, and you won't do as good a job on something you're dragging through instead of enjoying. As far as I'm concerned, most sales letters (at least the ones that easily spring to mind) are a bunch of BS and are offensive to anyone with an iota of common sense and a shortage of time (and some studies have shown this is true among a lot of women apparently), so I don't write them (or read them) unless they are actually interesting to me. I might venture into them in the future - especially if I can fine-tune a system that appeals to discerning women and mothers (one of the most prevalent and fastest growing markets online, I might add.) As Jenn and I have mentioned in other threads, I do write press releases. I don't pretend to be a PR expert the way she is. I can craft a professional release, but I don't offer distribution. There are plenty of firms that can handle that end of things for clients. Although I'm sure if I were to take the time to learn the full gambit of public relations properly, I could make a significant amount of money, but again - it simply doesn't interest me enough to bother with in the past, present or near future. Besides, that would be my seventh career, and I'm rather satisfied with the ones I already have! )
Thanks for all the excellent, excellent help. Apologies for the slight sucking up in the thread title Will sign up to that forum- looks very interesting at first glance, so hopefully will be learning a lot, lot more on the various aspects of writing. As for the sales letters/press release stuff, I think I'll try my hand at writing sales letters first (they may be a bunch of BS, but quite a bit of my writing reads like that ) Now, on getting experience- no one is going to hire you if you don't have a portfolio as such, how do I do this? I was thinking of offering say three free sales letters to various companies and then using what I write in my portfolio, as well as their review if they like it; does this sound a decent idea, or should I charge a low fee? Will look at press releases in the next few weeks, as I have a couple writing projects at the moment; don't worry, the shameless self promotion worked Jenn, I'll be buying your eBook
I suggest you sign up over here at : http://www.copywritersboard.com/ for copywriting, some of the best people in the business lurk here and they earn anywhere from 100$-5,000$ a article, big bucks if you got a unique style.
The easiest way to build up a portfolio is to do made up assignments. Start with products and services you know and love. While fictitious in nature, they will show what you're capable of. If you want to branch out from here, offer to do some small projects for free. And don't lump all "sales" letters into the same category. Even a letter from the Sierra Club asking for a small donation to help the environment is a "sales" letter. They're not all "Plumber makes good on pledge to become rich without working" copy. Good luck!
You're right - but I sure do seem to see a bunch of plumber letters these days. It must be all those bottom lines.
Hello, This might be a little late, but this here http://www.copyblogger.com/ is the top blog for copywriting. Make sure you read past articles and not just news ones.