“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

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.

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.

In the past, I’ve detailed my tried-and-true Six Point Lumpy Mailer Plan designed to put you in touch with high-value contacts at the companies you want to write for.

This Freelance Switch post details a cold calling plan that eschews the lumpy mailer step, focusing instead on calling 300-500 prospects.

The article goes into a lot of detail (scripts, etc) that I didn’t. You might find Martha’s plan more to your liking than mine.

After I left my second agency job, I made a lot of cold calls, and yes – collected new clients. Success is in the details, and Martha does a good job of outlining the steps. (Build a client profile, write a script, follow up, etc.)

I prefer my system because it’s more selective and lumpy mailers are fun, but either method will find you on the phone with your target companies.

Cold calls? Lumpy mailer?

You decide. Just don’t decide to do nothing.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler

My wife and I both worked a very, very long work week. And when it lands hard on both of us at once, neither can pick up the slack.

It’s not true, but the last few days, I feel like I’ve eaten nothing but cereal.

Does it look like I’ve been sleeping here? (It feels like it.)

Still, the worst is over. Yet I’ve only got time for a short update.

In a prior post, I urged my readers to pursue their dream clients (and dream projects) instead of sitting and waiting for clients to choose them.

I even outlined a process, and employed it myself to win a meeting, where I pitched a sizable membership project. I left the meeting feeling pretty good.

And I’d love to report on my success (as in “I’m writing this from the French Riviera, where my English butler is doing the typing for me“) but in truth, the reality isn’t that rosy. Still, you get the bad with the good here on the Underground, and the project that seemed so promising is now on… hold.

Why?

After all, I invested several hours educating the marketing person.

Who just left the organization.

Damn.

But you know, stuff happens. And if you’re deterred by every setback, you should consider a different line of work (no crybabies on the Underground).

The good news?

The higher ups now know my name. They liked the original proposal. And because of the visibility gained, I’ve been given a shot at a different project (my proposal’s on several desks as we speak).

In fact, I’ve got three separate proposals circulating at two different organizations, and I’m talking to the industry leader about some very, very intriguing engagement marketing stuff (and yes, I’m getting sick of spreadsheets).

Best of all, each is the kind of project I want to do — the kind of work that fires my imagination.

Starting tomorrow, I’m spending a week in Maine, where I’ll have limited connectivity (they have web servers in Maine, but apparently they’re wood fired).

I’ll leave you with this thought. When you sit down at the keyboard in the morning, what kind of project would it excite you to write?

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

We started back here — the post where I suggested getting your foot in the door of high-value clients via a lumpy mailer.

Lumpy mailers have gotten a bad rap; some feel they’re misleading (a sheet of bubble wrap in credit card mailers is generating bad press), but in this case, we’re delivering something of value (even if it’s just fun), and I’ve never once heard a complaint.

In the age of badly written email and hair-trigger attention spans, a lumpy mailer is pure power.

This time I sent two high-value prospects a pair of chattering teeth (yes, it’s a communications theme, and yes — I have a box of the things sitting on a shelf).

Attached to the teeth was a card laying out the benefits of my proposed program.

One prospect immediately called for a meeting, and last Friday, we met.

I pitched an engagement/membership program, and at first, the client was skeptical. Then she grew very interested.

Frankly, you have to be prepared for this; unlike the clients who seek you out — presumably after identifying a need for your services — prospecting on your own means pitching people who don’t necessarily think they need your help.

In short, the prospect requires a little education, and you don’t have much time to do the educating.

In this case, the client liked what she heard. At the risk of bragging, I wasn’t that surprised.
Copywriters often fear they have little to offer (it’s the most common fear among newer copywriters).

They’re typically wrong about that, but in my case, I’m very comfortable pitching engagement marketing to marketing professionals. This client responded to that pitch.

How do I know?

For starters, our one-hour meeting ran 2.5 hours, and the walk back to the office (from the cafe) was repeatedly interrupted by stops (she wanted to go over more possibilities).

I didn’t walk away with a signed work order, but I’m now the proud owner of a prospect deeply interested in the kind of project I want to write — one who asked me for a detailed proposal.

How about you; have you picked a small handful of clients you want to work for and then pitched them?

If not, why not?

Let me help; take 60 seconds to sit down and hand-write a list of the four companies/organizations/causes you’d kill to work for.

There. You just started the process. I already laid out the next few steps. So what are you waiting for?

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.