What copywriting IS, and what it ISN'T.

Ben, this is a useful thread. As a Copywriter and Article writer, I search the content creation forum. I find titles which request for copywriting services. When I go deep into the advert I discover that what is required is a content/article writer.

What, I believe, brings the confusion is that the word "copy" is used with many things. A book, newspaper, article, report etc can be attached to Copy. " I sent John a copy of my article," is common language we hear. One who writes articles, mistakenly, is called a copywriter. Wrong.

Any written material used to sell anything is copywritten. As Ben has put it, brochures, sales letters, web pages(sales),adverts,product descriptions, direct mail packages, lift notes, etc are written by copywriters save for lift notes which might be written by an expert for recommendation purposes.

An article could take one an hour to complete. A sales letter, for example, could take several days or weeks to complete. A copywriter, if he has to write an effective sales letter, must know his/her audience well. He/she has o find out which age group,, sex,earning power etc to craft a strong persuasive sales letter. This knowledge will help him/her come up with the appropriate tone for the letter. He/she has to figure out the needs and wants of his target group. With this knowledge one could go beyond raising benefits from features of a product one has studied well. He will know whether to arouse fear, anxiety or any other emotion to seal a sale.

A copywriter will come up with a good attention grabbing title, make a strong promise, prove his claims and use a hidden structure to write persuasively. i am saying hidden structure because no copywriter mentions them in their sales letters. As trained copywriters we know these elements as we read a sales letter.

You can see that there is a lot of work when one writes a sales letter. There is less work when writing an article. The charges differ.

Besides a sales letter could be mailed several times. it could keep on making money for a company for many years. Martin Conroy wrote the most successful sales letter that sold "The Wall Street Journal" for over 20 years. It raked in over one billion --- NOT million but BILLION dollars!

Surely you cannot pay a copywriter what you pay him/her when he/she writes you an article!