With the advent of the Internet, not only is the written culture not dead, as predicted by many wordsmiths, but on the contrary, it has become totally widespread. The way we communicate on the web is through writing. Information is transmitted via text. And, consequently, there is a need to create a huge amount of text material, which would fill sites. Thus appeared the copywriters, the people who create texts for a small fee for publication on the Web. How is their work organized? And who can claim the role of a copywriter?
The word “copywriter” is a Russian transcription of the English “copywriter”: it comes from a fusion of the word “soru”, which in this case is translated as manuscript or text material, and the word “writing”, derived from “write” – to write. The interpretation of the word is different: copywriting is understood as a creation of unique texts (that is written from scratch, without using additional materials) for the SEO optimization, that is website promotion and also as a preparation of materials of not necessarily advertising character, but being prepared on the basis of already existing texts.
In other words, the copywriter is a person, who is writing for a fee the texts for publishing on different websites. He is neither a journalist, nor a newspaper writer, nor a purely advertising text writer. This is a kind of boundary profession, which lies at the junction of all the specializations related to the network writings.
Creator of special texts
Still, the main task of the copywriter – to prepare a semipromotional text, which is the way unobtrusive, but will push the reader to purchase a product or service, which will be discussed in the material. In addition, copywriting texts have a number of technical requirements that must be met: for example, the article should be repeated certain words or phrases set by the customer.
We will not go into technical details to explain the reasons for this requirement, we can only note that to write a coherent text, using two sentences of given words (eg, rocking chair, built-in dishwasher, pickles) – a task on the one hand, a simple, but on the other hand – quite complicated. For its decision it is necessary at least to master the art of words and have a literary flair, to know perfectly the Russian language, and also to have ideas about the psychology of perception of written texts by readers. However, a person skilled in the preparation of journalistic materials or feature stories may well be able to cope with the task.
Work style – rush
The copywriter is a unique profession in the sense that its representative does not need to go anywhere to perform his work, but anyway, he is always in a hurry. The copywriter, when getting an order, is working in a very strict time-limited: he has to write an article clearly before certain time. If he does not do that, he risks to lose his fee and reputation.
A professional copywriter, as a rule, cannot live on one or two orders per day, because the fees, offered for writing the articles, are very low, and in order to get a respectable sum, the specialist has to take five or six orders per day. The most surprising is that thematically the orders may not overlap with each other, as a result copywriter for ten working hours has to write about the facade glazing, the engine of a famous car brand, infrared saunas and the city of Cesky Krumlov. And all this under conditions of strict adherence to time constraints on pain of losing his salary. To withstand this tempo, you need at least to be a person collected, strong-willed and patient, to be able to withstand the criticism of the customer – fair and not so fair.
“Copywriter’s Labor Exchange.
The free copywriter, that is, the one who seeks to work for himself, not “listed” in any company, can begin his career with the registration on one of the many sites devoted to copywriting. Such portals are conventionally called “article exchanges”, “content exchanges” or “copywriting exchanges”. Here you can both wait for orders for the preparation of materials for a fee, and to put up for sale your already written article.
With a skilful approach and high diligence can bring your earnings to an amount equal to the average salary of a staff journalist in the print media, but at the start then have to write a lot of texts, earning a high rating on the copywriting job exchange. But you can do it in any comfortable conditions for the copywriter, because the main thing is to give a high-quality text to the customer, and it does not matter where and how he wrote it.
