Business Of Copy

Doing free work for potential clients

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Perhaps I’m stupid. Or just naive.

I just spent an hour doing free work for a potential client. He hasn’t paid me anything. He might never pay me anything.

And yet, I watched his current VSL (troubled, to be generous). I then wrote up a nice document with the problems I saw and what I would do instead.

This made me think of one hot summer evening three years ago. I couldn’t sleep. So I snuck out of the bedroom (my girlfriend at the time was sleeping, the heat didn’t bother her). In the living room, I put on a Perry Marshall webinar.

The topic of the webinar was “discovery contracts.” The gist of it was this:

Instead of talking to potential clients to see if you are a good fit to work together… instead of spending time analyzing their situation with nothing in return… instead of coming up with valuable recommendations they can get implemented elsewhere…

… you can do a “discovery contract.”

In a nutshell, as they say, you can do all the stuff I just listed, but charge your potential client for it, up front. You say something like:

“I’ve stopped doing discovery calls with potential clients, but here’s what I can do. I’ll dive into your current copy/product/whatever, and give you my best recommendation of how to proceed, presented in a neat document. You can then go ahead and find the best person to implement those recommendations for you, or you can hire me. I charge my hourly/daily/whatever rate for this kind of discovery project. If you decide to hire me after I finish, I’ll subtract that rate out of my final fee.”

Sounds great, right?

But like I said, I’ve never done anything like this. Maybe it’s stupid. But I have no regrets (not yet).

I’ve had lots of good experiences doing some free work up front for potential clients. And I talk with new clients rarely enough these days that, even if they stiff me out of an hour of work, it’s not the end of the whirl.

But maybe you’re not in the same situation as I am. Maybe you’re constantly talking to potential new clients. Maybe some of them take advantage of you. Or maybe you’re just tired of all the wasted time.

In that case, it might be time to try a discovery contract. You’ll weed out the tire kickers. You might get paid. And the clients who do go for it will likely respect you more.

If you want more free articles like this (you tire kicker, you), you might like my daily email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.

Sorry to see you go

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Here’s a Days-Of-Thunder-sized personal confession:

I cant “read” marketing.

I find it too boring. As soon as I suspect an email or a web page or an article is trying to sell me something, a switch gets flipped in my head, my eyes get watery, and I start to gloss over the text in hope of escape.

This is definitely a problem, since I make my living writing sales copy, the exact kind of stuff I can’t stomach reading.

So I’ve found ways of working around this.

For example, one of the main benefits I get from hand-copying ads is that it simply forces me to carefully read those ads.

For a while, I was also having success by seeking out trends for a “3-minute DR news” feature for my email newsletter. That helped me actually pay attention to other marketers’ ads, even if I had no interest in what they were selling or preaching.

As part of this, I subscribed to dozens of email newsletters. But over time, I unsubscribed from almost all of them.

I did the same just now with copywriter Abbey Woodcock’s newsletter.

All I know about Abbey is that 1) she was one of Parris Lampropoulos’s copy cubs, so she’s gotta know about copywriting and 2) she has some kind of program helping newbie freelancers get started.

Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen in Abbey’s emails, she doesn’t talk too much about 1. But she talks aplenty about 2.

So I unsubscribed. But then, I saw an interesting thing on Abbey’s unsubscribe page.

It’s something I haven’t seen anybody else do. Here’s what happens:

When you click unsubscribe in Abbey’s email, you get taken to her site to confirm. “Yes, I really do want to unsubscribe.” Once you click that, you are taken to one final page.

“Sorry to see you go,” the page says.

And then directly below, it goes on: “Here are some other resources that might be a better fit,” followed by two affiliate links (Copy Chief and something called Effic Planning System).

I thought this was great because 1) it could be genuinely helpful to somebody who wasn’t a fit for Abbey’s stuff and 2) it could make some money for Abbey from an otherwise useless ex-lead.

This illustrates a principle I first heard Ben Settle talk about. (I guess he learned it from Dan Kennedy.)

That principle is to always seek out unused capacity.

Abbey’s unsubscribe page is just one small and clear example of this.

But if you have any kind of business — yes, even as a newbie freelancer — you might have unused capacity that you could profitably exploit.

Take for example these blog posts. For most of the time I’ve been writing them, I simply ended each post without including any kind of call to action.

Unused capacity.

So I started including a CTA each and every time. Something simple. Along the lines of,

I’ve got an email newsletter about marketing and persuasion. If you like what you just read, you might like that too. In case you want to give it a try, click here to subscribe.

The bad (and the good) of beating a control

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BAM!

On April 6, 2019, bad boy MMA fighter Conor McGregor stepped inside a Dublin pub.

McGregor owns a brand of whiskey. So he offered to buy a round of his Proper No. 12 to all the pub patrons.

One old guy said, no thanks.

So McGregor, who at one point held two MMA belts and also fought boxing legend Floyd Mayweather, socked the old man right in the ear. The old man absorbed the jab gamely. But he quietly turned away, clearly ceding to McGregor’s physical dominance.

The infuriating thing is that none of the mainstream news media reported a fact I know deep in my heart:

This old man was the standing boxing champ of that local Dublin pub.

He won the title back in 1989, against another local drunkard named Ciaran. Since then, nobody has dared to challenge the old man’s reign. Except Conor McGregor.

Here’s where I’m going with this:

McGregor winning that pub fight was much like a copywriter beating a long-standing control. (A control, as you probably know, is your best ad, the one that’s been running successfully for a long time, and outperforming all competition.)

Maybe you see the similarity. If you beat a control, it’s impossible to say what that really means.

Maybe your new copy really is a highly trained fighting machine. Maybe it could beat all competition, even on a world stage filled with killers.

But… maybe, just maybe, you sucker punched an old man who was teetering on a bar stool after his third pint. Maybe the old copy was so outdated, so weak, and so ready for change that even a finger tap would have done it.

Nobody can tell for sure.

Which might be bad if you’re looking for copywriting “truth.”

But it’s certainly great if you’re a copywriter looking to make a name for yourself. So go out and start brawling. Get yourself a control, even if it means pushing over some tipsy, harmless geezer.

Last thing:

I have an daily email newsletter. Much of the content is me pushing over long-standing but tired claims like “he won a control, therefore he must be great” and replacing them with something more interesting.

If you’d like to sign up for my emails so you can see me terrorizing these bits of conventional wisdom, here’s where to go.

Crash and burn with new client onboarding

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These days, airline pilots have to sit in flight simulators.

After 3 months of no flying, pilots are considered to be out of practice. They lose their certification and have to take the whole “I’m a pilot, really” test all over again. So they sit in simulators.

Other professions, such as copywriting, are not so strict or regulated. That doesn’t mean you won’t forget useful skills you might have had earlier.

For example, I just started working with a new client. That’s unusual.

For the past year or so, I’ve mainly worked with one large client.

It’s been nice and steady work, but it’s put me in a kind of lull. Along the way, I forgot some of my new-client-management skills.

With this particular new client, I forgot to set clear expectations around timelines. As a result, I got an email from him today. It’s been a day and a half since we agreed on the initial test project. He wanted to know whether I have anything to show him. I wasn’t even planning to start on the project until later today.

That’s my fault. The thing is, I should know better.

Back when I used to be on Upwork, I talked to a dozen potential new clients each month. I usually started working with one or two of them. I was very sharp with client “onboarding.”

I even wrote a little book about how to get good clients on Upwork and how to keep them good. In Section 3 of the book, I wrote the following:

“If you never want disappointed clients, then set expectations immediately. Let clients know what you will do, how the final result will look, and what they can expect in terms of results.”

I should have included something there about setting timelines, even if the client doesn’t.

Oh well. “Crash and burn, huh Mav?” Time to get back to the simulator and start practicing again.

By the way, if you haven’t seen my Upwork book, there is a chance you might find it valuable. If you’re a new copywriter, and you’re looking for work, it can help you get that jet off the flight deck. Upwork isn’t as terrible as everybody makes it sound. I managed to make over $100k on there, and I found good clients.

And if you’re not a new copywriter, well… maybe you’re just rusty with your client management skills. I obviously am. So I will reread my own advice, back from the days when I was juggling a half dozen clients at the same time. Maybe you too could use some of these reminders.

Anyways, if you’re interested, then slap on your aviators and ride into the danger zone over here:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book

Copywriting star or bust

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In the early decades of the film industry, there could be no stars.

In 1896, the first for-money movie theater in NYC opened up. By 1910 (a landmark year as will become obvious), thousands of movies came out.

These thousands of movies featured performers, even regular ones.

But nobody knew their names.

The producers refused to credit the actors. So the actors just acted their part and got paid a worker’s wage.

That all changed in 1910. That year, a popular actress named Florence Lawrence finally got her name to appear on film.

By 1912, Lawrence was paid $250/hr a week — the highest rate of any movie performer. But that was nothing. Over the next seven years, movie actor salaries went from Lawrence’s $250 a week in 1912… to Mary Pickford’s $2,000 a week in 1915… to the first guaranteed salary of one million dollars a year for Fatty Arbuckle, in 1919.

Stars were born. And they wanted more.

The next big step came in 1952, with a little-known film of Jimmy Stewart’s, called A Bend in the River. The film is mostly remarkable because it was the first time a Hollywood star got a percentage of profits.

That meant stars went from being well-paid to swimming in vaults of gold coins. Suddenly, the stars could dictate the terms. The studios needed stars more than the stars needed studios.

All of the above are some tidbits I read in William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade. And I think they illustrate a hard truth:

If you are in any service business… whether that’s acting or copywriting or haircuttery…

Being a star and getting paid real well go hand-in-hand.

Inversely, doing good work but not having any name recognition… well, you’ll always stay on the ground floor. You’ll get the modern equivalent of a worker’s wage — and that’s it.

That’s something to keep in mind if you are building up your freelance copywriting career. And it’s something you will have to address, if the prospect of being a star makes your bladder clench up right now.

Anyways, I have no interest in being a copywriting star. But the field does interest me. I write about it every day. And if you want to get emails with the stuff I write, you can sign up here.

The invaluable experience of freelancing for peanuts

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Today, I was waiting in line at the grocery store and watching the fiasco up front.

A woman of indeterminate middle age, wearing skimpy latex shorts and big leather boots, had just put all her groceries on the conveyor belt.

Only once the grocery dude rang everything up and it was time to pay, did Cruella de Vil realize she didn’t have her wallet.

Ok, it happens to everybody. But then it went to another level.

“Please put the groceries aside,” she commanded the grocery dude, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

She left the store, I guess to get her wallet.

She was back in 5 seconds.

“Could you put the groceries in a bag for me and charge me for the bag? I’ll be in a hurry when I get back.”

The grocery dude was confused but he did as he was told. Cruella left the store for a second time.

She was back again in another 10 seconds.

“Actually I’ve got my own bag,” she said. She unwrapped a little designer nylon bag and started packing her groceries inside. She still hadn’t paid or even gotten her wallet. Eventually she left for the third time.

But let’s switch to another topic for a second.

Before all this happened — in fact, all the way yesterday — I got involved in a discussion on Reddit.

The gist of the discussion was an old freelance copywriter conundrum:

Is it worth working for peanuts at the start of your freelance copywriting journey… or is it better to hone your skills in secret, and then to approach higher-caliber clients straight away?

I was on the peanuts side. My argument was that peanuts are better than no peanuts.

Other people disagreed, because they find peanuts offensive.

It’s too bad the discussion stopped there.

Because peanuts or no peanuts, I feel there’s a lot of value in getting experience with client work, even if the money is laughable.

For example, some clients can be very demanding. But when it comes to paying, suddenly they’ve forgotten their wallet at home, just like Cruella did in the story above.

Eventually, you can learn to recognize the red flags, like the tiny latex shorts or the big Doc Martens. But you have to have those experiences yourself.

That’s why I think, if you’re just starting out, it’s good to get going with client work as soon as possible. You’ll get invaluable experience in the business of copy. And the fact that a client is paying you peanuts can even be a benefit, because it can take much of the pressure off.

Copywriting playboys get treated like a piece of meat

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A while back, when there was still such a thing as professional sports, I noticed that the top three or four men’s tennis players all had one unusual thing in common:

They were all in settled, long-term relationships, often with the same girl they had started dating while they were still teenagers.

Further down the rankings, you had tennis players who were known to be playboys. Regardless of their natural talent, these playboys hovered around the top 20, but could never break into the very peak of the sport.

Coincidence?

Probably. But maybe not. Maybe a stable relationship really is crucial for massive success.

Don’t worry. I’m not telling you to go in search of a ball and chain to lock around your ankle. My point is simply this:

When I look at top copywriters — meaning people who get paid millions of dollars a year, with schedules booked up months in advance — they all fall into one of two categories.

One is guys like Chris Haddad or Jon Benson, who got successful promoting their own offers. The other is guys like Dan Ferrari and Stefan Georgi, who worked in-house at a direct response publisher for long enough to get a pile of successes in their knapsacks.

What you don’t see are playboys who came up by bouncing around from client to client. Maybe this promiscuous lifestyle worked many winters ago. But I don’t see it happening today.

Not to say you can’t make good money as a copywriting playboy. It’s what I’ve done in my career. I now make more money for less work than at any job I could have ever held.

But if you want to make it to the top… or if you want to be perceived as more than a commodity service provider… then jumping from client to client is unlikely to get you there. ​​If you want clients to stop seeing you as a piece of meat, you will have to get hitched — either to your own business, or to somebody else’s.

That’s something I’m working on as well right now. If you want to follow how I’m doing that, click here and subscribe to my email newsletter.

Spider-Dan stymies the experts and you can too

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On May 25 1981, a man dressed in a Spider-Man suit crossed Franklin Street in Chicago at just the right moment.

He had been scoping out the Sears Tower for several days. He knew the routines of the security guards. Right now, nobody would be there to stop him.

So he got out his two suction cups, stuck them to the black glass wall of the giant skyscraper, and started to climb.

It took him 7 hours, but he made it to the top. 110 floors, 1,450 feet above the ground. All the way to the roof of the world’s tallest building at the time.

The man’s name was Dan Goodwin. For his effort, he was arrested and fined $35. He also earned himself the nickname Spider-Dan.

That doesn’t seem like much of a reward. So what made Spider-Dan do it?

A few months earlier, Goodwin was in Las Vegas where he saw the MGM hotel burn down. In spite of the firefighters on the scene, 86 people died in the blaze.

The next day, Goodwin went to the fire marshal’s office. He had a proposal for how to rescue people from the top floors of burning skyscrapers by climbing on the outside.

“Have you ever climbed a building?” the fire marshal snapped back. “No? Then don’t tell me how to do my job.”

So Goodwin did a bit of thinking… a bit of practicing… and then on May 25th, he accomplished his audacious climb up the Sears Tower. Something most people, including experts like the fire marshal, would have said was impossible.

I’m not saying you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. I don’t believe that’s true, for you or for me.

On the other hand, most experts are full of mashed potatoes. An expert’s number one goal is to protect his own status and self-image.

You only have to go back 50 or 100 years to see how tons of experts in any field – whether scientists or politicians or educators — were dead sure of ideas we would find laughable or offensive today. The same will happen when people look back on today from the perspective of another 30 or 50 years.

Anyways, Dan Goodwin did all right for himself with his Spider-Dan role. But he could have been killed. And he did get fined $35.

In other words, the world can be a risky place. It makes sense to keep that in mind.

But when experts make confident predictions or prohibitions… well, my personal stance is to pay them no mind. Their job is to protect the status quo, and their own interests.

So here’s a suggestion: If you want to attempt something, don’t let adverse expert opinion stop you. You might succeed. And you might even get a cool nickname out of it, just like Spider-Dan.

By the way, I don’t pretend to be an expert. But I write daily emails nonetheless, mostly about persuasion and influence. If you want to get them, click here to subscribe.

Making more money without adding a single thing

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A couple days ago, an on-and-off client contacted me with a possible new job.

He’d hired another copywriter first (big mistake). No surprise, he wasn’t happy with the outcome. So he wanted me to rewrite the worst parts of the other guy’s work. How much would it cost?

It would cost a lot. But let’s take a moment and imagine a hypothetical scenario:

You go to a friend’s house. He offers you some ice cream and he says, “I forgot it out in the sun last week. It melted to shit. But after a few hours, I remembered it and put it back in the freezer. It’s all yours if you want it!”

I don’t know about you, but I’d find a way to politely refuse. Eating refrozen ice cream doesn’t sound appealing. And it could cause serious digestive regrets.

That’s how I felt about the rewrite offer. But there was something else clanging around my brain-pan, too:

“You can make a lot more money if you stop doing the things you’re doing now, without adding a single thing.”

I heard a guy named James Schramko say this in a presentation a few months back. James’s advice was to look at your current clients and get rid of the least profitable ones. Somehow, James promised, you’d make more money this way.

This might sound like “law of attraction” fluff. It’s not. It’s specific business advice.

James laid out much of his system in the presentation I listened to. This is stuff that allows James to surf most of the day while making several million dollars a year. It’s also worked for his coaching clients — guys like Ryan Levesque and Kevin Rogers.

In short, this presentation was real valuable. If you’re a copywriter and you want to work less but somehow make more money, it’s worth your time. Here’s the link:

https://copychief.com/ep-164-james-schramko/

“My service is so valuable… but so few companies value it”

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In the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, a banker named Greg Lippman went a-selling on Wall Street.

He wanted to get institutional investors to buy “credit default swaps.” These instruments would pay out big if the market crashed, and Lippman would get a fat fee off the deal.

Lippman had unquestionable proof the market would crash. He had a great sales pitch. And he had a killer offer — to make his investors a ton of money, with great odds, at a low price.

And yet, these stupid investors wouldn’t buy. “If it’s such a great deal,” they would say, “why are you offering it to me?” Others said, “I couldn’t explain this to my investors.” And the most common objection? “I’m convinced. You’re right. But it’s not my job to short the subprime market.”

In the end, Lippman managed to get some buyers. But these investors were already determined to short the subprime market… and were just looking for the best way to do so. Thanks to Lippman’s advice, they made out like bandits when the market came crashing down.

But don’t worry. I’m not getting enamored with investing. And this newsletter is still about copywriting. In fact, that’s why I bring up the story above.

I was reading a thread today on a copywriting forum. People were frustrated that copywriting is so powerful… and yet, most companies don’t value copywriting.

It sounded like the struggle of Greg Lippman above.

Your copywriting services might be powerful. But most businesses still won’t want in. So why waste energy approaching businesses that should see the value you’re bringing… and then getting frustrated when they fail to do so?

Instead, approach businesses that already do see the value of copywriting, and are just looking for the best way to get it. These are the businesses that will make out like bandits from your winning copy. And they won’t mind when you get a fat fee off the deal.