After read­ing some of my arti­cles on how to find copy­writ­ing clients, one of my stu­dents, Jeff, asked me an inter­est­ing question.

He’s an aspir­ing copy­writer and wants to build his own free­lance copy­writ­ing busi­ness. When he read that I wrote copy for free when I started my career as a copy­writer, he told me he was think­ing about doing the same.

How­ever, he won­dered if he should ask for some­thing, any­thing, in return. In fact, here was his question…

“Mike, my friends have a very small busi­ness, and they have asked me to do copy for them. They say they can’t really pay me that much. I have told them I will do it for free as long as I get rights to the copy and can use it for a ref­er­ence and in my port­fo­lio. I think this is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to get more expe­ri­ence, but my wife wants to see some money on the table.

“I value your opin­ion. Can you help?”

Here was my answer.

Ask­ing for a con­ces­sion in exchange for offer­ing one is always the way to do it. While I believe your trade-​​off is good in prin­ci­ple, it’s still mea­ger. I would con­sider some money — or some larger con­ces­sion on the part of the client. Here’s why…

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Lately, I’m see­ing a lot of posts in pub­lic forums and blogs these days about peo­ple get­ting sick and tired of see­ing “crappy,” “hypey,” used-​​car, Ginsu-​​like, looooong copy.

Some of them come from guru-​​bashing naysay­ers who hate mar­ket­ing, which I always take with a grain of salt.

But some are intel­li­gent, mature, and com­mon­sen­si­cal. They are inter­est­ing because I believe that, while neg­a­tive feed­back does have its place, it’s often misplaced.

Here’s why. They blame long copy when all too often it’s not the copy’s fault. More impor­tantly, it’s not because of the length. Let’s get some­thing clear off the bat: long, Ginsu-​​like copy does work. It has always worked. It will always work. And it’s here to stay.

But (and it’s a big “but”)…

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I wrote this arti­cle way back in 1998. It seems to have made a resur­gence, espe­cially with today’s econ­omy. So I said to myself, “Why not repub­lish it?” So here it is. Enjoy!

If there is some­thing about which I’m pretty adamant, it’s the idea of attract­ing qual­i­fied prospects who are will­ing to do busi­ness with you. And this involves many dif­fer­ent things.

Posi­tion­ing is one of them. In fact, it has been one of my favorite mar­ket­ing con­cepts for this very reason.

How­ever, this fun­da­men­tal mag­net­ism is not only based on pure mar­ket­ing prac­tices or strate­gies. It also involves some­thing at a much deeper level that is far more effec­tive than any other mar­ket­ing tool or process in existence.

This “thing” to which I am refer­ring is, I believe, the most impor­tant mar­ket­ing secret I can ever teach you — and it’s far from being a secret at all. It is con­sid­ered as one sim­ply because it is often neglected or ignored by many mar­keters and businesspeople.

What is this “secret” that’s so elusive?

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As part of my coach­ing pro­gram, stu­dents can ask me unlim­ited ques­tions via email. One com­mon ques­tion I seem to get is, “I’m new to copy­writ­ing, where do I start?”

Since my coach­ing stu­dents also get access to any of my dig­i­tal pro­grams, they also get access to my Copy Doc­tor web­site, where I share over 50 hours of saleslet­ter and copy cri­tiques, recorded on video. It’s a great start.

But one stu­dent said some­thing that struck me:

“I learn bet­ter by doing than by watch­ing. Is there any­thing you can recommend?”

Great ques­tion. Some peo­ple are more visual (they learn bet­ter by watch­ing), some are more aural or audi­tory (by hear­ing), oth­ers are more kines­thetic (by doing or feel­ing). And I also thought it would be a great ques­tion to cover on my blog. So, here goes…

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Organic traf­fic is a fan­tas­tic source of vis­i­tors that’s often ignored by many marketers.

Search engines change all the time and many of them now charge for the priv­i­lege of includ­ing your web­site. So, peo­ple often ask me how to gen­er­ate traf­fic, beyond the search engines and with lit­tle to no cost.

Let me be can­did by say­ing that I am not a search engine expert, nor do I play one on TV. But there are two meth­ods that I’ve used con­sis­tently to attract thou­sands of qual­i­fied hits to my web­site at vir­tu­ally no cost and with very lit­tle effort.

Granted, everyone’s dif­fer­ent. And these tech­niques may not be appro­pri­ate for every­one. How­ever, let me share what works for me and what I do, along with a few tips.

My biggest organic traf­fic gen­er­a­tor is con­tent marketing.

Namely, there are two categories:

1. Post­ing con­tent on social net­works, includ­ing blogs, blog com­ments, forums, social net­work­ing sites, dis­cus­sion lists, and of course, my own blog;
2. Con­tribut­ing con­tent, such as writ­ing arti­cles or reports, and sub­mit­ting them to ezines, mag­a­zines, direc­to­ries, and guest con­tri­bu­tions on other people’s blogs.

Now, let’s take a closer look, shall we?

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After read­ing and re-​​reading the lat­est FTC guide­lines, I’ve come to some impor­tant con­clu­sions that I want to share with you. Par­tic­u­larly as they relate to testimonials.

Last night, my good friend and top copy­writer John Carl­ton called me up, and we had an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion on this whole FTC thing and the hys­te­ria it has created.

I expressed to John my opin­ions about them, along with a very sim­ple solu­tion. And John agreed with me.

It’s a huge ben­e­fit to those who under­stand copy­writ­ing, because they can actu­ally turn around and use the FTC rul­ings to their advan­tage. Even make more sales as a result.

Part of the solu­tion is actu­ally sim­pler than you think. And it doesn’t involve tear­ing down all your tes­ti­mo­ni­als, plas­ter­ing a bazil­lion dis­claimers around them, or con­duct­ing painful, men­tal con­tor­tions to decide what is typ­i­cal or not.

You can start by doing this one sim­ple thing…

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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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