Product Description

An essential guide for anyone who wants to earn money as a part- or full-time copywriter, Deign shows readers how to get started, find work, and adapt personal style to different types of work, such as advertising, direct mail, Internet, public relations, press, sales promotion and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #735179 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From the Author
Don't be fooled by the title: although this book is specifically aimed at those who want to make a living from copywriting, it is written to appeal to anyone in the business of writing, from budding advertising creatives to experienced PR practitioners. I have tried to cover as much about the topic as possible - to make this the only book you need buy if you are setting out to ply your trade as a copywriter. Writing is only one part of the equation; I've also included information on dealing with clients, colleagues, suppliers and other contacts, plus how to set up on your own and what your options are once you're established. This book came about because of the number of people in the past who have asked me for advice. I figured there must be many more out there wondering whether it would be possible to make a living from writing. It's worked for me - and with this book, hopefully it will work for you, too.

About the Author
Jason Deign has been a successful professional copywriter for over a decade and has worked with blue-chip companies both in Britain and internationally.

Excerpted from Making Money from Copywriting: An Insider Guide to Setting Up and Running Your Own Copywriting Business by Jason Deign. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Imagine a job where you earn good money for your creativity and your ideas. Where you create wealth from nothing, using just the power of your imagination and a flair for prose. Where you work the hours you want, anywhere you want. Where you choose whom you work for – and how much you get paid.

If this sounds like the kind of work only a musician or novelist could aspire to, think again. Many thousands of people enjoy just such as lifestyle - as freelance copywriters, the hired guns that create the commercial messages that make up much of the fabric of our everyday environment.
Every word in an advert, brochure, leaflet or mail shot has to be written by someone, somewhere. Many more are penned by people who work in publishing – not just for papers and magazines, but also on websites, company newsletters and elsewhere. They, in turn, often rely on information written by public relations agencies and departments.

And virtually every one of these words is paid for. Several thousand people in the UK earn a living from writing commercial material. Some do it in-house, as part of a marketing or communications department within a large company. Some work in advertising, direct mail, new media or public relations agencies. Some do it part-time as part of a wider role. And many ply their trade independently, working where, when, how and for whom they want.
The advertising copywriter’s trade can be traced back to ancient times, when public criers circulated through the streets calling attention to the sale of items such as slaves and cattle. Advertisements began to appear in the 17th Century, for products such as coffee (1652) and chocolate (1657). In the early 20th Century, ad agencies, which up till then had simply been brokers for space in newspapers, became involved in producing commercial messages, including copy and art work. Commercial television reached the UK in 1955; the first TV ad in the country was for Gibb’s SR toothpaste.
Breaking into this field is not as difficult as you might think. Few of those who specialise in copywriting have any formal training. Some, frankly, are not even particularly good. So if you have ever read an advert, brochure or mail shot and thought you could do better, the chances are you could be right – and you could earn good money into the bargain.
The commercial market for words is massive and it is expanding all the time as new types of media provide new channels for businesses to deliver brand- or sales-related messages. The massive increase in communications brought about by the world-wide web, for example, has on its own opened up a wealth of opportunities for writers by creating an environment where news has to be updated every few minutes and company information becomes out-of-date if it is not renewed every week or so.
This is a far cry from the origins of copywriting, within the advertising industry more than a century ago, when writers paired up with art directors to come up with catchy slogans for the first commercials. Before those days, ads and other promotional messages were usually penned by someone such as the business’s proprietor, and depending on the personality of the author tended to be full of brash, unsubstantiated claims or, at the other extreme, to read like dry public information notices. By ditching this ad-hoc approach and carrying out empirical studies on the kinds of messages the public would respond to, the first admen were able to transform the effectiveness of advertising and, it could be argued, help bring about the brand-dominated landscape we live in today.
In the process, much more emphasis was placed on the way words were used and certain rules of thumb, which I will come onto later on in this book, were developed to improve results. These rules have spread to other areas where the demand for promotional text has grown, such as in direct mail, public relations and the internet. Meanwhile, the news media – radio, TV and, particularly, press – have also for many decades been a major market for writers, albeit that the demand is for a different form of prose from the sales-oriented text produced by advertising copywriters. However, as I will point out later on in this book, producing journalistic copy relies on many of the same principles that govern other forms of copywriting. And in recent years, traditional media owners have increasingly branched out into new areas, such as contract publishing or even internal communications, which are less about hard-nosed investigative reporting and have more in common with manifestly commercial activities such as advertising or public relations.
A competent copywriter today might be expected – and should be able - to turn their hand to any of these areas, regardless of their background.