When I first ventured into freelance writing, I really thought there wasn’t any difference in writing website copy and writing articles. That was until I started bidding on website copywriting jobs, and had potential clients offering to pay me for every sign-up that went through my website copy.
This was so unlike article writing, where I get paid right away as soon as I submit my article – there’s no click-through rate (CTR) condition for my getting paid. And that was when I started to think differently about website copywriting. So what’s the difference?
With articles, you basically write information that would be of value to your readers AND skillfully write the Resource Box so that they’ll click on your link and through your website. On the other hand, website copy is basically the sales person of the website.
Without a good a sales copy on a website, there’s little hope that a product owner is going to be able to sell to anyone. Out here on the Internet where attention spans and TRUST are two of the rarest commodities, website copywriting is hypnotic, magical writing.
While writing articles give your site good backlinks and drives visitors to your site, website copy is what moves people to actually BUY. So, can you see now why website copywriters are paid much higher than article writers?
If you want copywriting training, Maria Veloso, in her book Web Copy That Sells: The Revolutionary Formula for Creating Killer Copy That Grabs Their Attention and Compels Them to Buy
1. Find good models of website copy and write them in your own handwriting
2. Use this five-question blueprint before writing website copy. Ask yourself:
“What is the problem?”,
“Why hasn’t it been solved?”,
“What is possible?”
“What is different now?”, (your product’s Unique Selling Proposition)
“What should you do now?” (Your CTA or Call-To-Action)
3. Use emotional keywords instead of bland ones, like write “buy” instead of “purchase”.
Maria has practically written a training manual with her book. You’ll definitely want to read it if you want to train yourself in copywriting and earn big bucks writing freelance.