“Copywriters aren’t writers. Also, they should all kill themselves.”
– Message I received
Do you have to be a scumbag to make money online?
People assume that marketing and sales is unethical and shady.
They imagine you selling poison to children, or dumping toxic waste into community water supplies.
This stuff might make for good fodder in some big-budget Hollywood movie where the bad guys are all evil capitalists, but it’s pretty rare in the real world.
Between all the different review sites, and social media, attempting to dupe people is hard.
Starting out as a writer I was paid to post fake reviews for a guy who published two-page “books” on Amazon.
His scam was a disaster.
People could tell that they were going to get robbed and they left all kinds of warnings on the product page.
No matter how many times I was hired to write positive comments, like “Concise but good,” sales remained dead.
You have to recommend products that you use
In case you missed it, go check out my 30 Days of Discipline review.
It’s a great example of a product recommendation done right.
I tell an actual, and honest, story.
When you want to endorse something you’re putting your reputation on the line.
Don’t pick a product because you think it will make the most money.
Pick one that will provide the most value.
Readers don’t come to your site to spend money. They’re there to find a solution to something that troubles them. Focus on helping and providing answers.
What to do if someone calls you a scumbag?
The average person is pretty stupid.
Everything is either good or bad.
Most people put business, especially if it involves sales or a computer, into the “bad” category.
A few times a year I’ll go to a party and have some well-meaning, but ill-informed, person ask me if my job is unethical.
This would be like the owner of a grocery store how he sleeps at night, knowing that innocent people were forced to spend money in order to eat.
It doesn’t make any sense.
When someone tells you that sales or business is bad, don’t take it personally.
I used to get mad when people would make these comments, but now I let them slide.
Folks who say this type of stuff aren’t that bright or that socially inept.
The guy who decided to tell me that copywriters should “kill themselves,” is probably a moron. I could have wasted time explaining business 101 to him, but I didn’t bother.
When you deal with these kinds of people your best course of action is to ignore them and move on.
If you aren’t lying and cheating people out of their money don’t take these comments seriously. There’s nothing amoral or unethical that’s going on.