The freelance copywriting market is in a odd state. Fees to copywriters at the low end have never been less tenable, yet demand for copywriters is at an alltime high.
This snippet from the end of Anne Holland’s Chief Marketer article suggests what awaits copywriters who can prove their value, especially in revenue-generating fields (direct response being chief among them):
When it comes to the most valuable potential hire, several cited an old-school choice: a good copywriter. StomperNet’s Fallon hired one at a cost of $30,000 a month but said the ROI was obvious given the $12 million in sales the move helped generate. And Zacks.com’s Lohmeier said hiring a veteran, award-winning copywriter was essential for the company’s recent postcard e-mail/long landing page tests: “Copy is king.”
$30K a month sounds like a pretty good salary — until you move deeper into the sentence, and discover $12 million in revenues were the result.
What are you worth to a client? And what are you doing to make yourself worth more?
Long vs Short Copy
Not interested in money? The same article offers interesting (and contradictory) evidence about the long copy vs short copy debate. Their answer? The ever-present “it depends.” Worth a read.
Keep writing, Tom Chandler.
[tags]writing, copywriter, copy, freelance, freelancing, freelance writer[/tags]
Comments 15
Hi Tom,
I think the point about good copywriters is that they don’t just ‘write nice words’ – they really get to grips with what a business is about, what’s it’s trying to say, and where it wants to be. You could almost describe it as ’strategic copywriting’ in its best form.
But in a way, that’s nothing unique about copywriting. If you want to be a good graphic designer you need to have a similar view, both retro (where is this client coming from) and forward-looking (where does the client want to go). It’s just that the end product from a copywriter is words, and for a designer it’s graphics.
I’d argue that everyone who wants to be good at their job, from sales to marketing to HR to technical – need to add that element of horizontal perspective as well as being experts in their own field.
But yes, I take your point: it can sometimes be galling if you find out your impact on a business. Perhaps it’s better not to know…!
Regards
FG
Wow. I didn’t know about the salary until now, but I distinctly remember receiving those StomperNet marketing emails and thinking – damn, this is good copy and reading through every one of them. Even saved some in my “awesome copy” folder for reference.
Thanks for sharing.
Getting paid for value is an interesting issue. How do you translate that into money? I’ve been told by a client that I’m incredibly cost-effective, and that they’ve made more sales since I began writing marketing & promo materials for them, so I sense that I could raise my rates, but the question is by how much? $30K a month would never fly!
My intent is to suggest that good copywriters are in demand like never before — especially (as Ghost put it) those who deliver more than “nice words.”
He calls it a horizontal expertise, I label it the “value-added copywriter… you get the picture.
If a copywriter writes SEO articles that generate $300 for a company over the space of five years, then they should expect to get paid in peanuts.
If you can write something that generates $3,000,000 in six months, then you can expect a better paycheck.
It is a question of value, so if you’re working on nothing but low-value projects, pitch the client some high-value work.
Keep in mind, who was the company that was willing to pay $30,000 per month? Stompernet. These guys are rolling in cash. The average Internet entrepreneur isn’t. So to me, the whole idea of consistently getting jobs with monster sized fees is somewhat laughable.
Thanks for the mention Tom! As you probably know, in the classic print direct response package copy world, top freelancers can get $25k-50k per new package… plus an extra royalty of perhaps one cents per piece for the lifetime of the package. Some packages were mailed in quantities of millions for months on end or even years. In the offline world, some copywriters ask for a flat percent of sales or conversions. In effect you get a cut.
Anne: The fees demanded by top DR writers are well known to me.
I think a lot of newer writers view those as being out of their reach — when in fact they simply reflect the writer’s value to an organization.
One of my recurring themes on the Underground is that copywriters who want to get paid more need to bring more value to the client. The $30K a month salary was an example.
Thanks for stopping by!
I’ve just started my adventure into writing copy and this sure is exciting news. 30k starting will make my wife a happy women (30k a month a much happier woman.) I better start cracking the books. Thanks Tom for the inspiration.
Hullo, all.
I’m not a professional copywriter, but I respect the heck out of what you all do, as I value the punch of good writing as much as what it can do to a company’s bottom line (I’m the medical director of a small medical group, with a lifelong love of the written word).
My 2 cents: if you’re not already doing so (and forgive my ignorance if you already are), pitch a two-tiered compensation model. A base salary or fee for the project, or your hours, or whatever, targeting what you think the market will bear without your employer blanching. But have added a percentage of revenue – such that if the project does poorly, your employer isn’t out much more than the base, but if it does well, you get a share of the awesome inrolling dough. Even 3% of $12 million is $360,000.
And personally, since the vast majority of any project’s success derives from how it’s marketed, I think that the “cut” a copywriter should get should be theoretically a lot bigger than that. (Obviously, I’m not in the copywriting business.)
Marketing *yourselves* has got to be a priority: changing the perception of copywriters for businesses from 2nd cousins of wannabe Hollywood screenwriters, to integral, indispensable, professional *specialists*. And never stop pushing the distinction: you’re an investment, not an expense.
Wow. $30,000 a month? I could use that. Unfortunately, I don’t think the clients I have right now want to pay that much, but I’ll keep looking! :o
I promise you that Brad did not hire his copywriter simply because he was “rolling in cash”. And until Stompernet launched, the $12 mil was all speculation.
He’s paying because he understands the ROI.
It’s simple.
“Step right up, folks, to the Magic Copy Machine. Put in $1, get back $10!”
How many times would you do that?
As many times as they would let you, right?
There are not many Stompernets.
But there are plenty of clients who can, will, and should pay you enough fees to put $30,000 per month (or more) into your bank account.
For many writers, I think the thing holding them back is more mindset than anything else.
Interesting that the copywriter gets credit for the $12 million in rev. In my ad agency days everyone would be claiming they delivered the key component of the package (PR, media buy, creative, even the mail room guy).
Dave: Actually, I gave that copywriter the idea for the $12 million campaign.
One client sent me a brief for a project. Admittedly it was a complicated one that involved many research interviews, a report and a PR campaign. But buried deep in the brief, which doubled as the project’s specification within the client, was the extraordinary fact that they expected the campaign to generate at least $10m worth of revenue. I don’t think there’s any way i could get a royalty on this but the figure certainly helped justify a reasonable fee for the work. It is, however, the only time I have seen a client calculate or share their expected ROI on a marketing campaign.
Matthew: Most corporate programs are backed by some kind of business case document, but it’s rare I get to see them.
At one point I thought of taking the Brazen Approach and adding “Expected Project Revenue” to my Creative Brief.
I never did, but I wonder if they’d fill in the blank just because it was there…
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