A mem­ber once asked a ques­tion about the legal­ity of using an alias or pseu­do­nym in copy.

That is, is it legal to write the copy in the voice of a fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter, or telling the story of a fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter enjoy­ing the ben­e­fits of your offer?

Using an alias in busi­ness is a com­mon prac­tice. How­ever, if you’re con­sid­er­ing using an alias or already are using an alias, there are a few things to know to keep your head above water with the law.

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Many copy­writ­ers, both new and expe­ri­enced, strug­gle with how much to charge their clients. In fact, it is a prob­lem that many in the ser­vice indus­try face.

The dilemma?

Charge too lit­tle and you risk los­ing cred­i­bil­ity in the eyes of your cus­tomers and poten­tial clients. Addi­tion­ally, the qual­ity of your work, even if it is worth 100 times what they paid for it, will be seen as hav­ing dimin­ished value.

Worst of all, when you charge too lit­tle, you may begin to resent the project, the client, or even your cho­sen profession.

In short, charg­ing too lit­tle doesn’t do any­one any good, least of all you.

On the other hand, if you charge too much you run the risk of los­ing a poten­tial client. You may lose out on oppor­tu­ni­ties to work with clients who could open doors and pro­vide you and your busi­ness with an abun­dance of work.

The solu­tion?

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An inter­est­ing thread appeared on my copy­writ­ers forum. A mem­ber asked who, be it men or women, are bet­ter at writ­ing copy for cer­tain prod­ucts than others.

Albeit a lit­tle close-​​minded in my esti­ma­tion, the ques­tion seemed like a legit­i­mate one and with­out any ill-​​intent. So I wel­comed it. But while the thread started out grace­fully and on-​​topic, it quickly took a few turns.

The dis­cus­sion turned out to be none­thet­less quite enlightening.

For exam­ple, one tan­gent went into the role of women in copy­writ­ing, as copy has been long touted as “the boys club.” This is where one proud board mem­ber offered some great nuggets that I wanted to share with you.

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The other day, one of my coach­ing stu­dents emailed me about his dilemma — some­thing that’s all too com­mon in our business.

“Too many times,” he said, “I’ve known what I needed to do, and I always end up wait­ing weeks on end to do it.” He asked, “How do you cope with procrastination?”

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is indu­bitably the copywriter’s most sti­fling prob­lem. Since our job is fraught with dead­lines, pro­cras­ti­na­tion can be one of the costli­est prob­lems in the copy­writ­ing busi­ness. It can mur­der your reputation…

… And your career!

So, how do you cope with pro­cras­ti­na­tion? Even bet­ter, how do you over­come it? Here are six tips I use, which helps me to get more done faster.

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So, if you’re fol­low­ing the com­mand­ments, you should now have a unique name, pos­si­bly a tagline, and estab­lished your­self as the first or leader in your unique cat­e­gory. What about the ser­vice or prod­uct you offer? Do you offer an extra­or­di­nary prod­uct or ser­vice, or do you offer an ordi­nary one?

Even if the ser­vice you pro­vide is cus­tom­ary, tra­di­tional, and prob­a­bly offered by your com­pe­ti­tion, you should make it appear unique just as well.

Remem­ber that per­cep­tion is more pow­er­ful than truth. You don’t need to empha­size that your prod­uct or ser­vice is unique, bet­ter than the com­pe­ti­tion, or even the best for that mat­ter. Doing so by declar­ing that it is can some­times be worse than not say­ing any­thing at all, and the rea­son for that is that it makes your self-​​serving claim appear sus­pect or exaggerated.

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Core expan­sion is far dif­fer­ent than exten­sion. Exten­sion is often referred to as fran­chis­ing, licens­ing, line exten­sion, or branch­ing out — also known as con­glom­er­at­ing. In this con­text, I am refer­ring to expan­sion by division.

If you’re a spe­cial­ist in your field — which I hope you are after read­ing this book — and you offer only one type of ser­vice, you can expand from within by divid­ing your core (your prod­uct or ser­vice) into mul­ti­ple, smaller components.

This helps to do 3 things. 1) It doesn’t take away from your cat­e­gory or spe­cial­iza­tion. 2) It increases your hit ratio when tar­get­ing clients, since some of them might be inter­ested in your entire pack­age while oth­ers may be inter­ested in only a por­tion of it. And 3) it increases the aura of exper­tise you project because you refrain from spread­ing your­self too thin.

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Free­lance copy­writ­ers are an inter­est­ing bunch. They prac­tice the art of sales­man­ship in print, yet have dif­fi­culty sell­ing them­selves. They strug­gle when it comes to self-​​promotion.

So instead of being well-​​fed and con­tent, they often go hun­gry. Why is this?

I believe it comes down to three fun­da­men­tal defi­cien­cies. I observed these in myself when I was get­ting started a few years ago. I have con­tin­ued to observe them in other copy­writ­ers who are launch­ing new free­lance careers.

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