Disillusioned Copywriter Demands The Truth

A dis­grun­tled, aspir­ing copy­writer wrote me demand­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tions. He believes most copy­writ­ers lie and exag­ger­ate their claims of wealth. Let’s call him “Chuck.”

I under­stand where Chuck is com­ing from. Because I’ve been where he is. So I responded, not because I wanted to acqui­esce to his demands but because I wanted to give him hope, ideas, and, dare I say it, a million-​​dollar education.

He says he will be ask­ing other copy­writ­ers the same ques­tion, and even threat­ened (although, that may be too harsh of a word) to pub­lish my reply. I’ve decided to take the lead myself, and pub­lish it here.

For all I know, this copy­writer may be gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion to cre­ate his own prod­uct. Who knows? If he is, I must say that his strat­egy is bril­liant. A tad decep­tive, but bril­liant. Regard­less, if he does cre­ate a prod­uct out of this, good for him!

But I’m reprint­ing the con­ver­sa­tion here not just to take the lead but also because I believe it will help a lot of other strug­gling copy­writ­ers out there. Also, I’m open­ing myself a lit­tle more than usual. I guess you can say that I’m expos­ing the real “Michel Fortin.”

My answer might sur­prise you…

First, here’s his question:

“Michel, can you prove this ‘bil­lion dol­lar copy­writ­ers?’ Do you have to exag­ger­ate so much? You are insult­ing any­one who reads your writ­ings. This is harsh I know, but I am sick and tired of read­ing about the mil­lions in prod­ucts and ser­vices sold because of copy­writ­ers. Or the thou­sands they make per project.

“Where do you guys come from? Who is pay­ing you these fees you speak of? Is there any­one out­side of the ‘let’s all pro­mote each other and get rich’ network?

“One other thing, if you are really mak­ing the kind of money you say, why do you sell courses, have a forum, do sem­i­nars, etc.? Is there lit­tle demand for your fee level? I do not believe any self-​​proclaimed top copy­writer can make a six-​​figure income with copy­writ­ing alone. Is this the scary truth?

“You do not need to prove any­thing to me, or any other copy­writer out there, of course. Just put your­self in our posi­tion. We strug­gle to get by, most of us. Then here you are, claim­ing to make thou­sands per project, yet seem­ingly doing all these other things online. Or maybe you are cloned?

“It makes no sense at all. All I want is the proven truth. Per­haps this is not pos­si­ble online. A per­son can claim almost any­thing on the web and many will believe it.

“I may send sim­i­lar let­ters to other ‘top’ copy­writ­ers (many of us have our doubts). Per­haps I will gather the info and cre­ate a report. The tone of my let­ter will be the same.

“This has an intended pur­pose. There are many of us strug­gling, dis­il­lu­sioned copy­writ­ers out here. We hope your reply will be spe­cific, fac­tual and quite frankly, give us hope. A ‘no reply’ will noted for the pos­si­ble report.”

Chuck, I appre­ci­ate your con­cerns. They are legit­i­mate, as I was in your posi­tion when I first started out as a strug­gling copy­writer. But first, let me clar­ify a few things.

I’m not sure where you got “bil­lions” (I do know that Clay­ton Make­peace is indeed a “billion-​​dollar copy­writer,” as he writes for large mail­ing and pub­lish­ing houses, and earns hefty roy­al­ties). But it’s cer­tainly sev­eral mil­lions — at least for me, anyway.

And I also don’t know how you took those sales lev­els achieved as income gen­er­ated from copy­writ­ing fees alone. To be clear, and as I often state in my own copy, I was instru­men­tal in pro­duc­ing mil­lions of dol­lars for my clients. And for myself, too.

When I say “instru­men­tal,” it means that my copy, my coach­ing, and my con­sul­ta­tion work with million-​​dollar clients helped to pro­duce mil­lions of dol­lars. Not me, directly.

And when I say “for myself,” I don’t mean just in copy­writ­ing fees or roy­al­ties. I also mean that my copy pro­duced mil­lions of dol­lars in sales, includ­ing the sale of my own prod­ucts. (Plus, I’m sure you know the dif­fer­ence between gross rev­enue and net income.)

Sec­ond, many of my clients are also part­ners, where I get a piece of the action for writ­ing their copy. That means, I don’t get paid just a flat fee, which you seem to be imply­ing. In some cases, I also get paid com­mis­sions and roy­al­ties my copy pro­duces for my clients.

This is the “next level” I believe copy­writ­ers should aspire to. Why? Because as long as you write copy for a flat fee, you are no dif­fer­ent than some­one work­ing in a job trad­ing hours for dol­lars. Earn­ing roy­al­ties is cer­tainly a step above “for-​​fee” copywriting.

And cre­at­ing part­ner­ships with clients is another step above that.

(I’ll come back to what this means in a moment.)

Nev­er­the­less, I hope this a goal for you, too. Obvi­ously, it won’t hap­pen overnight. It took me 12 years before I landed my first commission-​​based client. It doesn’t have to take that long, but it does get eas­ier once you get bet­ter at mar­ket­ing yourself.

Third, I’m not just a copy­writer. I write the copy for my own busi­nesses, too.

I own sev­eral busi­nesses. Over a hun­dred, in fact. Many with my wife Sylvie Fortin. Some are tiny, insignif­i­cant web­sites sell­ing prod­ucts, mostly infor­ma­tion, to highly tar­geted niches — prod­ucts out­side the “mar­ket­ing,” “copy­writ­ing,” or “make money” industries.

But oth­ers are indeed larger and far more prof­itable. Granted, I also do sell prod­ucts in the make-​​money arena. But it’s just one niche of many.

By the way, one of our lat­est prod­ucts on how to make money online is the brain­child of my wife, who also owns one of the most pro­lific out­sourc­ing com­pa­nies on the Internet.

That’s how we met, inci­den­tally. My wife and I were both ser­vice providers cater­ing to the same clien­tele. I wrote their copy while my wife han­dled their cus­tomer sup­port, prod­uct devel­op­ment, mar­ket­ing cam­paign man­age­ment, web design, etc.

(We finally met at one of my sem­i­nars. Lit­tle did we know, we were doing this for years until we dis­cov­ered we were liv­ing prac­ti­cally next door to each other!)

That prod­uct is called “Suc­cess Chef Uni­ver­sity.” Why? Because, just as you would fol­low a recipe, it teaches peo­ple how to plan, start, run, and grow an online business.

You may clas­sify it as a “make money” prod­uct, which you men­tioned. And to some degree, it is. How­ever, it was cre­ated not just out of a need in the mar­ket­place but also as the result of an epiphany we had while deal­ing with a per­sonal challenge.

You see, ever since my wife’s breast can­cer a few years ago, which included rad­i­cal surgery (mas­tec­tomy), six months of chemother­apy, fol­lowed by three months of radi­a­tion treat­ments, we were glad that we owned our own businesses…

… Busi­nesses that were not tied to ser­vic­ing clients.

In fact, we had no choice. We had to train our staff to take care of our ser­vice busi­nesses while tak­ing time off to tackle this dread­ful dis­ease. In the process, we real­ized that many of our clients and coach­ing stu­dents would ben­e­fit from that training.

The result became Suc​cess​Chef​.com. (Do check out the “Free Video” on the site. It’s 70 min­utes long, and walks you through the four steps we prac­tice and teach.)

Fourth, I’m not sure why you seem to be con­fused about the idea of offer­ing forums, sem­i­nars, and courses, out­side of the ser­vice busi­ness. They were cre­ated to help peo­ple, many as the result of their requests and ques­tions. Some are com­pletely free, too.

But they were also cre­ated because of my own per­sonal situation.

Now, let me can­did for a moment.

I’m open­ing myself up a lit­tle more than usual and reveal­ing some of the inner details of my busi­ness, but I’m doing this so you can get a bet­ter sense of where I’m com­ing from.

While I used to be “just” a copy­writer, I was get­ting tired of mak­ing other peo­ple rich. I was tired of get­ting paid $5,000, $10,000, or even $15,000 for writ­ing long saleslet­ters, while watch­ing them pro­duce mil­lions for my clients.

It frus­trated me. It still does!

As a mat­ter of fact, my best year in terms of income derived solely as a copy­writer (many years ago), where I earned close to a mil­lion dol­lars in copy­writ­ing fees in one year alone, I was also get­ting burned out. In fact, I was get­ting ter­ri­bly exhausted.

I worked 18–20 hour days to meet dead­lines, and in some cases with­out any sleep sev­eral days in a row. I jug­gled three to five copy­writ­ing projects at any given time. While that may seem like a nice prob­lem to have, my health was dete­ri­o­rat­ing as a result.

Sure, I was in demand, charg­ing hefty fees, and doing well finan­cially as a copywriter.

But I hit two major walls: 1) I reached a plateau (obvi­ously, there are only so many projects a human being can do and there are only so many hours in the day). And 2) I was also tak­ing on too many projects, overex­tend­ing myself, and mak­ing myself sick.

In fact, I got so sick that I had to “quit” tak­ing on new projects, fired all my clients, refunded over $100,000 in copy­writ­ing fees, and took a long-​​needed sabbatical.

Nowa­days, I own an agency. It’s the one you see at Suc​cess​Doc​tor​.com.

I still write copy for some clients. But I’m very selec­tive now, and I pre­fer “part­ner­ship arrange­ments” as I stated ear­lier. Oth­er­wise, I have my team of junior copy­writ­ers, who were stu­dents of mine at first, write for my clients under my agency’s banner.

Also, that’s one of the rea­sons why I offer “how-​​to” prod­ucts, because many of my junior copy­writ­ers were first and fore­most my stu­dents. They work closely with me, and fol­low my method­ol­ogy, my for­mu­las, my tech­niques, my writ­ing style, and my philosophy.

Bot­tom line, I pre­fer to own my own busi­nesses, teach other copy­writ­ers, and hire other copy­writ­ers I can out­source to, than to work as I did before when I was strictly a copy­writer, and risk get­ting so exhausted to the point of mak­ing myself sick again.

Fifth and finally, if you seek proof, I encour­age you to visit my web­sites. (Check out the tes­ti­mo­ni­als and case study sec­tions, where clients gave me not only tes­ti­mo­ni­als but also revealed their results achieved with my work, which they’ve documented.)

Also, do check out my blog.

Speak­ing of which, I don’t blog to make money. Not directly, any­way. I blog because I love it. Aside from copy­writ­ing, own­ing sev­eral busi­nesses, and sell­ing prod­ucts in a vari­ety of niches, my blog exists purely as a pas­sion and a cre­ative out­let for me.

True, I do mon­e­tize my blog in a vari­ety of ways — from adver­tis­ing rev­enue and using it to attract copy­writ­ing clients, to mak­ing offers and sell­ing prod­ucts on it. After all, I’m a mar­keter. But I do it because it’s fun, and moreso for that rea­son than any other.

Nev­er­the­less, I’m not sure if this answers your ques­tions and con­cerns or not.

But my sug­ges­tion to you is:

1. First, learn marketing.

Mar­ket­ing is the lifeblood of any busi­ness — whether you’re a copy­writer, or a gar­dener sell­ing toma­toes. Go to my blog and read some of my arti­cles. (My lat­est one, “Three Tips For Find­ing Top-​​Shelf Clients,” is one arti­cle of many I pro­pose you read.)

2. Sec­ond, hone your craft.

Get good. Get real good. To that end, write as much as you can. The bet­ter you become at copy­writ­ing, the more in demand you will be. Your results, your track record, and your rep­u­ta­tion will speak for them­selves. They will sell for you. Espe­cially by word of mouth.

3. Third, get a piece of the action.

Once you get busier as a for-​​fee copy­writer, start to seek roy­alty arrange­ments. This is where you write copy based on per­for­mance. What I rec­om­mend — and it’s the way I do it most of the time — is to offer a flat-​​fee as a draw against future commissions.

For exam­ple, say your fee is $5,000 for a saleslet­ter. How­ever, $5,000 is a guar­an­teed draw against future com­mis­sions. “Guar­an­teed draw” means it’s not refundable.

Then, once the accu­mu­lated roy­alty exceeds the ini­tial draw they paid you, they pay you the excess and keep pay­ing you for as long as your client uses your copy.

Granted, find­ing such clients is not easy. But once you get bet­ter at writ­ing copy and mar­ket­ing your­self, these arrange­ments will start to fall on your lap. You will have clients who will be will­ing to con­sider pay­ing you on per­for­mance, and not just for a flat fee.

4. Fourth, seek partnerships.

Once you get your feet wet with a few roy­alty arrange­ments, next is to start seek­ing part­ner­ships. This is the next level, where you grow as a copy­writer to the point where you become a part­ner and own a vested inter­est in your client’s business.

In this case, you pro­vide more than just the copy. You also pro­vide consulting.

For exam­ple, you can write the copy for the entire mar­ket­ing fun­nel. You can share mar­ket­ing strate­gies, test results, and business-​​building advice. You can seek out increased rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ties, under-​​exploited profit cen­ters, and new mar­kets to penetrate.

And your fee is not a roy­alty but a larger per­cent­age of their busi­ness overall.

5. And finally, start cre­at­ing your own products.

This is ulti­mately the best, because when you write your own copy and pocket 100% of the prof­its, you will gain a lot more momen­tum, free­dom, and money work­ing for your­self than you will ever gain as a ser­vice provider mak­ing other peo­ple rich instead of you.

The infor­ma­tion busi­ness is often the eas­i­est way to start. From ebooks, soft­ware, mem­ber­ships sites, and train­ing pro­grams, to books, CDs, DVDs, sem­i­nars, and more. And it doesn’t have to be about mak­ing money or copy­writ­ing, either.

As an afterthought…

Don’t for­get to learn what you can, when­ever you can. Always be a sponge, as I am. I may have read thou­sands of books and watched hun­dreds of videos. But I still con­tinue to edu­cate myself — about busi­ness, about mar­ket­ing, and cer­tainly about copywriting.

Because doing so will help you not just as a copy­writer, but also as a poten­tial part­ner in your clients’ busi­nesses and, of course, in your own business.

Ulti­mately, seek to bet­ter your skills as well as your busi­ness. Because you are not a copy­writer. You are a copy­writ­ing busi­ness. And your busi­ness pro­vides a ser­vice. More to the point, your busi­ness pro­vides results. Remem­ber that.

One web­site I highly rec­om­mend is Peter Bowerman’s “The Well-​​Fed Writer.”

I hope this helps.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• How to Capture and Captivate Attention
• The Real Problem With The Flaw of Attraction
• Two Shining Stars in an Age of Darkness
• Changes, Relaunches, and Extreme Makeovers
• Superior Value Equals Superior Sales

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