Here's a common question I get: does copywriting work if you're NOT a writer or a creative person?
And the easiest way to answer that question is with a quick story.
Enter: Ning Li.
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If you've been on my list for any length of time, you've likely seen Ning's name. Along with his job as copy chief at Paleo Hacks, as well as a lucrative freelance career, Ning has been a coach for up-and-coming copywriters for the last few years.
But Ning didn't start as a copywriter.
Or even as a writer.
Before Ning discovered copywriting (and CopyHour), he was a graduate student at Colorado State University studying elephant seals.
He was on track for a biology PhD... which is an underpaid and overworked career path.
The "underpaid and overworked" part was never very obvious to him though. Instead he just started getting a gut instinct that something was off with the career path he had
chosen, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was...
Until one day it clicked: he didn't admire the lives of any of the scientists whose job he was training for.
The professor he worked for, for example, was grumpy every day, picked on his students constantly, and didn't make much more money than any standard 9-5 career.
(Who could blame the guy, though? His day-to-day work was mostly just writing grants begging the government for money. I think anyone would be grumpy if that's all they did all day.)
The more he thought about it rationally, Ning realized it made no sense to put in so much work (and go so deeply into student loan debt) for that future.
SIDE NOTE: I (Derek) have a very similar backstory.
Immediately after college I worked as an assistant at a music publishing company.
My plan was to work my way up in that field... until I realized that my boss's life was a nightmare (by my standards):
- She had no work-life balance. She was either at the office or out at a show trying to schmooze with artists and managers.
- She couldn't even go to eat lunch by herself without having to entertain a client — each hour of
her day was filled with networking of some kind.
- She had no kids, no family, no boyfriend that I knew of (and I knew her schedule well).
- Worst of all she was in her late 40's and still complained about money all the time.*
I looked at her life and thought... "Is this where I want to be in 25 years?"
It wasn't long after that that I quit, and not long after quitting that I stumbled on copywriting.
When Ning started having doubts about his PhD track, he stumbled into copywriting by googling "how to make money online".
I would never recommend using that search keyword because it's a complete dumpster fire but it somehow worked and Ning stumbled on articles about copywriting.
And... he was hooked. Copywriting has a way of grabbing people by the throat and sucking them in in the beginning. It's sort of like
finding out that there's been a game played around you all your life that you weren't aware of - but now here are the rules, all laid out.
He started studying everything he could get his hands on and practiced writing in his spare time.
But things never quite clicked.
He was studying a lot of copy but wasn't sure why certain sales pages worked and others didn't.
He didn't have a solid grasp of copy fundamentals just yet.
That is... until he found CopyHour.
And the rest is history.
After his 90 days of CopyHour things opened up dramatically.
He quickly and quite randomly caught the attention of Dan Ferrari (a living legend and, as you saw
two days ago, a former CopyHour student) in an online forum.
Dan gave Ning his first paid job for $1500 and away he went.
And to fast forward a bit, Ning's copywriting career income since has looked like this:
2016 - $4,500
2017 - $30,000
2018 - $90,000
2019 - $110,000
2020 - $154,000
2021 - $200,000
2022 - $350,000
2023 - $600,000
These days he lives in San Diego, surfs during the day, travels with his wife any time they feel like they need a get-away, and are about to welcome their first baby into the world.
Ning is a perfect example of one of the most beautiful things about copywriting as a career.
You don't have to be a "creative" person or
even a writer to succeed. In fact I've found generally that the super eloquent, creative, artsy types struggle the most with copywriting.
And that's simply because great copy isn't an act in creativity.
Great copy is about offering killer products to people who need them.
And most people respond best to writing that's simple, straight forward, and real.
The more "imperfect" your writing is, often the better it converts.
As you'll see in CopyHour, the best copy in the world is unbelievably simple - and extremely formulaic. If you can hard-wire the formulas into
your brain, you can write six and seven figure copy.
And that's exactly what CopyHour is designed to do: it's widely considered the simplest, fastest, and most effective way to "install" the fundamentals and formulas of copy into your brain.
The process takes about 90 days.
You get a short email every day with a lesson and a piece of copy.
And then you set aside up to 1 hour to handwrite that copy to make the lesson stick.
It feels a bit weird at first - but sticking with it for 90 days will hard-wire copy fundamentals so they come as naturally to you as speaking a language. This is why CopyHour has so many massive success stories.
The cart for CopyHour closes this Sunday at 11:59PM PT and won't be re-opening until next year, so if you know you need this for your own career or business, I recommend you join now.
And there's no risk to you - if you find it isn't the right match for you, send my team an email within the first 30 days and we'll send you a refund.
Imagine being able to sit down and hammer out sales letters that generate six and seven figures, either for your own business or for others.
That's how you create true freedom for yourself.
I want to show you how.
>>> Train yourself to write six & seven figure sales copy in the next 90 days
– Derek
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