In the last post I pointed to Michel Fortin’s post about giving free consultations by phone.

I couldn’t agree with him more. And I could relate to a statement he made in the comments section as well:

“One client once berated me for not picking up the phone prior to hiring me, and hounded me persistently. They expected their initial consultation to be free.

“I later found out they went to another copywriter and became a ‘client from hell.’”

After being a copywriter for a while, you start to be able to spot clients who will give you trouble very early on. (That’s why it’s so fun to ask Michel questions about how to deal with clients, because you’re likely to get a long, extremely helpful reply/rant!)

And one red flag is someone who expects freebies. Free consultations on copy, marketing, additional add-on’s like squeeze pages and order pages at no cost… the list goes on.

It was funny that promptly after having this discussion on my blog and Michel’s that I would get hit by the wrath of a freebie seeker.

I was selling a product at a deeply discounted rate and offering to give away an additional product to the first 5 that purchased. One of the first 5 to purchase was a client. He told me which product he wanted free from the list I provided and then asked if he could also receive my sales page Template for free as well.

He’s a client and most of my clients get this Template anyway. I felt generous, so I gave it to him.

After sending him the gift I got several responses from him asking how to use the Template. I didn’t understand what he was asking… you open the Template in whatever website creator you use and write a sales letter inside of it.

The supplied video tells you how to format your letter in the Template. He never answered my question when I asked, “did you watch the video?”

At one point he sent me a message saying, “Do I need to get someone to create this for me? A little guidance would be great, otherwise I’ll end up being overcharged.”

Overcharged??? It was a free gift!

Maybe it was just a misunderstanding, I hope so.

Want to leave a comment? How about a story about your experience with freebie seekers.

Cheers,

Stephen Dean, Copywriter

Offering Incredible Copywriting Services

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Michel Fortin recently made a blog post addressing phone calls with clients. He has a pretty strong opinion about them. In fact, he called the post “Phone Calls Can Kill Your Copywritinq Business.”

I believe the post was written based off of an answer he’d given me in his coaching program. I’d asked him about phone calls on more than one occasion. And my experience is very similar to what he shared.

Clients often request phone calls. I don’t always mind this but I prefer to communicate through email. For me, email is an automatic transcript so that I don’t forget anything we discussed.

And I think it’s much more efficient. It helps me to get more work done in less time, which is very important to me.

In fact, James Brausch and Michel both chose email for their coaching programs instead of the phone because the communication contains better value and it takes less time to achieve.

I understand some clients are more comfortable 1) getting to hear the voice of someone they’re going to pay a lot of money to, and 2) being able to simply speak about what they’re thinking instead of taking the time to write out an email.

These are the clients I like. At this point I haven’t completely stopped taking phone calls before a copywriting project, but I will soon. And to help the clients in the above situation, I’m going to try and make it as easy as possible to convey their plans for the project.

Soon I’ll start testing an application process that’s quick to get through, but will ask enough questions from the client that they won’t have much else to add or ask. I can also take steps to ensure I’m a real person they can trust (like this blog is meant to do) to further calm any reservations.

I see these changes as very important to my business.

For every “good client” there’s someone who simply wants to pick your brain (and never hire you), or someone who’s bored in their office and wants to ‘chat,’ or a control freak that’s going to be an extremely scary client.

These prospects are no fun and extremely expensive to work with.

Cheers,

Stephen Dean, Copywriter

Offering Incredible Copywriting Services

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Popularity: 7% [?]

Here’s a pop quiz, what’s the #1 goal of a headline in sales copy?

Answer: To capture their attention and get them reading. Supposedly it should get them reading the next line but if you’re like me you’ll jump to somewhere else in the copy. In any case, get them reading.

Want to know my secret weapon for doing that?

Shock ‘em. Shock ‘em with your headline.

Now, you can shock people in a lot of ways, but many of those methods probably aren’t a good idea.

However, one good way to shock people is to strongly assert a contrarian viewpoint. Here’s an example.

Not too long ago I was working on a real estate sales letter. (You can hire me to write your sales letter here: Stephen Dean Copy.)

The product taught 9 different ways to arrange a deal and profit. One of those ways happened to be the “Short Sale.”

You don’t need to know what a Short Sale is to get the point, but it’s an extremely popular real estate investing model right now.

Well my clients insisted on teaching 9 real estate models because they knew the numbers… and knew that the short sale was not always the most profitable model.

So how can we take advantage of that?

Headline: 14,869 Reasons Why Short Sales Suck.

The 14,869 reasons would be the number of dollars they’d lose on a specific deal (covered later in the letter) if they went with the Short Sale model vs. another.

That was a great way to get attention and to get them started reading.

Of course, to pull off a contrarian headline you have to know a lot about your market. Because it’s imperative that whatever controversial statement you make is important enough to the visitor to capture their attention.

Your product also needs to be able to support your contrarian headline (and the rest of the sales copy). But if you can manage it, try it out! It may be your next big winner.

Cheers,

Stephen Dean, Copywriter

Offering Incredible Copywriting Services

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Popularity: 8% [?]

Gary Vaynerchuk runs a wine business and produces a daily web show at http://tv.winelibrary.com.

Many of us online entrepreneurs are interested in freedom, so we try our best to find ways to minimize our work time. (Which is difficult as a copywriter.)

Tim Ferris has his method for limiting his email time. I have my tricks.

Gary Vaynerchuk insists on answering all of his emails himself. Woah! That sounds like a lot of work.

I remember Jim Edwards revealing that early on in his career he spent the first 4 hours of his day answering email. That’s not freedom! (He doesn’t do that anymore, that’s for sure.)

So maybe Gary’s goal isn’t freedom. But I can’t see answering as many emails as he gets as being fun. In any case, even he has come up with a way to help lighten the load.

If you want to be helpful to your visitors and customers but don’t want to be a slave to email, check out this page he made.

http://tv.winelibrary.com/garyvs-inbox

Cheers,

Stephen Dean, Copywriter

Offering Incredible Copywriting Services

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Popularity: 8% [?]

Argh. Have you ever seen someone write or heard someone say, “I’d never buy from someone who (describes behavior).”

Most of the time, a sentence like that makes me scoff. Why? Because I usually don’t believe the person and see it as complaining.

I think what most people are really saying is, “(Specific behavior) annoys me.” And by saying they would “never buy,” they know that’s the strongest statement they could make to someone who’s looking to get sales.

I see the statement as an attempted power-grab. But I don’t buy it. (Pun not intended.)

Sure, if someone is engaging in unethical behavior, you probably don’t want to reward them with business. But I don’t believe people are “not going to buy” a product they’d otherwise highly value, because of something that annoys them.

I don’t believe someone would never buy because of a pop-up. Pop-ups can be annoying, but they work!

Some people told me they’d never buy from me because I considered banning all refunders (it’s 2 refunds now for the record). But you know what? Only serial refunders are concerned… because they know my rule only applies to them!

I recently saw a comment on another blog that said the person would “never buy” from someone who said the offer was only good until such and such a date. Because they “knew” it must be a date script.

(A date script constantly moves the date where the offer is “no longer valid” backwards, so the offer never really expires.)

First of all, that’s ridiculous. There are all kinds of reasons to have a legitimate date set where the offer expires. It’s not always a “date script.”

If it is a date script, that is a sign that you could be dealing with someone who’s dishonest. And then you might need to watch out.

But that’s not always the case either. Some date scripts can be honest and legit.

Either way, I’m not going to let an annoyance keep me from buying something valuable. An annoyance may cause me a few seconds of despair. But I probably worked a lot longer than a few seconds for the cash I’m going to spend…

…because the product is surely worth more than a few seconds of annoyance!

My rule? Stop complaining about the minor annoyance and get on with your day.

Want to leave a comment? How about sharing any minor annoyances that would not keep you from buying, or serious scenarios that would keep you from buying.

Cheers,

Stephen Dean, Copywriter

Offering Incredible Copywriting Services

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Popularity: 12% [?]

Yesterday I put forward the theory that maybe how many clicks your site gets in Google’s search rankings may play a factor in how well you rank.

Of course, getting a click is valuable outside of increased rankings. But since the topic has come up, let’s talk about how to get more clicks.

When your site shows up in search for your main search term, often you’ll see…

1) the Title of your site as the link,

and 2) either a description of your site using words near the beginning of your page, using words that surround the search term you’re using, OR a description that YOU wrote and put in to your meta tags.

That means the part of your listing that you have the most control over is the site title and the description in your meta tags.

Those will be the headline and subhead for your site. So while you’re likely going to need to put keywords in your title, be creative and think of it as a headline.

After all, that’s what people are looking at when they browse results. Make it count.

And the same with your meta tag description. If the title is designed to get attention, this should be designed to entice a click. Make it compelling. Maybe let them know you offer a free gift.

Consider that they’re looking for something relevant to their search… how can you let them know that your site has what they’re looking for?

To let Google find and list your site description, put < and > around the following block of text and add it to the HTML of your website (or the header.php of your blog) immediately after the tag.

meta name=description content=”This is where you write your compelling site description.”

And that’s it.

Now that we’ve gone over that. Can you think of a creative way to Split Test your site title and description to see what brings in the most clicks?

Cheers,

Stephen Dean, Copywriter

Offering Incredible Copywriting Services

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Popularity: 13% [?]

Something occurred to me the other day that really has me wondering. Could Google be tracking how many times your organic links are clicked? And factor that in to your search rank?

I haven’t heard anyone discuss this (although I know very little about search engine rank). But it’d make sense to me.

I started wondering about this while seeing how fast the order of search results were changing in the top 10 for the term “copywriting.” This blog has been lingering outside of the top 10 for several weeks now.

As a way to waste my time I tend to check my rank everyday. And then it finally happened…

I was listed #10! I’d like to say that made my day. Even that it made my night would be good. But really it only made my… few seconds.

…Because when I pressed next to see results 11-20, I was listed at #16. I tried the search again to see the top 10 results, and I was no longer there.

I’ve seen this phenomenon with other sites in the top 10 as well. Constantly bouncing back and forth from the 1st and 2nd pages of results. That made me think…

…Could it be?

I know that Google Adwords rewards you with higher placement based on your click-through-ratio. That makes sure that searchers are getting helpful results and they’ll continue to use Google.

Well… wouldn’t that be the same with organic search results? Wouldn’t a site in the top 10 that few people clicked on be less helpful than a site that received many click throughs? Wouldn’t it be better for Google to make the top 10 results as clickable as possible?

And if so, could they be multivariate testing their search results to see which combination of results get the most clicks (or are the most helpful)?

Maybe that’s why my site randomly broke in to the top 10. To give it a chance for a click and let Google track it’s click through rate. I have no idea if they’re doing this. But I’ll probably be clicking my link when I do a search from now on.

Of course there are many factors involved in getting in to the top 10. But maybe this is another.

Let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Stephen Dean, Copywriter

Offering Incredible Copywriting Services

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Popularity: 17% [?]

David Pritchard took me up on my interview offer and has now posted it to his blog. Check it out here:

http://davidpritchard.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/interview-with-a-copywriter/

Cheers,

Stephen Dean, Copywriter

Offering Incredible Copywriting Services

Recommended links for: Copywriting Services   Internet Advertising

Popularity: 15% [?]

Software can be pretty expensive. And there’s nothing worse than buying expensive software that frustrates the heck out of you.

I can become insane with anger when a word processing program or a WYSIWYG editor automatically “corrects” me because it thinks it’s smarter than me. Especially when I say “no,” change the ‘correction’ back the way it was, only to see the program switch it back again!

It’s like dealing with a bratty kid who continues to press buttons when you tell them not to… or even worse, when they repeat everything you say.

I’m a pretty level headed guy 99.9% of the time. But this stuff outrages me!

Solution for Microsoft Office:

So one day on my way out the door to go buy Microsoft office (which costs several hundred)… I stopped myself in my tracks. I thought to myself “maybe I should just check to see if there’s an open source word processor.”

So I did a quick search and found Open Office. This free open source software can open and work with Microsoft documents just fine. Their free programs can replace Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more. And it rarely frustrates me.

Solution For Creating Webpages:

WYSIWYG editors have been more difficult for me to find. I used to be happy with an older version of Dreamweaver but it stopped working on my computer. I downloaded a free trial of the newest Dreamweaver and it had me cursing at the screen.

So I tried out Microsoft’s ‘Sharepoint‘ editor and once again I was insane with anger.

There are quite a few free WYSIWYG editors but they all frustrate me (like NVU and Amaya). and the HTML code that all of these generators create are UGLY. It’s awful when working on a rewrite and I have to wade through mountains of ugly code to find what I want.

I haven’t found a solution for this. So I just decided to create my own. I don’t need elaborate functions, I just need to write a sales letter. I could use notepad, but adding all the >’s and <'s aren't fun.

Essentially what I've done is created a text based environment that allows me to type the sales letter without worrying about any code. And when I'm finished I hit submit and out pops a beautifully generated sales letter.

As soon as I'm finished with all the features, I'll release this as a 24 hour special.

Solutions For Fighting Viruses And Spyware

More software that can be expensive and annoying is anti-virus or anti-spyware programs. I once had my computer completely shut down by viruses and spyware. I thought it was a hardware problem and spent over $1000 trying to fix it.

In the end I was able to restore my computer using 3 free programs. Ad-Aware, Spybot, and HijackThis.

James Brausch recommends Deep Freeze to protect your computer from viruses, spyware and all kinds of other problems. (Correction, it’s not free.)

Those are my resources. If you have any of your own to share, please leave a comment.

Cheers,

Stephen Dean, Copywriter

Offering Incredible Copywriting Services

Recommended links for: Copywriting Services   Internet Advertising

Popularity: 20% [?]

When I first started writing copy I took pretty much any project presented to me. Some times I ended up writing for pretty scummy products that I regret doing so now.

(Although I doubt any of the products sold well. People who create scummy products are often lousy entrepreneurs.)

Many times I walked in to these lousy projects by not checking out the product beforehand. Bad idea. You should almost always ask to see the product before accepting a project.

Now that I’m more successful I can be a lot more choosy about the projects I take on. I can make sure the product isn’t junk. I charge more for products that will take a considerable amount of research. And if the project just doesn’t feel right, I can just say pass.

There are all kinds of things that can make a project feel “right” or “wrong.” Some of that is just by the word patterns the client uses in emails, or especially the questions they ask.

But there’s one thing I always look for. Do you have proof!

If the client doesn’t have proof that the product works, you’re in a tough spot.

They’re paying you a lot of money to make the product sell…

…but you don’t have one of the biggest tools you need to craft a winning sales letter: proof.

If the client doesn’t have any testimonials (or they’re all from friends). Or if the client doesn’t have a doctor, or a certified expert backing up the information. Or if the client doesn’t have demonstratable proof that the product works…

…selling that thing isn’t going to be easy.

And the cruel irony is… YOU, the copywriter look bad if the copy flops. They might even tell their friends that you “don’t have it” because your copy (with no proof) didn’t convert.

So often, it’s best to pass on projects that can’t prove their value. It’s going to be a TOUGH sell to make. The deck is stacked against you. And yet you still take the fall.

Cheers,

Stephen Dean, Copywriter

Offering Incredible Copywriting Services

Recommended links for: Copywriting Services   Internet Advertising

Popularity: 18% [?]