Why hire a talented copywriter? Interview with Stephen Dean

Most internet marketers (including myself) are scared of spending sizeable amounts of money to hire professional copywriters.

The main reason is a well known vicious circle:

• No thoroughly thought strategy,
• No resources to do things properly,
• No money to hire talented individuals,
• Anarchic use of resources,
• Low quality output,
• No success,
• No money…

This is the risk that you are facing if you do your own copywriting without experience or if you hire a cheap copywriter. Talented copywriters have the ability to provoke the reader's emotion and trigger them into your desired action. With the help of a professional copywriter, you increase your chances to move into a virtuous circle and have a good return on your investment.

A few days ago, I had the chance to interview Stephen Dean, a young but talented copywriter and he shared his view point on this aspect of the copywriting business. Stephen  is a working out of his blog stephensblog.com. Some of his past clients include Ryan Deiss, Jim Edwards and other well known entrepreneurs.

Hi Stephen, and thanks for accepting to answer my questions today.

- When and how should an internet marketer get help from a professional copywriter?

If you're looking to create an income stream from a new product or service, it's smart to hire a copywriter. Obviously your budget will play a big part in your decision, but if you can afford to hire a copywriter it's the best investment you can make.

For my services, I help clients pick domain names, craft their offer (which often means giving input on the product itself), design their advertising campaigns and THEN write their copy.  That means I get to see behind the scenes of many successful campaigns.

When you apply that expertise to your campaign, the monetary value of each visitor to your site can skyrocket.  Meaning the longer you wait to hire a talented copywriter, the more money you're watching fall through the cracks.

So you should hire a copywriter as soon as you can.  How do you do so?  Ask other entrepreneurs for recommendations.  Or when you look for a copywriter, look for credibility.

Also, price is important.  If the copywriter is charging less than $2-3k for a sales letter, their skills are likely still developing.  I know from first hand experience because I started out writing sales letters for $97 a piece.  It was virtually manual labor at that point, which made sure my clients got value for their money.

The better I got, the more I charged.  If you're really good, there's simply no reason to charge less than a few grand.  So you have to understand that when hiring a copywriter for a few hundred dollars… it's not just a discount to be nice.

– Is this process accessible to a beginner in internet marketing?

It doesn't matter what stage of your business you're in.  It's smart for beginners to hire a copywriter too, but they should probably rely heavily on recommendations when choosing a copywriter.  That's because they don't have experience knowing what to look for.

It was very beneficial for my career to be endorsed my Ryan Deiss and Jim Edwards at two of their live seminars.  And now I've gotten projects through recommendations by legendary copywriter Michel Fortin.  So again, that's been very helpful.

- Can a professional copywriter help his clients build a strategy (for example, selecting products to sell, creating a fan club, becoming a guru, and help get higher selling prices for the same product or
service)

Absolutely.  Copywriters see a lot of product launches and advertising strategies from behind the scenes.  They see what works.  So we can provide a lot of helpful input and direction.

- Is it common practice for you to share some risks with your clients? (e.g.: the client pays a reduced fee and you get a bonus if the sales or conversion rates exceed a certain threshold)

There are some things I do to make sure the client gets good copy and that I get paid.  I do up to 3 free revisions if the copy bombs.  I also offer testing services where I make sure the conversion continually rises.

Because I understand hiring a copywriter is a big investment, I go out of my to make sure they got their money's worth.

- Should any new internet marketer learn copywriting and what are your recommendations to get started?

 Yes.  Most of the top guru's I know understand copywriting pretty well.
Many of them are former pro copywriters.  And that's because a lot of copywriting involves the psychology of selling… and what could be more important when trying to sell products or services?

But even so, virtually all of the guru's hire other people to write their copy.  Even if they could do it themselves.  That's because they know it's worth it.
Let me close on 2 hot subjects of the moment:

- What impact will videos have on copywriting? For example, do you think that they will replace sales letters?

I doubt I can predict the future, but I think 'replace' is too strong of a word.
I definitely think you'll continue to see more video sales letters.  But my guess is the majority will be a combination of both.  Different people want to consume information in different ways.

For example, I write the subheads in copy primarily for skimmers.  Those are people who don't want to read every word, so I spell out the offer in the subheads.  How do you skim a video?

So I imagine text will stay around for people who want to get details fast or just prefer reading.

- Traditionally, economic crisis wipe out the weakest businesses and leave a cleaner situation. Do you see an impact of the current recession on the internet business and on copywriting in particular?

 I've been paying attention to the economic woes lately and I'm of the (very
humble) opinion that it's going to get a lot worse.  But there are so many elements to consider that I'm not sure what will be affected and in what way.

For example, if the US market collapses, there's still another market in Europe and other places… and the Internet allows us to reach them.  Could those markets collapse with ours? Some people think so. I'm not an expert so I won't give my opinion on that.

You might see beginning copywriters drop out.  You might see the average copywriter lower their prices.  And you might see the top copywriters raise them.

For Internet businesses, you'd probably see less frivolous products being developed and an emphasis on more practical products… and probably a huge surge of "Internet Marketing" products aimed at the Average Joe who normally wouldn't be looking for such a thing.

But again, I'm no expert.  So we'll have to wait and see.

Thank you Stephen