The Craft of Copywriting

I’m filing this one under Freelancing, but I think it touches on both Freelancing and Copywriting, as it talks about how to do the latter in a way that makes the former possible. It’s something I struggled with early on, but ever since I did, it’s become the most important lesson I’ve learned in my professional life.

It’s the difference between craft and art. If you want to build a real, sustainable career doing this, you need to understand that first.

Writing for personal taste

Professionally, I’m a copywriter, but I never set out to be one. “Copywriter” was where enough of my talents and abilities coalesced for me to start a career, but before this, I was a journalist, comedian, promoter, musician, and, from the very beginning, a writer.

I tried a lot of different art forms as a teenager, all of which I enjoyed, but the one I enjoyed the most, and received the most positive feedback from, was writing. Before I wrote for brands and clients, I wrote listicles for BuzzFeed and comedy articles for CollegeHumor. Before that, I wrote a blog, and before that, poetry that became lyrics for my high school/college band. Go back far enough and you’ll find parody songs inspired by Weird Al and sci fi epics almost directly lifted from George Lucas.

I’ve been a writer as far back as grade school, and for the majority of that time, the writing I’ve done has been for me. If I thought something was good, someone else usually did, too. My own taste was a really good arbiter for a long time, and that’s what I learned to write for: my personal taste.

Writing for an audience

But to be a copywriter, you need to be able to write for other people. Do it long enough, of course, and you’ll develop a professional taste you’ll be able to rely on, but that development has to start with learning how to write what someone else already wants to read.

I didn’t grasp that distinction at first. The discrepancy between what I wanted to write and what the people who paid me wanted was first obvious at BuzzFeed. I wanted to write articles to share with my friends; they wanted articles everyone would share with everyone.

At the time, I didn’t have the presence of mind or the vocabulary to put words to this. I’m saying all this with more than a decade of hindsight and clarity. When I transitioned to client work, first at agencies and then as a freelancer, I had to change how I found value in my work.

Is it good to derive your own value from your work? Yes, of course. But if you’re going to get paid to do this, you have to also see the work the way your client will—assuming you have a competent client. If you don’t, then you need to see the work the way your client’s audience will.

You have to be able to be your audience. You need to see the work as they see it. 

If you want to write things based solely on how you find value in the work, by all means, be an essayist, memoirist, fiction writer, or newsletter author (invite your friends!)*. But I’m going to level with you: it’s going to be a lot harder to make this your sole source of income that way.

This is key to understanding copywriting as a craft, as opposed to an art: seeing your work as its audience will. (As a bonus, this may inadvertently make you a better artist, too.) You may say this is pretentious, sell-out apologism, but we don’t hold a woodworker who makes tables or a musician who scores movies to the same standard. Those are craftspeople selling their trade. Why should writing be any different?

Writing as a professional

Perhaps you don’t view this as an art in the first place. You may consider yourself all too ready to set the client’s value as your own; you may want me to tell you how to do that. Guard yourself against that, too. Being whatever your client wants won’t make you a better copywriter, just a more replaceable one. You won't haven’t invested in developing a unique professional taste of your own. If clients wanted a writer that would give them exactly what they asked for, they’d use ChatGPT.**

Part of being a craftsperson is having a professional taste—notice that I’ve been telling you to see your work as your client and audience will, not to replace your own sense of taste with the client’s. Your style, your voice, your approach to writing for an audience is what the client lacks, not words on a page.

They can get anyone (or, more likely, ChatGPT) to fart out 400 words for a homepage or email. To make it in this job, you’re going to have to give them something no one else can: your professional taste. Your ability to speak to an audience. The unique product of your labor and experience.

In other words, your craftsmanship.

*Ironically, even in my independent role as the author of Inkspiller, I’m still writing with other people’s value as my goal. If you don’t think this newsletter about copywriting will improve your life in some way, then you won’t pay for it. But that’s okay: I have another newsletter that’s just for me, for whenever I want to post, and it’s completely free.

**Don’t try to compete with ChatGPT, it doesn’t need to eat or sleep.

Blots and Drops

• This article is a whole lot of words to say something my dad has always said a lot more simply: "It's not about what you said, it's about what they heard."
• "The great cathedrals of Europe were built by craftsmen; they’re not designed by them." -Anthony Bourdain
• Learning to see the work as your audience does requires knowing your audience, which begs the question: How do learn a new audience?
  
  A go-to for me has always been to find their communities online and see how they talk to each other. I’ll look specifically for the frequent topics, in-jokes, shared frustrations unique to their community, and common experiences they can all reference without exposition, trusting their like-minded compatriots will instantly understand it.
  • Niche subreddits are still a great way to uncover how an audience talks to themselves (even as Reddit continues to enshit itself).
    
    Early on, when I was still new to agency work, I was placed on two reality TV shows: one about cars and one about custom motorcycles. I subbed to subreddits about cars, motorcycles, planning group motorcycle rides, engines, roadside cafes and attractions, road trips, and more. I gained good, specific insights I was able to use, and by immersing myself in their community, I saw how to speak to them as they spoke to each other. You’ve really got to be a chameleon.
• Influencer accounts will show you what an audience talks about.
  
  By definition, influencers are followed by a large community that shares a common interest. Sometimes those communities are quite large (“young women who like makeup”), or they can be more niched (“construction workers”). The size of the community isn’t as important as how much they trust the influencer, and trust in an influencer (real trust, not trust an agency paid for) is built by an influencer talking honestly about things that community actually relates with.
• It’s always worth poking around a community’s hashtags, too. There will be a lot of pretty generic or expected ones, but you might find a total curveball if you look hard enough. There’s almost always something in those curveballs you can use.

Thanks for reading. If you were forwarded this, I’m glad you’re here! Hit the subscribe button below to jump in on the Summer Spiller sale: Free Full Access all summer long, and $10/month starting in September.

Got something to say? Subscribe to sound off in the comments. Free tier gets comment access. I’ll reply! Seriously, I’ll reply!

Finally, feel encouraged to forward and share this. And if you want to sound off, I’m on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Discord as @seancurry1. You can usually find me in the Garbage Day and Copywriting Collective servers.

Still here? Thanks for making it down to the bottom of yet another issue. I'm obsessed with negronis this week, and their darker cousin, boulevardiers. My move right now is to put a inch cube of ice, 2013-style, in a rocks glass and mix in two shots gin, two shots Campari, and two shots sweet vermouth. Then I garnish with whatever fruit is around my fridge (might be a peach tonight) and sit on the patio with it.

The patio part is probably the most essential ingredient.