nick usborne's guide to online copywriting
For information on my coaching service for freelancers copywriters, visit:
Excess Voice Newsletter
Aug 2008, Issue # 161
In this issue:
>> Intro: Losing the Muse
>> Review: Pricing Your Writing Services
>> Article: Are you writing that sales page to friends or to strangers?
>> Survey: Are you a Moonlighter?
===============================================
Find out about my COACHING service for freelance writers and copywriters.
And get your free copy of the Freelance Business Growth Checklist.
===============================================
Greetings,
In the last issue I asked whether or not you ever lost the creative "muse" when sitting down to get your day's work done. I gave you three choices for the answer – Yes, No or Sometimes.
For the first time since I began this newsletter, back in February of 2002, the three options all received the identical number of responses. That said, if I add the Yes and the Sometimes responses together, the balance clearly lies on the Yes side.
In this issue the article takes a look at some of the different audience types we try to address on a single version of a web page.
And if you are a freelancer or moonlighter, be sure to read this issue's review.
Until next time,
Nick
Nick Usborne
>> Feedback: mailto:nick@excessvoice.com
===============================================
REVIEW - Pricing Your Writing Services, by Steve Slaunwhite
If you do any freelance writing work, or moonlighting for extra income, one of the most important business skills you need is the ability to set and negotiate the best prices for your work.
Of the various guides and reports out there, the one I like best is "Pricing Your Writing Services" by Steve Slaunwhite.
(If you don’t know Steve already, I can tell you that he is one of the good guys. No hype, no breathless nonsense, no plague of auto-responder emails.)
What I find particularly useful about his guide is that he not only provides guidelines on the going rates for various types of writing work, but also shows you how to be professional and smart about how you prepare, present and follow up on your estimates.
In other words, there's a lot more to getting the best price for your work than just sending off a two-paragraph quotation to your prospective client.
Well worth having, and very reasonably priced.
Read my review:
http://www.excessvoice.com/pricing-your-writing-services.htm
POPULAR PRODUCTS AND REVIEWS:
#1. Nick Usborne's Million Dollar Secrets to Online Copywriting
This is a "professional-grade" course written to address the full complexity of writing online. It is a strictly how-to course in which I go through the process of writing all kinds of web pages, emails and newsletters. Take this course and you'll know everything I know about writing for the web.
More details here:
http://www.awaionline.com/onlinecopywriting/index.php
#2. Writing Rituals
My productivity guide for marketing writers and copywriters. This set of 5 rituals will help you stay focused on your writing tasks, avoiding the perils of procrastination and writer's block.
Learn more...
http://www.writingrituals.com/
#3. Michael Masterson's Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting
Other than my own, this is the only copywriting course I wholeheartedly recommend to any copywriter who wants to write copy that drives results.
Learn more :
http://www.thewriterslife.com/bb/nuf4/
===============================================
ARTICLE: Are you writing that sales page to friends or to strangers?
When I write a landing page or sales page, I first ask plenty of questions about the people who will be reading it.
It's Copywriting 101 – knowing your audience and crafting your information and sales messages accordingly.
Like you, I do the best I can to achieve a clear understanding of what kind of approach will work best for the people coming to that page.
What do they want? What are their desires? What is most urgent for them?
However, as I have recently been learning, there are often a number of different audiences to please...and a single copy approach won't do well across all these groups.
This is something I have been learning with one of my own sites, WritingRituals.com.
When I first wrote the Writing Rituals ebook, created the sales page and did some promotion back in the Spring, conversion rates for the first month of sales were at about 10%.
My first reaction was to pat myself on the back and congratulate myself on writing such a good sales page.
But in the second month that conversion rate fell to a little under 5%. And in the third month is bottomed out at a little under 2%.
What was happening here? How could the same sales page for the same product perform so differently each month?
Here's what happened:
1. I first promoted the e-book in this newsletter. Of the people who subscribe to the newsletter, a certain number have known and read me for years now. They are fans and they trust me. And if I write something on a topic that interests them, and I charge a reasonable price, they'll buy a copy.
For this first group of buyers, it doesn't much matter how good or bad my sales page is. In fact, on the first day I announced the availability of the ebook, someone wrote back saying they had gone to the sale page and simply scrolled directly to the end and clicked the Buy button, without reading the text at all.
2. Over the following weeks I continued to promote the ebook, but my conversion rates started to decline. By this stage the fans who were interested in the topic had already bought a copy. Now I was selling to subscribers to my list who enjoyed my writing, but didn't necessarily think that everything I wrote was worth buying.
In other words, the copy on my sales page started to matter a great deal more. I had to do some selling.
3. After a couple of months I had pretty much got all the sales I was going to get from both my fans and loyal newsletter subscribers. By this stage, my reputation no longer had much impact on whether or not I'd make a sale.
Put simply, once I started promoting my ebook to strangers, all the heavy lifting fell to the copy I wrote for the sales page.
As a result, that sales copy has now been through a number of quite dramatic revisions. Only a few sentences are exactly the same as they were when I first uploaded the page.
As the nature of my audience has changed, so has the copy.
And it's not that I have simply had to make the copy work harder. I have had to change the tone as well. For the first little while I was writing to people who knew me. Now I'm writing to strangers. And, for me at least, that makes a difference.
What does this mean for my copywriting for clients?
My experience with my own site has made me pause and think a little about the copy I write for paying clients.
When I write a sales page for a company, am I writing to friends or to strangers?
To be honest, this isn't a question I have been asking myself, or my clients.
But I should. And I should be recommending that they have me write at least two different versions of each page - one for members and subscribers, and another for strangers.
>> Feedback: mailto:nick@excessvoice.com
===============================================
SURVEY: Are you a Moonlighter?
If you are employed full-time, do you make any extra income with your writing skills by doing some moonlighting during the evening or at weekends?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
(NOTE: Any comments and your name may be published in the next issue, or on the Excess Voice web site.)
Cut and paste your replies to me at mailto:nick@excessvoice.com
===============================================
NICK USBORNE'S SERVICES:
Yes, I do more than write articles and publish newsletters.
Ask me to give a training seminar or webinar for your writers or web team.
http://www.nickusborne.com/speaking.htm
Ask me to write for your site, emails and newsletters.
http://www.nickusborne.com/copywriting.htm
Ask me to optimize your key offer pages...
http://www.nickusborne.com/consulting.htm
Sign up for the Excess Voice Newsletter and get this 35-page Guide FREE.
Writing For the Web #1
7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web
Sign up NOW and I'll send you the link where you can download this 35-page guide...
(Your email address will be used only for the purpose of sending you this newsletter, and you'll be free to unsubscribe at any time.)
