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8 Tips for Writing A Knock-Em Dead Headline
There are so many elements that play a very important part in every ad, sales letter, brochure or any piece of business communication that you write. And one of the most important elements is the headline. The headline of your piece will either...
Creating A Search Engine Copywriting Plan
by Karon Thackston © 2005 http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword Search engine copywriting has become an extremely important part of the overall search engine optimization process. However, in addition, search engine copywriting has developed...
Freelance Copywriting: How to Negotiate Rates
Lots of people who seek out my copywriting services are concerned about money. Rightfully so. I’m a small business owner too, and I know what it is to have that do-it-yourself mindset. (It’s exhausting!) But entrepreneurs like you and I often...
How Using A Drop Capital Increased My Ebook Sales By 40%
You will often find me with my head in a book, studying the marketing and copywriting experts from the past. It was whilst reading one such book, that I discovered how using a drop capital, can increase readership of advertising. The book was:...
The Mind's Fancy Dress Party - Or: Brainstorming With Contentclix Copywriters
In Berlin a restaurant opens for anorexics and in Buffalo a lawyer with a stutter wins a court case. When everything you're working on has gone STALE and your own initially promising concepts are starting to annoy you, you need a brainstorming...
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Is it worth paying for professional copywriting?
"Article writers wanted: I will pay $3.50 per article. Must be quality writing – no hobbyists!"
No, this isn't a joke. It's an actual job advert, posted on a website earlier this year. What’s more, there's nothing particularly unusual about this advert. It seems that more and more often these days, people expect writers to work for free – or as close to free as it's possible to get.
So what's the catch? Well, professional copywriters won't write for $3.50, which means that the only people who'll respond to an advert like this will be very people the employer says he doesn't want – hobbyists.
But what's wrong with that? Why not go with a hobbyist – a non-professional writer? What can a professional copywriter give you that an amateur can't?
Here's what:
1. Time
Let's think for a minute about how many $3.50 articles a writer would need to produce in order to make anything like a decent amount of money from it. Quite a few. Quite a few hundred, in fact. In order for it to be worth their while, then, the cheap article writer has to be churning them out at the rate of at least a few an hour. They're not going to spend a lot of time on each article: what would be the point? Even if each article takes them an hour, they're still earning less than minimum wage, so the article you receive isn't going to be carefully researched and written: it’s going to be churned out in as little time as possible.
2. Quality
You may think quality doesn't matter too much. If you're commissioning articles for a website, you may be tempted to think that quantity is all that matters: the more pages of content and keywords you have, the better your chances of being ranked in the search engines, after all.
Think about why you want a good ranking though? Presumably you want your site to be well-ranked in order to receive more
Evolving Culture: Where Do We Go From Here?
Humans are still evolving, but cultural evolution is far outpacing genetic evolution. Our environment and technology are changing so rapidly that genetic adaptations can't keep up. So we're adapting by learning new things and passing that knowledge onto the next generation.
Camp For Alzheimer's Patients Isn't About Memories
An unusual sleepover camp brings together about 20 people who have dementia for a weekend of music, dance, reminiscing and other activities that emphasize strengths instead of losses. While the campers typically won't remember details of the retreat, it lifts their mood, camp staffers say.
traffic and more sales. Your content, then, is there to lure in people, not search engines. And it's a fact that most people arriving at a website full of badly-written content will just hit that back button right away.
3. Credibility
There's no doubt that good quality writing lends credibility to your website or articles, while sloppy writing creates the impression that even you didn't think your project was worth investing in, so no-one else should either.
4. Skill and Experience
Some people think that anyone who knows how to string a sentence together can call themselves a writer. Not so. A professional copywriter doesn't just put words on the page: they know the right words to use to gain the reaction you're looking for from your audience. It takes years of experience to know what works and what doesn't in terms of website copy. Do you really think someone who's spent years acquiring those skills will give them away for $3.50?
Of course, it's up to you. If your main concern is adding content to your site for very little cost, go with the $3 article writers. But if you want to create a high quality website, with content which will pull in visitors and keep them coming back, it could be worth bringing in the professionals.
About the author:
Amber McNaught offers a professional but affordable copywriting service through her business, Hot Igloo Productions Ltd.
Amber McNaught offers a professional but affordable copywriting service through her business, Hot Igloo Productions Ltd.
Amber also runs WritingWorld.org - an online agency for freelance writers, editors and proofreaders.
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