What is copywriting and why do people say the make so much money?
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Copywriters are people who write advertising or marketing material for others who have something to sell.
This can include everything from social media posts to emails to websites to big-budget multimedia campaigns. And they can work for an ad agency, in-house marketing department, or as freelancers (working independently or “for hire” when an agency needs extra help).
I am going to focus on ad agency copywriters, who can be paid quite well. In the early 2000s I worked a series of jobs as an agency copywriter and made around $160K/year in today’s dollars.
An agency copywriter will work very closely with an art director — the person in charge of the way the ad looks — brainstorming with them to come up with the concept, or idea for the campaign. Even if it doesn’t involve writing per se. “Look at this Jared Fogle guy who lost 200 pounds by eating Subway sandwiches! What if we made a commercial telling his story?” (Using this example because I personally know a copywriter came up with it.)
They can make a lot of money because it’s not super-easy for just anyone to come up with these advertising ideas, much less write scripts and direct voice actors (another thing copywriters do).
So there are independent, self-employed copywriters who can also charge a lot, because writing in a different voices and tones while also communicating important sales points and successfully persuading the reader to act is also hard.
They also are able to write stuff that moves the needle. e.g sells shit.
Often, they consistently write emails that have a high open rate, ads that have a high click rate, and most importantly, a high conversion rate. This is a the ratio of people who bought after clicking on the ad/reading the email to people who read/clicked and didn’t do anything.
Also, copywriting can be lucrative because people have the tools to do it themselves — e.g. the English language — but are not able to produce copy that moves the needle.
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