Tips for the Beginning Copywriter

Sales. They come and go. The economy tumbles. But people still buy stuff! People have always bought stuff-to eat and drink, to watch, to read, to fill up the gas tank.

I am going toward copywriting, but cannot think of a great analogy. Let's put it this way: Copywriters get paid more than most writers. Even beginning copywriters pull in reasonable incomes. Most make $40,000-80,000 a year. That's about the average salary of a working TV script writer, and it's a field much easier to break into.

I am working on becoming a copywriter-in other words a beginner. But most of us have done some form of sales, and that is usually what a beginning copywriter needs to know. I've done journalism for a few years, working various jobs, but actually didn't even know what a copywriter did until I found my bank account pretty small and my fiction not selling.

Enter copywriting.

I haven't hit the big time, but I'm taking a course from AWAI, a useful class on copywriting put together by the experts, leaders in developing a large writing income. In short, they teach you how to make the big bucks in the direct mail industry. So far, the class is worth the $450 I put into it. My online sales are going up; by implementing what I've learned I'm more successful with SEO Web Copy than ever before. It's a huge field. I just wrote an article on SEO web copy, mainly because the field is like the Comstock Lode. There aren't even enough SEO writers to fill the need.

But, direct mail is also a huge field too, with billions spent every year trying to sell you the latest magazine, book, t-shirt, fishing equipment, wonder drug, or just about everything else. For a beginner copywriter, it can be tough to find the right niche. It's very important you do. My philosophy ... which I received while a journalist ... is to spread out my contacts and work as much as possible. If something falls through, there's this other field. Health, for instance, is one huge field in copywriter.

You can profit as a copywriter. Some hate the idea of sales. Peter Bowerman, in his useful but somewhat optimistic book "The Well-Fed Writer" explained how so many of us hate sales calls. My whole philosophy was to stick to emails. Shyness comes out, it seems, in writers more than others. Yet you don't have to make calls, emails and mailings work well too. Email marketing has done more for me than any resume.

It may take you some time, aspiring copywriter. A year or two, in my mind, and if you read enough and you put enough time into becoming a copywriter, then you will be successful. There is a need. Fill it. I am not the expert-just another journeyman writer sick of being broke.

I learned to be a business writer. I haven't been broke since.