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?

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.

Sure, Harlan Ellison is an abrasive pain in the ass, but he’s repeatedly put his money where his sizable mouth is when it came to protecting the rights of writers and content creators.

In a time when the concept of “paying creators for content” is conspicuously absent from most Internet business plans, this video’s worth another visit:

Tell ‘em Harlan.

Next time you’re about give away your work, remember: Pay the Damned Writer.

This New York Time article (found via the Copywriter Maven) looks at the recession’s effect on the self-employed (and under-employed), and touches on an often-overlooked emotional side-effect (we’ll get to that later). First, the numbers:

Recession Takes a Toll on Freelance Livelihoods – NYTimes.com

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks the number of self-employed workers who say they are working “part time for economic reasons,” which means that they work fewer than 35 hours a week because they can’t line up more employment. In March 2008, 622,000 self-employed workers across the country put themselves in this category. A year later, the number had almost doubled, to nearly 1.1 million. “What you can see in this data spells real trouble for these people,” says Susan Houseman, a senior economist for the Upjohn Institute, a nonprofit research center.

OK, the numbers are terrible, but they only tell a piece of the story. There’s an emotional toll that doesn’t get a column in the unemployment statistics:

That trouble is about not paying bills. It’s also about the vertigo of falling out of the middle class. “We talk about it as middle-class poverty,” said Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of the Freelancers Union, which has 70,000 members in New York City. “Your frame of reference, when you think of yourself as middle class, doesn’t include being scared about making ends meet, realizing that welfare and food stamps are your only option. Psychologically, that shift is devastating.”

Interestingly, the researcher also noted the different responses between those who lost jobs and freelancers who lost clients – an observation which will resonate with many freelancers:

Venkatesh sees a difference in how freelancers talk about the recession compared with workers who have been laid off. “They’re more alone, and they can’t help but feel like they did something wrong because they’re losing relationships with individual clients,” he says. “They think of themselves as ministering to their clients, so they also feel guilty about no longer helping them.”

It’s natural to develop relationships with regular clients – especially if you’re working hard, getting good feedback, and functioning as part of the team.

It’s easy to forget it’s a business relationship.

And when the client stops calling, it’s just as easy to blame yourself.

Don’t do it.

Sure – take a hard look at your business with an eye to making yourself more relevant. Are you offering the right services in a fast-changing marketing landscape?

But never forget this is business – and even the best agencies lose accounts, often for reasons far outside their control.

Add free-falling, recessionary marketing budgets into the mix, and suddenly, a certain amount of client loss can only be expected.

Do what you can to contain the damage. Beef up your service offerings. But don’t personalize the loss. Things happen, and getting depressed about it simply limits your ability to dust yourself off and find a new client – or develop a new offering.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

freelancing, freelancer, writing, recession, losing clients

We’d like to definitively state that we applaud his initiative (if not his abs):

Yes - even in the crowdsourced, IP-is-dead era of instant communication, sex sells. (Though we're not sure if this will.)

MaleCopywriter.com features Lawson Clarke (a lot of Lawson Clarke), and we think it’s a bold move – or a desperate, pre-mid-life crisis cry for help.

Either way, it’s hilarious.

Found via Crindalyn (twitter), this Advertising Age article by Bob Garfield (it’s a link economy, eh) spells out the sordid details:

The website isn’t especially robust or razzle-dazzle, but it does embrace a number of genuinely inspired elements, including the URL itself — which is paradoxically generic and revealing at the same time — and a wildly stupid/funny welcome page. This consists of a paunchy and hairy Clarke himself, sprawled nude on a bearskin rug, à la Playgirl centerfold circa 1970, pursing his lips like Zoolander and fig-leafed by circa-1970 portable TV.

It, of course, is playing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” like a local TV station’s end-of-broadcast-day sign-off, circa 1970. The logo, which is really, really big, consists of girly silhouettes surrounding the words “Male Copywriter” in a go-go font, circa 1970.

Sure, creatives have long taken creative risks while hunting new clients and jobs, but forcing an exclamation point on this whole hairy, beefcake-y affair is Gaylord’s only half-joking contention that a lot of formerly well-paid copywriters could be hoisting shock sites over the next few years in pursuit of a new job:

This is maybe not the best time ever to be a copywriter. If you have a job, you will probably lose it within the next couple of years, 10 years max but very possibly before Labor Day. If you do not at present have a job, it’s time to take a long hard look at a new career in a sector of the economy not being ravaged by digital technology:

* diagnostic-imaging technician
* casual-dining assistant manager
* burglar

Please understand that when the president talks about “retraining,” he’s not talking about steel-mill workers (those guys have long since donned green scrubs and started processing MRI scans for $12.25 an hour). He’s talking about you. Act now or risk being a freelancer/barista for a long, long time.

Overstated? Probably. Wholly untrue? Not even close.

In the meantime, we salute Mr. Clarke, though we hasten to add there’s absolutely no reason for him to get up and see us out. We’ll find our own way.

Keep writing (fully clothed, thank you), Tom Chandler.

And rather than beat around the bush, let’s just call this list the “Eight Gratifying Moments in the Life of Any Freelance Copywriter or Consultant:”

• Reading a short, pithy, “The copy’s perfect” email from a client
• Shipping solid draft copy, and checking it off the list
• Getting a check
• Getting a check before it’s due
• Getting a big check
• Finding a signed work order – for a prestige project initiated by your lumpy mailer – nestled in your inbox
• Discovering the blog/email program you recommended is working exactly as you said it would
• Explaining modern Internet marketing to a class of entrepreneurs, and realizing they get it

I’ve experienced all the above in the last 1.5 weeks, and while I’m not threatening to burst into song (Tonight on the Underground: Copywriter Karaoke!), I’m reminded that even after 23+ years in this business, good stuff happens with gratifying regularity.

Keep writing & consulting, Tom Chandler.

Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. With every new design decision, critics cry foul. Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail. “Is this the right move?”

When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case.

Ouch.

It’s an interesting glimpse inside Google – and a good illustration of the difficulties faced by creatives in technology driven environments.

Freelance writers find themselves operating in similarly difficult environments; without fulltime access to managers or an in-house champion, credibility can be hard to grow.

During the dot-com boom years, inexperienced marketing managers often forced me to justify even the most basic marketing decisions.

In one instance, a novice marketing manager challenged me to “prove” (on the spot) a benefit-driven ad concept would outperform the pun-based headline he favored.

In another, a manager said copying the competition’s materials and message allowed us to “piggyback” our efforts atop their marketing budgets.

Oy.

In another, I suggested testing direct response offers. That night, the engineer/founder of the company stayed up late and – intrigued by the testing grid I’d sketched – crafted a program testing several dozen attributes, including slight variations in typeface, color and similarly unimportant factors.

The last scenario was more amusing than difficult (at the very least, the founder was engaged). The first two instances were more problematic, and in those situations, it’s easy to get frustrated.

Life grows complicated when the marketing process becomes a power struggle instead of quest for results, and you may ultimately decide those environments don’t work for you.

Still, sucking it up and attempting to educate the client remains the best path. At the very least, forwarding interesting articles, links and tidbits builds credibility.

And yes – at some point, a client should become comfortable with your decisions. If that day never comes, then consider – as Douglas Bowman did – simply moving on (or tacking a 30% “hassle factor” fee to your estimates).

As for Mr. Bowman, don’t work up any tears. He just began his new job as Twitter’s Creative Director.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

google, visual lead, creative process, freelance writer, douglas bowman

I recently finished teaching the last local session of my Online Marketing Boot Camp. Aimed directly at small businesses, it was a reminder there’s life outside the twitter/facebook/blog echo chamber occupied by most freelance marketers.

My students were little interested in spending an hour a day generating “content,” and the challenge was to chart a path through the online marketing thicket that was appropriate (and realistic) for my micro-entrepreneurs.

Because my students needed more than an overview of all the possibilities, we found ourselves constructing an Online Marketing Map – a document outlining each businesses’ online marketing activities and the channels they’d use.

It’s hardly revolutionary. But it is grounding, especially in an era where a marketer has literally hundreds of options.

More importantly, I’ve discovered small businesspeople market best when marketing becomes a process – same as accounting or ordering supplies.

Too often – especially when overworked entrepreneurs are involved – marketing is the last job to get done, and yes, that realization also comes from grim personal experience.

Outlines? Or Graphics?

People learn differently, and in fact, that’s the source of my biggest struggle as a teacher. I’m an experiential learner, which is to say I dive into things and learn them by doing.

It’s not always the most effective technique (sometimes reading the directions actually works), and worse, my first response to students who want simple, basic, step-by-step directions is to just tell them to dive in and do it. What could be easier?

Turns out, a lot of things.

A sample graphic marketing map.

These differences played out even across the Online Marketing Map. I’m all about outlines, largely because I’m a writer (so I’m used to the format), and perhaps indecisive (I can change them easily). You can also easily add detail to an outline (just indent), and I like detail.

Some students did a lot better with graphic representations, so I pondered that for a while before constructing one in OpenOffice’s Drawing module (which was damned easy).

It lacked a certain level of detail, but the students were happier (especially the artists), and who am I to argue with success?

I liked the Online Marketing Map idea because I’m involved in one of my periodic reviews of my own marketing, both professionally and on my fly fishing blog, which I’ve decided needs to pay its own way.

And it’s never a bad idea to break out of your rut, asking yourself questions like:

• Am I working smart?
• Am I wasting time in unproductive channels just because they’re hot?
• Am I capturing the full value of prospects I do draw to my site(s)?
• Am I converting all this effort into sales and revenue?
• What am I missing?
• Can I back up any of the above with data, or am I rationalizing?

These are all good questions for freelance writers, especially when the economy is tough, and the number of media choices multiplies daily.

In the case of my trying-to-become-a-sustainable-media-property fly fishing blog, the Online Marketing Map exercise proved particularly useful, especially since advertisers are bound to ask them too.

I’m not done yet, but I’m already making decisions. Is it time you built an Online Marketing Map?

While I don’t track my time with such precision (any more), I have adapted my last ad agency’s job tracking system to my freelance practice, and while I’ve tried other methods over the years, I keep coming back to this simple, elegant system.

At the start of every year, I simply print a simple gridded spreadsheet with job numbers (each line increments by 1), and when I begin a new project, I pick up the clipboard/binder near my desk and assign that job the next number on the list (along with a start date).

The simple job tracking grid: fast, easy, and offline.

It couldn’t be simpler.

The Benefits?

Suddenly, each job comes equipped with its own unique job number, so I can simply note that number on everything associated with that job (copy files, invoices, passthrough costs, travel expenses, etc).

And because my numbering system begins with the year (”I started this year’s sheet with “2009100″ – the next job assigned will be “2009101″), I can tell at a glance which jobs have been invoiced (because yes, I do forget), which are finished, and even if a suspended job needs a tickler sent to a client.

More importantly, you’ll have a paper index of all your jobs – one that’s easy to scan, so you can tell at a glance which jobs are lagging, and which of your jobs haven’t been invoiced (yes, I have forgotten to invoice jobs in the past).

Every freelance writer develops an internal process for handling the business – and I’m sure there’s a technology-enhanced method for handling this one (if I wrote a lot of editorial, I’d probably integrate this into one of the PC or online submission tracking systems).

Still, simple offers a quality all its own (namely, it’s sustainable over the long run), and it’s hard to argue with what works, no matter how low-tech.

Click here to download the basic job-tracking spreadsheet in Excel format (.xls). Modify it to fit your process, and let us know how it works.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

After all, my contribution to the freelance survival conversation (and I think freelancesurvivalist.com would be a stunning blog name) amounted to “get as close to the revenue stream as you can.”

Good idea, but vague. Better might be this: In a down economy, the freelancer’s worst enemy is a shrinking budget (his best friend is marketing staff layoffs, but we’re ignoring that grim reality for now).

So where are marketing budgets growing?

That depends on who’s doing the counting.

DMNews published data from an email software provider’s poll; it identified the top three areas marketers expect to raise spending in 2009:

• 72% E-mail marketing
• 44% Search marketing
• 35% Advertising

Content marketing site Junta42 says content marketing spending is accelerating as the economy worsens, while B2B Magazine says only 25% of B2B marketers plan to cut budgets.

That’s hard to reconcile with the Canadian Marketing Association’s contention that 44% of marketers will reduce their marketing spending, but then, most of these surveys aren’t exactly scientifically valid, it’s an apples & oranges comparison, and those Canadians are a pretty shifty lot to begin with.

Back to Basics

My experience during past downturns suggested marketing departments participate in “back to basics” movements, and our current mess is probably not an exception.

In a recession, Return on Investment (ROI) is king, and not surprisingly, accountable media are seeing gains (or at least not reductions). And who is the marketing ROI King? E-mail marketing, a fact which squares nicely with the bullet points above.

You might also expect to see lots of activity in high-ROI direct response media (the really glitzy lumpy mailers to 100,000-name lists are probably out), and as I pointed out above, “content marketing” also looks good, though I wonder if that isn’t mostly an extension of search marketing. (I divide the world into SEO content and engagement content, and where do the two meet?)

One bright spot is the emerging social media marketing, which despite its “experimental” status, is seeing lots of growth (and yes, I lost the link to the stats).

While social media remains a mystery to many organizations – and its effectiveness is often hard to quantify – spending in that area is still growing based simply on the potential for massive ROI, though again, it’s a spotty thing.

Marketers are often seduced by the low initial cost of social media, but when headcount is tight and people already overloaded, the ongoing care and feeding of social media projects becomes a problem (or perhaps an opportunity for the ambitious freelancer).

Where It’s Not Great

It’s probably not a great time to specialize in non-response oriented brand advertising, especially in high-priced media (like broadcast).

In addition, ad pages in consumer magazines are down a whopping 11%, and those numbers will only get worse as they’re updated, which means less print ad work for writers and art directors.

And it’s not surprising to hear that “luxury” projects (like Web site makeovers, corporate print brochures, etc) are toppling under the swinging budget scythe.

Of course, these are gross generalizations (every situation is unique), but then, why write a blog if you can’t make sweeping generalizations?

What To Do

I’m a big proponent of pitching work to the clients you want to work for, and in a recession this strong, that hasn’t really changed, though you better keep a couple points in mind:

• A strong value proposition is essential – people aren’t buying into experimental programs or those lacking the promise of real ROI
• A package deal often helps – cutbacks usually mean remaining staff are severely overworked, so projects have to be turnkey
• Be prepared for disappointment – people are hunkered down, and don’t take it personally

The psychology of what I’ll call “non-abundance” is an endlessly fascinating thing. Some remain optimistic and see opportunity everywhere while most hunker down, happy if they can protect what they’ve got.

A strong value proposition is no guarantee of anything in times like these, but it’s an excellent starting point for a freelancer.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.