The Copywriter Underground

The emails come almost weekly. And while they take different routes, the copywriters sending them all pretty much end up in the same place:

“How do I build a career as a copywriter?”

The answer is not what they expect.

Your ability to build a lasting career as a copywriter will not be based on your knowledge of “The Ten Headlines That Always Get The Sale” or a Super-Secret, Can’t Miss Sales System or knowing by heart the “Five Reasons Twitter Will Change The Universe Forever” blog post.

In fact, no post, article or book will prepare you for what’s to come.

And while businesses would like you to believe otherwise, the success of your copywriting career doesn’t rest on your choice of smartphone, Twitter client, or high-bandwidth wireless connection.

So exactly what is the key to long-term survival?

Simple. It’s your ability to adapt.

Marketing – Now With the Great Taste of Chaos

I just hung up the phone after a lengthy client conversation – but only after agreeing to teach several more online marketing classes.

Teaching was never a career goal.

In fact, I never considered it prior to the last couple years. Yet here I am, teaching classes. A lot of them.

It’s something I couldn’t do if I was close-minded about my career.

But then, when I typed my first paying copy jobs on an electric typewriter (I wasn’t man enough to go manual), I never imagined I’d write ads for high-end racing helmets, sell $10 million semiconductor manufacturing systems, eventually derive most of my income from consulting, or be successful enough to live on a beautiful property located on the flank of an inactive volcano.

In short, you may think you’ve got it all planned.

But history suggests your long-term plan is more fiction than reality.

Guess what?

For the smart, aware and adaptable copywriters reading this, that’s a good thing.

Really.

Adapt, Adapt, Adapt

If you’re building a copywriting career today, you’re facing a fast-changing marketplace, fickle customer base – and a marketing universe which will look very, very different when you wake up five years from now.

In prehistoric times (as little as ten years ago), you could handily pay the grocery bills writing corporate capability brochures. If you sprinkled in a handful of B2B direct response packages, life was pretty good.

Annual report gigs were the frosting that funded retirement accounts and new cars.

Today, two of those markets are largely toast. The other is a shadow of of its former self.

And the copywriters who specialized in the above – and didn’t see the fast-moving bus that was the Internet – became roadkill. (Ask veteran copywriter Copywriting Maven Roberta Rosenberg what happened to a couple of her print-only copywriting friends – who never made the transition to online marketing.)

The World Is Spinning Faster

If a decade seems too long ago to feel relevant, simply consider online marketing’s recent history.

Only a few years ago, every business “needed” a Second Life presence. Then a MySpace presence.

At one time, email was hot. Then it wasn’t. Now, it’s hot again (proof common sense sometimes prevails).

And let’s not forget the latest “hot” channels: Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter’s cruising, though Facebook is experiencing the inevitable backlash against their ham-fisted handling of their users and partners.

It’s tempting to say the old media channels are fading, but they’ll likely be back, albeit in different forms.

They’ll fight for survival alongside the new marketing channels, which are springing to life almost hourly.

Simply put – even within the narrow confines of the online marketing universe – much has changed in just 12 months.

And don’t doubt for a second that more change is on the horizon.

Has your business changed with it?

All The Little Fingers, Typing

Here’s an unpleasant reality: There have never been more sets of fingers willing to type for hire.

And many of the emerging copy markets are – how do I put it tastefully – sorta low rent (the product of a [hopefully] transient lack of taste on the part of search engines, which are still in their infancy too).

And while we’re toting up the bad news, copywriting’s customer base has never been so reluctant to pay a living wage for words.

Which means today’s novice copywriter faces:

• A chaotic media landscape
• A search-engine derived emphasis of quantity over quality
• The accelerating obsolescence of existing media (which will soon include some of the current “hot” channels)
• Free-falling fee structures
• Intense competition
• Media channels which encourage “do-it-yourself” client marketing
• A guarantee of more of the same

What keeps a new copywriter fed and dry in a landscape like that?

Hint: It’s Not The Alphabet

Clearly, the basics of copywriting will never change; “what’s in it for me” will still be the first question asked by prospective buyers, and your ability to answer it will determine the health of your bank account.

Still, even the basics of marketing may be bending a little under the strain of the Internet.

After reading uber-thinker Nicholas Carr’s latest book (The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains), I’m fairly certain my current thinking is right; we’ll have the same sales conversations as before.

But we’ll have them in smaller chunks.

An illustration?

When I first wrote corporate web sites, the word count on the average page was far higher than today’s sites.

Then we went through a spell when “clean” design was hot (I cynically named the trend “corporate sterile”), and the pages hardly said anything at all.

Thankfully, that phase passed.

Today’s site is fast becoming a convergence point for an organization’s feeds and streams (“Feed and Stream” is likely the best unused social media magazine title ever).

Home pages can no longer be considered a site’s main landing page, and in fact, the readership of many business blogs far exceeds that of the rest of the site.

Those copywriters and marketers who can’t adapt to streams, or chunking, or insist on writing web sites the same old way because “they worked before and they’ll work now” (something I once embarrassingly said) – will see their business (especially the interesting stuff) wither away.

The Big Finish

It would be wonderful if I could boil down a foolproof survival tactic into three short bullet points.

That would be highly tweetable, but not very real.

Instead, I can offer you the following:

Challenge Your Assumptions

What’s true today could be tomorrow’s empty (and cashless) cliche. Conventional logic suggested Amazon.com was never going to turn a profit (neither was Facebook or Twitter).

Something changed, and those who recognized that change prospered as a result. I have my own ideas about the future of marketing as it concerns copywriters, but what are yours?

And more importantly, which of your assumptions (“the annual report will never go away“) are about to go down in flames?

Let me add one thought. Listening to everybody else – and accepting it as gospel – is simply a cheezy way to substitute their assumptions for theirs.

The Internet is full of parrots, con men and weak-minded fools, and like Carson Brackney said, it’s your job to avoid them.

Stay Aware Of Your Revenue Streams

This is manifestly not sexy, but it is critical. Small shifts in the kinds of projects you’re seeing – and in your own revenue sources – may herald a larger, long-term shift in your business.

Ideally, you’d stay ahead of those shifts, but that’s expecting a lot.

If clients start asking for the same kind of project, is that coincidence? Or a whole new (and largely untapped) revenue stream?

Make Things Happen

If there’s one constant on the Underground, it’s that I constantly flog my readers to go out and find the clients/work/projects they want to write.

It’s truly marvelous when the world comes to you, but you don’t have to be a statistics whiz to know your chances of achieving happiness are a lot higher when you decide what happiness looks like instead of the next guy to call.

Have a Sense of Wonder

Admittedly, this concept hasn’t found a home in too many MBA programs. But it’s absolutely essential if you’re going to survive.

It’s my final piece of advice to my online marketing boot camp students, and one of the few things that can sustain you over the course of a long career.

There are few certainties in copywriting, though we can make pretty safe assumptions about two of them.

First, you will deal with rejection. Perhaps a lot of it. New clients won’t like your pitch. Existing customers won’t like your first draft (or your second). Your mother will urge you to find a real job.

Get used to it.

Don’t take it personally. And recognize that hiding in a totally safe, rejection-free world is akin to living in a padded room because it’s safer.

It might be safe, but you’ll eventually go crazy.

And – oh yes – you should regularly marvel at the idea that somebody pays you to write for a living.

Second, we can safely assume the copywriting universe is going to change.

A lot.

You either lead the change, ride along with it, or get run over.

If you see emerging technologies as interesting, wondrous things (maintaining the kind of skepticism it takes to survive in a hype-driven field), then you’ll last a whole lot longer than if you embraced a dark, sinister worldview.

I started the Copywriter Underground simply to see if blogging really was an effective lead-generation strategy – something I’d have to know if I was going to recommend it to my clients.

Four years later, my business has morphed to the point this blog has become a pointless artifact.

The time I invest here largely reflects that. Yet this is where it truly gets interesting.

I could look at the Underground and suggest it’s been a colossal waste of time. Or marvel that I could reach so many people just by typing a few ideas into a text editor every now and then.

How could anyone not have a sense of wonder about that?

Keep writing (and adapting), Tom Chandler

In the world of mega ad agencies, new business pitches are intense affairs; jobs hang in the balance (and more importantly, egos).

For a freelancer or consultant, losing a new business pitch isn’t the same kind of catastrophe.

You’re never happy, but then, you probably don’t have hundreds (or thousands) of hours at risk (like a big ad agency might).

Just yesterday, I got the news about a small website project RFP I’d contested.

I lost.

The Project

As losses go, this doesn’t rank anywhere near my Top Five Most Painful New Biz Failures.

It was a small job, and I didn’t invest a lot of hours in the proposal.

And yes – I approve of the vendor the prospect eventually did choose. Nothing hurts worse than losing to the marketing equivalent of a charlatan, and local vendors almost always enjoy an advantage (this prospect was located at the extreme far end of the country).

Still, it was a project I wanted – an interesting project for an interesting client.

How do I profit from the loss?

Learn From Your Failures

Honest feedback from the prospect can only be useful in future pitches – provided you’re getting useful feedback instead of a simple brushoff.

If you’re on good terms with prospect – and receive any opening whatsoever – then it’s OK to ask a few questions, like:

• What aspects of the competition were the most critical?
• What did the winners do that led to the win?
• What aspects of your pitch were off the mark?

We learn more from our failures than our successes, and what you learn this time will lead to success the next time – provided you take the feedback to heart.

(Helpful hint: a common mistake when responding to an RFP involves misreading the RFP or project spec, and missing the mark as a result.)

Second, Position Yourself to Profit

Profit? You lost, right? How do you profit?

Simple.

Projects rarely go as planned. Should the winner’s project hit a brick wall – a reality I’ve benefited from several times in my career – you may find yourself on the receiving end of a phone call.

For that matter, the project might be gone, but other projects beckon.

Aside from the local angle, one reason I lost this simple website project because I focused too much on the bigger picture stuff – the overall online presence.

I stressed content flow, integration of a stronger email program with social media, re-purposing content across multiple media channels and other concepts.

But I didn’t offer enough detail about the site project itself (I did offer several recent examples of similar projects, but that wasn’t enough).

The opportunity here?

The winner is a small design firm. They’ll do a good job on the CMS. But once it’s done, they are too.

I’m keeping in touch with the client (I asked for permission to do so during our conversation). After the site’s launched and things have settled in, it’s time to remind the prospect – preferably by demonstrating success with another client – that his membership-based nonprofit needs a stronger email program.

And while we’re at it, let’s get the social media ball rolling.

In other words, I lost the website battle, but I can still win the larger marketing war.

Keep marketing, Tom Chandler.

Yahoo just purchased Associated Content – one of the leading article farms – for a cool $100 million.

For just a moment, I wondered how much of that payout is headed for the folks who actually populated the AC’s site with content.

And then I smiled.

Silly me. The answer, of course, is zilch.

As Nicholas Carr of Rough Type has pointed out, content creators have become the sharecroppers of the digital age, and those who create for the “greater good of the community” are likely to discover their community’s about to be sold for the “greater good of the owner.”

Obviously, benefits can accrue to those working in organized online communities.

Yet those benefits need to be balanced against the unhappy negatives.

Handing over control of content – which means investing time, money, and energy into someone else’s proprietary “community” – is only smart if you already have a plan to turn the largely intangible benefits of social media into tangible ones.

For example, do you “own” your 5,000 Facebook fans?

If Facebook killed your presence today, how many of those fans could you contact?

And if Facebook crumbled in the face of a sexier, less-predatory replacement, would you simply move on – leaving your massive time investment to crumble with it?

Could you reclaim your data (and your hard work)?

Open, My Ass

In what some are calling a new era of openness, it’s ironic that we’re seeing the resurrection of closed, proprietary platforms.

They’re very good at converting the work of the “community” into sky-high paydays for their owners.

Yet to do that, they aggregate the work product of many – often delivering only low-quality relationships in return.

Which is why I recommend implementing email programs before starting social media programs. (And integrating e-newsletters with blogs, and WordPress over Blogger, and open over closed…)

Are you converting social media “currency” into real dollars for your business?

Or are you simply chasing useless stats – feeding your ego, but not your bank account?

Are you turning followers into horrifyingly old-school email addresses? Fans into conversions?

Or are you simply sharecropping?

I’m behind. Way behind. I’ve been sick almost continuously the last month – the result of my adorable daughter bringing home every bug in the county. I’m recovering, but several iterations of the flu (and a cold, and a wave of power outages) clearly don’t respect a deadline.

In simple terms, I’m well and truly behind the 8-ball. Deadlines loom, and clients are waiting.

It’s an uncomfortable place for any freelance copywriter – especially given that my marketing consultant business continues to grow.

What’s a freelance copywriter to do when circumstances put you way, way behind the curve?

#1: Pare Down

This is the blatantly obvious – yet wholly painful – step where you stop investing energy in the things that can wait (the personal or vanity projects, speculative ventures, test sites, new technology, etc).

Instead, you focus on keeping your paying clients happy.

It sounds simple, but frankly, it’s not.

Because I’m trying to meet my clients’ needs, I’m in the embarrassing position of finishing my third project for my “marketing” company – yet my marketing Web site is only half completed.

And it will stay that way – at least until I catch up on my other commitments.

Painful? You bet.

Necessary? I think so.

#2: Stay In Touch With Your Clients!

I rarely sprinkle exclamation points in my copy, but made an exception for #2.

Sadly, I have to admit I’m not always great at keeping my clients in the loop when I’m struggling – usually the result of delusional, “I’ll pull a couple all-nighters and get caught up” thinking.

Or worse, I’ll embrace what I call embarrassing thinking like: “For several days – despite being sick and tired – I’ll be just as productive as I was when I wrote that entire ad campaign in two hours.”

Never mind your most productive day ever occurred over ten years ago, and you’ve not come close since.

As writers, we tend to remember the high points more readily than the daily slogs, and sometimes, fate doesn’t tap you on the shoulder and hand you a project after ten minutes work.

Sometimes you can pull all-nighters and catch up – your client none the wiser – but as I approach the half-century mark and now raise a little daughter, those all-nighters hurt a lot more.

And truthfully, are you really doing the best work you can for a client when you’re exhausted from working all night?

The moral? Tell your clients about your problem. See if you can’t buy a little more time (you do this by uncovering their real deadlines, or if there’s wriggle room left in the schedule).

If you don’t keep in touch, you run the risk of blindsiding your clients, which is where the real trouble begins – both now, and in the future.

#3: Don’t Make Things Worse

In the midst of my second brush with the flu, my Web host – which had been experiencing increasing problems with a server, but hadn’t addressed them – crashed spectacularly, losing several days worth of data for me and my clients.

When the dust settled (after a couple of long nights), I decided to switch to a new host. Immediately.

Good decision, but bad timing.

The move cost me several more all-nighters, a week’s worth of hassle, and yes – I got sicker in a hurry.

Simply put, I should have waited until I was better, and my deadlines weren’t so pressing.

If you’re sick, working on three hours sleep promises to make you sicker, creating a cascade which will put you even farther behind.

Don’t do it.

Other Strategies?

I outlined three critical strategies, but life’s never really simple enough to boil down to three bullet points. That’s why (absolutely free of charge) I’m including a few other useful strategies:

• Hire help (Find another writer who can help you out of the jungle.)
• Telescope existing projects (Find out which project bits must be finished now, and what can wait until later.)
• Look for productivity gains (Grinding along on a ten year-old laptop? Maybe it’s time to upgrade. Write long, detailed emails? Time to shorten them.)

Freelance long enough, and you’ll find yourself the victim of circumstance – whether through sickness, accident, natural disaster or other calamity.

Some things can’t be avoided, but your response to those moments is always in your hands.

What will it be?

Keep writing (despite disease, power outage, etc), Tom Chandler.

Social Media is the subject of a great deal of hype, though less-explored are its downsides.

These include employee oversharing, the need to “Feed the Monster” – and an increased risk of malware and spam attacks (the new social disease?).

From the Good Morning Silicon Valley site:

More businesses may be incorporating social networking into their internal and external communications, but that doesn’t mean the cranky guys back in the systems room are happy about it. A new report and survey of 500 companies by security outfit Sophos found a 70 percent increase last year in the number of firms reporting spam or malware attacks via social networks. Almost three quarters of the companies surveyed believed their employees’ behavior on social networking sites endangered security, and 61 percent named Facebook as their biggest worry among the social sites.

Obviously, every media channel has its pluses and minuses, and they need to be weighed against the potential benefits.

Outside of concerns about malware, I speak candidly with my consulting clients about the dangers of employee oversharing. Social media fanatics are often quick to call for transparency and unfettered employee access, but frankly, some folks shouldn’t be allowed near a Twitter client or a blog.

More than a decade ago, I gave a vendor direct access to my client. It was a tough project (an ad/show campaign), and to my horror, that vendor immediately got into a nasty email flame war with my key client contact.

By the time I found out, the damage was already done, and though I made amends, I (understandably) lost the client.

Oddly, I’d worked with that vendor for years, and their actions never suggested a tendency towards corporate suicide (with their clients or mine).

The moral here is that you can’t simply hand each everyone access to direct media channels like social media. The above exchange took place via email – but imagine if the flame war had taken shape on a Facebook page or even a blog – for all to see?

Too many social media projects begin on a seemingly ad hoc basis – lacking a plan or even a clear idea of the goals, means, and yes – potential pitfalls.

Keep your eyes open about the pitfalls, and you’re a lot less likely to have a bad, bad day.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

A couple weeks ago we experienced what the local paper termed “The Storm of a Lifetime” – which left six feet of snow on the ground, many of the trees on my wooded three-acre lot broken and toppled over, and the power out for the better part of a week.

That it happened while I was running headlong into several copywriting and consulting deadlines is likely proof of a vengeful god, and – like the snow-shattered trees in the yard – I’m still cleaning up the mess.

I’m also making big changes to my business model, and if it’s one lesson I’ve learned over the years, writing your own copy and consulting on your own marketing plan are much, much harder than doing it for others.

As several other bloggers have noted, the copywriting world is changing fast, and not always for the better. I’m simply recognizing those differences.

The new venture is the logical outgrowth of my focus on the value-added copywriter, and while I’d suggest I’m taking a bold new step, the reality is less hyperbolic; I’m hurrying the transition that’s been occurring for the last handful of years.

I’m a fly fishermen, and given water’s tendency to flow downhill, I’ve always known that you never foot in the same river twice.

Given the nature of our times, it’s equally true you never step out of bed into the same world you left when you crawled in.

Ignoring that reality is a prescription for something other than fulfillment, gratification and success.

We’ll resume normal function here soon – once the trees are off the roof (and the porch, and the driveway, and the…).

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

In an earlier (and popular) Underground post I profiled niche writer Tom Gaylord – the writer who turned his lifelong passion for target air guns into a fulltime career.

Two years later, Gaylord’s writing gig has mushroomed into several lucrative new areas, and it seems the time is ripe for an update.

Those who read the original post will recall Gaylord’s advice: write about a subject you love so much, you can’t wait to get out of bed and get to work.

Not only is it a prescription for job satisfaction, but it’s not a bad route to getting paid.

In the last two years, Gaylord’s turned his domination of the adult target airgun niche into several lucrative new projects – including a co-host spot on a TV show and several lucrative product development deals.

In fact, with his American Airgunner TV show recently signed for a second season, Gaylord is now in the enviable position of refusing even high-paying jobs.

His dance card’s just too full.

Write to Your Passion, But Get Paid For It

“I’m exactly where I want to be” said the plain-talking Gaylord at the start of the interview.

“I’ve reached my work limit, I don’t “audition” for any kind of work any more, I’m getting paid for my time, and I’m doing something I want to keep doing as long as my heart is beating.”

Can you top that?

If not, read on.

First, what’s Gaylord doing right?

He’s getting paid to:

• Write airgunning’s top blog
• Produce a 2x monthly podcast (he taught himself the technology)
• Write paid articles for several sites & magazines
• Co-host a new TV show
• He signed a pair of lucrative product development deals

How has he arrived at this place?

Simple.

He knows this stuff, and he loves writing about it.

If that’s not exactly the four-point formula for success you were hoping for, consider this: For several years, Gaylord has posted new blog articles five days a week (without fail).

And he does it for the fastest-growing retailer in the business (an excellent example of content marketing that you can reference in your own pitches).

Gaylord’s audience continues to grow, and and just so you know he’s hardly phoning it in, his blog posts regularly generate upwards of several hundred comments – an astonishing number given the tiny airgun market.

In addition to all the writing projects outlined in my prior article, the past year has seen him signing several paid product development deals – and moving from the online world into a TV host spot.

In other words, he’s still doing exactly what he wants.

And yes, he’s making more money at it then ever.

Television

While it’s common for successful bloggers to steer themselves into other channels, Gaylord wasn’t necessarily looking for the television show which has transformed his working life.

And while the TV show has been well received in its first season (the Sportsmen’s Channel just signed for a second season), Gaylord notes the ride hasn’t been wholly smooth.

“Between the travel and the workload, I discovered what my limits were. Now I have to make sure I don’t make myself sick again.”

Still, the TV exposure promises to raise Gaylord’s profile even higher among not just the airgunning world, but the larger sporting markets. In terms of building a personal brand, a TV show is not a bad route – and the affable Gaylord comes across as so likable and passionate, you can’t help but see a big future in video (whether broadcast or online).

Product Development

In what Gaylord calls “another lobe” of his work are his new product development deals.

He recently signed two deals which see him helping a pair of industry leaders fine-tune – and even revolutionize – their product lines.

While modesty – and a pair of NDAs – limit what Gaylord’s willing to reveal, it’s largely true to suggest Gaylord was at the foundation of one American airgun company’s recent introduction of three world-beating products.

They’re revolutionizing a market, and because nothing succeeds like success, Gaylord’s stock has risen to the point where several other manufacturers are willing to pay him to talk turkey.

I don’t care what market you play in; that’s an enviable position.

OK, So How Does He Do It?

Rather than repeat everything Gaylord said in my earlier profile, let me reprint a quote from the earlier article summarizing Gaylord’s approach, and then I’ll get down to the nitty gritty:

Still, it’s not hard to see what matters to him — the first words out of Gaylord’s mouth were: “Most important is to write about the things you love doing.”

Gaylord’s writing style is conversational, and not intimidating or pedantic.

“I see my role as more an educator than salesman” he said, and his straightforward style of writing reflects it. He’s been writing about airguns for almost two decades, and expects to “continue doing so until I drop.”

How does he generate so much copy for so many venues?

“You should write about the things you love so much that you can’t wait to write the next post or article.”

With that in mind, Gaylord’s approach to growing his online presence beyond the online world involves nothing particularly high tech or glamorous.

Instead, Gaylord makes it a point to know everything there is to know about his industry (see blockquote above), and then pitches his ideas to those in a position to make a difference.

When one company invited several airgun writers to a show & tell, Gaylord went armed with a specific product pitch, including marketing information he’d picked up at an industry breakfast a couple years prior.

Simply put, it worked. And it lead to one of his product development deals.

It’s a recurring tactic for Gaylord, who only founded his extremely popular (and paid) blog because he pitched the idea a top online retailer – a pitch that came complete with costs and revenue potential.

“Don’t Be Afraid to Fail.”

Diving headfirst into new areas is a recurring theme for Gaylord, who used to publish a printed airgun “newsletter” that ultimately failed when the Internet picked up steam.

“Sure, you sometimes make bad decision, but don’t be afraid to fail” he said.

“You need to fail to learn, and if you’re one of those people who has to ask three other people what they should do, you’re simply going to prolong the learning process.”

And while his stock is definitely on the rise, Gaylord’s not afraid to admit he made mistakes even in the midst of his most-successful year.

The TV show – which required frequent travel to New York (Gaylord lives in Texas) – was a new situation for him, and he didn’t strike a deal that served him particularly well.

That’s been rectified for the upcoming season, but Gaylord – in opposition to a lot of what you hear spouted on the Internet about writers giving away the farm – is very clear on the idea of giving too much away.

“You’ve got to be very careful not to give too much away,” Gaylord said.

“As a writer in a particular market, over time you develop an experience base that should make you valuable. There’s a tendency to give that knowledge away in order to get in the game.”

“Don’t do that.”

Where Are You Going?

While Tom Gaylord’s niche is small and unusual, the product and television deals have put him in a place so ideal, he can’t imagine anything better.

“At 62, I’m finally in the place I wish I was at when I was 40″ he said.

“I’m turning down work, I don’t audition for anything, and I’ll happily keep doing this work as long as my heart keeps beating.”

Keep writing (and pitching, and thinking, and failing…), Tom Chandler.

UPDATE: Gaylord’s year-end post displays the kind of specific, boots-on-the-ground thought leadership that allows him to charge for product development ideas. Worth a look.

With more copywriters business blogging for bucks (say that three times fast), and people now accessing streams of information more or less instantaneously, the dangers of the WordPress “Publish” button loom large.

Mis-type a word in a headline – or entirely blow your first paragraph out of the water with a half-assed edit – clicking Publish immediately places that post in your RSS feed , saving it for all to see and marvel at (for eternity).

It’s embarrassing when you do it on your own blog. But potentially expensive when you do it for a client.

The Feed Pauser plugin (WordPress only) helps solve this problem by delaying the Publish –> RSS cycle a user-specified amount of time.

In other words, set it for ten minutes, and you’ve got a whole ten minutes after publishing the post to correct any mistakes.

The post shows on the site, but isn’t placed into the RSS feed until your grace period is up.

Those headless posts you mistakenly send? Those half-finished drafts the world is never meant to see? Those headline typos?

Feed Pauser offers you a second chance to fix them, and like all great solutions, it does so simply and elegantly (no affiliation or financial interest on my end).

Regret is a powerful thing, especially when your own work is the source of it…

feed pauser, wordpress, wordpress plugin, blogging, paid blogger, business blogging, blogging for money

Lately, there’s been precious little writing going on here – an odd reality given that you’ll find the word “writer” in this blog’s title.

It’s not sloth.

It’s a slew of new Web projects. A little teaching. A rare fly fishing vacation/road trip. And the happy byproduct of taking my own advice (I know, it amuses me too).

That advice?

The Value-Added Copywriter, Meet the Online Marketing Map

Becoming an indispensable resource for your clients – the “value-added copywriter” concept I’ve plugged ad nauseum on the Underground – is a concept becoming more relevant to marketers, not less.

It’s where you apply knowledge and experience to your client’s problems, thereby transcending simple “word jockey” status.

My reality? Clients are happily paying me to craft their online presence instead of simply writing their copy.

In a purely economic sense, that’s a good thing.

The copywriting industry is not the rose garden it used to be – especially at the middle and low end – and after you’ve done something for a while (hint to social media gurus – a “while” is longer than two months), you might as well get paid for what you’ve learned along the way.

Tapping into a couple decades of marketing experience is how my recent teaching gig – which I expected to be a temporary, short-lived thing – became an ongoing concern. In fact, I just signed to do what amounts to a monthlong, fulltime classroom stint later this year.

I still write – and I’m not here to mourn the passing of my copywriting career. It’s alive and kicking. But it’s changing.

Is my online marketing presence changing along with it?

And more importantly to my gentle readers, is yours changing as your business does?

Now, The Inevitable Online Overhaul

I tell my online marketing students the basics of marketing remain in place, but that all the details are subject to change by the end of our class session.

They laugh, but only because they recognize the grain of truth buried there.

I’m simply recognizing the dynamic nature of our online world, and I mean it when I say marketing has changed more in the last ten years than in the prior 100.

Those that sit still too long risk becoming embarrassing dinosaurs.

That’s not to say you must embrace every new social media fad. Or abandon your current online presence after five minute’s thought. And in fact, if your current system involves sales letters and phone calls – and it’s working – then keep it.

Success trumps faddishness every time.

For example, this Copywriter Underground blog was first launched as an experiment; I didn’t feel right advising clients about blogs without really knowing how they worked.

The response was gratifying, and I quickly ended up on Google’s first page for “Copywriter” – a move which saved me a big chunk of change in Google ad fees.

Still, after 24 months, I realized the leads generated weren’t all that relevant to my changing business. So the Underground simply became a writer’s platform.

Regular readers will know I stopped relying on random leads, and began courting the clients I wanted to work for – often using personalized methods like my lumpy mailer.

The results haven’t been swift, but they have been gratifying.

Is this whole post a long-winded gloat? No (though yes, I’m perfectly capable of gloating).

How long has it been since you sat down and evaluated your online marketing presence? How long has it been since you’ve taken stock of your own marketing – and the media channels you’re using?

Are you working for the clients you want? Are you doing the kind of work you want do do?

The Online Marketing Map

When my small business students emerge from my Online Marketing Boot Camp, they do so with an online marketing map – a guide which directs their online marketing efforts.

It’s both aspirational and realistic; it’s used to define what marketing the business wants to happen (and how, and when), but also provides the kind of reality check needed in an era where already-stretched small business owner is told they need to foolishly commit to five blog posts a week.

Marketing is driven by business goals (not the latest technology), and yet an increasing number of small businesses are letting technology drive their marketing decisions, not their brains.

When the technology tail starts wagging the dog, trouble often follows.

In this case, my own online marketing map has fallen on hard times.

My bare-bones copywriting site hasn’t changed significantly for years. And it doesn’t reflect my new reality.

Time to follow my own advice. Time to craft a new Online Marketing Map.

What time is it for you?

Like you, I receive the emails every week. They spell out a golden “opportunity” which allows me to write for an emerging content site.

Inevitably, the arc of the communication is predictable; it always ends at a place where the site gets the content, and the writer gets screwed.

What’s remarkable is how many people tumble for this scam – where they work for free, so others can monetize their content.

Somebody’s Lost Their Marbles

This particular pitch came from a new sporting site called MarblePlay.com. Launching sometime this fall, the site’s feature list was impressive. The pitch aggressive. And the flattery apparent.

But there was no mention of compensation.

In today’s “content’s free, no matter what the cost to the creator” environment, that’s a bad sign.

I have little interest in building wealth for others, but yes, I wondered where this gig fell on the Ripoff Richter Scale.

The editor forwarded the “Contributor’s Agreement.”

I read it. And then gave it a 10.2. (In terms of its rapaciousness, it moved heaven and earth).

First, compensation ranged from zero to… nothing. So what does our lucky writer get? Why, the chance to self-promote himself.

What does the lucky MarblePlay.com network get in return?

Amazingly, this was a “work for hire” agreement – the magic phrase that means you transfer all rights to the work you contribute to the site.

Simply put, they’d own your words, and you’d own… nothing. (Helpful hint – always looks for the words “work for hire” in anything you sign, and recognize what they mean.)

Astonishingly, it gets worse.

You Won’t Compete… For Free?!

Because simply giving the work away wasn’t quite enough, MarblePlay ushered in the concepts of regular deadlines and (wait for it)… a non-compete clause.

Which means I couldn’t work (for free or otherwise) for any competing sites.

Over the course of my entire career, I’ve signed exactly three non-compete clauses – and all in return for a sizable payout.

For free? Limit your right to work elsewhere, and do it for free?! (Imagine writing a book’s worth of content for this site – and then realizing you can’t publish that book because you didn’t own the words.)

A dozen comparisons leap to mind (most include lubricants). In truth, this agreement is so abusive, I’m not even sure it’s legal – a court would have to find that the “opportunity” to self promote rose to the level of real consideration.

Regardless, MarblePlay isn’t the only network doing this.

And the target clearly isn’t professional writers as much as amateurs willing to be seduced by a few kind words (and the writer’s equivalent of a crust of bread).

Still, this kind of thing is on the rise, not the decline, which suggests somebody is falling for it.

It’s one thing to write for free because you want your words to be seen.

It’s quite another to give that work away – along with the right to publish where you want – all in the interest of fattening someone else’s bank account.

Moral of the story?

• Ask up front what’s in it for you.
• Don’t sign any “work for hire” agreements unless you’re being compensated (my copywriting clients typically gain full rights to my copy, but they pay for that right)
• If you sign a non-compete, you deserve to be compensated for your potential loss of income. Or just don’t sign.
• Don’t work for free, especially when someone else stands to benefit

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.