Mentally, I was just going through a list of my proudest “success stories” when it comes to writing web copy that turns  hard-to-convert browsers into buyers. Three of the most astounding (to me and  the clients I served) follow.

The first  was copy I wrote for a client in Israel who was launching a diet website. According to him,  diet industry conversions are notoriously anemic because 1.) there is so much competition in that niche and 2.) people who want to lose weight bounce around a lot looking for some kind of “magic bullet” that helps them lose without having to make often-difficult lifestyle changes.

Despite this, my client was astounded to report that the copy I wrote was converting at a whopping 4.5%–an “astronomically-high rate” for the niche.  This gentleman has remained a steadfast client for the past five years as he segues from niche to niche in various self-help fields. And he just referred a colleague to me whose website copy needs to start converting browsers into buyers as reliably as the ones I wrote for him do.

In the next case, a data brokerage hired me to write a series of email letters to real estate professionals who had dropped their accounts with the firm. Although getting clients back was a shot-in-the-dark (especially since they admitted to me that the fault had been their own, which is something I definitely needed to know to write  appropriate copy for them) they reported back that the emails had been sent to 2,000 real estate professionals.  Of those, 200 (10%) were opened, and five (5) converted.   They did this two more times  (follow-up letters to the remaining real estate professionals) and achieved the same results each time. My client wrote, “My Marketing Consultant was very impressed.” 

Apparently, it’s rare-as-hens-teeth to recover disgruntled former clients. I wasn’t particularly impressed at the time they told me this–I simply didn’t know enough about what a good conversion rate would be in cases like this–except that I was surprised and delighted to know that eventually fully 30% of the people emailed had actually opened and read them. And since they got back 5 clients for every 200 who did bother to open them, that’s a downright impressive percentage.

The recovery of this many clients was certainly worth far more than the price they paid to have me write the letters! I’d be embarrassed to tell you how little I charged them for this service back then. It’s no small wonder so few potential clients even gave me a second glance, as little as I was charging! Countless business owners and entrepreneurs must have slipped away thinking, “This gal must be a novice or a hobbyist to be charging these anemic prices. I need a pro, not a pretender!”

Finally, if you’ve been following me a while, you’ve already spotted the “static/permanent” testimonial on the home page of this blog, the one that says a client in Southern California made a $2500 sale from the copy I’d written for her on the first day she posted it. Heaven only knows how many more times this has happened for her since then, but the price she paid me to have this happen was all of $220.  (Yes, I should have charged more. With document-able results like these, I charge more now, boy howdy!!)

I will be reviewing my “storied past” as a copywriter to glean a few more case studies. Just thought I should start with these because they show what I can do with hard-to-convert clients. I must have an even higher conversion rate when it comes to compelling people  who aren’t skeptics! Alas, too few clients ever get back to me with their conversion rates for the copy I write for them. This is either because they don’t think I’d love to know or because they think if they tell me their conversion rates, I’ll charge them more.

Well, that ploy is moot. These says, I’m charging more whether they divulge my conversions rates or not. I’ve figured it out, finally: I’m darned good at what I do!  (blush…toe in rug.) There, I’ve said it aloud.

Loud and proud.

And humbled and grateful and thankful.

It has been a long, long road to get this far and this good…

Everything worth pursuing as a career takes time to bloom into its fullest splendor. Copy writing is no different…