Today, I’m going to do something unconventional…
I’ve promoted my book The Copywriter’s Guide to Getting Paid for a long time.
And usually when I promote it, I’ll highlight the good reviews…
Like the 5-star review that says, “I bought this guide and consumed it in one sitting. It was just what I needed to position an irresistible offer to pitch a big hitter in an industry I’ve never written for.”
Or another that says, “Roy’s book does exactly what the title tells you…it gives you actionable steps to getting paid as a copywriter. He gives you multiple options to getting your first client and the exact formula to do so. The best part? You can take the information from this book and turn around and start doing it within a weekend. Highly recommended.”
Or a comment on one of my Facebook ads that says, “ Love this book! Made a huge difference in my career and business… it helped me think about the markets I wanted to work in, what specific types of services I wanted to offer, and how to charge for my services, among other things.”
Normally I’d just gloat about all these good reviews. But not today…
Today, I want to talk about why people hate me…
Because, yes, I do get bad reviews from time to time. And, in fact, whenever you put anything out into the world, you better be ready for it.
Some people are just not a fit. Some are straight haters. And some focus on the wrong things entirely and so they can’t recognize your value.
So today I want to respond to a few points people have made in their bad reviews.
Not from a place of whining. But from a place of putting those bad reviews in context, so you can decide exactly how important they are to you. Both in judging my work. And in judging the work of others, and making sure you focus on the right things to get maximum value from it.
And yes, we’ll get to my promise in the title of this article — the truth about making a great living as a copywriter…
First: people hate me because I published an EDITED transcript!
Have you ever heard the saying, “can’t see the forest for the trees”?
This is, to me, one of the dumbest reasons you can give for a negative review. And yet on Amazon, the most consistent negative review I get are from people who bought the book and as soon as they realized it was formatted like an interview, they immediately disregarded the possibility it could contain any valuable information.
Was the book drafted by doing an interview and transcribing it? Absolutely!
In fact, here’s the process I followed…
— I created a detailed mind map of what I wanted to say in the book.
— I figured out the best questions an interviewer could ask me to get my experience and advice out.
— I worked with Dean Jackson’s team to interview me, and get it transcribed.
— I spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME editing that transcript to the point that I probably should have just edited out the interview formatting.
— And once it was thoroughly edited to make sure it featured all the valuable advice I could offer in the best possible way, then we put it into book format and published it.
By the time I was through that process, only the ROUGH DRAFT was truly an interview transcript.
This is by far the fastest, most efficient way to get your best content into book form. And, in fact, it’s also how I produced The Ultimate Selling Story, although I ditched the interview formatting there.
Formatting is NOT a reflection of the value you’ll get out of a book, or any other piece of content.
Formatting is formatting. The value of the content is the value of the content. They have absolutely NOTHING to do with each other.
IMAGINE THIS:
You connect with a long-lost relative. They’ve made a fortune, and they have an unconventional way they want to share it with you.
They’ve given you 100% permission to log into their bank account and set up transfers to go to your account — up to $50,000 per month! You just have to be the one to do it. They’ve even pre-approved this with their bank. All they need to do is give you the password, and you can log in and start receiving money into your accounts.
Does it matter what format you get that password in? Is the value any more or less if they write it with crayon on a piece of toilet paper… Versus having it embossed in gold on designer stationery?
Imagine the person who says, “NO! I won’t take your $50,000 per month because you only wrote the bank password in crayon on toilet paper!”
The person who gets the most out of life will be the person who focuses on where value truly lies — and not on superficial markers of value.
Next: people hate me because I don’t tell them about the process of getting paid…
I’ve gotten a couple negative reviews along these lines recently…
One complained that The Copywriter’s Guide to Getting Paid didn’t cover the basics of managing accounts receivables. (Never mind that the actual promise of the subhead is how to land awesome clients and make a great living.)
Another complaint was that I didn’t go deep into contracts or negotiation or what they called, “the nitty gritty of doing business.”
And perhaps this is a more founded complaint — from one perspective.
These are good and valuable skills to have as a copywriter.
Arguably, the contracts bit is the most valuable. And I covered it in a bonus interview I did for Jake Hoffberg’s FREE course for financial copywriters on “Becoming a Six-Figure Freelance Copywriter.”
But it’s also a very TACTICAL element to running a copywriting business.
You don’t make a great living because you understand contracts.
You also don’t make a great living because you know negotiation tactics.
And you certainly don’t make a great living because you understand how to manage accounts receivables.
Most of this you can learn from a “basics of running a freelance business” book, and yet NONE OF IT WILL GUARANTEE YOUR SUCCESS.
If you don’t know already — if you haven’t read The Architecture of A-List Copywriting Skills — I like to focus on PRINCIPLES and STRATEGIES.
This is what moves the needle.
The few foundational things you must know or believe to be successful.
The handful of important decisions you make early on that will shape your destiny.
The smallest number of critical steps you MUST take to put yourself on the right path toward success.
To be honest, I’m MISERABLE at accounts receivable. The best thing I ever did for my mindset was to hire an accountant to do my bookkeeping and taxes.
I learned about copywriting contracts, but I’ve never written one for clients. I’ve just worked to understand what they mean, and made sure I fully understand them and they are fair before signing.
I’m also mostly incapable of negotiation in the traditional sense — because I hacked it to the point that I don’t really negotiate.
When people LOVE me, it’s because I share this truth about making a great living as a copywriter…
Writing THE RIGHT KIND OF COPY for THE RIGHT KIND OF CLIENTS is what it takes to make a great living.
You really can’t get around this.
Yes, I cover this in more detail in The Copywriter’s Guide to Getting Paid — a thoroughly-edited interview transcript printed and bound like a book.
But here’s the fundamentals…
When you get good at the right kind of copy, you don’t have to negotiate much. Mostly, you have to know that it’s possible to get paid on performance. And then write copy that will perform. It’s easy to raise your fees in time — and I’ve often had clients offer to pay me more — once you develop your skills and reputation. But if you’re getting paid based on results every step of the way, your income will automatically go up commensurate with your success.
Then, you have to go to the right kind of clients. Those are the clients that value copywriters as perhaps the most important people in their companies. Clients who write contracts for copywriters in a fair way, because they recognize the long-term value of a good copywriter to their business. And clients who happily pay generously and on time, again because they value the relationship.
No amount of tactical understanding of the logistics of running a copywriting business will make it easy to earn a great living as a copywriter, if you don’t get this right.
And on the other hand, if you get these big things right, you may find you succeed in spite of failures on the more tactical aspects of running your business.
Because PRINCIPLES are far more powerful than TACTICS, every single time.
To be honest, I’d suck at writing a book about the tactical aspects of running a freelance business. I’d get 1-star reviews out the wazoo, because that’s not where I provide unique value.
But if you want to know what will really give you the breakthroughs to “getting paid” as a copywriter…
Well, here’s the link.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
