The Amazing Secret Behind Scoring All The Copywriting Jobs You Can Handle

Wednesday, 7:34pm
Reno, NV

Howdy…

If you listen closely, you can hear the wailing and cries of all those non-established freelance copywriters…

… who feel they’re quickly being made irrelevant by AI robots, which are now doing “most” copy jobs for free.

And some of that fear is completely justified. I mean, for the low-end “quickie” copy jobs out there, yes. Absolutely, AI can knock out emails, ads for social media, and even videos for certain products and services. In certain markets.

But that easy stuff has always been a dead-end for any serious copywriter.

Heck, I remember back when email marketing was new… and A-List master copywriters were slaving away at writing email copy, because no one had yet figured out the formulas and checklists that now work so well.

And then, when the formulas and checklists became public knowledge… the top copywriters stopped writing the simple emails. Because you could hire a rookie to do it for five bucks.

Even further back, I remember being asked to write up ads for the phone book. (Go ask your mother what a phone book was.) (Okay, fine, I’ll tell you, instead: The “phone company” — AT&T back then, a monopoly — published everyone’s landline phone number in every county or big city in a HUGE freaking book. And handed these phone books — which were often as thick as a brick — out free to every phone-owning customer. And to pay for these free phone books, they included a huge “Yellow Pages” section with ads, categorized by service. Plumbers in the P’s, lawyers under A for attorneys, ad agencies also in the A section, and so on.) (And somebody had to write the ads for these companies.) (The color of the pages in your phone book devoted to ads were actually yellow, by the way. The rest of the book’s pages were a light green.) (It was a much simpler time.)

Anyway, for ages some copywriters could make a decent living just calling themselves a copywriter specializing in Yellow Page ads.

But then marketing experts like Gary Halbert came along with shockingly excellent ideas on how to make your Yellow Page ad stand out and bring in more biz than the other ads in your section. And the whole “secret” of making these ads work was suddenly common knowledge among copywriters, and it was really easy to find a newbie writer with the basic knowledge to create an ad quickly… and much, much cheaper than the specialist copywriter used to charge.

The point being this: Regardless of the medium used (Yellow pages, newspapers, direct mail, the Web, Facebook, Tik Tok, etc)… in the early days (before the smarty-pants figured it all out), there were always “secrets” to making it work. And copywriters who were hip to theses secrets could charge lots of money to provide ads. Until that sad day when the secrets were revealed to everyone, and suddenly newbie writers were gobbling up all the jobs, charging cheap-as-shit wages.

It has ever been thus in civilization. In the Wild West early days of innovation, the money flows like wine for the experts. Then, things get smoothed out and the formulas and checklists arrive fully formed… and the easy days are gone forever.

AI has just done this to every current market on the planet.

Which means that writing the easy, low-end copy required for formulaic marketing no longer a viable career choice for rookie freelance copywriters.

Panic ensues. Predictions for the eternal death of ALL copywriting gigs are suddenly rampant. It’s all over for copywriters. We’re all just Walking Dead now, replaced by robots.

Of course, it isn’t true at all.

The reasons are endless: AI CANNOT be trusted not to hallucinate and jam out copy riddled with misinformation, made-up references, and utterly incorrect data. For the rest of your lifetime, a real human is gonna have to double-check critical AI-generated copy — to avoid lawsuits, confused prospects, angry customers, and all kinds of mayhem that comes from dingbat copy.

But yeah, all the top copywriters I know (which includes most of the A-List, by the way) use AI in some form or another — to blast out routine, low-end email… to do quick research on ideas… to brainstorm hooks and angles… to slam out first drafts of ads or scripts… and much more. AI has many uses as a working TOOL for professional writers.

Still, high-end copywriting remains much more than using simple formulas and checklists to poop out ads for any kind of serious campaign.

The final sale in any consequential (read: expensive) marketing effort will always require human-to-human interaction. A real, living, heart-pumping creature with a functional cerebral cortex and years of experience persuading people to part with the Big Bucks for the right deal.

The key will forever be this: Experience. The top copywriters who score the big gigs today know what they’re doing on levels that even the most life-like robot cannot even hallucinate about.

Because it’s human-to-human persuasion. A formula or checklist can get you 80% to the sale… but it can’t close the big deal. Not yet, and probably not ever… because the experience required to be that kind of high-end sales expert takes time to develop. Years of making mistakes, learning your lesson, applying your newfound knowledge or skill, and continuing the dance until, one day, you realize you’re a know-it-all and retirement is just around the corner.

Becoming a top copywriter today requires putting in the time to know more than all clients about marketing, salesmanship, persuasion, deal-making, and the psychology of every prospect in every market since the beginning of Time.

Thus, writers absolutely serious about learning the craft today need to pay attention. Back in the early 1980s, when I started my freelance copywriting career, I starved a bit earning my chops. Doing grunt work — the kind of low-end writing that, today, might equal overseeing what AI comes up with for emails and social media ads… and knowing enough to spot the egregious errors, the appalling hallucinations, and the obvious nonsense that would turn off prospects and ruin the sale. Understanding AI at an expert level, but also understanding salesmanship at the same high level — which, even as a rookie, will make you indispensable to any marketer who truly desires to crush his filthy competitors and amass ALL the wealth that comes with dominating a market niche.

The big damn secret to creating an actual, well-paying career as a copywriter… today… means making AI your bitch, while also understanding more about what it takes to arouse a prospect, and bring them drooling to the sales page ready to buy… than what even your clients understand.

This has been the path to being a high-paid copywriter since the very first copywriters arrived in the world.

And this knowledge — about the methods used to effectively sell, in the vehicles for delivering your message in use at this time, in ways that crush the competition and create raving fans that will feed your lust for moolah for a long, time — makes you worth a FORTUNE to any client alive who needs to sell to make their nut.

You can call it consulting. Or establishing the contours of the marketing battlefield, if you want to get fancy.

Regardless, you are the dude or dudette who arrives at your client’s office armed to the teeth with the tactics, tricks, secrets, skills and bloodthirsty drive to demolish the competition. While, at the same time, helping the client (or idiot biz owner, as my colleagues say) develop a bullet-proof marketing plan, find pipeline leaks where profits gush away (via everything from glitchy salespage links, to embezzling employees, to sabotage by competitors, or technology changes they’re not keeping up with, or criminally ignoring their house list, or pissing off the best customers) and on and on.

In short: The copywriters who survive and thrive in this brave new digital world…

… will be AI-savvy writers steeped in the copy secrets that actually work to bring home the bacon…

… while simultaneously providing consultation on how the competition, the market, the products, the deals and the absolute shitshow that employees, partners and vengeful ex-spouses provide every client with during this wonderful adventure called The Business World.

And that, Bunky, is the best god-damned advice you’re ever gonna get as a writer trying to make the gig work in this simulation.

Now go buy my books and courses, you slacker. Almost everything you need to get up to speed lies within them.

Stay frosty,

John