Copywriting Prices – Why it Pays to Use a Professional

Copywriting Prices

As an experienced copywriter I am used to hearing the words “I can’t afford a copywriter” but to turn that objection on it’s head, I explain why it pays to use a professional.

To demonstrate my point I’ll tell you a wee story about one of our recent experiences (we can’t name the client but they were happy with us writing this article).  A company asked us for a quote for writing their website content from scratch and decided they couldn’t afford it.

The contact at the company was focused purely on finances and ultimately informed us he would get someone in his company to write the content for the website.

Around a month later I got an email out of the blue from the same company asking for help. Here are the main points;

  • One of their sales team wrote the website copy
  • They’d had virtually no traffic since the website launched

I was glad to be able to help out and the customer was only too happy to accept our quote the second time around.

While we chatted about his requirements, he divulged that his top sales person had spent a week writing the copy for the site – at a cost of approximately £300.

The company also lost that sales person’s revenue for that week – estimated cost £1000.

Their website wasn’t being found by their target market in the first few weeks after launch – estimated cost £??

Writing the copy themselves cost them £1300 at the very least and they then ended up paying us our original £400 quote on top which brings it to £1700.

So the company that couldn’t afford a copywriter ended up paying more than 4 times the original cost and that’s without factoring in the lack of people finding them online.

Before you decide to write your website copy in-house, ask yourself the following questions;

  • How much is it going to cost you in terms of salary and taking someone away from their usual role?
  • Does the person writing the content have any experience?
  • How much will you miss out on in terms of lost sales through poor copy and people not being able to find your website?
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2 Comments to “Copywriting Prices – Why it Pays to Use a Professional”

#1 Posted by Nikki (24.06.10 at 13:05 )

Hi

Fabulous blog post! And an important one for businesses to consider.

As a fellow copywriter, I’ve been on the receiving end of similar comments. My answer is always the same: there is a difference between ‘cost’ and ‘value.’

As you’ve pointed out here, companies shoot themselves in the foot by writing their own copy to save money. If a website doesn’t convert, then the potential ‘cost’ to a company’s reputation is huge. Not to mention loss of sales…

One of my clients recently increased his profits by over £8K, after I edited his sales letter. My copy fee was (pitifully) nowhere near that!

When businesses appreciate the ‘value’ of a professional copywriter, everyone wins…

#2 Posted by Jamie Graham (24.06.10 at 19:04 )

Thanks for your comments Nikki. I liken it to employing someone with no sales experience to go out and speak to existing and potential customers. Most companies don’t hire anyone for offline sales unless they have a good track record and the same should go for website copy as that’s what’s going to make or break online sales.