Copywriting is one of the skills that have the potential to make you a trtemendous amount of money. It’s a skill that will make people spend their money, almost begging you to take their money out of their wallet. Sounds interesting?
In this article, we’ll dive into the ABCs of copywriting so that you can learn and get started on your journey towards mastering this high-income skill.
What’s Copywriting
Copywriting in its simplest form is the art of persuading someone to take some action through written material. That written material in all its forms is called a copy.
Fromm this perspective, you can take into account few keywords right there : Persuasion, action and writing.
In fact, being a copywriter means having to borrow a lot of psychological strategies and tactics -already used by people in everyday life – and mix it up to a certain level in your writing in order to get your reader to take the desired action you want him or her to take.
In essence, copywriting is everywhere. See the text on those annoying video ads on Youtube ? that’s copywriting.
What about the magazines you love to read ? Full of ads, sales letter or flyers. That’s copy right there too.
What’s interesting now that you know that copywriting is all around, is you can’t unsee it which is a gift because one very important skill every copywriter must have is to be curious and tap into their inner child so that they can learn from everything and everyone.
The second keyword is action. The main goal of a copy is to be compelling enough to carry the reader smoothly into taking action. Whether you write a letter for an NGO about a fundraising campaign or you want to grow your email list or maybe you want people to share your page, all in all your copy is successful if you can make people take action. Don’t worry, we’ll talk about the different types of copy you can write in the next sections.
The last important key point is writing. Now, writing is arguably the most important factor of a copy (duh ?). Yet, it’s not as simple as writing. Writing a copy has a set of « rules » implemented over the decades by the most successful copywriters of all time and it’s important to know them before you intend to write a copy. Otherwise, copywriting would’nt be a high-income skills. We’ll get to the basics of copywriting in the next sections.
What’s the difference between copywriting and content writing?
Oftentimes, people confuse copywriting to content writing. There are a lot of differences between these two. The most important one being about the intent.
In fact, even though, both copywriting and content writing are meant to deliver a message through written materials, their end goals differe a lot. Most often than not, the goal of writing a content is to share or educate people about a certain topic in in a blog, on a social thread or on forums. On the other hand, the unique goal of writing a copy is to sell. Yes, even a website visit is through a copy needs to be sold hard.
You may ask, which one is better between copywriting and content writing ?
And the answer is that it depends. If your overall goal is to nurture your audience, educate them in a certain topic and be the expert in your field, it’s better to focus on writing content, be active on social media or by creating a blog. Nevertheless, if your intention is to add more sales, look for donations, increase conversions, add people to your email list, writing copy will, definitely, be your way to go. Bottom line, you will want to mix them in your strategy if you want to squeeze out the maximum potential out of your business.
Is copywriting a growing industry regarding A.I?
A.I is on everyone’s mouth right now. It’s the hottest topic and for a good reason. Most people think they may be out of job, and it can also be true. Like when any new technology comes, there will be some new jobs too. Nothing new under sun, so far !
Now, can A.I impede your copywriting career ? Not if you’re smart. A.I tools like Copy.ai, Content At Scale or Jasper, are just robots that have been trained.
Which means that, they will still need the human perspective on certain area to function optimally. Now, as every new tool, they will be certain changes.
As a copywriter, it will be your role to do the research and find the right strategies you will use for your copy. With AI, copies can be written in seconds and from there, your goal is to tweak the first draft. So regradless of whether or not A.I may get you out of job, your best bet is to use those tools to write faster, enhance your writing skills and your productivity.
Types of copywriting
Indeed the ultimate goal of every copy will be to make your prospect and audience take action. But, it doesn’t mean that every copy should be written in the same manner.
In fact, there are different types of copywriting and each one has its own specificities that you must take into account if you want to be successful
Social media copywriting
Having a good social media presence has the ability to make or break your business. Think about it for a second, the typical social media user uses, in average, six social media per month spending around 2 hours 24 minutes per day on them [1].
Furthermore, the number of users has increased in such a way that more than 4 billion accounts are now active on social media app [2].
With that being said, it’s more than necessary to use social media as part of your overall business marketing strategy. But, you can’t just hop on the social media bandwagon without knowing what to do, that’s where social media copywriting come sinto play.
Social media copywriting is a form of writing that is specifically designed for social media platforms. It involves creating content that engages, informs, and inspires your target audience.
What makes social media copywriting interessting is that you need creativity to publish and stay relevant. Yet, once you understand and master the requirements of each platform [3] jab, jab, jab, right hook by Gary Vaynerchuk, you still can repurpose every single post.
All in all, you must always focus on creating value for your audience. Provide useful information, tips, and insights that your audience can use. Use storytelling techniques to make your content more relatable and personal.
Direct response copywriting
Direct response copywriting is a type of writing that aims to get a specific response from the reader, like buying something or signing up for a newsletter. Basically, the ultimate goal is to convince the reader to take action by tapping into the basic emotions, the wants, and needs.
When you see a direct response copy, you’ll usually find a call to action (CTA) that urges you to act fast. You can be tempted to buy because of scarcity which will increase your probability of purchasing. Remember the first time copywriting made me spend money ? That’s exactly, how you should make your readers feel. Plus, You’ll see examples of direct response copwyriting all over the place, from ads to emails to sales pitches. It may be the most common copywriting people use nowadays.
Good direct response copywriting is straightforward and powerful. It focuses on the benefits and value of the product or service being offered, and it addresses any concerns or doubts you might have. To make it even more convincing, it might include testimonials or proof that the product or service really works.
Overall, the goal of direct response copywriting is to make you feel like you just can’t resist taking action. So next time you see a call to action in an ad or email, you’ll know what’s going on behind the scenes.
SEO copywriting
There are two ways a website can generate traffic : the paid way where you’ll need to pay advertisers to bring you leads and the natural way where you’ll have to use techniques and strategies to create content that will help your website rank on search engine. The latter is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
A good SEO strategy involves choosing the right keywords [4] that are relevant to your industry, creating content related to those keywords and strategically disseminate them in your content in a way that you can avoid keyword stuffing which can be detrimental to your ranking by Google.
When you do SEO copywriting, you also need to focus on optimizing your content by using the right titles in your posts and also in your meta description. It will help Google and other search engines categorize your content to be able to show to the right audience which will increase your organic traffic.
Technical copywriting
Even though it is helpful to write in a simple manner, when things get techie you’ll need to explain complex matters in a more concise and precise way. That’s when technical copywriting come sinto play.
Technical copywriting involves writing about technical topics such as engineering, technology, biology… in a way that the reader can understand. Most of the times, these explanations come in the form of manuals, product descriptions, and whitepapers.
One of the biggest difficulty in technical copywriting is finding the right balance between the readability and the technical accuracy. Technical writers need to make sure that they’re using the right words that will make them be understood. Furthermore, it might sound commonsense, but they will also have to double check on stats, datas, and do their research in order to be up to date according to their field to make sure they meet their target audience’s needs.
Digital Copywriting
The digital copywriting is so common that you can easily miss it. Digital copywriting is every writing that involves writing content for a website. It involves writing the copy for a homepage to avoid visitors bouncing or you may want to rewrite a webpage that is not converting well.
Maybe you want to create a page to raise awareness about a certain topic or cause.
Or even simpler, maybe you want to create ads that will make people get to take action… Either ways, a good digital copywriting strategy often walks hand in hand with a good SEO copywriting to work well because it will involve writing content and making your website be relevant and rank on search engines.
How Much Can You Make As A Copywriter?
According the U.S Bureau Of Labor Stistics, the average salary of a copywriter is around $62,170. While this is a good amount of money, the top tier, ten-percentile of the copywriter easily get paid 6-figures a year – Over $121,760.
On the other hand, the low tier of the copywriters can get as low as $31,700 per year.
Your earning potential is determined by a lot of factors, especially:
The Niche you Choose
In the copywriting world, your niche is very likely to dictate the amount of money you can make. For example, if you are a general copywriter – even though you may have a lot of work to do, you are unlikely to get paid as much money as those who specialize in a single industry.
Furthermore, the niche you’ll choose also will have an impact on your payroll. Certain industry, let’s say finance and health tend to pay more dividend than other industry.
If you can specialize in an industry that has a huge potential to generate money, you are very likely to climb the ladder towards the top tier of copywriters.
Your skills & The Contract You Sign
If you’ve have chosen the right niche, the second factor is your ability to generate sales at will. A good copywriter is a copywriter that generates money for those who hire him.
Your ability to consistently generate money will also determine the type of contracts you will sign. And if you are good enough, you may even get paid and have royalties on every sales your copy has generated – Talking about a good bag of money right
What’s Up Next?
Now, you know what copywriting is and how important it is to learn such a high-income skill that has the potential to make you 6-figures per year. Copywriting is a skill that needs a lot of practice to master. As I’m talking right now, I still learn and get better about it so can you. Yet, if you want to make money right away, you can take a look at the 15 side hustles to make ends meet.
References
1 – https://www.gwi.com/book-demo?utm_source=kepios&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=2021+Kepios+Global+Audiences
2 – https://datareportal.com/social-media-users#:~:text=Facebook%20remains%20the%20world’s%20most,or%20more%20monthly%20active%20users
3 – Jab, Jab, Jab, right hook by Gary Vaynerchuk – https://amzn.to/3oT0LA9
4 – https://www.semrush.com/blog/content-optimization-guide
