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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The dif­fer­ence between good copy and great copy are in the results achieved. In direct response specif­i­cally, results are based on the num­ber of actions the copy generates.

The more actions the copy dri­ves, the greater the copy is.

My friend John Reese, a mas­ter at sim­pli­fy­ing what we often tend to unnec­es­sar­ily com­pli­cate, says it best. He says the only met­ric you should ever really count on is this:

How many said “Yes” or “No.” And that’s it.

Sounds sim­plis­tic, I know. But here’s the key point: your copy may get read­ers and it may get great feed­back. It may enter­tain and it may edu­cate. It may inform and even inspire.

But if it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t matter.

Now, what makes copy nudge peo­ple into action requires a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent things. So let me share with you three pow­er­ful ele­ments that can help you turn your not-​​so-​​good copy into good copy, and your good copy into out­stand­ing copy.

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Some peo­ple don’t mind hard-​​hitting copy, while oth­ers pre­fer newsy copy. Some peo­ple pre­fer long copy to get as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble, oth­ers pre­fer short, brief, to-​​the-​​point copy. Some like drama, sto­ries, and tes­ti­mo­ni­als; oth­ers data, sta­tis­tics, and facts.

Does it all mat­ter? Absolutely.

What makes one style of copy more favor­able than another? Why does one per­son buy from one type of copy and not from another? It really comes down to the buy­ing behav­ior of your mar­ket. And in fact, there are four major per­son­al­ity types.

Before I tell you what they are, remem­ber that the style you choose will not appeal to every­one. It never will. Roy Williams, author of The Wiz­ard of Ads, once noted, “Even some of the best ads miss the mark with at least half of their tar­get audience.”

You may have heard me say this before, but it’s impor­tant. Don’t be all things to all peo­ple. If you do, you have no choice but to paint your copy with broad brush­strokes in order to appeal to every­one. Instead, give your copy per­son­al­ity. Even if it offends some.

Oth­er­wise, ads crafted so as not to offend any­one will be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. They may even back­fire. And more impor­tantly, they might be more offen­sive than you think.

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It’s Thanks­giv­ing in Canada, so it’s time to give thanks. It’s also my birth­day. That’s why I’m the one who’s going to give you a gift (there’s only one con­di­tion, so read on).

I want to give thanks to all my loyal sub­scribers and read­ers. But there’s another per­fectly good and more impor­tant reason.

I need to make some room!

You see, I have 3,000 copies of one of my books in stor­age, and I need to get rid of them. Fast! So I’m fully pre­pared to give them away. For free. Let me give you some back­ground first…

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Seems I’m rant­ing a lot these days, and a lit­tle more opin­ion­ated than the norm. Per­haps it’s my bro­ken back, which is killing me, that’s mak­ing me more sen­si­tive or irri­ta­ble. I don’t know.

But some­thing some­one recently said in my copy­writ­ers forum irri­tated me. And it’s not what this per­son said specif­i­cally, but the mind­set behind it that’s both­er­ing me.

In a thread about an Inter­net mar­keter who was recently arrested (yes, it had some­thing to do with forced con­ti­nu­ity, but it had more to do with refus­ing refunds and avoid­ing cus­tomers than it had to do with forced con­ti­nu­ity itself), one mem­ber said:

“There is NO such thing as an hon­est busi­ness man. (…) Ask any accountant.”

Now, I have no clue as to why this per­son said this. And my opin­ion here is not about this per­son specif­i­cally. Again, it’s about the think­ing process that some peo­ple have when they make such assertions.

Per­son­ally, I believe this view of busi­ness peo­ple is skewed, off, and wrong. It’s destruc­tive, too.

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Ralph Zuran­ski: Hi, this is Ralph Zuran­ski. I’m on the phone with Michel Fortin. He’s one of the lead­ing copy­writ­ers in the world today. He is so suc­cess­ful in his writ­ing that he’s helped a num­ber of the Inter­net mar­keters achieve $1 mil­lion dol­lar days in sales.

He has been at a num­ber of the Inter­net con­fer­ences. Michel Fortin knows more about copy­writ­ing and test­ing copy than any­body that I’ve ever met.

I think that’s one of the rea­sons why he’s such a great teacher and also such a great copy­writer. He tests every aspect of copy­writ­ing to find out what works. I know that most of the time, on any of the copy­writ­ing pieces that he cre­ates, he has four or five tests that all run simul­ta­ne­ously… the color, the fonts, the place­ment of images.

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Since the new year is right around the cor­ner, blog­gers and mar­keters alike are post­ing their pre­dic­tions as if a psy­chics con­ven­tion has come to town.

So in keep­ing with that tra­di­tion, I’d like to post a few of my own. But unlike those who post their pre­dic­tions in point form, I won’t make a spe­cific list but rather share with you some of my thoughts.

(Near the end, how­ever, this post will cul­mi­nate in what I believe will be three major trends to watch out for and dive into, if you want to make some seri­ous money in 2008 and beyond.)

First off, let me state that you may or may not agree with me on these. But some­thing is def­i­nitely going on right now that points to these three trends. All the clues are pretty evi­dent, and you’ve prob­a­bly seen some of these yourself.

What I’m talk­ing about is…

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