How to Become a Copywriter -- The "Standard Way"

When you ask a copywriter how to become a copywriter, here is the response you will usually receive (in a more direct, blunt fashion):

1. Learn all you can about copywriting.
2. Read advertisements.
3. Write down classic sales copy by hand.
4. Start writing practice sales copy.
5. Write some samples for your portfolio.
6. Put together a portfolio and resume.
7. Find clients and start your career.

Having gone through this myself, I can tell you that there is something fundamentally wrong with this strategy:

The Lies about How to Become a Copywriter

Lots of copywriters and copywriter-training companies profit by wasting your time. Out of the above techniques listed, number 2 combined with 3 is certainly a great strategy for people to profit off you: Sign up for a copywriting training program, read a bunch of old advertisements, copy them by hand, and repeat for hours a day. You feel like you've done something and the training program can pretend that they've taught you something; win-win, right? Hell no! By the way, this is a strategy the big-name oldschool copywriting companies employ. Organizations such as AWAI and well-known copywriters such as Dan Kennedy love to put their paying customers through this tripe.

Realize that a lot of companies claiming they can teach you how to become a copywriter are not doing a lot of copywriting themselves. Instead, they make most of their money off clients like you, hoping to be like them. Stay away from any copywriting program that tells you the first step of copywriting is learning about writing sales copy.

Yes, you did not imagine that last sentence: I said, "Stay away from any copywriting program that tells you the first step of copywriting is learning about writing sales copy."

To become you do not need to know how to write sales letters.

Why? Because you will learn to write sales letters as you promote yourself. Clients do not care about your portfolio or claims to copywriting mastery; they only care about what you can provide them.

How to Become a Copywriter: The Answer

Here's the one-step guide to becoming a copywriter:

1. Attract clients for whom want you to write.

That's it. No need to copy sales letters. No need to buy copywriting books. You can do that stuff in your free time, if you really believe it will help you.

You need to learn to advertise yourself before you can advertise for anybody else. That's how you become a copywriter.

The first implication is that you can become a copywriter while you work another job. Are you a lawyer? Experiment with your ads in the papers and website content. Are you a tutor? Change the way you market yourself in your conversations with prospective students. With practice, you will realize you can do this for others, because most others do not know how to market themselves.

The second implication is that you don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on copywriting courses and books. Most everyone I know who has done so could not find clients upon finishing. Everyone I do know who's found clients has done so by marketing themselves, not by "knowing the trade."

How to become a copywriter: Act like a copywriter.