The Most Expensive Piece of Copy

I echo with you "the single most expensive piece of copy you
can ever buy is one that doesn't work"

Whether it's copy or articles, cheaper is always more expensive.

As David Ogilvy used to say, "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys."

Whether it's copy or articles, I charge a lot more than the usual rates.

However, take this example...

Just this week I wrote an SEO article for a firm.

Before the article they were in 4th place on Google.

In less than 24 hours after I wrote and placed the article, they were 1st.

Do you think that might make a difference to their bottom line?

What's more expensive:

Paying someone who knows how to convert a $5,000 investment?

OR...

Hiring someone for $200... and leaving unlimited potential profits on the table?

Hmmm...

I worked with a client last year who probably spent almost $10,000 on content writing and low-end copywriters BEFORE he hired me...

...because he was always trying to nickle and dime a big upfront investment.

I charged him around $5,000. I honestly don't remember the exact quote (because we ended doing more business together.)

Anyway...

He had a hefty list that he blasted the day his new copy got put up.

And he converted his first ever six figure day.

Mind you...

He never did that in a year.

Sadly...

He offered me a taste of the back end and I didn't take it.

He ended up selling his business to an investment company (his competition) that proceeded to pretend his innovation never existed.

Anyway...

Amazing things happen when you put your money where your mouth is.

Play big or go home.

mark

Hey Shawn,

I really like your enthusiastic posts.You seem like a guy who knows what he's talking about.
I understand that if you want results you have to pay good money.I'm not disagreeing.

But here's the thing.

Since I'm from a piss-poor country where the average annual income is around $5000,I can relate to these poor souls looking for stellar copy at bargain prices...I realize it ain't happening,though.

So,let's play a little devil's advocate here.

You said:
"Because the single most expensive piece of copy you
can ever buy is one that doesn't work."

What if your $5000 copy fails to deliver?

If I pay a couple of hundred bucks for a lousy piece of copy and it doesn't convert,I can live with that loss.Paying five grand on the other hand and not seeing results is an entirely different story.

A great post Shawn!

When one buys a shirt he does not look at the price only as the determining factor. The texture, color, size etc all come in to help make a buying decision. Unfortunately, a lot of clients will look at the price. A few will look at the color. They base their buying decision on few factors.

When you want to hire a copywriter go for the best one.

How do you figure out the best one?

As copywriters, we provide samples, portfolio, testimonies from satisfied clients, among other things. By so doing a client is enabled to pick on an effective copywriter worth the quoted amount. A client, in other words, would have felt the texture, seen the color and found the appropriate shirt size.

This should banish the fear of buying copy that does not convert.

Buying cheap copy that does not convert could force a client to look for another elsewhere. This done repeatedly could prove to be more costly than buying one highly persuasive and irresistible copy crammed with emotion-arousing selling words and skillfully feature-derived benefits.

Pardon my honesty, but that is absolute hogwash. If I'm a new client to you I frankly don't care how good you were for other clients. I care about how good you will be for ME.

You must know how often "business owners" like myself get burned. And frankly, to acquire a long-term client, you must accept and show you understand how tough a "new relationship" is for a business owner. If you don't, you could charge me a single penny and I wouldn't take you on!

I will tell you very honestly - I would NEVER pay $5000 to a new service provider. Because, as far as I'm concerned, if you're really interested in working with my business, you would get that you'd have something to show me before I'd take you on long-term. Once that 1st business deal proves it's worth, then I will obviously want to come back you.

Few business owners approach a new service provider considering only a one-off partnership. Trust is everything. And so business owners usually go out in search of service providers they can rely on for a long-term partnership.

Are YOU not looking through the wrong side of the telescope? Do you not believe it would be so much more profitable to you if you approached new clients with a different attitude? Like - "my normal rates are xxx, but I will want to show you I am worth every one of those many pennies, so let's start off with our first project at --% discount because I know you will return for my business." --- that kind of approach, to me, shows the writer probably IS very good and worth hiring but it also shows me this writer is business savvy. And to work with "business owners" you should be!

A copywriter is not a Gucci bag in the shop i can touch, see and smell from close-up, or feel the quality of it with my own eyes before I choose to buy it.

I came over to this part of the forum looking for copywriters for a long-term project. I have the money to pay. But what your post tells me, as a business owner looking for copywriting services, is you would have no interest in building long-term partnerships. You would just charge me your pro fee excluding your follow-up on just how well your work fared for my business.

And why the quotes around "business owners"?!! Really, we're just simple folk struggling like everyone else! We don't mean any harm.

Good luck to you.

honestly Crissie,

I've been doing this for 12 years and have helped over 300 clients.

and honestly, without exception... the clients who paid $300 for copy were far more trouble and gave me far more headaches than those who paid me $5,000 to $10,000.

oh, and yes, the $5,000 to $10,000 ones were the ones who became friends and long term clients... NOT the $200 ones who price shop.

what you say in your post is your opinion, and that's fine.

but honestly, i enjoy being able to chose who i want to work with... and i also enjoy being able to turn away any and all copy jobs if the business owner doesn't value good copy.

so, you're going to go into your heart surgeon's office and say that you won't pay what they're asking... because you don't have a relationship with them?

huh, makes sense.....

Yeah,Crissie nailed it.

I believe it was NickN who came in second in a $10.000 contest not too long ago on this very subforum...and he was relatively new to the scene.There were many seasoned copywriters in the game,too.

The guy blew them out of the water.

That just goes to show that sometimes enthusiastic rookies can provide better results at a lower fee and that you can get a good deal without it costing you an arm and a leg.

"the single most expensive piece of copy" ... Does Gary Halbert have the record?

Warriors,

Imagine this...

You invest your $5,000 in the stock market and are thrilled with a "amazing" 12% yearly ROI.

OR...

You invest that same $5,000 in creating a site that converts visitors into cold, hard cash -- which could easily repay your ENTIRE INVESTMENT in less than a few days (sometimes even less than 24 hours).

So, let's say hypothetically your website (which you invested $5,000 in) makes you $20,000 a month net. What ROI is that?

That's a massive 300% MONTHLY R.O.I.

In a year - that's a 4,700% R.O.I.

This doesn't include all the backend sales that you'll make -- assuming you have a rudimentary understanding of basic marketing principles.

Now, tell me -- what would you rather have:

A 12% "safe" ROI invested in something you don't control, or...

A 4,700% ROI asset (which you can SELL for a multiple of earnings)

Just some food for thought.

ADD SUMMARY: Focus on R.O.I.

Fascinating set of responses!

On one side are people who know their worth and are getting it (or perhaps less than they are worth judging by results.)

On the other side are people who don't trust the people charging larger sums of money for their copywriting skills, or don't think the ROI is worth it.

It sounds to me like the people who are willing to invest in the more "expensive" (effective) copywriting services have confidence what they are selling will provide benefits to the people who buy it. And there will be a demand once the benefits are made clear.

Maybe not so with the others.

Marvin

I have potential clients, many potential clients that call wanting me to write copy for them, until they ask, "how much?"
$3000.00
I hear a gulp and no thanks.
Maybe next time.

What is the most powerful word in advertising? not "free", "It's You" -Eugene Schwartz

Must of missed this: "Are YOU not looking through the wrong side of the telescope? Do you not believe it would be so much more profitable to you if you approached new clients with a different attitude? Like - "my normal rates are xxx, but I will want to show you I am worth every one of those many pennies, so let's start off with our first project at --% discount because I know you will return for my business."--- that kind of approach, to me, shows the writer probably IS very good and worth hiring but it also shows me this writer is business savvy. And to work with "business owners" you should be!"

The problem here isn't with the writer it is with the business owner seeking a copy writer and wanting a discount just because he/she thinks this is a new service provider or what we call in the business a "Copy Cub".

Well a copy cub knows more than the business owner about his craft if he was taught by an experienced copy writer. Now someone like myself, I am a self taught copy writer of almost 8 years. I consider myself a copy cub. I only have 12 post cards and 6 peices of copy under my belt. I have had copy bring in from 3% roi up to 9.2% roi. the last figure comes from my latest peices. All of my copy was not on the Internet they were mail peices for my late plumbing company.

I haven't written much for the Internet.. Yet.

Now back to my story. I think in this situation the business owner is looking through the wrong side of shot glass. (oop's you spilled. I hate it when that happens

I have a neighbor and a few years ago he had a problem. A big problem. His father had passed and he was renovating his dads home. He hired a carpenter to handle the renovations. Well has it turned out I got a phone call by our county sherrifs department ( I have a buddy that works as a dispacher there), and ask me if I could go over to my neighbors house to help the fire department (whom the neighbor called) turn off his house water.

To make a long story short, I ran over to the neighbors house and turn the electricity off by flipping off the main breaker outside on his cut off box. I had found the problem before the fire department arrived.

It turned out the carpenter re-plumbed the bathroom and installed a new pressure tank. He replaced the water main because the valve handle wouldn't turn. The only problem was that the carpenter had glued a copper sweat valve on to pvc plastic pipe. This is a no, no, because copper is metal and plastic is well... plastic. They don't mix. My neighbor woke up with his house flooded. And all of this could have been avoided if he had only hired a plumber.

Well it is the same with business owners and writers. If you need advertisments written you shouldn't hire a content writer or a novelist. You hire a copy writer who knows how to write a profit pulling ad. The reason for this is that your return will be to the positive and not in the negative.

That is why you ask for credentials. Who have you work for? or what kind of advertisments have you written and what was the roi? Any good copy cub has those figures. If they wrote copy for another writer they have a phone number and email adress.

The point here is if the cost is to high, don't buy.

Hi, like Crissie, I am a small biz owner (looking for a good copy writer or marketers) who have been burned before... and I fully agree with her note on the testimonies from others are great but can the copy really do something for my biz.. and our marketing dollars are limited.

My question is that if the copywriters/marketers are indeed confident about results they can helped bring in, can we find someone who is willing to say "I will take xx amount for my time and yy% of the sales that comes in from the copy?

For example, a testimony of "One sales letter I wrote for a "Quit Smoking" program sold over $253,500 worth of ebooks in less than 43 days." - That's fantastic!!

But at the quotation stage, would someone be happy to come along side and say, "I'll take $500 to compensate the time taken to write the copy, and 10% of the sales" which will be $500 + $25,350 = $25,850 which is >5 times the asking price of $5,000 fees for writing the copy.

I will be happy to work with someone like that, as a small biz owner.

chiasw- if you search the archives, you'll see several threads on this topic. They'll give you some background on why many copywriters (not all) avoid a compensation structure as you suggest. Here is one:
http://www.warriorforum.com/copywrit...ommission.html

For example, it would take much more than $500 for that level of copywriter to even consider the promotion. A ballpark up-front fee for many high-level copywriters is around $5,000+.

chiasw- I understand. This thread lays it out well:
http://www.warriorforum.com/copywrit...ales-page.html

One of the best quotes on that thread is a good copywriter "stacks the deck in your favor." (Montello).

I'd determine your goals, figure out the best copywriters to write for that project, and choose among them. Each copywriter tends to specialize in certain niches.

Here is a good example of someone looking for a copywriter and including the amount of detail needed to find the right people to help.
http://www.warriorforum.com/copywrit...wordsmith.html

Hi Joe, thanks for the very useful first thread.

On the 2nd thread - I was wondering if he has a good results in getting and working with a good copy writer. Thanks!

The bottom line is so simple...most small business owners are not a good market for good copywriters.

They want excellent copy on the cheap for whatever reason.

Focus on targeted businesses and companies that appreciate good copy and are willing to pay a good price. You can have the rest.

Many copywriters are fishing in the wrong waters.