It’s easy to think that if you want to make a living as a writer online, all you have to do is write a few things and you’ll make money. It’s especially easy to think this when you see so many bloggers writing a few things online and making a fortune.
So if they can do it, anyone can do it. Right? Mistaken.
I’ll explain it to you by telling you the story of a well-known editor, who unfortunately is no longer with us, but left a legacy.
Have you ever heard of Eugene Schwartz?
He was a famous copywriter and one of the best that ever lived.
I have read a lot about how he worked.
He wrote ads for a living that made him millions. She could sit down and write a long sales letter in 4 hours or less, and that ad would generate millions of sales.
So how did he do it?
The answer is simple, but very few people do it, but if they did, your online writing business would be much more profitable.
This is what he did.
Eugene Schwartz always had just 3 words of advice for any successful copywriter:
- Prepared
- Prepared
- Prepared
If you’re working online, then you’re a copywriter whether you know it or not.
Copy writing is salesmanship in print. It is selling with written words. And if you want to have a profitable online writing business, or any online business, you MUST be able to sell with your written words.
Eugene Schwartz advocates preparation. By this he means “investigate a lot”. He says that he spends a whole day researching before writing a sales letter.
He says he researches the product he’s writing about and the person or company that produced it and looks at competing products to see what sets them apart.
He says that if he’s selling a book, he goes through it over and over again and highlights a lot of different paragraphs and writes a lot of notes. He sometimes he writes 40 pages of notes.
Then go through your notes and decide what is most relevant and what can help the product sell.
He then sits down and writes his sales page once he feels adequately prepared.
And this is what you should do too.
- Prepared
- Prepared
- Prepared
Know why you are doing something before you start.
If you are writing an article, what are you trying to say?
What are you asking the reader to do?
Make sure you are fully prepared before beginning any project.
Do a lot of research, take a lot of notes, and know what the desired outcome is.
And if you’ve never heard of Eugene Schwartz before, finding out more about him and his work can really help your business and help you be a better, more persuasive writer.