Doug D'Anna here, and that's been my mantra since 1992.
Work once and get paid over and over again.
I've made millions in my
career because of it.
I mention this not to brag, but to get you thinking about getting paid royalties too.
Life is too short to work over and over to get paid once.
Follow what I have to say here and you'll get paid over and over like me!
In fact, I just cashed a royalty check for over $5,000 for something I wrote ten years ago for $15K. My total royalty take on this one piece is over six figures.
Cha-ching!
If you would like to work once and get paid over and over again, here's how you can do it
too!
Negotiate a royalty deal,
and
Put a ROYALTY agreement into your
contract.
Fact is, if you don't ask for royalties, you'll never get them.
If you don't have a contract that spells everything out, you may never get paid.
I learned that hard lesson years ago when I client tried to rip me off.
That when I swore that I would never let that happen again to
me and why I spent over $10,000 creating my contract.
I don't want to see any of my brother or sister freelancers working for peanuts anymore.
As a copywriter/creator you ALWAYS should get a piece of the action.
To do so you need A REAL CONTRACT that spells out how much you get paid, when you get paid, penalties for not paying you time, and the legal venue where all disputes are settled--your hometown.
And MINE spells you that I OWN THE COPY--not the client--and I licensed it to them.
You are going to love that.
That's how you get paid royalties because you own the copy and you license your work to them--just like a songwriter!
I can't tell you how good it feels to receive payouts like these over the years.
None of those payouts would have happened if I didn't negotiate a royalty deal and put it in writing.
And...
If you follow my lead, you can create a ROYALTY MOAT around your clients that keeps your clients your clients.
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
FOREVER--just for the royalty. 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 a“vitamin
booster” shots to all your ads, continuing to give them new life.
By doing so, 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.
How do you get your client to pay you a FEE and royalty?
YOUR GET YOURSELF AN GREAT CONTRACT!
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 with which all legal disputes are settled.
What's more, my contract even spelled out royalties in the event of my death--because I owned the copy and I 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 too.
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.
That's how you make sure you always get paid--with a real contract that spells out
everything!
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, had to come 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.
That's why 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 them, and MOST OF ALL
So that you don’t have to pay over $10,000
for legal advice as I have!
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 not only make sure I was paid but to also 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 I can get to the level that I enjoy today.
That’s why I have decided to give them away for just $79!
Why so little?
To give up-and-coming copywriters the opportunity to get the
kind of protection of their work that I enjoyed-at the lowest possible cost.
When you understand that your attorney will probably charge you $150 to $500 an hour to modify this contract for your purposes, you'll thank me 1000 times knowing you've given them a sample to work from.
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.
