As you know, the big money in copywriting is made selling investment newsletters and financial advisories. Publishers will pay top talent fees from $10,000 to
$25,000, not to mention royalties that could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
Despite what you may read on other Web sites, breaking into this field is not easy. Yet it's not as hard you may think. You can get into this field with a little preparation and confidence.
When I say preparation, I mean it. Especially if you
don't have any written sales samples or results in this field.
Here's what you must do before you contact a soul.
1. Bone up on investing and investors. If you plan to sell investment advice, you must know something not only about the many facets of investing but also about how investors think.
2. Get a feel for the stock market. As I write this, the market is rebounding from a number of wild swings as inflation and gas prices surge.
You
must know what these actions mean to investors and to stocks.
3. Think like a stock analyst. Most investment advisory promotions are driven by stock recommendations. As a result, you must be able to understand how investors are feeling in relationship to the market and then connect the dots to a stock and then to the publication.
You'll need to know what a contrarian is...the difference between dividend and growth stocks...if tech stocks are good buys now...the difference between oil drillers and integrated oil companies.
You'll also need to know why copper prices are spiking...how ethanol production is affecting corn prices...why natural gas prices are at all-time lows and how you can profit from this...and much more.
This is really just the beginning of what you should know.
But the payoff can be quite huge when you break into this business. The checks can be mind-boggling. It all begins by
gaining knowledge of the subject and of how investment cycles work.
My Big Break
If you heard my
interview with Clayton Makepeace, then you know I caught a huge break in 1992 with an assignment with Phillips Investment Resources. My first package was for The Retirement Letter. It was called "The Great
Retirement Betrayal."
When it finally fatigued, the company had mailed more than 20 million pieces and I had received--hold on to your hat--more than $250,000 in royalties.
What I failed to mention in that interview is that I would have never been able to write that piece if I didn't spend a year working as contract writer at the Ruff Times, the
largest investment newsletter of the 1980s.
It was there I learned about the stock market and investors and began honing my writing skills. Of course, nothing I created
there had the impact that my first piece for Phillips did. Yet it was this training ground that helped me to gain the insights and understanding that I credit for much of my success today.
So in order to break into the financial copywriting niche, you must add this critical knowledge to your background before you write one word.
In many ways, it's like training for a sport. Not only do you need to practice before you can play, you really need to know the game. How to Get Up to Speed on the Financial Markets
First and foremost, you're going to need to read the financial sections of
the newspapers and watch the TV shows. The reason is simple.
You need to read what investors read and know what they know. That way you can tap into their feelings and
emotions.
(By the way, if you're not interested in writing for the financial markets, this is good advice for whatever niche you specialize in.)
Once you
begin to get a feeling for the financial markets and investors, you'll read through other direct mail and email packages with a whole new eye. You'll see how they tap into not only the mass knowledge of investors but
also the individual feelings that investors have.
A great way to learn this business is to study other people's work. Creating a swipe file is great way to do this. Just be
sure you're grabbing the right pieces.
If you're looking for winning ideas, you'd better be looking at winners. As you've undoubtedly discovered, some really great pieces you've read may not be controls at all.
So you want to make sure you know what's working and what isn't. The reason is simple: so you know which ideas and themes are working in the marketplace and which ones aren't so you can avoid them!
Because I've seen more split-run copywriting tests that most copywriters, I've been able to avoid what doesn't work while many of my competitors work their fannies off developing ideas that will ultimately go nowhere. So you better believe there's promotional gold in knowing what doesn't work and what does. The key, of course, is to know the difference.
How to tell? Easy. If you've received it more than one time more than likely it's a winner. If you receive a different piece from the same source, chances are it's not. Once you've separated the wheat from the chaff, your real education begins.
How to Study a
Financial Promotion
You'll notice I said "study" and not swipe. You can't simply swipe your way to success in this business. The A-level clients I work with have more than
20 years of experience in this business.
They have seen all the promotions, since they are renting their lists to other companies. So what you must bring to the table is something
original and unique.
How to do this?
By studying other people's promotions. I mean studying. When I started out I would not only count paragraphs between arguments, but also look deep into the arguments.
That's where the gold is. If you can hit your prospect with the right idea at the right time with the right reasons why, the result can be the equivalent of owning a broken slot machine.
All this circles back to knowing the market, the product, and your end customer. Once you gain this knowledge, you're going to need to write some sample promotions and then sell
yourself. I'll go over all that in the next few weeks.
Until then, the market is calling...
All good wishes,
Doug
P.S. If you are serious about writing financial copy, you'll find 10 of my best promotions in my $100 Million Copywriting Formula Swipe File. These are the same ones I use to teach my copywriting students my time-proven formula--including The Great Retirement Betrayal.
Your copy comes with full credit towards my one-on-one coaching program -so it's almost like getting these swipes for FREE.
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.
