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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If you played video arcade games in the late 80’s or early 90’s, you might remem­ber Zero Wing — a game in which a bat­tle takes place in the year 2101, where you must defend the planet Earth from an alien invasion.

Zero Wing may have been a favorite among teenagers, but like the Cab­bage Patch doll the fad faded… until Sega Gen­e­sis came out with their ver­sion of the pop­u­lar arcade game in ’98, giv­ing Zero Wing new breath.

But this time, one is offered an ani­mated intro­duc­tion in prepa­ra­tion for the space bat­tle, which started with: “In A.D. 2101, war was begin­ning.” And a dia­logue between the ship’s cap­tain and the dreaded war­rior Cats ensued, offer­ing these price­less gems:

• “You Have No Chance To Sur­vive Make Your Time.”
• “What you say!” “Some­one Set Up Us The Bomb!”
• “You know what you doing. Move ‘Zig’ For Great Justice!”
• And of course, “All Your Base Are Belong To Us.”

The result became a viral phe­nom­ena that spread quickly, first among early adopt­ing geeks, then to main­stream media. It has become so per­va­sive that it inspired a new gen­er­a­tion of web­sites show­cas­ing bad trans­la­tions, and the explo­sion in fail blogs.

Now, what does a video game have to teach us about copywriting?

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A mem­ber on my copy­writ­ers forum (now my blog) started a thread on what makes my forum so pop­u­lar. Every­one chimed in with some great answers, and I appre­ci­ate the feedback.

(The cool thing about it is, that very thread also reached an impor­tant mile­stone. It was the 10,000th one! Talk about a coin­ci­dence, eh?)

But then some­one asked:

“Michel, can I ask how you ini­tially got the word out about your forum?”

My answer revealed a bit more than what the mem­ber antic­i­pated. Instead of talk­ing about how my forum became so pop­u­lar, I went on a tan­gent and explained the step-​​by-​​step process I used to book copy­writ­ing projects.

The answer was so well received that I decided to reprint it here.

Now, you may be won­der­ing what pro­mot­ing a forum (or a blog, for that mat­ter) has to do with pro­mot­ing my copy­writ­ing ser­vices. Keep read­ing because you’ll soon under­stand why…

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In today’s Inter­net, con­ver­sa­tions are crop­ping up all over the place. Peo­ple are talk­ing. They are talk­ing about prod­ucts. They are talk­ing about busi­nesses. And they are cer­tainly talk­ing about their expe­ri­ences.

When you look at how blogs, forums and social net­work­ing sites have exploded in the last few years, you can see how pow­er­ful word-​​of-​​mouth is. But the ques­tion is, is it all really impor­tant? Can it really help your business?

Yes.

And I’m not talk­ing about traf­fic. And you don’t need to be con­tro­ver­sial, either. I’m talk­ing cre­at­ing sys­tems to lever­age, man­age and profit from the “buzz.”

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The next ques­tion is, what does Web 2.0 have to do with saleslet­ters, if any­thing? And how does it affect them? For mar­keters, Web 2.0 presents a num­ber of new oppor­tu­ni­ties and avenues that allow more interaction.

More specif­i­cally, tools cre­ated by Web 2.0 can help to not only human­ize but also mag­ne­tize a web­site, which, in turn, gives mar­keters the abil­ity to cre­ate bet­ter rela­tion­ships with prospects, and sup­plies them with bet­ter tools to offer more proof, com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively and develop that trust they so seek.

In terms of mar­ket­ing, it can lever­age a viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign by cre­at­ing a cer­tain buzz about the busi­ness, which can enhance a website’s traf­fic, expo­sure, stick­i­ness and, to some degree, believability.

But in terms of saleslet­ters specif­i­cally, which is what I really want to focus on, it can serve up a sales mes­sage in the way the user wants, not how the busi­ness behind it wants or thinks their users want.

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I was a lit­tle intro­spec­tive today. A bit numb. A bit gloomy. A bit pen­sive. So I surfed the web and YouTube, and came across this amaz­ing video. It changed me right away.

If you go over to YouTube, there’s even a video inter­view with the man behind it, Juan Mann, who was required by the city to stop or take out a $25 mil­lion (yes, that’s $25,000,000.00) lia­bil­ity insur­ance. A 10,000-name peti­tion put an end to that. Thank­fully.
Here’s the video. It’s uplift­ing and inspiring.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. It brought a tear to my eye.