Hi.

Welcome to the Copywriting.com Community Forum!

Use this thread to tell us a bit about who you are, where you are
from, why you joined this forum and what you do (yes, posting
your website here is ok as long as it's not just a shameless plug).

All the best!
Miguel Alvarez
Copywriting.com

Hey Miguel,

Grats on the site. It looks great as they always do Due to exploding hardware I have no photo, nor
a shameless plug.. yet. I did check out what you've put up though. I'm loving all the straight-forwardness
of your newest projects including not having to confirm details over and over hehe. Breath of fresh air.

RSS feed, check.
Forum membership, check.
Newsletter subscription, check.

Looking forward to joining in the copywriting convo's and learning a lot from one of your sites again. Roll on RMA. I'll be upping a photo as soon as I return.

Cheers,
Mo Wisniewski

Hi Miguel,

Here Jennifer from Germany, living in Monterrey (Mexico) and on the road to learning as much as I can on copywriting.

Maybe I still stand a chance in the IM world!!

Later I will send you a link to my site, but not today.

Jennifer

My name is Jerome Chapman from Corpus Christi, Texas.

I have an awesome wife (Monica) 3 kids (Justin, Hailey,
and Aubrey) ages 11 8 and 5.

I've been a full-time Internet Marketer for almost 10 years.

I'm also a realestate investor.

Anyway, enough about me....

Miguel awesome job on this site and forum you've put together.
I see lots of good things to come from this and glad to be able
to share ideas with every one.


Thanks,

Jerome Chapman
http://www.FreeGoogleAdsSystem.com


.

Hey Miguel,

The site looks great.

I don't spend too much time in forums but obviously I'll be around for this one

My name is Chris Elliott and I'm a copywriter that's been working fulltime online for 10 years now.

I have a wonderful wife named Wendy and 2 awesome little girls. Kelsey, my oldest is 12 and Madison is my youngest and is 1 and a half.

I live waterfront in Corpus Christi, Texas and have been here for about a year since moving from Anchorage, Alaska.

Look forward to taking part in the forum and helping people out where I can.

Chris Elliott
http://www.ChrisElliottCopywriting.com

Hi Miguel and friends,
Just found your website on Google and thought I would briefly introduce myself.

First I would like to say... Nice website you have here. The domain name must
have cost you a small fortune.

I live in a nice, quiet suburb North East of Houston Texas.

I just turned 47.

I have a wife, four great kids, and a one year old grandson.

I am currently very busy writing copy for clients, but I will be happy to do critiques
and hope that I can be beneficial to this community.

At this time, I have a website that has some awesome audio interviews with some
big players in the copywriting industry. Some of the names, you might recognize
(Clayton Makepeace and Michel Fortin are just two of them).

Probably have around 15 interviews in all (so far), but more are on the way.

I invite and encourage everyone here to go to my site and sign up to my membership.
Sorry if this sound like a plug or blatant spam, but I'm not selling a thing on this website...

It's all free.

Miquel, I will do what I can to get the word out concerning this new forum and will encourage
my members to check out your article section as well.

Thank you for putting together this new community... I wish you well!

Greetings,
I'm Raj Dash. I've wanted to be a copywriter for decades - mostly in travel. So I'm enjoying the site/ blog here and will be taking the AWAI course shortly. I don't know how much I have to contribute just yet, despite being a published writer and book co-author. I have published a local print mag, but those were the days when my writing was horrible. I've not preserved the print mag for the web. Too much work, not enough time, and I don't know how to get hold of the contributors.

Anway, looking forward to interacting here, with other members.

Hey everyone, my name's Jesse Lear and I'm a college marketing student from Ohio.

I've set a goal to reach 6 figures in annual, residual income before my 23rd birthday (January 2010). Online ventures are my main vehicle, so developing skills in copywriting is relatively essential.

My first copywriting piece was a page I wrote for my dad when he started his business. I had never written copy before, but thinking it would be mindlessly easy, I told him I could do it. It didn't take me long to realize that it's not as easy as it looks!

I've now written 3 pages and I'm pretty serious about getting good at this. Interacting with you guys in this forum will help, I'm sure!

Cheers,

Jesse
http://www.jesselear.com

Hiya Groupies. Another newbie here.

Whew Buddy! Everyone sounds so nice and um, eloquent.
I read all the introductions and would hire some of you too,
just from what I have read in this forum. LOL.

I have not as yet put any web sites in my profile as I have
several and all the copy is bad. I know, as I wrote it all.
Since I do get hired to write copy, I am quite capable of doing
it for someone else. It's an embarassing and lame excuse.

I don't make the kind of mistakes at the web sites I build or
write for when doing it for others. I always put my best foot
forward and do quite well. I just cannot seem to do it for
moi.

I will put some of the web sites in the appropriate place and
ask for suggestions though sometime later on today or possibly
tomorrow. One of those is loaded with info about me so I will
wait and let you all form your own OH-pinions.

I hope I can manage to help a few here and take away a lot
of good advice as well. Uh, wrong choice of words there.
I meant to say LEARN a lot, not "take away" as in steal...

See what I mean?

Have a great and blessed day

Verb

Hallo everyone,

Name's Joshua.

Also the webmaster for MyWritersGuild.com and always interested to work with fellow copywriters, internet marketers and seo specialists.

I like the design and ease-of-use of this site. Congratulations and may it grow successfully.

Sincerely
Joshua

Hi Everyone,

I discovered this forum by design I'm sure... because I need to learn copywriting as quickly as I can. I only got seriously interested in doing this for a living just a few months ago. It should make a very viable late-life career (that's my dream).

I know there are some fabulous minds in this community, just from reading a few posts, and I feel fortunate to be in such good company. I will do my best to help the newbies and simultaneously learn from the pros.

I live and work from my home in Florida and my goal is to be good enough at copywriting to support myself before the end of a year. Lofty, yes, but with diligence, it's a doable goal.

My first love is creating graphics, so I suppose that will be a nice asset when I get my first copywriting job, because I can outsource the graphics job to myself. ;-)

Thanks for creating such a nice 'space' here, Miguel - I look forward to visiting and contributing, as well as picking up some useful knowledge.

Success to all,

Donna

Hallo Donna,

Welcome onboard, I discovered this site "by design" too. LOL. I was specifically looking for good copywriting communities so that I can attract some really good copywriters to my new Beta Website which is a Job Portal for Quality Content Creators. There are too many so-called copywriters nowadays who are willing to write copies for peanuts and produce junk as a result so I thought it is high time that some one created a Portal specifically targeted at Companies and Businesses that wants to hire Top-Notch Copywriters and Marketers and are willing to pay for it... that's how the idea of MyWritersGuild.com started anyway...

Well, it's great to meet great copywriters like yourself in this forums and, once again, welcome and I hope you make tonnes of money doing what you love and, of course, have loads of fun doing it!

Have a great day ahead.

My regards,
Joshua

Dear Joshua,

Thanks so much for the welcome! I appreciate it very much. I do have a few questions for you (or whomever wishes to answer) and that is what does a person start out charging to do this kind of work?

How do you get your first client? They have to trust you to do a good job, but you don't have a "resume" until you do a few for examples... right? It's much like any job, they usually want experience. You only GET experience by DOING. It's a catch-22 sort of.

I am willing to work as a copywriter's apprentice for the first few, like say you get a copy job - a horrible sales page - and I take it and rework it as though I was making the "big bucks" (and do the very best I can possibly do for you) but you pay me something smaller like say $500 and then you do "your thing" to it and charge the customer for your customary fee of $2500 or whatever. Make sense?

It's a win-win scenario for both of us, because you don't have to work as hard (because I have done all the grunt work on the page... editing, changing, fixing grammar and syntax errors, spelling corrections, etc, etc. and reworked it into a viable sales page.

I would do this for several copy jobs, you critique them after I'm done so I learn, of course. Then when I'm ready to fly on my own, perhaps one day when I'm super good at it, I can 'adopt' a fledgeling and do the same kindness for them.

Hopefully, someone will want to become the "wind beneath my wings" and that way I can pay off some debts and bills while I become the next Gary Halbert. Garyette?



Have a super day,

Donna

Hi Everyone! Obviously, I'm new to this forum. My name is Rhonda and I live in Lake Elsinore, Ca. with my boyfriend, of 8 years. I'm 47 years old and have 2 children (boy and girl) who are awesome young adults. I have a young dog who's my best "Buddy" (and yes, that's his name) and a Grand-puppy named "Brindy."

My freelance copywriting business is fairly new; I'm still a student of the AWAI copywriting course. I've been writing my entire life, but never really knew what "market" I wanted to write for. I learned how to write books and magazine articles for children.....through the Institute of Children's Literature.....but wasn't passionate about it. Then I took a Travel Writing course but realized I needed to find something I could do from home. However, I plan to use these skills down the road. I LOVE to travel, but have decided to put it on the back burner until my business income affords me to do so.

I've finally found my passion through "Direct Mail" copywriting. I love it! It has all the elements I enjoy doing, like.....research.....persuasive letter writing.....providing opportunities to offer products and services that people want and desire for themselves.....and helping other businesses make money!

I'm hoping to find some "Copy-Buddy's" in this forum, people who are interested in forming a support group where we can help each other in our freelance businesses.

I'm grateful for this opportunity. Thanks!

Hallo Rhonda,

Copywriting is a skill which is very much in demand as more and more companies understand the value of a good copy. Whether it is a consumer-focused company selling products and services specifically for generic consumers or a technology/engineering type company promoting its engineering services, technical products at trade level.

If anyone is interested and would like some help setting up a basic website, I can give you a hand to set up a content management system framework without charge. You can then promote your copywriting skills to many many businesses using your online presence!

I have about an hour to spare everyday and I can help 1 person to do this everyday. So anyone who wants a hand to set up their online presence (website) and promote their copywriting skills, please feel free to send me a PM.

Cheers,
Joshua

Donna,
I'm not the first one to come up with this idea, but a few of my copywriter colleagues have suggested this...

If you are just starting out in copywriting and you don't have any samples under your belt, join an affiliate program such as Clickbank and create your own salespage.

This way you not only create samples, but you have the opportunity to make money as an affiliate at the same time... it's a win-win.

To do this the right way, you'll need to send your visitors to the purchase page instead of the product's main page (you will be creating your own salespage to sell the product).

This can be accomplished by tweaking the code (the hard way if you're not code-savvy) or by using a software that creates the coded links for you.

One such software is called Affiliate Cloner. I'm not sure what the forum rules say at the moment concerning links on this forum, so I say do a search on Google and you'll find it.

I hope this is helpful and I hope you make tons of money in your copywriting efforts!

Hi Donna and Rhonda,

Welcome to "the great copywriting site" forum.
I don't have anything to add here...

Just a simple Hi and Welcome

Verb

Hi Stephen,

Sorry to not get back here and see your post sooner... been busy like everyone, life gozon...

Thank you for the great suggestion... hadn't thought of doing that for "samples" but it's a super idea. Will try that asap.

:-) Donna

Verb... thank you for the welcome, it's nice to get those when you step into a new group.

relyonme2 - what is your honest opinion of the AWAI copy course? Do you feel you're getting your money's worth there? Does it take a phenomenal amount of time each day?

I'm happy for you finding your passion (mine is graphics, but not being photoshop savvy is a downfall so that won't be my make-a-living arena) I love to write, so maybe that will be my saving grace when I get good enough to attract the big bucks.

I like your idea of having "Copy-Buddies" because we all need someone to bounce ideas off of, and share victories and defeats with - supporting each other's dreams.

Everyone have a great rest of the week,

Donna

Hi Donna,

I would think that it is pretty important to get Copy-Buddies... Most adult learners learn by interacting with fellow professionals... With the internet real estate boom going merrily along, there are quite a good selection sites where you can find good Copy-Buddies... including this site of course...

Personally, these are my few favorites:-
(1) www.copywriting.com
(2) www.copywritersboard.com
(3) www.freelancewriting.com

There's also a Up-and-Coming Web 2.0-Style Portal Copywriters' Community and Support Group which I am helping to administer and moderate. It's got pretty nifty features being implemented.

Check - http://copywriters.niche-communities.com

It's currently in Beta Testing Mode and should be all set to go by end of August.

Have a nice day and hope to read about some of your fabulous Sales Copy

Cheers,
Joshua