A stu­dent, who is an upcom­ing copy­writer, recently asked where he could find clients will­ing to pay higher rates for his skills.

Hav­ing built a client base through net­work­ing on Inter­net forums geared towards start-​​up busi­ness own­ers, he now wanted to find oppor­tu­ni­ties that would allow for upward mobil­ity within his craft.

This is a com­mon sce­nario, because local and espe­cially start-​​up busi­nesses are easy to find, and pro­vide plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to prac­tice your emerg­ing copy­writ­ing skills.

In a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, I talked about three tips for aspir­ing copy­writ­ers. I rec­om­mend any new copy­writer to fol­low these three tips to start build­ing a track record and get to a level that makes them appeal­ing to higher-​​paying clients.

But after your copy­writ­ing skills are devel­oped, how­ever, it becomes desir­able if not nec­es­sary to seek out clients — bet­ter, more lucra­tive clients — who are estab­lished enough to pay a fair wage for your skills and, above all, your results.

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A recent study found that 65% of online shop­pers are “win­dow shop­pers,” and take on aver­age up to 33 hours to make a pur­chase — often over secu­rity concerns.

Some inter­est­ing find­ings show that most peo­ple who aban­don their shop­ping carts don’t do so permanently.

They tend to return within the first day to com­plete their pur­chase, likely after they had a chance to shop around, review their secu­rity, or prac­tice some due diligence.

Accord­ing to WebProNews who reported on the study, “65% of all shop­pers will wait a day or more to com­plete a pur­chase.” The most notable find­ing was the idea that just increas­ing secu­rity and buyer con­fi­dence can increase con­ver­sion by 11%.

Inter­est­ing, yes. But far from surprising.

In fact, I often tell my clients and stu­dents that, in order to boost sales, you should be a “con­ver­sion con­trar­ian.” In other words, don’t focus on increas­ing con­ver­sions. Not at first, any­way. Instead, you should focus on decreas­ing some­thing else…

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Today, a client has requested, out of the blue, a refund for copy­writ­ing work per­formed last year. Yes, last year!

Can you believe it?

Over seven months have passed and this one client is ask­ing for his money back. His excuse? “I need the money.” Of course, I refused. But he sounded des­per­ate, so I pre­sume he won’t be happy with my decision.

Likely, he will pull tooth and nail to make his case, likely by high­light­ing all the neg­a­tives, warts, and things he doesn’t like as to jus­tify his case.

The thing is, while the client did not hide the fact that he’s strapped for cash, we had an agree­ment. I can sym­pa­thize, but why should that be my responsibility?

As Larry Winget often says, “A deal is a deal.”

I ask for 100% of the fee upfront. No excep­tions. I work hard enough as it is to mar­ket my ser­vices, find clients, and then write copy for my clients. Why would I want to work twice or three times as much just to get and/​or keep my money?

Even though there’s an agree­ment in place, which states that I give no refunds but do offer a 30-​​day revi­sion period for rewrites, it still irks me on a num­ber of levels.

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Recently, a coach­ing client asked me about deal­ing with prospec­tive clients over the phone.

This copy­writer under­stood the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with prospects and answer­ing their pre-​​sale ques­tions. How­ever, like me, he pre­ferred to avoid the tele­phone and asked me if his strat­egy was sound.

Free con­sul­ta­tions are often a nec­es­sary step in secur­ing clients in your early days as a copy­writer before you’ve estab­lished your exper­tise and devel­oped a reputation.

It’s nat­ural that poten­tial clients want to get a feel for your style and stan­dards with a “get­ting to know you ses­sion.” Quite often, they will want to do this via a phone con­sul­ta­tion with you.

I’m a big believer in open­ing the lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and I also like to pick up the phone to speak with a client when writ­ing copy.

But before a client hires me, I pre­fer to remain off the phone. Why? Because the tele­phone can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and even hurt your business.

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Rant warn­ing: what fol­lows may offend some peo­ple. But I wanted to throw in my three cents on the topic of “forced con­ti­nu­ity,” which seems to be the sub­ject of a lot of debate these days.

Sev­eral well-​​known mar­keters have made offers of late with forced con­ti­nu­ity. What it means is, the intended prod­uct you want to buy can only be pur­chased when you buy another (often, a con­tin­u­ous sub­scrip­tion) billed to your account every month or so until you cancel.

Forced con­ti­nu­ity is noth­ing new. (In direct mar­ket­ing, they call these “Til For­bid” offers.) It’s another type of offer, pure and sim­ple. It’s mar­ket­ing. And there’s noth­ing wrong with that. What’s wrong is not the way the offer is made.

The real prob­lem is its lack of transparency.

But that’s not what I want to rant about today.

What a lot of peo­ple seem to be miss­ing here (and some­thing my bril­liant wife brought to my atten­tion, which makes per­fect sense to me), is that there is a deeper, much darker side to this whole thing.

Some­thing all mar­keters need to be aware of…

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Just a quick note to let you know I’m still alive. I’ve been crazy-​​busy, as my wife and I are about to pre-​​launch our upcom­ing mega-​​product, “Suc­cess Chef.”

Over 200 videos and tuto­ri­als, and counting!

Nev­er­the­less, I will be post­ing a new arti­cle next week. But until then, here’s a quick lit­tle video… Do you rec­og­nize the per­son inter­view­ing me? He’s our client, a friend, and a very well-​​known TV fig­ure. Yes, it’s John Daly!

You may remem­ber him from the widely syn­di­cated show, “Real TV,” on Fox. And now, he’s John Daly, the host of The Real Money Show. My inter­view is only one of a hand­ful of top mar­keters John grilled on video…

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The other day I was asked a ques­tion I hear all too often: “How do I dis­tin­guish myself from other copywriters?”

To find the answer, look to one of the most effec­tive and fre­quently used copy­writ­ing and mar­ket­ing tools. It’s your “Unique Sell­ing Propo­si­tion,” or USP.

(I pre­fer to call it a “Unique Sell­ing Posi­tion.” If you’ve read my book, “Power Posi­tion­ing,” then you’d know that I’m a big fan of posi­tion­ing rather than prospecting.)

Your USP is also your “hook.”

Time and time again, I’ve told many aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and mar­keters that a USP is what dis­tin­guishes you from the pack. It increases per­ceived value, exper­tise, and cred­i­bil­ity — with­out need­ing to state it outright.

But since I hear this ques­tion often, par­tic­u­larly from copy­writ­ers just enter­ing the field, I sense that it’s because peo­ple need a lit­tle help in defin­ing their USP.

So to help you, here’s a tip.

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