• Is it better to go to the client with just one idea?
• Is it better to go to the client with two or three of the best?
• …or does your client want to pick and choose from a hundred different options?

The answer depends on the client — and on how well you can read them.

Some clients want to be told what to do. They’re paying you, the expert, to tell them what will work best. Other clients will reject your first idea out of hand, even if it’s good, simply to show that they’re in charge.

Other clients need to be led to a decision, but feel like they’re part of the creative process. (A favourite technique of mine is to supply three options, with two of them being absolute stinkers).

Then you get that last, most difficult client. The one who wants every option you can think of — and then more. So what do you do?

Ad agency McCann Erickson tackle a tricky client.

Do you carry on writing until your dog-eared thesaurus finally falls apart? Or do you insist on a direction?

I’ve been sharing some of my work-in-progress with other creatives over on fiftytwonetwork.com – including a document of over 50 straplines separated into five distinct tones of voice. That’s a heck of a lot, said fellow copywriter Reed Words. But not necessarily if it’s a work in progress.

In fact, the multiple options were going to the account manager on the job, who could then use the document to try to get a feel for what direction they felt the client would plump for.

But for me, this brought up another, bigger question.

How many ideas do you have to discard before you find one that works?

I prefer to take my time over creative projects. To go away for a week, to think about the options, and to come back with two or three really storming ideas. The client or agency is presented with a branding report explaining my research and my thought process, along with three concepts or copy samples.

I’m often blunt about it. I tell the client: sometimes, you’ll be paying me to play golf. Or to throw darts at a board. Or to have a night out drinking overpriced cocktails. Or whatever. The point is, you’re paying for whatever it takes to put me in the right frame of mind to have a creative, original idea. And yes, you’re also paying me to improve my backswing.

As Don Draper puts it in Series 3 of Mad Men,

“Part of working with creative people is giving them the freedom to be unproductive until they are.”

It’s an absolutely essential part of the creative process — throwing away bad ideas until you find a good one. Tossing ideas back and forth with people you’ve just met in the pub, on the driving range (or, if you live a virtual life, on Twitter and Facebook!).

The trouble is, while good ideas take time, you don’t always have that time. Agencies, studios, and their clients have deadlines. Creative or not, it’s your job to get the work done on time.

When I’m in a rush, I tend to adopt a scattergun approach to copywriting. Think of it as automatic writing — literally writing the first thing that comes into mind without thinking why. I might write 100 straplines in a morning. At least 50 of these will never see the light of day. But the rest will be categorised (“this emphasises the product’s ease of use…” “these appeal more to techie types…”) and refined.

It’s a little like prospecting for oil. You dig a hundred holes. But you only need to find one spurt to know you’re rich.

Personally, I prefer to take my time — but I’ve found that for clients in a hurry, the scattergun approach to copywriting works too. Naturally, it’s more stressful (most every copywriter charges more for a “rush” job), and my brain is fried for a couple of days after it.

But I’ve found that both methods work. So is it a case of six and two threes, or is one method better than the other?

In short, I think it’s all about finding a method you’re comfortable with.

In the fairy tale of the Tortoise and the Hare, it’s the slow and steady tortoise that wins the race.

But one wonders if he’d cut it in advertising. If the client is truly demanding, sometimes more is more — and less isn’t enough.

When you’ve had a hundred ideas, you have a hundred starts to work from.

So why am I in London?

It’s partly a personal thing. My friends are here. My girlfriend is here. My life, more or less, is here. But every so often (usually once every year or so) I get the sudden, powerful urge to leave. Paying rent is killing me. Catching three night buses and getting home at 3am is killing me. The riots certainly didn’t help. The trouble is, there are definite and compelling business reasons to stay.

Firstly, even in London, some clients want to feel a strong geographical connection to their freelancer.

As a copywriter, I can write from anywhere. But even in the age of email, skype, and (relatively) cheap international calls, people still want to meet face to face. I’d say at least 50% of my clients insist on at least one face-to-face meeting during the work. If I left London, I’d be leaving 50% of my business behind.

Secondly, there’s obvious search related benefits to being geographically attached to an area.

The most popular organic search term clients use to find my site is a price sensitive keyword. The second most popular is related to my portfolio. The third most popular keyword: it’s geographical.

But it’s not simply about volume of searches. It’s also about my conversion rate. While seven times more people find this site for a price keyword than a geographical one, I’m certain the opposite is true: geographical keywords are several times more likely to convert than price. “Price” people tend to make ridiculous enquiries (“Will you do this £250 job for £50?” “No!”) while geographical searchers have higher budgets and are more interested in building a long term relationship with their copywriter — hence the use of the geographical search, to find someone close by.

Finally, there’s the repeat custom.

For some reason, local (i.e. London based) jobs tend to lead to more London-based work from friends or colleagues of the original client. Perhaps this is because people feel more confident recommending someone they’ve actually met. Either way, to move would be to lose this valuable contact base.

Conclusion: is being a freelancer more about the personality than the work?

Collectively, these three things astound me. Cumulatively, it’s clear evidence that people are more interested in meeting you and sizing you up to see if you’re a good fit than they are in seeing how well you present yourself online, or even over the phone. So why bother with a fancy website? Why bother updating your portfolio?

Obviously, it’s important to have a strong online presence — it’s this that gets your foot in the door. But it seems that this is only the first step — and if you don’t live in the area you’re targeting (or at least within easy commuting distance) you’re missing out on a lot of work. I know plenty of regional copywriters — people in Bristol, people in Newcastle, et cetera — and they base their business (and target keywords) geographically too.

In other words, even in a fully digital age, people still prefer to “go local” — and that’s probably as true for any other service as it is for freelance copywriters.

Unfortunately, this information isn’t enough to help your copywriter do a good job. It’s only enough to help them do a generic job. If you want truly personal copy, you’re going to have to be prepared to get personal.

Can’t meet your client in person? That’s where my brief comes in.

A personal interview gets personal results. So does a good copywriting brief.

As a London copywriter, I’m fortunate to get enough local business to enable me to meet most of my clients in person. Once I’ve met them I’ve got a much better idea of who they are and what they want, as well as being able to ask them specific questions based on their earlier responses. In other words, I’m interviewing them, the same way a journalist might interview someone for a magazine feature. It should come as no surprise to you to learn that before I became a copywriter I was a magazine journalist. But my method works for copywriting, too.

The questions a good copywriting brief (or interview) needs to answer:

You’re unique. In order to write copy that’s specific to you, a copywriter needs to know three things:

• Who you are
• What you do
• How you help your customers.

Next, a copywriter needs to know a little more about your personality. That includes:

• Your sense of style (Funny? Serious? Laid-back? Adademic? Professional?)
• What you like and don’t like (buzzwords, slang, Oxford commas, etc)

Finally, a copywriter needs to understand about your audience. A good copywriter doesn’t write for you, he writes for your customers. Understanding what they want is at least as important as understanding what you want — and perhaps a great deal more.

Free to you – my copywriting brief!

I’ve created a 15 question copywriting brief to send out to clients I can’t meet in person to help them think more about their business, and to help me understand more about them, so I can provide them with copy that’s personal to them.

Too much copy is bland, generic, and could be about anything or anyone. Bad copy fails to convey a brand’s personality. The reason so much copy is bad is because clients rarely bother to provide personality information in their brief — and bad copywriters rarely bother to ask.

Here are my 15 questions. You can download this copywriting brief template here in MS Word format or as a PDF.

Copywriter Brief Template

1. Describe, in plain English, what your company does.

• Explain who you are first, then explain what you do. For example, “we are a factory… we are a shop… we are a website… we are a software development team…” then “we manufacture phone handsets, we develop apps for the android platform, we sell bicycles, etc”
• Avoid buzzwords or business-speak (e.g. “we provide solutions”, “we enable companies to leverage their investment and generate increased ROI” etc).

2. How do you help your clients? What benefits do you offer them? How are their lives / businesses enriched by your product / service?

• For example, “the bicycles we sell from our online shop get you from place to place faster than walking, but cost less than a car, and are better for the environment! Best of all, we deliver!”

3. What is your main objective you hope to achieve with the copy?

• For example, to attract new customers, retain old customers, make your brand sound more modern, enable you to charge higher prices by positioning yourselves as a ‘premium’ product, etc.

4. What is your USP? (i.e. something your competitors can’t provide)

• For example, we are 50% cheaper than our nearest competitor, we have twice as many staff, all our staff have a university education, we sell our product in more colours than our competitors, our product is proven more reliable, lasts twice as long, etc.

5. Do you have any evidence to support your claims?

• Case studies, product reviews, testimonials etc.

6. Do any of your competitors provide a similar service? Who are they? What are their strengths? What does their marketing (website, brochure, etc) look like. Provide links to their websites if possible.

7. Who is the main audience — who will be reading the copy? Provide as much information about the client as possible.

• For example, age, income, company size, job title, location, interests, political affiliation, choice of newspaper, gender — anything that can help identify the reader.
• e.g. “Our clients are typically aged 30-40, have £1000 to spend, are university educated, female, interested in the arts and the environment, liberal, iPhone users, married but don’t have children, etc”

8. Is there a secondary audience who should also be targeted in addition to the main client?

• For example, if you supply beauty products to high street stores, you might also want to supply them to spa owners as well – they’re not your main audience, but it’s worth considering them in the copy.
• Ask yourself – is there anyone else’s business you wouldn’t mind targeting?

9. What is the primary conversion objective of the copy?

• A conversion goal is anything you want your website to achieve.
  • It could be an enquiry about your product by phone or email…
  • A sign up to your site or subscription to your newsletter
  • A click-through to another site
  • More comments on your blog or inbound links from other sites (“linkbait”)

10. Are there any secondary objectives?

• For example, increased brand awareness, greater number of purchases by under-25s, website (and copy) featured on another prominent site, etc.

11. What sort of copy do you like? Do you have a preference for tone of voice?

• Conversational? Friendly? Formal? Professional? Educational? Funny? Light-hearted?

12. If your business was a person, who would they be?

• For example, Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, Don Draper, A 37 year old man in a suit, a 27 year old hipster, a teenage girl with pigtails, a Mercedes Benz driver, Al Pacino in Scarface, the sort of person who always wears a watch, etc

13. What do you like about your current copy? What don’t you want me to change?

• e.g. short, concise, headline-driven

14. What don’t you like about your current copy?

• e.g. too technical, too pushy, too long, too boring, etc

15. Additional information – now I’ve got you thinking, is there anything else you think I need to know?

How long does good work take?

When I first started freelancing, I’d frequently have time to spend two or even three days on a project I’d quoted a day’s work on. After all, I needed the work and didn’t want to price myself out of the job. But I had extra time to think about projects and more time to recharge in between. My work was better, because I took longer over it.

Since updating my sales pitch to feature “Ogilvy style” persuasive techniques updated for the web, I’ve been inundated with work.

A quick aside for everyone who wanted to know if my experiment with long copy worked

My bounce rate rose by 18.95% — almost immediately. In other words, I was turning more people away — making them think ‘this guy’s not for me’ — yet overall time spent on the page rose slightly and overall time on the site rose significantly, and enquiries via phone and email more than doubled, up to an all time high of 11 a week this month.

In other words, the people who stayed were more than twice as likely to read my sales pitch and get in touch — exactly what Ogilvy would have predicted.

With all the new work, I’ve felt a little rushed.

In other words, when I say you’re getting a day out of me, I mean it. There’s no time to go over your text the next day, because the next client is already demanding their work. Combined with the extra admin time taken by the new enquiries and my foray into social media, I’ve felt as if the quality of my work has suffered.

I know I can produce better work in three days than I can in one. The trouble is, getting clients to think that way. It’s hard work convincing every client that good work takes time. My solution: from now on, I’m only going to take on new clients who are prepared to let me take my time and produce my best work.

Less, but better – a philosophy for good copywriting.

Dieter Rams, the creative director behind Braun’s legendary designs, believed in the philosophy of “less, but better” — he meant it to apply to functionalist, minimalist, high quality products (he’s since said that Apple are the only people today still producing consumer goods according to this philosophy). But I believe it can be applied to copy, too. It’s not just a matter of saying things in fewer words (“less is more”) it’s vital those words are better, too. And good work takes time.

It’s easy to churn out words quickly. But the sign of good copy is taking up the least possible amount of space — long copy is fine, but there should never be superfluous copy.

Badly edited copy isn’t a sign your copywriter is bad. It’s a sign he’s too rushed to do the job properly.

Correspondingly, I’ve raised my copywriting day rate from £200 to £250.

This will probably mean less work, but it will give me more time to do the things I used to do to recharge — go to the gym, go for long walks, take the occasional extra day off. I’ll produce less work. But it will be better.

I haven’t changed my day rate in over two years. Raising my prices will reduce my workload and allow me to concentrate on producing better copy for clients who know good work when they see it.

I still think I’m giving my clients great value for money — in fact, I think by taking on fewer clients I’ll be giving the ones I choose even better value for money than ever before.

For all my existing clients, I look forward to welcoming you back. Don’t worry — long-standing clients have always qualified for discounts. And to all my new clients, I look forward to working with you, spending more time with you, and continuing to offer brilliant value for money.

Less, but better. It’s a guarantee.

Who the hell is David Ogilvy?

Well, first things first, let’s be clear. David Ogilvy is not Don Draper. In Mad Men, Don prides himself on his creativity, his appeal to the emotions and, above all else, the fact that he’s “never written anything that’s longer than 250 words.” In many ways, Don represents the advertising world as it’s become: an emphasis on short copy, striking design and appeals to the senses, rather than to the rational consumer: don’t make them think they want it, make them feel it.

A classic "Ogilvy Formula" print ad

Ogilvy’s old school. He emphasises the importance of research, as well as tried and tested formulae — his book Ogilvy on Advertising devotes a considerable amount of time to telling the reader why they should never set white type on a black background, as well as why a 6,450 word ad in the New York Times was one of the most successful of all time.

I’m inclined to believe in short copy, particularly on the web. I tell my clients “stick to 300 words per page, preferably less, or people won’t read it.” Blog articles are the only exception to the rule. Even then, never use more words than is absolutely necessary to get your message across.

Ogilvy suggests a simple formula for print ads:

• A large photograph taking approx. 3/4 of the page.
• A headline of up to 9 words.
• 240 words of “editorial” style copy.

Ogilvy’s ads look a little dated and slightly corny now. But that’s only because they worked so well, everybody copied them — and they became overused.

Adapting Ogilvy’s technique for the web

When I launched my site, the front page consisted of three “sliders” with a little over four sentences on each. It looked beautiful. Designers praised it. But it didn’t convert.

I asked myself why and came up with an answer: it told people what I did, and what I believed in (“simple” copy). But it didn’t give them a reason to choose me.

So I decided to be more combative. My first page is as it always was: a picture of me and a description of what I do. I agree with Ogilvy: it helps to show a picture of the product. You’re buying my time — you’re not buying a typewriter. So my page features pictures of me, not copywriting cliches like clipart typewriters, pens, bottles of whisky, etc. My second page I changed to an argument, directly adressing the reader: telling them “their copy sucks” and I could do better. My conversion rate doubled.

But it’s still far from what Ogilvy suggests.

Ogilvy suggests the following “magic formula” for generating sales:

• A long headline (10 words) that offers helpful information or news
• This inspires up to 75% more people to read the copy, copy that should
  also explain the benefit to the customer
• A clear indication of price, as well as the suggestion of any discount.
  How many people would walk into a shop without price tags?

This is combined with his golden rule: advertising is never about guesswork, it’s always about research.

Using Google analytics, I noticed the following:

• Twice as many people (39%) viewed the “three sliders” as viewed the next nearest page, “about” (18%).
• At least half, and maybe more of the people who viewed this page, were web designers or digital agencies who’d come to look at the site’s design.

I’d previously written off most of these visitors as unconvertable — they’re not here to view the merchandise, they just like the design of the shop. Yet designers and agencies need copywriters — in fact, every one of these people is a potential sale.

It wasn’t a huge leap of faith to assume that my site wasn’t converting because it wasn’t speaking directly to its target audience. Using the techniques suggested in Ogilvy’s book, I came up with this:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

The changes I made (and the changes you should make, too):

• Targeting each type of visitor and selling to them directly
• Being specific, open and up-front about price (even making it a feature)
• Providing information under headlines that promise it.
• Using print techniques like bold and underlining to highlight the message
• Eschewing “fancy” design — letting the words speak for themselves.

Is Ogilvy right about competing on price whenever possible?

With the exception of a couple of introductory offers, I haven’t raised or changed my prices in over two years. I’m now charging approximately 25% less per day than the average copywriter. Meanwhile inflation is running rampant at 4.8% and the price of petrol is almost double what it was in 2008. I have my own central London office that’s about 200 yards from the Thames. These things aren’t cheap.

So I figured there were two ways to make money: either start charging more, or find a way to increase my conversion rate. I’ve always agreed with Ogilvy on one thing: the price is always a selling point. It’s why I’m amazed more copywriters don’t even give ballpark figures on their websites, let alone a simple, transparent rate.

Again, I’m using research: more people find my site via Google through price related keywords like “rates” “copywriting rates” “price per word” etc than any other way.

So I’ve made my prices a major selling point — as well as explaining why this actually enables me to offer a better standard of service to my customers. If Ogilvy comes through for me and my conversion rate increases, I’ll be able to keep my prices low. If not, I guess I’ll have to raise them for the first time since August, 2009.

It’s a gamble. Will it pay off? Like Ben Locker, I’m putting my money where my mouth is and testing whether Ogilvy’s techniques still work. Watch this space.

I’m a big Scott Walker fan. Scott’s a cult singer who started out as a 60s pop crooner who gradually evolved into an experimental noisemaker by way of the dark, lyrical lounge music of Jacques Brel. Imagine if Frank Sinatra got a gig in Vegas and went from playing crowd pleasers to crooning deep numbers about call girls, death and torture, before finally just deciding to pummel a side of meat for seven minutes (Scott actually does this on his latest album).

But love him or hate him, Scott makes music that makes you think about other people. His early work was “rediscovered” in the 80s with the release of a compilation album called “Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker,” compiled by Julian Cope of The Teardrop Explodes.

The title is taken from the song “Big Louise,” a song about a lonely woman growing old alone, because her friends, and her lover, have moved on without her.

But enough talk. Just listen:

What the heck has “Big Louise” got to do with social media?

Big Louise is a song about a woman who’s sad and alone because “the world’s passed her by.”
But there’s that chorus: “in a world filled with friends, you lose your way.”

Those two sentences sum up everything that’s great, and terrible, about social media.

I said two years ago that I would never use Twitter. Why? Well, to sum up:

1. Running my own business makes me very time-poor.
2. I’m very prone to distraction (not good when you’re trying to concentrate),
3. It’s too easy to make a fool out of yourself in public. Tweet in haste, repent at leisure.
4. I’m actually a very private person.

Sometimes, I feel like Big Louise. Lonely. Like everyone else is having fun, and I’m staring down at them from a very long way away. When I’m out at mixers and I tell people what I do, they’re frequently astonished I don’t use twitter, I don’t have a Facebook fan page, and I’ve never “liked” anything because (depending on how many drinks I’ve had) “it’s nobody else’s f$%@ing business” what I like.

I’ve started to wonder if my reticence to go down the self-promotion route is hurting my business. Other people use twitter to interact with a meaningful community of peers and potential clients — I don’t.

I’m like the aloof girl at the party who stands in the corner, looking too cool for school. “I’m so good, you’ll come to me, baby.” And a lot of clients do. But how many more don’t?

Meanwhile everyone else on Twitter is standing round the punch bowl, slapping each other on the back, exchanging contact details, and generally having a whale of a time.

But the truth is I’m not a back-slapping, punchbowl kind of guy. I value longer, more meaningful exchanges with a smaller number of people. If I had a penpal, I’d rather write them a letter a week than exchange twenty 160 character messages.

And I just don’t have the time to follow a thousand people on Twitter and be talking to them all the time. I’ve got a business to run.

There’s the dilemma. Either don’t use social media and, like Big Louise, watch the world pass you by. Or spend all your time using social media and “lose your way”.

Professor Sherry Turkle of MIT recently claimed “Twitter and Facebook are driving us mad.” She said:

“We’re using inanimate objects to convince ourselves that even when we’re alone, we feel together. And then when we are with each other, we put ourselves in situations where we feel alone – constantly on our mobile devices.”

When everyone else is constantly tweeting, liking, facebooking and instant-messaging, the temptation is to join in — or be left behind.

Obviously, other freelancers manage to keep their social media profiles updated regularly and tweet hourly. I know I should be spending more time looking after my social media presence, but I’ve been so busy with work I simply haven’t had the time. But I think my reticence to tweet, to have a facebook fan page, to “like” things in the hope of getting a “like” back is the same as Professor Turkle’s. I’m worried that the technology diminishes us: in Scott Walker’s words, makes us “lose our way.”

Is there a happy medium?

Should I be tweeting once a day? Is it possible to tweet “once a day” or even just once an hour, and not get drawn into tweeting more? Am I “missing out on important networking opportunities” or would I lose clients because they see me tweeting when they’re paying me to be working?

And can social media really replace real-life networking? It’s London Social Media Week next week. Even social media experts still feel the need to “network”.

I’m doing quite well at the moment and considering taking on an intern, with a view to making them a permanent member of staff if the move pays off. The first thing I’m going to ask applicants is: are you good at social media? Because the truth is if you don’t have time for it, you’re better off finding someone who does than trying to do it yourself, half-heartedly.

Don’t let the world pass you by.

With a publishing background, I’m much more suited to larger projects where structure, tone and usability are important. If you want professional yet informal, informative yet accessible, I’m all over it like a cheap suit. And I won’t start whimpering if I have to manage a project with 100 keywords, 1000 images or 100,000 words. But if you want a three-word slogan for Apple Tango, I’m probably not your man. (I’d probably suggest ‘apple bubble solution’.)

Fair enough. I’ll gladly take any headline / slogan / short copy work he doesn’t like the look of! But can the principles of creativity be applied to longer projects? To sales brochures? To B2B copywriting? I think they can.

Granted, it’s not always what a client is looking for. I was recently asked to write a sales brochure to corporate clients in a “creative” style. So, for example, I came up with section headlines like “No white rabbits: let us show you the tricks of the trade!” instead of “glossary of financial terms,” which is what I would have written were I not asked to be “creative.” The client’s feedback was unusually blunt. “Eh? I don’t understand this.” Fair enough. I crossed it out and re-wrote “glossary of financial terms.”

The point is, everyone’s definition of creative is slightly different. My definition, my client’s definition, and Tom Albrighton’s definition are all divergent. Tom thinks it’s about creating something original. I think it’s about “thinking outside of the box” — requiring a degree of originality without descending into what Tom calls “crazytivity.”

Being creative: it’s all about the concept.

In many cases, it’s about the “idea” — generating the concept that underpins the copy / design / campaign is the creative side of the work. For example, I helped re-brand a digital agency who were worried they looked a lot like everyone else. When discussing the brief, the word “troubleshooter” came up. I had the idea to rebrand the company as “hired guns” troubleshooting their client’s problems. It was a nice alternative to the over-used word “solution“. And the client’s designers came up with a gorgeous graphical set of windswept prairies and desert sunrises — not a clip art stetson or cowboy cliche in site. Writing the copy was as simple as substituting the word “folks” for “people” and making the occasional reference to digital “pioneers”. It wasn’t crazytivity. It was simply creating a brand identity. As a creative copywriter, that’s something I’m good at.

So maybe that’s what being a creative copywriter means. Being able to have original ideas and knowing how to implement them effectively. Of course, I’ve learned from my mistake with the “creative” sales brochure. As Tom puts it,

True creatives have the confidence to know when creativity is needed, and when it’s not. For them, creativity is a tool rather than a mask.

In other words, sometimes when you’re asked to be creative, don’t. That doesn’t mean some level of creativity in B2B copywriting isn’t possible — or desirable. Last week I had a client enquiry for a B2B project from a company that was impressed with a recent rebranding I helped out on. The client was a software house — nothing particularly exciting. The work, the copy, was very technical — for engineers. But the concept was what attracted the client enquiry. “We liked the fact you used something as simple as putting a ‘+’ in all the headlines to emphasize both positivity and inclusivity — people working together.” A concept as simple as that underpinned over six thousand words of technical copy. Is it original? Probably not. Is it creative? Yes. Did it add to the company’s sense of identity, of individuality? Absolutely.

Creativity is always happening behind the scenes

So when you come to a “creative” copywriter, you’re often looking for ideas as well as words. Sure, I’m happy to offer you words without ideas, but couched in those terms, “uncreative” copywriting doesn’t sound very attractive. Sales copywriting is always about arguing your client’s case. And to do that, you have to convince them with your ideas. So when I say I’m creative, I mean I’m good at coming up with ideas to support arguments — to find your company’s USP and convince potential customers to choose your product. It doesn’t necessarily mean I come up with “crazy” headlines, puns, or “zany” copy.

I’m sure Tom Albrighton uses ideas and arguments to structure his copy, too — after all, I’m familiar with his work, and it’s good. But it’s interesting that he chooses not to call himself a creative. I reckon Tom should cut himself some slack — maybe we’re not, to use his example, painting masterpieces. Maybe we’re painting frescoes, at best.  But we are paid to come up with original words. And original ideas. That means we’re creating something.

I know what you’re thinking. You get up in the morning. London’s all grey and awful. You’ve got to get up before it’s even light and trudge twenty minutes in the rain to catch a bus to catch a tube and stand around geting pushed around just to make it to your desk for five to nine. Then, in eight hours time, you’ve got to do it all again.

Working from home is living the dream, right? Wrong. Let me tell you how working from home becomes a nightmare you can’t wait to wake up from.

I’ve worked in offices before, and I’ve also worked from home before. But since moving closer to central london late last year, I’ve sacrificed space for location and I’ve done it in a big way. Let me tell you how it starts.

Snooze Button

Imagine your office was only ten feet and one doorway away from your bed. Okay, so you’d have to be <i>really</i> lazy to knock off work at 1 for an afternoon nap, but think about the temptation. It’s 09:30am. The alarm’s ringing. “Just another half an hour… after all, it’s not like I’m going anywhere today…”

Then, once you’re actually up. Your xbox is only 10 feet away. So is your TV. So is your fridge.Worse, the person you live with just quit their day job and bought a cat. But you’ve got clients breathing down your neck demanding first drafts, while the washing machine churns away in the background. How many pants does the woman own! Concentrate? You’ll be lucky. You’re not at home any more. You’re in work hell.

Working from home successfully requires separate space

I’ve managed to work successfully from home in the past simply by having a bigger home, scheduling client meetings for early mornings (so you actually have to get dressed and leave the house by nine) and by being disciplined. After all, when you’re self employed, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. But in the central London shoebox I’ve been living in, my work ethic totally broke down.

You see, the thing is, you don’t hate working in an office. Sure, you might hate the commute, but the chances are you have friends in the office, people to talk to, people to bitch to, people to go for a drink with. What you really hate isn’t being stuck in an office. You hate not being your own boss.

Live the dream – become self-employed!

When people say “I wish I could work from home!” what they mean is “I wish my boss wasn’t looking over my shoulder all the time” or “I really hate Clive from Accounts!”

They mean things like “I hate my boss, I hate having to do a 9-to-5…” They rarely mean “I hate my actual job.” They think working from home will solve their woes. They’re wrong.

People put up with “working in an office” and dream of being free. But the truth is working at home won’t set you free. You’re still working. Only now you have to be self-motivated, too.

So go ahead. Quit your job and start your own business. I did. And I’m earning twice what I did before. I’d probably walk straight back into an agency if the money was right, but I’ve definitely started enjoying being my own boss.

You’ll love the freedom. Just don’t turn your home into your office hell.

If you’ve decided to go it alone and start your own business, chances are you won’t be able to afford an office right away. As Mad Men fans know, even Don Draper, when he starts his own breakaway agency, has to start off in a hotel. So here’s some tips for turning your home into a working environment:

1. Use a separate room. That means don’t work in your bedroom. Definitely don’t work in the living room. It’s where you’re supposed to relax.

2. Never work with children or animals. Fido’s bark never bothered you before, but now you’re trying to concentrate he’s become your worst enemy. “The cat wants to play” is not an excuse to stop working.

3. Get out as often as possible. Schedule meetings early and often and in places you wouldn’t otherwise socialise. Make sure you go out for a drink with your friends now and then. Otherwise, you’ll turn into one of those shut-ins you see in documentaries on Sky 3.

4. Accept it’s never going to be a long term solution. If you’ve any ambition, you’ll want to start taking on staff one day, and do you really want them in your house? What about when your dream client comes through and you have to tell him you can’t meet him “at the office” because your flatmate is playing video games / watching porn / having sex with strangers next door?

5. Pretend you’re at work. Put on a shirt. Put on a tie, if it helps. Watch the clock — start at nine and end the day at five.

The golden rule: do everything you can to keep your home and work lives separate.

The chances are after six months, your dream of working from home will have turned into a damp squib. But you’ve learned how to be self-sufficient, you’ve learned discipline, and you’re ready to take your business forward. Just like me, soon enough, you’ll be back in the office.

Shoes - Stolen!

Happy new year, folks. Hope you’ve had a good one. I’ve had one of those months. You know the sort, the kind where a vengeful girl locks you out, steals your shoes, and leaves you to drive two hundred miles in your wellington boots to crash on a mate’s couch because you have nowhere else to go for Christmas and New Year.

Never happen to you? Well, you’re lucky. But my month on the road (working, as ever, with my Laptop, my wireless dongle and my trusty Blackberry) made me think about one thing. As a copywriter whose business is primarily online, who communicates for the most part with clients via email, phone and skype, do I really need to be in central London?

I’ve had something of a bumper month, with work coming in more or less every day. In fact, I’ve had to turn some people away because I simply couldn’t give their projects the attention they deserved. It’s just as well, because I’ve had a sizeable hotel bill to pay. Funnily enough, I’m still more annoyed about the shoes. (Are you getting the hint yet? I really loved those shoes.) But it occurred to me — if I could work from an anonymous out-of-town Hilton and, later, from my friend’s desk in Leeds, 200 miles away from London — do I really need to live in London for work?

The answer is yes and no. No, because the rent in London is extortionate, the weather is awful, and the bars are always full of tourists. Yes, because I’m back in the city this week because I have two new client meetings, both for sizeable accounts. I’m not sure “Could you drive up to Leeds for a meeting?” would sound quite as impressive as “sure, I live at London Bridge, let’s have a coffee on the South Bank and talk.”

I’ve been tempted to move. I could get a much bigger flat for much less than I’m paying here. I could work a three day week — and take up a hobby in my spare time. But the real reason I don’t move? People don’t take you seriously unless you’re in London. And I’m sure if I moved, my business would suffer.

I’ve seen “copywriters” as far away as Middlesbrough (that’s an hour further north than Leeds) advertise themselves as “London Copywriters”. Presumably “Copywriter from the Middle of Nowhere” didn’t have the same ring to it. And yes, I suppose they could drive down for five hours for a midday meeting, but it’s not quite the same as nipping over the river for a quick chat.

Wellies - not so good for driving

I used to live just 49 miles outside of London and would frequently drive in for business. But since moving to the centre, I’ve found my local business has more than doubled. Why? Because I’m better able to market myself, using keywords, maps and, of course, Google Places. I can meet people same-day and seal the deal that afternoon.

In other words, while I can conduct my actual business — copywriting — from anywhere, there’s a major benefit in terms of account handling, meeting new clients and self-marketing — from my current, central location.

When I first got into the copywriting game, I was advised to start out local. And “Copywriter Guildford” might have been a better way to market myself before I moved back to the Big Smoke. But the truth is that the majority of the market is in central London, and it’s here you’ll find the lion’s share. To most of the world, England is London. And to do business with them, they expect you to be here.

I’ve been away for a month, but it feels good to be back. And with the extra money I make from working in London, I can easily afford a new pair of shoes. Now, if only someone could halve my rent…

So far, I’ve held off mentioning copy mills — terrible places where semi-pro writers sell blog posts and press releases for as little as 2p a word. Other copywriters have already said all you need to know. Google “Copify” and you’ll find a whole host of complaints and bad reviews. If you pay peanuts, you’re bound to get monkeys. At 2p a word, a blog post earns you less than £10. And how many professional copywriters are willing to work for less than £10 an hour?

If you employed a builder to build a house, would you ask him if he charges per brick? He’d probably give you a very blunt reply.

Comparisons between professional copywriters and copy mill writers are worthless. It’s like trying to compare a painter and decorator to an artist, sure, they’re both painting, but one is giving you a considered, finished piece, while the other is just slapping a coat of paint on so you don’t see the cracks.

Builders don’t charge by the brick because they understand that every project is different. Copywriters don’t charge by the word for the same reason.

A professional copywriter is a jack-of-all-trades, understanding the basics of business and being prepared to do detailed research into your project to get on top of your brief. We’re not just writing, we’re googling — we’re reading up on what you do, we’re checking out your competitors, and most importantly of all, we’re applying our knowledge of how to sell. A copy mill writer is just churning out words with little to no interest in if they actually work.

Even a simple blog post is done differently. A professional copywriter cares about creating linkbait — in other words, writing a blog post that gets linked to, draws traffic to your site, and encourages people to call you. A copy mill writer is just throwing out a few random keywords and hoping it’ll draw a few stragglers in from Google.

Average Price Per Word

I’ve averaged out my long copy (large websites, sales brochures) work and arrived at a final figure. I’d say I’m earning, on average, 10-12p per word for editing a 2000 word sales brochure. Or, put another way, if you supply it, I can check over it in a day and I will charge you around £250 for the privilege. If you want me to write it from scratch (or from your bullet points), you can double that figure.

But that’s just a rough estimate. I’ll evaluate you, as well as the work. How long will I spend on the phone with you. How many redrafts will you demand? At the end of the day, if I quote you a fixed price and end up taking twice as long as I had budgeted for, I’m losing out — and, for all you know, I can’t pay my rent next month. It’s that simple — seasoned copywriters won’t under-quote.

It’s not about price per word, it’s about how long it takes.

It’s different for regular clients. I maintain blogs for some of my regulars, and their blog posts can work out at as little as 10p a word. Why? Because I’m used to writing in the correct style, because I understand the ins and outs of their business, and because I’ve worked with them over a number of years, a brief that would take 4 hours to get on top of only takes an hour.

Paying by the word doesn’t work.

It took me a week to come up with a product name, recently. Creating a witty, memorable name took time and effort. I produced two words, at a cost of £100 a word. That’s a long way from 20p a word. It’s even further than a paltry 2p. The truth is, some words are worth more than others. Headlines on web pages take hours to write. The accompanying paragraphs take minutes.

So what’s the use of comparing price-per-word?

It’s worth checking out long copy prices per word, as that will give you an approximate idea of how much your copywriter thinks he is worth. But if you think a good product name, or even a good headline, is worth nothing more than pennies, think again. When you pay a professional copywriter for his services, you’re not just paying him to write. You’re paying him to attend meetings, to learn about your business, and to apply his psychological knowledge to create a structured argument designed to get your customers to think about you differently.

In other words a professional copywriter isn’t just a writer. He’s part business consultant, part psychologist and part researcher — if he’s smart, he’s all sales.

Personally, I use my “20p per word” to arrive at a ballpark figure when I’m asked for a quote. This means a blog post can be anywhere from £50-100, while six web pages will be at least £300. If I’m working with nothing more than a blank page, or we’ve already spent several hours on the phone, I double my quote — because experience has taught me it will take twice as long. I then factor in the complexity of the project and the amount of ‘headline’ (ATL) work I’ll need to do.

In other words, price-per-word can be useful when comparing copywriters. But the cheapest is almost always the worst.

Inexperienced copywriters give cheap quotes because they’re a) hungry for the work (they have no longstanding relationships or reputation to feed them regular work) and b) because they frequently underestimate the time a job will take.

Shop around, by all means, but beware the cheap option.

You always get what you pay for.

After a lengthy discussion on my blog earlier this year, I abandoned the policy of setting variable copywriting rates and settled on a flat-fee structure.

My copywriting rates are completely transparent: I charge £25 an hour, £200 a day, with a minimum spend of £100 for new customers. For that price, your first edit will be free.

The only thing ‘variable’ about my copywriting rates is the number of hours I estimate a job will take. Existing clients will get cheaper estimates because I know their business and have a better understanding of their needs, which means fewer redrafts and less research. Small businesses will get cheaper estimates because they will require less contact time as fewer people will need to approve the final copy.

This blog post isn’t about me, honest.

OK, I’m going to stop advertising my services and get down to explaining what my business model means for your business.

How would you feel if every time you walked into a shop, you had to take the items to the till and ask the shop assistant how much they cost before deciding to buy? You’d think it’s a ridiculous way of doing business, right?

Yet that’s exactly what most freelance copywriters (and many other types of freelancer on the web) do. “Get in touch!” they exclaim. “I offer a great ROI!” or even, occasionally “You’ll be surprised by how little it costs!”

People don’t like surprises when it comes to price. So why not just be honest and up-front with your customers? “I charge £200 a day. No surprises.”

When you don’t tell your customers up-front exactly how much something costs, there will always be the suspicion that they’re eyeing you (and your wallet) up and figuring out how much they can screw you for.

Some freelancers I’ve spoken to have told me that’s exactly how they do business. Why charge a Moneybags £200 a day when you can screw him for six?

The simple answer is that Moneybags might only come along once every six months — meaning you’re losing customers who would be prepared to pay a fair price, if only you told them what it is.

What happened when I made my copywriting rates transparent?

It’s hard to judge exactly when the number of enquiries a freelancer gets can vary so wildly. But my adwords campaign provides good, solid evidence that being honest about your prices increases interest in your company.

I’d been running ads targeted at people looking for a copywriter in Central London for several months. Last month, I changed the blandly generic second line “Award winning copy and branding” to the more specific “£25 an hour, £200 a day.”

Within a month, the click-through-rate for my ad had risen from 1.37% to 2.28%. In other words, interest practically doubled overnight.

Some people baulk at this idea. They see it as the equivalent of going downmarket. But the truth is, I’m not a “cheap” copywriter. Look around. My prices are pretty middle-of-the-road.

Anyone charging you more than £300 a day, unless they’ve got top agency or brand experience, is ripping you off. People who can afford to charge more than £300 a day don’t need to advertise. And I know of copywriters who’ll charge as little as £70 a day. But believe me, you get what you pay for.

I like to think my copywriting rates say “Hi, I’m a friendly, approachable, competent, experienced but not too expensive freelancer who’ll be honest and up-front with you.”

There may come a day when I think my portfolio warrants charging £250 a day. But when it does, I’ll be sure to tell you.

The general lesson for business  is that displaying your prices in the window doesn’t make you look cheap. It makes you look approachable.

Imagine if online stores like Amazon put “Price on Request” on all their products. They wouldn’t get much business.

If you’re selling something on the web, you need to be honest about how much it costs. “You’ll be surprised at how much you’ll save!” doesn’t cut it.

Give people a rough idea how much they’ll be spending before they get to your contact form.

You take an hour of my time, I take £25 of your money. It’s a fair deal.

Let’s break it into five days for simplicity. I’d say, on average, I spend three days a week working, another day a week chasing potential clients (doing spec work, replying to briefs etc) and of course writing and chasing invoices, doing my accounts, etc. That leaves one full fifth of my working week for self promotion. The truth is I probably don’t spend that long. I treat it as a half-day off. Yesterday I went to London’s Design Museum rather than work. But really, I should have been updating my blog.

There’s more to self-promotion than blogging…

But it’s a good place to start. Once you’ve written your blog, it’s there forever — constantly generating inbound links and visits through organic search. Yesterday’s tweet is yesterday’s news. A blog post is for life, not just for this morning. That doesn’t mean blogging should be the be-all and end-all of your self promotion. Here are some other things you should be doing:

• If you’re a social media sort, you should be interacting with other people online. Don’t see this as an opportunity to promote your brand. See it as a chance to talk to your peers and colleagues and make sure they remember who you are. Not many copywriters use twitter. But most web designers do. If you’re a web based copywriter, it’s a chance to remind your clients you’re still here.
• If you’re not a social media sort, you should be networking. Remember when networking was more than just tweeting? Well, if you’re in a big city like London, there’s still all sorts of networking events going on. Be sure to bring lots of business cards. And try not to get too drunk.
• Keep in touch with old clients. Ongoing relationships mean you don’t have to spend as much time looking for new work. And as your relationship develops, you’ll gain a better understanding of what they want. That means you spend less time re-drafting because you get the job done first time.
• Use AdWords. No, really. I know there’s nothing worse than shelling out for advertising when the social media ‘revolution’ promises you can do it for free, but the fact is PPC still works, otherwise people wouldn’t do it. I spend about £100 a month on PPC advertising. Since I started my campaign, I’ve doubled the amount of leads I’m getting, found more local business in London and increased my profits. AdWords isn’t a ‘set it up and forget’ option. To get it right requires constant maintenance. I check mine every day.
• Consider getting someone else to do your marketing for you. Lots of people will be on an agency’s books in addition to touting for work themselves. Make sure your agency is reputable and meet them in person if possible. Whatever you do, don’t sign up for a copy mill. Pay-per-word doesn’t work — mainly because it’s much simpler to write 1000 words of mediocre copy than write 100 words that really sell. A really good hundred words might be worth £1000 to your client. 1000 words at 6p per word isn’t worth the paper it probably isn’t even printed on.

Any more tips and suggestions? Share them here.

I’m all in favour of the quick phone call. In fact, I think it’s great when a potential client rings me up and asks me for a quick run-down of what I can do for them. It’s nice to be able to put a voice – if not a face – to the name. But the key word in that sentence is quick. If your phone call lasts for more than five minutes, chances are you’re wasting your time. Here’s why:

Information overload.

It’s easy to remember all the salient points in a five minute chat. But how much of a half hour call can you really remember, even if you’re taking notes? The chances are you’ve only got time to scribble down 10% of the call. And while you’re scribbling, you’re not listening. In other words, when you call, the odds are 10 to 1 important information is going to get ignored.

In fact, you’ll probably call again next week asking your freelancer ‘why he missed out xxxxxxx’ when you asked for it specifically. You’ll blame him for not writing it down. But actually, it’s probably your fault. We’re only human — we can’t write everything down and listen to you at the same time.

Long calls are inefficient

If you’re talking for more than ten or fifteen minutes, chances are you don’t have a proper brief yet. Briefs are called briefs because, well, they’re brief. When you write down what you want your freelancer to know in an email or document, you can guarantee it’s his fault if he doesn’t follow the brief. That’s not the case when you call.

If you’re talking for a five or ten minute stretch, chances are your freelancer will feel it’s rude to interrupt you. Sometimes, he’ll feel as if he can’t get a word in edgeways.

Too many people treat phone calls as a chance to tell you something, not a chance to open a dialogue. If you find yourself talking 90% of the time while your freelancer is going “yeah, yup, uh-huh” every fifth minute, you’re wasting your time — and your freelancer’s time. If your ‘conversation’ is a one way street, you should be writing down this information and sending it. It’ll help clarify your ideas, too.

The way to use the phone effectively

Be brief. Open a dialogue. Ask your freelancer specific questions. “What do you think to this idea?” “Do you have any experience with pay per click?” “I’ve got five strap lines. Which one’s the best?”

In short, engage your freelancer and pick his brains. Don’t just tell him what you want him to do. Instructions are like a shopping list. You’ll remember more if you write it down.

Meet me. It’s better than a call.

Long conversations are better handled in person, where you can work together to find a common solution. I’m always happy to meet clients in London personally, and I’ll sometimes even travel further afield, even though I’m a copywriter based in London.

Calls take much longer than emails to handle, and your freelancer may bill you for your time. It takes him five minutes to read an email. If your call lasts an hour, he might just bill you at his hourly rate.

I know freelancers who have an “email only” policy. Personally, I prefer a hands-on approach, getting to know my clients as much as possible. But I also know that long phone calls don’t work. Emails are like butterfly nets that catch everything — all the relevant information. Phone calls are like a sieve. Much more trickles out than gets saved.

Your freelancer probably has half a dozen clients to deal with in a day. So do your freelancer a favour: if it’s important, write it down.

I started out as a journalist. After almost two years of badly-paid freelancing and doing mostly unpaid internships in the editorial departments of medium sized magazines, I came to the conclusion that there simply aren’t enough jobs in journalism to go round.

Fact. As a copywriter, you will earn more than a journalist.

As a young journo, I was charging £70 a day for my services. As a much more experienced, seasoned, professional copywriter, I’m now able to command sums of £200-250 a day for my services. But the truth is that copywriting is a much more difficult skill than journalistic writing, and not all of you are going to make the cut. Here’s why.

Could you work in sales?

Many people, particuarly English Lit graduates, have a strong aversion to sales. They become journalists because they want to foist their opinions on the world. If that’s you, give up now. Copywriting isn’t your game.

The aim of a professional copywriter is simple: To produce copy that sells. To have ideas that result in copy that sells. In other words, simply, to sell.

Made the cut? Read on.

Now you’ve decided to devote your life to sales, you should probably be aware of the competition. I’m a London based copywriter and I’m competing, by and large, with companies and individuals outside of London. Why? Because “Copywriter London” generates a lot more leads than “Copywriter Norwich” or “Copywriter Middlesbrough”. Yet agencies based in both these cities rank higher on Google for “Copywriter London” than I do, because they’ve been around for longer, or spend more on SEO than my budget allows. The same would be true if you’re a copywriter starting out in New York or Chicago or Sydney.

Are you big league or small league?

Premium clients are associated with premium cities. You might find a niche by promoting yourself as number one copywriter in, say, Chichester or West Sussex, but you’ll never score big accounts. Be prepared for the hell of trying to squeeze £150 out of a local business for SEO, or the Dante’s Inferno of collecting even microscopic payments from absent minded sole traders. In short, if you want to be a copywriter in London or any other major city, you’re going to have to play tough. And if you want to find a ‘niche’ market, you’re going to have to be prepared to be paid less and / or spend more time chasing invoices.

I chose to market myself as a copywriter in London because, firstly, that’s where I am. And secondly, I wanted a shot at the big leagues. You’ll have to make a similar choice.

At last! Your quick start guide to being a copywriter.

• Get a website. Make sure it’s good. Unless you’ve already got tons of agency experience or other contacts, chances are these days most of your enquiries will come from the web. Your website is more than just your digital marker. It’s a virtual handshake — can you project a confident image online?
  
• Blog. Blog, blog and blog again. You’re a writer, right? So write. Not only will regular blogging serve as brilliant SEO, giving you more landing pages and keywords to get your business noticed,  it’s a great place to display your writing talents, especially if your portfolio is weak.
  
• Set your prices low. If you’re just starting out, the chances are you aren’t the best copywriter in the world yet. Don’t worry. You’ll learn. Until you can be the best, you’re best off trying to be the cheapest. People are always looking for a bargain, and your portfolio will start to get bigger — enabling you to charge more.
  
• Read, read, read about writing. Copyblogger is a great place to start. And you’re here, which is good. There’s so much more to copywriting than just being able to write good sales copy. Once you’ve learned those basics, consider learning about SEO, about pay-per-click advertising, and of course, about how copy integrates with design.
  
• Constantly evaluate yourself.How could you have improved on that last job? What will you do better next time? Did you handle your client well — did you argue with them too much, or were you a total pushover? How’s your site doing for your chosen keywords?

The most important advice of all: financial advice.

As a freelancer, people will either forget about your or try to bully you. Make sure you take a deposit up-front and make sure you get as much money as possible before starting out. Most clients are on the level. Some will try to wriggle out of payment, and you’ll find yourself writing them off as lost causes. But even reputable clients sometimes make you wait up to 90 days for payment. So if you’re useless at managing your own finances, stick to your day job.

Still need more help? Leave a comment here and I’ll try to give you some more personal advice.

Snow days

At the start of 2010, it snowed. A lot. In fact, I was almost snowed in for several days. I was living outside of London and I was completely reliant on my car. It took a brave decision to take her for a spin. It took an even braver passing stranger in a 4×4 to give me a tow when I got stuck on hard ice. The fact is, everything ground to a halt. Even in Central London, tubes were delayed and buses were overcrowded. And as for work, well, it simply didn’t come in for a whole month. That’s right, folks. I spent January curled up by a hot fire with nothing to do except watch the TV.

No work: it happens. Too much work: it happens.

Weather conditions aside, there’s plenty of other reasons why you might not have anything to do. You may finish a project earlier than expected, and as a result have nothing booked in for next week. August is also a terrible month for freelancers, because it’s the height of the holiday season and, without enough people being available to make a decision, work doesn’t get commissioned. Then September comes along, everyone’s back at their desk, and suddenly your phone doesn’t stop ringing. Now, you’ve got too much work.

Top tips for handling flows of work

Ultimately, you’re going to find months where you have very little to do and months where you’ve too much to do. That’s the name of the freelance game. I’ve found this advice helpful in managing my workload:

• Don’t panic.
  
  It seems obvious, but it’s all too easy to worry when you have too much work, and it’s terrifying when you have no work on the books and bills to pay. Try to remember your long term strategy. Look at how much you’ve earned over the last 12 months. Things will be fine. If they’re not, you should really consider a different career.

• Use all your time productively.
  
  If you’re having a slow week, it’s time to update your blog, or your copy, or your SEO. Get out there and look for work. August was so slow for me I finally decided to set up an AdWords campaign to market my business. But it wasn’t just because I needed extra clicks. It was also an important learning experience for me, getting my hands dirty with pay per click advertising. Next time a client asks for advice on it, I’ll be in a position to help.

• If you’re too busy, don’t take on any more work.
  
  I know it seems tempting, especially if you’re just coming out of a slow month, but if you take on more work than you can handle you’ll end up making all your clients angry. It’s better to do a smaller amount of good work than a lot of sloppy work. Remember, reputations take much longer to build than to destroy.

• Have you considered raising your prices?
  
  It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but if you’re too busy too often, it may be a sign that demand is outstripping supply. In a free market, that’s when prices have to rise. Once upon a time, when I was too busy, I used to explain to my clients that if they were willing to wait, I could help them next month. I didn’t get much business that way. I found clients were more amenable to being told ‘I’m busy, therefore my work commands a premium. I’ll be able to do this for you this week, but it’s going to cost you.’ It’s a great way to separate the wheat from the chaff and find out what you’re really worth.

• Get help.
  
  If you’re consistently too busy, considering entering a partnership with another freelancer — they’ll pass work they don’t have time for your way, and you agree to pass clients their way when you’re busy.  It’ll help even out those ups and downs. And if you’re not busy at all, take the opportunity to go see a friend. It’s too easy to spend too much time alone as a freelancer, especially when you’re busy. Spending time with someone else really helps when you’re bored, alone, and waiting for work — especially if the other person’s another creative.

In short? These are very simple tips. But sometimes, the best advice is the most obvious. When you’re stressed about work, it can be hard to see the forest for the trees, it’s too easy to panic about having too much work one month, then not enough work the next. I’m not going to tell you to put a little money aside for a rainy day — how you live your life is up to you. But remember: when you’re a freelancer, no two months are ever quite the same.

When you’re dealing with SMEs and start-ups, companies that don’t have much of an image yet, companies with products you probably haven’t heard of, the temptation is probably to keep things simple and do at least two things with the copy:

1. Promote a sense of trust (as people are less likely to naturally trust companies they haven’t heard of)
2. Make the company look bigger than it  is.

1 and 2 are interlinked. Unfortunately, 1 is fine — but 2 sometimes isn’t. Now, I know some people will tell you that copywriting — that the advertising industry in general — is all about telling lies. When I hear this I usually joke, “telling lies only really takes up about 50% of my time. The rest of the time I’m doing invoices or going for haircuts.” But the fact is that when you’re trying to promote a sense of trust in a company, telling porkies isn’t always the best option.

Many SMEs have small budgets. They want you to make a big impact for not a lot of money, and as a copywriter that almost instils a sense inside you that I must make this company sound bigger, more professional, than they actually are. Sometimes, that’s a good call. Especially if it’s what the client wants. But there are occasions where it’s worth arguing with your clients. And I think in certain cases trying to make SMEs and start-ups sound bigger than they are is a big mistake.

Being the underdog isn’t a bad thing.

Maybe it’s a British thing, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the scrappy underdog. The new kid on the block. The guy who’s gonna fight tooth and nail to stay in the business because he’s just laid out a deposit on an office for 12 months and he’ll be damned if he’s going to lose that by going bust in six months. And sometimes I think pitching yourself as the underdog really works. I do it.

My services are about 1/3rd cheaper than an agency and I make sure everybody knows it. I also make sure everybody knows I’m good. I haven’t been in the business for decades because two decades ago I was still looking forward to the bike I’d been promised for my tenth birthday. The point is, I’m the scrappy underdog — and I’ve fought my way from piecemeal two or three hundred pound jobs to bringing in accounts worth thousands of pounds — and I’ve done that by being better than the competition.

I want you to know that I’m a fighter, because that’s the kind of copywriter you want. If you’re an SME, a start up, or an entrepreneur who’s just had a brilliant idea, you don’t need to tell the world you’ve been doing this for years, you’ve got a staff of twenty million, or a fancy office in Central London. You just need to believe in what you’re doing, and have copy to match.

“You haven’t seen this before. Take a look.” – Who can resist the temptation?

When it comes to promoting a sense of trust, I think it’s easier to tell the truth to your clients. You just have to make sure the truth is portrayed positively. Being new or being small isn’t a disadvantage. It’s an opportunity to re-brand yourself.

“If your website / company / brand was a person,
what sort of person would they be?”

Copywriters thrive on detail. Often, we’re given a brief for a site, design or company that lacks character. The client has come to us because they want our copy to provide that character. But without direction, all we can do is take a stab in the dark.

The personality question gives us direction. Instantly.

There’s a number of standard questions I run through with a client when I take on their work. I’ll ask them what their USP (unique selling point) is because it’s important to find out what sort of through line they want me to push (are they the best? the cheapest? the fastest?). I’ll ask them to show me some styles of copy that they like, or copy that they don’t like, and I’ll ask them to describe their ideal customer. But I learn more from this one single question than I do from anything else.

Getting your character across.

My site’s a great example. As I’m a freelancer, my site’s design, layout and copy is designed to reflect my personality, so you get a good idea about who I am before you hire me. Your website should be the same. Ever noticed how certain types of people drive certain types of cars? Of course you have. Or how about certain types of people preferring certain breeds of dog? Try personifying your company. Give it a face. Is it rugged or smooth? What clothes would your company wear? What car would it have parked in the drive. Most importantly of all, is your company a boy or a girl? The list goes on.

The important thing is, you learn more about yourself and how you want to project your company’s image to your customers this way.

By answering these simple questions, you can learn a lot more about what makes your company great. Not only that, you learn about your weaknesses, too. After all, some types of people just aren’t attracted to certain types. By personifying your company or website, it’s easier to see who your ideal customer is. And if your company’s personality isn’t a good match for your target market, you’ve got to change.

It isn’t easy being a copywriter. Often, we’re expected to intuitively understand a client’s personality, even when we’re working across the internet with a customer who’s hundreds or even thousands of miles away. But with this one simple question, you can cut through every single layer of corporate bullshit and sales-speak, branding and marketing guff, and get down to the bare essentials of who your client is — and what they want.

Try it some time. I guarantee it’ll be the best question you’ve ever asked.

_______________________________

Copywriting rates should be transparent.

Clients are happy to pay you for your hard work. They’re not so happy to pay you to answer your emails, price up and send out detailed quotes, and, of course, do your taxes. Yet “admin” work takes up half my week. So I have to factor this into my prices. Every freelancer does. That’s why when people come to me with a job and say “this will only take you a couple of hours, so I’m only going to pay you for two hours work” I turn them down. I may have to spend at least a half a day looking for work, so when I get it, it needs to cover all my costs.

So how much is it fair to charge? Well, I charge a flat rate. At the moment, it’s £250 a day. But a thought recently occurred to me:

Should I be setting variable prices?

Fact: Middle of the road doesn’t sell.

Let’s imagine you’re buying a notebook.

Notebook A costs £200.
Notebook B costs £400.
Notebook C costs £1000.

Which one do you pick? Chances are Laptop A has poor specs, but you’re on a budget, so you buy the cheapest. Or £300 means nothing to you, so you buy the best. You choose C.

Who chooses option B? Answer: no-one. It’s not cheap enough for people on a budget, but people with a much larger budget only want the best.

Middle of the road doesn’t sell.

So your options are simple:

1. Be the most expensive or be the cheapest. Be option A or option C.
2. Charge a variable rate: be option A to clients on a budget. Be option C to the rest.

Some of my bigger clients are getting a bargain. They know my day rate is cheap compared to a big London copywriting agency, marketing agency, ad agency or similar. They’d be happy to pay double that — and they’d still be getting a bargain.

But jobs like this only come along rarely. The majority of the time I’m dealing with SMEs on a limited budget who can’t afford big agency prices.

So the question is, is it fair for me to set variable rates,
charging those willing to pay the most more than those who can’t pay much?

There’s something distinctly unfair about charging people more than others for the same thing.

For example:

A friend and I recently tried to go bowling at the Lakeside Superbowl, Chichester. We were told by a very grumpy member of staff that we couldn’t have the deal advertised on the website as we hadn’t booked a day in advance — even though there were plenty of lanes available. We were told we’d have to pay £40 between us for four games, rather than the £16 in total the website suggested. Naturally, we refused to pay, and left.

The bowling alley could have had £16 off us. Yet they ended up with nothing. Just an empty lane.

I’m faced with a similar problem:

I do a great job (if I do say so myself) and I’m pretty sure that some of my clients would think £400 a day is value for money. But I know that some of my clients with small budgets wouldn’t be able to pay these rates. Is it fair for me to charge big clients £300 and small clients £200?

The answer is that it probably isn’t. I factor in the complexity of the work when giving a quote, and that includes the number of expected redrafts and amount of client time in meetings, phone calls and emails I’ll expect. Bigger companies tend to be more demanding, so naturally I’ll charge slightly more because they’ll take up more of my time.

Big jobs only come along every so often — and I find myself doing smaller jobs for companies on limited budgets 3/4 of the time. But I don’t think my clients would stand for “variable” prices — just like I wouldn’t stand to pay full price at the bowling alley.

So when you see a copywriter who won’t tell you his daily rate in advance, beware.
He’s probably trying to figure out what your “pain threshold” so he can charge you as much as he can.

In conclusion:

Price is an indicator of quality. By being cheaper than my competition, I run the risk of looking cut-rate, and scaring off bigger customers. But if I raise my prices and don’t get enough big customers, I end up earning much less.

There’s no point being middle of the road. At the moment I’m pursuing an aggressive price strategy, undercutting my competitors and increasing my market share. But if I ever decide to change my pricing structure, I won’t change my copywriting rates so I’m “middle of the road”. Because nobody would buy it.

For now, I’m content to keep my prices relatively low — and to carry on charging by the day, to maintain transparency. But as my portfolio continues to improve and I find myself landing more and more “big” clients able to pay more, I need to start charging more.

After all, I don’t have a boss who’s going to give me a pay rise. As a freelancer, I have to decide that, too.

It’s more important to sound natural than to be clever.

F Scott Fitzgerald famously started out in advertising and came up with the slogan “we keep you clean in Muscatine” for an Iowa based laundry service. While he may have been the greatest writer of the 20th century, he wouldn’t have made it very far in the advertising world. Headlines like this are far too glib. Soon, they begin to grate. It’s possible to be “too” clever.

Good straplines find a great balance between being clever and being helpful, positive, and eye-catching.
They should stand out by being sharp, with carefully understated wordplay.

My favourite strapline out there at the moment belongs to the House of Fraser:

Yes, it’s a pun. But it’s a good one. A good pun doesn’t get tired the more you hear it, and every time I shop here, I look at that strapline and go “yup, that’s good.” It amuses, it explains, it entices but most of all — it’s positive.

Negativity never works.

A while ago I was asked to create a strapline for Skint.com, a website offering short term loans. Their existing headline, “it’s no fun with no money” simply didn’t work. Why? The use of the negative, twice. Why depress people by telling them something’s no fun — even if your site promises to fix that problem. Be positive. Look to the future, not the past.

Here’s the slogan I came up with for them.

You may have noticed it already in my portfolio. But it’s one of my favourites, and I thought it deserved a little explanation.

It’s positive. It’s proactive. It feels natural.

Most importantly of all, it paraphrases the three most important words in copywriting: we can help.

A copywriter’s job is to introduce his client to their customers in such a way as the customers know that the client is able to help them. They want to feel able to come to the client and know their needs will be satisfied, their demands will be met.

That’s also why ‘Temptation on every level’ works well. It tantalizes, it promises… there’s an aura of mystique with the feeling of a promise soon to be fulfilled.

Still think any old strapline will do? Think again. If your budget is limited, you’re better off paying a copywriter a day’s work to come up with one simple sentence that sums up your business than producing five or six hundred words of sales text.

Good headline writers are hard to find. That’s because good headline writing is the hardest skill a copywriter will ever have to master.

But when it comes to writing, everyone’s a DIY merchant. Everyone thinks, well, I speak English, so I can write well. That’s why it’s hard for a copywriter to make it in this modern climate. People will happily shell out for web design, because it’s easier than learning HTML. But English is a language everyone understands. Or so they think.

I studied hard to get my MA in creative writing, and I’m an expert copywriter. I know the English language inside out. I know what works and what doesn’t. I know how to turn a phrase and how to turn your customers on to your services.

The hard part is convincing you to think the same way I do.

It’s hard to sell your services as a writer. That’s why there are so many beautiful websites containing awful copy. It’s the bit everyone does themselves to cut costs. Why pay a writer when you can do it yourself?

The truth is, most people can’t write very well at all. Writing well for an audience is an art, and it’s as hard as fixing a car or a broken boiler. Okay, maybe it’s not brain surgery, but like most things, you get a better result when you call in the professionals.

Dustin Curtis provides an excellent example of how a well written call to action can improve your response rate. By changing his call to “you should follow me on twitter here” from “I’m on twitter” he improved his response rate from 4.70% to 12.81%

That’s a threefold increase just by crafting a better written sentence. Heck, even adding ‘here’ to the end of the sentence resulted in a 3% increase.

That’s the power of good writing. A good copywriter can take your message and sell it to your customers. In short, he’s talking their language. Are you?

The chances are good you could vastly improve your marketing, generate more sales and leads, as well as increasing brand awareness right now by hiring a professional writer, like me. The question is, why don’t you?

Happy holidays everyone. It’s been a great year.

Photo by my friend Spencer (here), check out the best and worst agency Xmas cards here (and the very best here) and remember: Rage at no.1 this year proved one thing: it’s been a really great year for viral advertising (and, err, Sony Records).

See you all in the New Year!

There were a couple of reasons for the change. Mostly, if I’m honest with you, it’s because I’ve noticed that while clients seem to prefer the image of the chain-smoking, three-day-stubble sporting writer on the page, when you show up at a 9am meeting looking like you’ve been on a week long bender and reach for your already depleted pack of Camels, they get a bit annoyed. So my new photos look a lot more like the way I look in real life — during working hours, at least.

This is what the old home page looks like:

and here is the new one:

I’m a big fan of the amazing Mad Men, the best TV show about advertising, ever. There’s some quite interesting anecdotal evidence about how “the Sterling Cooper effect” is changing people’s perceptions of how a creative should look and act. So I decided to suit up. But I lost the cigarette. They may want you to look sharp, but smoking in front of clients is no more acceptable than asking them if they’d like to split a pint of scotch (I haven’t actually tried this — I’m just guessing).

I also listened to my own advice and simplified my copy. Statistically, I have a bounce rate of about 36% — meaning that I lose a third of my readers after the first page. This is actually a slightly better than average statistic. Count how often you close a website down after viewing just one page. I bet it’s more than you thought.

The point is, I’ve pretty much only got one page to tell every visitor to my site who I am and what I do.

That’s how the web works –
You have to sell yourself in a second. Two seconds is too late.

Personally, I think both ideas are great. And they’re both definitely “me” — but they also project a different image.

So far, the feedback I’ve had has been positive. And prospective client enquires seem to be on the up. But I’m interested in what everyone else thinks. I’ve explained my reasons for the re-brand.

Good. He’s a hero. An archetypal, flawed, don’t-make-’em-like-that-any-more hero. He also happens to work in advertising.

He’s also a fictional character. But what can us real-life ad men learn from Don?

1. Stay ahead of the game

I just watched the finale of Season 3 online. I live in the UK. I’d have to wait months to see this on TV. So I didn’t.The world has moved online. Move with it, or be left behind — just like Harry is ahead of his time setting up a TV department at Sterling Cooper, so too have the agencies who saw the potential of the web powered ahead. Online advertising spend now outstrips television advertising. Get with the times.

If a film comes out in America but the release is delayed for even just a few weeks here, I’ll watch it online. That’s the way the internet works. Once it’s out, it’s out. You can’t censor it, block it, or slow it down. This is why Rupert Murdoch’s plan to make all his online newspapers subscription only will fail. Someone will reblog them for free.

2. Everyone at an ad agency should be creative.

It’s not just the creatives who have to think fast. Whether it’s a secretary coming up with a good excuse for why her boss is out of the office (hint – “he’s at the printers” doesn’t work in a digital age) or a personal assistant coming up with a reason why he needs an office, thinking on your feet gets results.

Pete Campbell gets made partner because he’s as creative as Don. No, he doesn’t have great advertising ideas. But when it comes to manipulating people, he’s good — one of the best .Whether it’s blackmailing Don or cooking up intricate schemes to get the next-door-neighbour’s au pair in the sack, he’s great at handling people. He’s creative.

Creative itself has to be creative two times over. Half of what Don does is to sell an idea to his clients. He has to be able to explain to them why his ideas work. If you can’t explain it to your clients, go back to the drawing board. Your idea’s just not that good.

3. Be cool.

Sharp suits. Sleek cars. The best barber in town. Everyone in Mad Men oozes cool the same way real-life ad-men sweat. Cool always saves the day. Whether you’ve been caught having an affair, or someone’s foot has been run over by a John Deere tractor, be cool.

For the last few years to be a “creative” you’ve had to look like a cross between a mad artist and an eccentric hobo. Either that, or look like you’ve just got out of bed. Times are changing. Clean cut is cool again.

Success breeds success. Successful people are successful because they look the part. People trust them. They look like winners. Would you let a loser loose on your account?

4. It’s tough at the top. It’s even tougher at the bottom.

Don’s broken away to form his own ad agency. He’s struck out, boldly — perhaps taking a leaf out of Connie Hilton’s book, or maybe just finally getting round to reading that Ayn Rand that Bert Cooper lent him. But suddenly the team’s gone from working in a gorgeous serviced office to working out of a hotel room. Sure, they’ve got room service, but it’s going to get cramped.

The point is, branching out on your own brings rewards. And if you don’t want to be a cog in a wheel, sometimes you’ve got to take risks. There are some agencies I’d love to work for. There are other jobs I’ve turned down. I’m a freelancer because the hours and the pay suit me right now. But if the right company made the right offer… or if a beautiful viscount’s daughter came along…

The most successful characters in Mad Men take risks. But they also take opportunities when they come knocking. And they’ve always got one eye on the next rung on the ladder. They play the long game.

5. There are some things you can’t get away with any more.

Drinking in the office. Now frowned upon. Try going for a gin martini after work instead. Drinks in the morning? Don’t get caught out in an embarassing pants-wetting episode. Try rehab. Sexual harrassment — it’s out too, I’m afraid. Homophobia — see how far that gets you these days. Television? Who cares. And for the love of God, don’t tell your boss you’ve had “a great idea to target the negro market”. That’s as uncool now as it ever was.

Mad Men is brilliant because it simultaneously shows us how far we’ve come, and how similar we still are. It’s a triumph of style and substance. A show whose popularity has spread by word of mouth.  In fact, Mad Men is just like the best marketing campaigns.

It’s won our hearts. We can all learn from it.

It’s hard setting time aside to relax, especially when you’re an “always on” kind of guy like me. I used to have a pool table (technically, a friend’s pool table) and that helped me to focus a lot. A fifteen minute work-out on the table gave my mind just enough breathing space to recover and get back in the game.

I wouldn’t say I’m a loner. In fact, I love being around people. I love watching them, love trying to figure them out — I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I couldn’t get into people’s heads. But when I’ve got two, sometimes even three clients, all expecting work to be delivered within strict deadlines… it gets hard.

I live about an hour outside of London, but when things get stressful, there’s a place I can drive to to clear my head. Sometimes I take a notebook. Usually I just go up there and sit for a while and ideas come to me. I’ve held off mentioning it here because I’ve often thought some clients might take exception to the fact they’re paying me to sit in a clearing for hours at a time and clear my head.

But that’s where the best ideas come from: a clear mind, uncluttered, unfettered by daily designs.

This is where I go when I need to come up with new ideas:

It’s really quite beautiful. Breathtaking, actually — this photo clumsily snapped on my 2MP BlackBerry hardly does it justice.

Us creative types are odd. When I was first starting out, a friend told me all I needed to succeed in advertising was a good haircut once a month and a good idea once every three or four years. I think that’s changing as social media makes the world turn that little bit faster and faster… but nonetheless — the busier the world gets, the more important this seems:

You’ve got to find time to stop and see things from afar.
That’s when the bigger picture becomes clear.

When you’re stressed, stop working. When you’ve stopped working, stop stressing.
Then get back on with the job.

I’m thinking about moving closer to London to be near to my work, but I’m not sure I want to leave this place behind.

I guess with all things it’s just about finding a coping strategy. Maybe I’ll have to buy myself a new pool table if I move back to the city.

In actual fact, it’s been a mixture of both this time. I’ve been doing a lot of copywriting, but I’ve not felt as if I have a lot to add in terms of sharing my thoughts with the world. There’s my random musings on Tumblr, of course… but I’ll spare you those here.

The most interesting thing that’s happened for me recently is the milestone that says more money is spent on online advertising than is spent on TV advertising. It’s linked to what I’ve been saying before — the web is fast becoming dominated by social media and viral video, and these are the two areas every company and advertiser needs to be looking at in terms of securing their online presence.

But this is something you should already know. Unless you’re living in a cave, of course.

Most of my work these days is for tech clients, is writing on the web. Even my offline product launches, the work I do for my “real world” clients in the Home Counties, involves websites and web-work.

The internet has changed everything, and social media and streaming video have changed it again. I really think we’re heading towards a day when other forms of media will be obsolescent. Television — destroyed by Youtube, Megavideo, BitTorrent. Radio obliterated by Spotify. Newspapers — available online through RSS feeds, Kindle readers and syndicated web portals.

It’s a brave new world. What I want to know is, why aren’t more digital design agencies modernizing to support it?

Most web agencies seem to think it’s enough to build websites,
or promote them, or provide content.

They don’t seem to understand the importance of what they’re doing –
targeting potential customers, selling them something…
even if it’s just an idea.

Just as the web is slowly making traditional forms of media obsolete, so too I think the big advertising agencies will make smaller design agencies obsolete. They’ll be squeezed out, at the very least — big clients will want big packages, and total solutions, targeted at their customers. They won’t just want beautiful websites.

I’m not trying to be a web guru here, sometimes I get it wrong. I remember being blown away by the launch of Facebook Lite (because it meant no more mafia wars) but going back to full Facebook 24 hours later when I found I couldn’t put rich content into my links. Having said that, I reckon I still know a good product when I see one. I’m still using my King of Shaves razor, and Frassy seems to go from strength to strength.

But I do think even a blind man can see the changes on the horizon, the changes that increased spending on advertising on the web is bringing — not just to the web, but also to design agencies, and to branding consultants such as myself.

These are exciting times. I think there’s a lot of money to be made out there — if you’re good at what you do…

This post, linked to by Guido Fawkes simply as “Twitter Tsar Talks Tosh” on PR-media-blog.co.uk, sums up a lot about what’s right and wrong with Twitter. Skip to the end:

Labour is experimenting with different social media activities, including a way of using Twitter to make grass roots activists feel more included…

…but is there a risk that Labour positioning itself as the “social media party” will detract from the real issues the public care about? “We’ve been careful about this,” says McCarthy, “as there’s nothing worse than politicians trying to be trendy. Authenticity is important and people will see if we are using it as a gimmick…

But how significant will social media be in helping Labour to victory in 2010? “It’s not the magic bullet that will win the election; it’s a small part of getting across the message but will help in getting activists enthused.”

PR Blog has highlighted a good point: twitter only reaches your converts. It rarely converts new listeners — and advertisers need to be noting that as keenly as politicians. They’ve also made a glaring mistake, by equating twitter with social media. Yes, Twitter is a form of social media, but it isn’t all social media.

As I’ve already pointed out, viral video and other ‘blitzkrieg’ guerrilla advertisements will be what changes the next general election. Tweets will merely give them more exposure.

With devastating simplicity, Guido has passed his own judgment in the comments:

“Oh and she is wrong about the use of social media in a political context, preaching to the choir or interacting without purpose with your base is not politically significant, nor will it have an electoral effect.

Carry on Tweeting, it won’t change the polls.“

I’m not against microblogging.

I’m just not a fan of the twitter format,

or the attitude that goes with it.

I’ve found one that I like – Tumblr.

It’s a great idea: a microblogging service that bills itself as a scrapbook for thoughts, musings, quotes, pictures, links and video. In short, it’s twitter without the restrictive word-count and the emphasis on links. You follow people and have followers. I’m already a big fan. I’ve been following Don Draper for quite some time. My tumblr is full of random musings and aphorisms — it’s also considerably less professional than my blog here. It’s good to let your hair down.

Can anyone recommend me any other good tumblr’s to follow? I’m hooked.

Speaking of mistakes…

…a neckbeard got in touch to point out, not nicely, either, that there was — shock horror — a spelling mistake somewhere on this website and I’d never make it as a writer if I couldn’t spell. I pointed out, rather brusquely, that I’m not a proofreader, and I am, in fact, shockingly, human. That’s to say, I do make mistakes. People hire me because I come up with brilliant branding ideas backed up with sound, cogent copy. They don’t hire me because I’m a grammar nazi. I apologise for my mistake.

He’s the first person out of 16,831 visitors to this site since July to notice. Or perhaps, simply the first person to care. I won’t be offering a prize. I’m sure fastidiousness of this nature is its own reward.

If my eagle eyed friend thinks my dropping an “e” from a word was the most enormous mistake I’ve ever made, I’d hate to see what he’d make of my last relationship…

Keep it simple

It’s not Shakespeare. Nobody wants Shakespeare, either. He’s old and nobody understands him. But I guess if you’re writing copy for a living rather than plays about kings and murder, you’ve figured that out already.

But what you might not have worked out is that simplicity isn’t just about using common words. That’s just patronizing — and audiences hate that. Sure, you want to go easy on the thesaurus, but simplicity comes from using a minimal number of words in a short sentence, without redundancies. Treat your reader like a savvy, time-poor client. Pitch to him quickly in easy to understand language.

If you can say it in a sentence, don’t use a paragraph. Because people won’t read it.

Break up your text

Like I’ve just done. If all the reader sees is the two sentences above in italics, and not the preceding paragraph, they’ll have got my message.

Nothing is harder on the eyes than blocks of identical, lengthy paragraphs.

That’s doubly true on the web. But even on printed copy, if you’re working with material of any kind of length, break up the text. I’ve been working on a 5000 word brochure. I’ve already got it down to 3000 words. That’s practically an essay. But I can’t take out any more text without the client getting unhappy.

So instead I’m going to break up the text with

headings

italics
bold
and of course

• bullet points.

Avoid bad words

There’s definitely a list of words you should never use. “Fresh” is one of them. Nothing described as “fresh” ever sounds fresh. It sounds like a marketing consultant with a clip on pony tail muttering things like “fresh and funky” whilst stroking his goatee beard. “Funky” also means “smells bad,” folks. So if your text is funky, it sure as hell isn’t fresh.

I could go on for hours. Apparently, the world’s most hated word (if you’re a woman) is moist. I’m not sure why. Perhaps we’re all living in a pornographic cliche. But it’s a reminder: know your audience.

My pet hate is the word “basically”. You know. “What I’m basically trying to say is…”

Stop. When you say “basically” you’re saying to someone ‘hey, I’m smarter than you, and I’m simplifying for you, because I don’t think you’d understand.’

If you have to simplify, use the word “essentially”. That way your reader knows you’re leaving stuff out because he’s busy and you’re just presenting him with the main facts. Not that you think he’s an idiot.

Last but not least… avoid cliche.

Think about it. Where did that idea for a great blog post come from? If it came from “that guy you read last week” don’t bother, unless it’s a direct reply. You’re just rehashing other people’s material. I post once or twice a week. Because, honestly, that’s about how much I have to say.

It’s also acceptable to use irregular punctuation when you’re speaking in a conversational style. If you’re writing formally, don’t dare. You’ll just look uneducated. But if you’re trying to build up a rapport with your audience, use punctuation as you’d use breathing marks if you were reading out loud. Your reader will love you.

You either get up in four hours, and sleepwalk through the day. Or you shut out the glimmer of light that’s already peeping through the curtains, and get up in the mid-afternoon.

Either way, your day’s been written off. Or has it?

In my case, yes, the day was definitely written off. I was so angry about being kept up I found it impossible to concentrate when I finally rose, zombie-like, from the pit of my bedchambers and poured myself what was to be the first of about twenty coffees. I ended up spending the day shooting pool. I lost almost every game.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

As a creative, I need my sleep. Without it, my imagination seems to die. There’s tons of research out there linking sleep with the creative process, so I won’t bore you with it. You might, you know, fall asleep. Suffice to say if I have bad dreams, I usually have a bad day at work. And I sometimes find my best ideas come to me in bed, which is why I always keep a notebook beside me. The draft copy for this website was written two minutes after waking.

I’m a big fan of the power nap. In my youth (I still think I’m young, but you try telling a teenager that) I used to swear by them. An hour’s kip before a big night out always got me through it. These days, sometimes, if I’m having a hard time, I’ll rest my eyes for an hour and let my mind wander. Usually, I snap out of it, and come back refreshed and with new ideas (hint: if your desk is in a large, open plan office, you probably shouldn’t try this at your place of work).

A friend once told me: I don’t have bad days, ever, because I can choose to start my day at any time.

It’s a good one to remember. Although it’s hard to live up to chirpy advice when you’re angry and you haven’t slept. But if you can’t sleep, you can’t beat a change of scenery — take a break, go for a walk. And if you can’t change that, maybe you should change your job, or find a more understanding boss who knows that productivity can’t be shoehorned into a 9-to-5.

There’s nothing wrong with taking a siesta. It’s probably a lot healthier than that eighth can of red bull.

Thanks to my neighbours, I’ve been doing research (research I’d admittedly rather not be doing) into unusual sleeping patterns. For me, I’ve found that six or seven hours at night, with a one or two hour top up late afternoon / early evening maximizes my productivity throughout the day.

But take a look at this. Theoretically, it’s possible to cut your sleep down to six twenty minute bursts throughout the day — to train yourself to get the “recharge” your body needs. I’m hoping it won’t come to that. There’s a reason this sleep pattern is called “the uberman”. But I can’t help but wonder. With a few half hour bursts of sleep a day, would I be more creative?

Or just mad?

I think Smashing Magazine think I’m a little bit arrogant. I suppose my face is plastered all over this site. But as regular readers of this blog know, I’m a big fan of the personal touch — adding that extra endorsement works, whether you’re a one-man outfit, or the boss of a much larger operation — it’s why I thought the promo campaign for the King of Shaves was so powerful. Sometimes, you have to be your own brand.

I’ve been taking on a lot of branding work lately — my favourite kind of work. It involves working with a client to figure out who their target audience is, then figuring out how to reach them.

So at the risk of sounding arrogant (sorry, guys) I thought I’d talk a little today about how I set up my own business.

It’s an example of what I can do for you.

The idea

This time last year I was a struggling journalist. To say I was earning peanuts would be an insult to monkeys. In fact, it’s an insult to peanuts, too. I’d done a lot of freelance copywriting, but I couldn’t get on the books of the big agencies. I was young, untested and we were in the midst of the collapse of the entire world banking system, after all.

Image is everything. How you pitch yourself determines who you are.

I saw an opportunity to take on the big agencies at their own game. I saw my chance to blow the opposition apart — not just the agencies, but also the old-school freelancers who knew a lot about writing (nice dictionaries, guys) but not a lot about what sells. After all, if they can’t pitch themselves right, what hope do they have of pitching anything for you?

A quick search revealed a lot of copywriters with poorly designed sites, loaded with copy as dull as a matt grey sky. You’d be amazed at the number of them who claimed their copy was “fresh”. Who even uses that word any more, let alone to describe a piece of writing? My competitors were stuck in the nineties.

I saw my chance. I took it. The result is this site, and this agency. You’re already here, so I won’t ramble on.

The secret

I’m a young, confident writer. I’m an individual. I work with branding, image and sales pitches. I don’t just work with words. Words are the end product of my work.

Most people who come to copywriters aren’t just looking for help with their text. They’re looking for a solution.

Copy is a string of words thrown together.
A brand is a sales pitch that gets results.

Most copywriters can produce the former.
Only a few can produce the latter.

My site is an example of good design, images and text that, taken together, create a pitch. My portfolio isn’t my words. It’s my image. That’s my brand.

When you buy my services, you’re buying me. You’re trusting me to come up with concepts that support my words. You want a troubleshooter, you don’t want the end-product of a team of suits “brainstorming” behind a conference desk. I get results, and I get them fast.

I’m more than just a writer. I’m a creative.

Maybe that’s arrogance. Personally, I think it’s just old-fashioned confidence. Either way, I’m certain it’s the secret to success.

Sure, I’m a freelancer. I can (and do) spend quite a bit of time writing at home, in the garden, in my shorts. But it’s tough out there at the minute. If the work’s not there, the work’s not there.

On quiet days when I have nothing to do I don’t laze around sunbathing or watching TV. I get back to doing what I was trained to do — to write creatively.

I had a free afternoon today so I popped down to the cafe, set up shop, and knocked out a couple of thousand words of fiction. It felt good.

I won’t bore you with the details (there’s nothing worse than writers writing about writing), but copyblogger has it right. I may not be a poet (I never could make things rhyme) but I am a creative. Writing pure fiction stretches muscles that other forms of writing just can’t reach.

They’re muscles that need exercising from time to time. After all, I use the same set of skills that I use to write fiction to create quality copy — my imagination, my vocabulary, my sense of style.

Copyblogger thinks that the best copywriters are creative writers. I agree. It’s one thing being proficient, competent, clean. But good writing has soul — a good writer will breathe life into his words, whoever his audience may be. Too much copy these days is bland and lifeless and feels like it could’ve been written by a machine. The best copy will always be the copy that establishes a dialogue with your clients. Good conversation is good communication.

Work’s been picking up a bit lately. I don’t have as much free time as I used to. And, of course, clients have to come first. But I’m going to keep setting aside a couple of hours a day to write for pure pleasure. After all, if I didn’t get any pleasure out of writing, I’d be in the wrong game, wouldn’t I?

Some days I just love what I do.