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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Need help with your sales copy or mar­ket­ing strat­egy? About to launch a prod­uct or pro­mo­tion, but unsure if it will work? Or sim­ply wish you could pick my brains for an hour?

(And want to pitch in for a great cause at the same time?)

Well, for a lim­ited time, you can.

As a free­lance copy­writer and con­sul­tant for the bet­ter part of 20 years, I’ve had the won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to cri­tique, review, con­sult, and coach thou­sands of peo­ple and projects.

At first, I did it because it was my liveli­hood. But today, my wife and I own sev­eral, prof­itable busi­nesses, and so I out­source much of it to our per­son­ally trained staff.

For this rea­son, I don’t do hourly con­sults any­more. When I do coach­ing or con­sult­ing, I give pri­or­ity to my mem­bers and rarely take on new clients. If I hap­pen to work with a new client, I do it mostly for fun. (But I also charge a min­i­mum of $3,000 for it, too.)

Well, if you ever wanted to “rent my brains” for an hour, and for a frac­tion of that price on top of that, then here’s your chance. Plus, you’ll be help­ing an impor­tant cause.

One that’s par­tic­u­larly mean­ing­ful to me and my fam­ily.

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As with sta­tic web­sites, the suc­cess of a blog depends on attract­ing a steady stream of new and return traf­fic. The dif­fer­ence is, blog pro­mo­tion tools are slightly dif­fer­ent, a bit more diverse, and largely much more effective.

Why? Because blogs are designed with inter­ac­tiv­ity and social net­work­ing abil­ity built in. They are ideal both for devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships and for mar­ket­ing your brand.

How­ever, don’t neglect stan­dard pro­mo­tional activ­i­ties in favor of blog-​​only traf­fic gen­er­a­tion meth­ods. You can and should use both.

In fact, tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing can become even more potent with a blog due to its nature.

For exam­ple, and most impor­tant, you will still want to uti­lize your email list, and use your blog to grow it, too. Ask read­ers to sub­scribe, and let them know when you post a new arti­cle just as you would with a new fea­ture or prod­uct on a sta­tic website.

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Here at the Big Sem­i­nar in Atlanta, the same ques­tion seems to pop up over and over again. I walk with a cane now, and peo­ple keep ask­ing me, “Michel, What’s wrong? Are you OK? What happened?”

I don’t blame them. My wife told me I was turn­ing as white as a ghost, so we’ve decided to go back to our room to take some time — and pres­sure — off my spine.

I thought to myself, “Maybe I should take advan­tage of this down­time to blog about this — that way, more peo­ple will know what’s going on.”

You see, I have a bro­ken back. Literally.

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When a sales page is not per­form­ing or if it’s not per­form­ing up to your expec­ta­tions, the worst thing you can do is… nothing.

By tak­ing action and mak­ing changes, you can strengthen your copy quickly and improve your sales con­ver­sions. In most cases, there are rel­a­tively sim­ple steps you can take to alter the copy to improve your results immediately.

The key to this process is test­ing to boost your outcome.

The sad truth is, the vast major­ity of mar­keters don’t test. But if you are test­ing or about to, then con­grat­u­la­tions. Because you’re miles ahead of most peo­ple in this industry.

How­ever, when most peo­ple start test­ing, they imme­di­ately think of some­thing they can add or change. Or they’re con­fused as to what to test, par­tic­u­larly what to test first.

In my expe­ri­ence, I’ve found that the best and most effi­cient ele­ment to test is to actu­ally first remove the things that are stop­ping peo­ple from order­ing. In other words…

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My last post, where a dis­grun­tled copy­writer demanded “the truth” about cre­at­ing wealth in copy­writ­ing, inspired copy­writer Andrew Cavanagh to share the story of his begin­nings on my forum:

“Here’s how I made my first ‘money’ in copywriting.”

Then one by one, other copy­writ­ers started adding their own. The responses were noth­ing short of amazing!

Many of the sto­ries show that there’s indeed hope. They also show that we were all strug­gling copy­writ­ers once, too. And we didn’t all become overnight mil­lion­aires with million-​​dollar clients, as “Chuck,” the dis­il­lu­sioned copy­writer, postulated.

I loved it so much that I posted my own story. I’ve decided to share it with you here. (By the way, the pic­ture at the top is of me, circa 1991. A lot thin­ner, with glasses, and a lot more hair!) Any­way, here is my story…

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The other day I was asked, “How do I moti­vate a poten­tial joint ven­ture part­ner to bite? When you have a great idea and you’ve located the per­fect part­ner, how do you moti­vate them to do busi­ness with you?”

In my last post, I talked about the power of a USP and how to define one. Being unique, or hav­ing an inter­est­ing twist or hook, will def­i­nitely up your chances of get­ting noticed.

But regard­less of how you approach your prospec­tive part­ner, whether it’s through an email, fax, or phone call, or by snail mail or FedEx, it is impor­tant to craft the offer in a man­ner that shows the ben­e­fits to your joint-​​venture partner.

How­ever, there are a few extra tricks to moti­vate a poten­tial partner.

Here are some of them…

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