If you want to keep your clients your clients, I would encourage you to build a royalty moat around them.
What exactly is a royalty moat?
It’s a lot like a REAL MOAT that surrounds a castle. But instead of keeping enemy attackers away, it not only keeps competitors away but it also can make you rich.
Here’s how it works.
You negotiate a FEE and a royalty arrangement for everything your copy sells.
The FEE pays you to write the ad or email.
The royalty is for updating the ads almost FOREVER.
I did not say write new ads, just update the old ones.
I’m talking about new headlines, subheadlines, leads, etc.
By doing so, you will be giving “vitamin booster” shots to all your ads, emails, and landing pages continuing to give them NEW life.
As a result, your client won’t be inclined to hire another copywriter to test against your copy because you will always be providing a never-ending series of ideas to keep your promotions fresh.
In other words, instead of your client having to pay your competitors a $25,000 fee to write a promo to test against yours, you will provide unlimited tests FREE--all part of your royalty arrangement.
This is how I averaged $35,000 a month over 20 years. All by simply building a royalty moat around my clients.
Here was the best part:
There wasn’t much extra work to this at all. Sometimes a new test consisted of writing a new subject line or headline or switching out one stock pick for another.
Frankly, it was not much work at all. Yet, because of this arrangement, I made a ton of money and pissed off a lot of other copywriters.
Of course, I would not rewrite the ads or emails forever--only for as long as the client was using it as their control.
So when the email promotion finally petered out, the client would ultimately pay me a NEW FEE and royalty and the whole process would start again.
How do you get your client to pay you a FEE and royalty?
You have to make sure you put that in your contract as I did!
One that spells out:
When you get paid,
How much you get paid,
The percentage of royalties you get paid, plus
Penalties for nonpayment along with the state and county in which all legal disputes are settled.
My contract even spelled out royalties in the event of my death--because I owned the copy and licensed it to them.
That is how you really make money as a copywriter–by owning the copy, just like a songwriter does.
And just like a songwriting contract, my contract even included responsibilities for the client to keep records and gave me the right to audit their records.
It also included a provision to keep them from hiring another copywriter to “knock off” my work. It happened once before, and I swore it would never happen again.
So that was in my contract too, along with indemnifying me against any claim against the client because of anything I had written.
From 2002 to 2015, I spent over $10,000 with attorneys honing my contract. And there were only two times I had to enforce payment provisions.
Neither of which, thankfully, came to any legal action. The contract simply reminded them of what they had agreed to.
This is why I continue to receive royalty payments from a number of clients for work I created over a decade ago. All thanks to my royalty moat contract.
Over the years, a number of copywriters reached out to me to get a copy of my contract. I always resisted because I did not want them to use it to build a royalty moat around a client I wanted.
But now that I’m retired, I have decided to offer a SAMPLE COPY of my contract to my followers for three reasons:
So you don’t have to start from scratch as I did,
So you can work with your attorney to craft a contract that works for you, and most of all…
So you don’t have to pay over $10,000 for legal advice as I did!
If you would like to obtain a copy, I will sell you one ONLY with the understanding that this is a SAMPLE for your informational purposes ONLY. Specifically for you to give to your attorney to use as a basis for creating a contract for you.
Here’s the deal.
As I mentioned, it cost me over $10,000 to create a contract to make sure I was paid and indemnify me from an unforeseen lawsuit. A few colleagues have offered me as much as $1,000 for a copy.
But that would go against my goal of helping as many copywriters as possible get to the level I enjoy today.
That’s why I have decided to give them away for just $79!
When you understand that your attorney will probably charge you $150 to $500 an hour, you’ll be able to save far more than an hour's work by giving them my sample to work with.
So, is it a deal? I hope so.
Because building a royalty moat around my clients was one of the most profitable business decisions I ever made. I'm hoping it will be for you too.
As a seasoned direct response copywriter, Doug has created hundreds of profitable direct mail packages, emails, and video sales letters for the world's largest specialized information publishers—generating over $100 million in direct sales.
