Many people are surprised when they first hear that a good, professional copywriter with a track record of successful conversions can charge between $1,000 and $5,000 for a sales letter.
This is especially true when those same people are used to the idea of paying $5 for a blog post.
But blog content is cheap, easy, and readily available. Virtually anyone who passed English in high school could write a decent blog post.
Becoming a good sales copywriter, however, is very expensive. Here’s a brief look at what it cost me personally:
- Over 5 years of practice (not counting my college education in business and English literature).
- At least 100 hours of video seminars from the world’s top copywriters.
- Over $34,048 in training materials (since I last calculated it over 2 years ago–it’s probably more by now).
And of course, if you’ve read my sales page, you know that I also had to start (and ruin) a failed business before I could learn the hard lesson that copywriting is what sells products–not web design or SEO or even a $1,000 Google Adwords budget.
But it’s not just about what copywriting cost me to learn.
It’s also about what it’s worth to other people.
There are millions of writers out there, but there are only a small percentage of those who can write compelling sales copy.
Even among professional copywriters at ad agencies, you’re very unlikely to find someone who has the ability to turn a 2,500-name email list into $9,826 in 2 days.
And that’s because they’re paid $25 an hour to come up with slogans and catch phrases and blog posts that no one’s ever going to read.
So although there are thousands of professional copywriters, it’s not quite the same as saying there are thousands of professional, self-employed sales copywriters who have made millions of dollars for some of their clients.