This week I want to challenge you a bit.
All week I’ll be writing to anyone who’s been in the copy game for a bit (for themselves or for other companies), and has developed decent writing chops, but still finds themselves struggling to be comfortable selling products to other people – and making the money they know they could be making.
I want to attempt to shift the way you think about selling and money. (I promise the payoff if you follow along will be huge.)
And I want to start it off by telling you a quick story.
It’s about a close friend of mine (who’s cool with his story being told but prefers to remain anonymous) who was a copywriter for about 6 years.
I say was a copywriter because after about 4.5 years, he burned out. He’d had some very small successes with his copy but he’d never made any comfortable amount of money.
His best year, he made about $70k.
Most other years were a lot less than that.
Worse though, writing copy just sort of paralyzed him. He could sit down and start a sales letter, but pretty quickly he’d begin second-guessing every word, write in circles, toss out what he wrote, start over, and just repeat the process day after day.
No matter if he tried his hand at selling his own info products or wrote freelance for other businesses (he did both) it was like there was just a block on his brain’s ability to write copy and be comfortable selling stuff to other people.
So, like I said, eventually he burned out.
And it took another 1.5 years after that for him to realize he needed to eject from copy as a career entirely and start over with something new. The whole copywriting thing just wasn’t working.
Eventually he landed on software development and decided to give it a shot.
And his experience with software development ended up being the exact opposite of copy. It just made sense to his brain.
- Within 2.5 years of beginning that journey, he was making $150k/year.
-
Within 4 years it was $300k/year.
And he could’ve gone even higher, but there was just one problem: in order to make that money, he had to work for giant companies where it was 50% doing work, 50% going to pointless meetings. He also had to be on their schedule, there was always tons of pressure to hit intense deadlines, and generally that lifestyle just wasn’t compatible with him.
So he did something crazy.
Late last year, he left software development and his cushy tech salary…
And he came back to copywriting.
Specifically selling simple small info products. I know, I know… what!?
Now keep in mind that he didn’t study copy at all in the 6 years he was doing software development. In fact he didn’t write a word of copy the entire time.
Yet in the last six months since coming back to copy, he’s generated more than $400k. This is all in tiny info product businesses where he keeps a significant chunk or all of the profits – not massive companies with huge lists where he only gets a modest payout.
He’s on track for his copy to generate well over $1mm by the end of the year.
And from the sounds of it, a lot more after that.
He’s happier than he’s ever been, he sets his own hours, he’s living an even more comfortable life than he had as a high-paid software engineer, writing copy feels easy to him, and he feels in complete control of his destiny…
So what in the world changed?
How was he able to go from burnt out and uncomfortable selling products to other people – to completely comfortably and easily writing copy that’s on track to generate more than $1mm in his first year back?
I want you to think it over until tomorrow – because I’m going to give you the answer then.
And I can almost guarantee it’s not what you’re expecting to hear. But it’ll make complete sense when you hear it.
And, my hope is, it’ll make a light bulb go off over your head – and help you see why you may be struggling to write copy as easily as you’d like and make the money you want to make. In fact, my hope is that it’ll be a turning point for you.
This week’s emails are going to be a lot of fun.
Talk tomorrow!
— Derek