Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing, and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood.

Audio Recording

In Episode #4, I answer the question, “What are the best resources for learning copywriting?”

 

 

Written Transcript: The Best Resources For Learning Copywriting

Hi guys. Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood. The question I want to answer today is, “What are the best resources for learning copywriting?” That’s a reasonably common question.

I think the version of this question that might be even more common is simply, “How do I get started?” That’s probably the one that I get the most, and it’s often accompanied by someone who has just read my guide to getting started as a copywriter, so I think the real question being asked there is, “Okay, I kind of understand the theory of this, but how do I actually go from “I know nothing about copywriting” to “I feel confident doing a copy writing assignment or gig”.

The place we need to start is in understanding that everyone’s different. What is going to be most effective in helping you learn is going to be different than what helps me learn, or what helps anyone else. The most effective strategy for one person might not work for someone else.

As an example of that, if you look at my blog post that’s about the top copywriting books, you’ll see some of these titles that get constantly recommended—The Boron Letters—or Ogilvy On Advertising—blanking on some of the other ones—there’s a whole slew of these old-school ones, and then there’s a lot of newer titles as well. But these get thrown around a lot because people like reading books when they’re approaching a new subject—a subject they don’t feel they know a whole lot about—a lot of people really like to read a book.

A book helps them. Some of these books are the things that gave them an initial window into what copywriting is all about, and that’s why, to them, they’ll always associate their knowledge of copywriting with these copywriting books that they read. For me, I’m pretty much the exact opposite.

I hate books. Not all books. I hate business books.

Can. Not. Stand them. Will. Not. Read them.

I spent a brief window of my life trying to read them…. Never again. So I didn’t learn anything from copywriting books, because that’s not how I learn.

So, if you’re someone like me, don’t go fucking read 20 copywriting books. Don’t even read one if you don’t want to. There are plenty of ways to get the exact same information from other mediums. The first thing I’d tell you is, “Go to the type of resource that most helps you learn and don’t feel like you need to follow the exact path that someone else followed on their learning journey.”

That’s the “Everyone’s different” spiel.

Now, I’m going to go in the exact opposite direction and say, “Everyone’s the same.” And here’s what I mean by that. 90% of what you’re going to learn about copywriting is going to come from actually writing copy. So, that initial learning period where you go from, I know nothing to I have a baseline, that’s really only the first 10%.

You can go do that in whatever way floats your boat, but at the end of the day, if you want to really learn copywriting, you’re going to have to actually write copy—do copywriting—and there’s no way around that.

I joke in that blog post that rumor has it, if you read The Boron Letters 10,000 times in a row,