Here are a few facts about me that might seem entirely irrelevant to a newsletter about marketing and copywriting:
I am unmarried, I have no children, I am straight. My religious orientation can only be described as puzzled.
My nationality is dual — Croatia and US. I grew up in the US, but I was born in what was then Yugoslavia but then became Croatia, in a mixed Croatian/Serbian family. As a result, my entire life I’ve been hostile to feelings of nationalism and even patriotism, because I experienced first-hand how much of a fictional construct my homeland was — both my old one, and my newer one, and my still newer one.
Here are a few more facts, maybe slightly more relevant to this newsletter:
Try as I might, I don’t care about money beyond the Micawber rule: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness.” I also don’t enjoy working for work’s sake, and I am by nature lazy, in fact very lazy.
And yet, for years now, I have been working, and quite a lot, and I have been making money, and more than I spend.
The reason is that, while I don’t care about money and I’m lazy to work, I do enjoy the feeling of being disciplined and achieving goals, particularly if I was resistant to getting started towards them. And if that means doing work every day and if money falls out as an end result, then so be it.
And now a few final facts, which are relevant to this newsletter:
I’ve been working as a professional copywriter since 2015. I’ve have had 100+ clients over that time, but the bulk of the money I’ve made came from maybe 5 of those clients, and the bulk of that bulk, the money that’s sitting in my bank account now and that’s allowed me to live life how I choose over the past few years, came from one client only.
I will tell you more about that client in a second. But first, let me tell you the reason for all the facts, relevant and irrelevant, I’ve just given you. The reason is the following passage from a book called Revolt of the Masses, by a writer named José Ortega y Gasset:
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I may be mistaken, but the present day writer, when he takes his pen in hand to treat a subject which he has studied deeply, has to bear in mind that the average reader, who has never concerned himself with this subject, if he reads, does so with the view, not of learning something from the writer, but rather, of pronouncing judgment on him when he is not in agreement with the commonplaces that the said reader carries in his head.
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Ortega was a snob and his entire book was written in a condescending and bossy tone. But the above point is spot on — people more often read to judge you than to learn from you. And what basis do they use to judge you? What they already know and believe.
So you got two options:
Option one is to start with your own beliefs and experiences, and to be transparent about those, even if they are irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Many people will judge you negatively as a result, and will consciously or unconsciously dismiss you from then on.
On the other hand, a few people will align with your own choices and beliefs, and they will judge you favorably, including on the actual on-topic content you might be sharing.
Option two is to start with your reader. To find out what your reader believes, what experiences he or she has, and then to signal that you share those — even if you have to stretch the truth or cover up stuff.
You might think I am passing judgment and saying to do the first but not to do the second. Not at all. I’ve done both myself. The first in this newsletter, the second in my work as copywriter working for clients.
Which brings me back to that client who was responsible for the bulk of the money I’ve made as a copywriter.
Today is the last day I am selling a swipe file of 25 “horror advertorials” I wrote for that client between 2019 and 2021. And if you check each of the advertorials in that swipe file, you will find that in the very first sentence or two of each advertorial, and many times after that, I signal in conscious but subtle ways that I am like the person who is reading, that I share his or her experiences, that I have similar beliefs.
It’s dirty work, but there is satisfaction in accomplishing it. And it does pay well.
Anyways, if you want to get my Horror Advertorial Swipe File, you have to be on my email list. The clock is ticking, and there aren’t many more hours before the deadline. If you like, click here to sign up.