Yesterday, I sent an email about how my Copy Riddles program is up on pirate sites, even though it’s not for sale on my own site any more. I got a bunch of responses to that email.
One reader wrote in to say that “not selling Copy Riddles is a crime against copywriters who want to master the craft.” Others wrote in to ask why I decided to retire the program.
If you like, I’ll tell you a reason why.
It’s that I believe — how can I put this delicately — that teaching people how to be a copywriter is a crumbling business.
ChatGPT is a part of it. But really, it’s that we were in a “copywriting bubble” over the past five or seven years.
The 4 Hour Work Week and podcasts and side hustle blogs made copywriting a thing. Marketers with copy chops and those without could create courses about copywriting, and sell them for good money to masses of people.
That came to a fever pitch thanks to corona — there was genuinely more demand for copywriters since everything moved online, and many people were looking for a change.
When I was looking for a copywriting coach in 2019, I had trouble finding one. Over the next year, every living A-list copywriter, and many others, unliving, C-list, or D-list, launched coaching programs.
But now, I believe all that’s coming to an end.
I’m not saying copywriting as a profession is gonna die. I predict that, if you have already have skills and clients, you will be able to adapt and continue to do well. And I’m sure new people will appear and write winning copy tomorrow who have never heard of Gary Halbert today.
But the fact is, 90% of the copywriting education market is not made up of people who will ever write winning copy, or really any kind of copy. It’s made up of people who don’t have skills or clients, and who never will, for reasons of their own.
With all the talk of AI, plus the wobbling of the economy, plus simply the fact that copywriting is past its gold rush moment, I believe this large crowd will start to scatter, if it hasn’t started already, to other business opportunities that sound newer and more exciting.
So that’s why I decided to give myself a bit of a nudge, and I retired my Copy Riddles program. A shrinking market makes me uneasy.
So that’s why I decided to give myself a bit of a nudge, and I retired my Copy Riddles program. A shrinking market makes me uneasy, and I wanted to step ahead of it.
But more on that in the future.
For now, I’ll point you to my Most Valuable Email course. I’ve kept that peach on the table because it’s not meant for copywriting specifically. Rather, it’s for anybody who considers themselves a marketer, and who wants to become more successful and valuable at what they do. For more info: