Copywriting Jobs and Businesses
By Eric Hammer
Copywriting jobs, or jobs where you write copy for web sites
are becoming increasingly common. One company that hires people
to do copywriting for them after a screening process, Demand
Media Studios, claims to have signed up some 73,000 people to
jobs as copywriters, though the number of writers who actively
work for them is significantly smaller, probably under 10,000.
So what exactly is a copywriting job anyway and how can you get
in on it?
Consider this: There are currently around 20 web pages in
existence for every man, woman and child on the planet. And that’s
in 2010, just 15 years after the World Wide Web was launched
Imagine now what things will be like in another 15 years, another
30?
Every time you click on one of those web pages, you are looking
at something that someone, somewhere wrote. Sometimes it’s
written by the person whose name appears, though often, it’s
written by an anonymous person called a copywriter, someone who
gets paid to write the material you see in front of you, in much
the way that this article is displayed in front of you. People,
who work in copywriting jobs are experiencing tremendous growth
together with the Internet’s exponential growth.
How Much Can You Make?
Copywriting is a very popular job, one in which millions of
people the world over are engaged. Therefore, the competition
is fierce and many web sites pay little or even nothing to the
people who write for them. It is not uncommon to find copywriting
jobs where you are offered all of fifty cents to write a two
page article for example. Some companies will even ask you to
work for free as a way to gain "exposure," though the
"exposure: they offer is generally of dubious value at best.
On the other hand, a great many people do make a full time
living writing for the Internet. The key is to gain experience
and get jobs with better paying places. The best deal, most copywriters
say, is to work for large companies. You can help them write
the content that will appear on their web sites and the pay can
be in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars per project.
The catch of course is that the competition is fierce and you
need to be at the top of your game to write content effectively
so that you can get those well paid jobs.
Ways to Make More | Related Opportunities
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One of the mistakes most people make when they start out writing
content is to limit themselves to a particular type of writing.
There are dozens of different ways that you can earn money from
writing. In addition to copywriting for web sites, you can also
get jobs doing technical writing for example, where you write
instructions for various items (every time you read a manual
that came with your new gadget, it was written by a technical
writer). Another place to branch out to is writing grant proposals
and of course, writing for magazines. All of these things are
possible as long as you are willing to work hard and you have
the skills to write well.
If you’ve never done anything involving copywriting,
it’s a good idea to spend some time researching something
called SEO. SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization."
This means that you will write in such a way as to attract more
traffic to a web site by including specific keywords that people
are searching for.
Qualifications / Requirements
There is no need for formal training in order to get into
copywriting or even writing for magazines and newspapers. The
key is to develop your talent for writing; and the only way to
do that is to write a lot and get your work critiqued. Make sure
to stay away from asking people to critique your work who simply
want to make you feel good by the way. So, while your mother
or husband may tell you "it’s wonderful dear,"
you should seek out people who will give you a bit more of a
critique than that and who will be honest with you when your
work stinks.
First Steps
Start by visiting a few web sites that regularly hire people
for copywriting jobs. A few good examples are Textbroker.com,
DemandStudios.com and Brighthub.com. All three have resources
to help writers to improve their craft, something you’ll
likely need when you are first starting out, even if you do know
how to write well.
Resources
http://www.demandstudios.com
- A place to find work.
http://www.freelancewritingigs.com
- Another place to freelance.
http://www.elance.com
- One of the best freelance sites.
http://www.brighthub.com
- More writing opportunities.
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