Copywriting Courses: A Checklist For Fluff

This scam checklist for copywriting courses was inspired and fueled by the real estate guru checklist written by John T. Reed. He has graciously given permission for me to use his format.

His checklist is wonderful, his website is wonderful and I highly recommend both. Even if you're not into real estate, it's still a great read. If you are, bookmark it as a resource.

A real copywriting course can set off a few of these guidelines and still be perfectly legit. There are a total of 25 flags on the list. However, if you start noticing patterns, don't spend your money.

The guidelines for avoiding scams are:

1) Disrespect to other people. If a copywriter calls people "sheep," run away fast. If that's the writer's opinion of his or her target market and you bought the course, guess what? You're the target. Real advertising and marketing people, copywriters included, respect their audience and their customers.

2) Creating scam fear. Honest critique backed up with provable facts is a public service. People trust honest critics to bring important facts to light. Scammers attempt to prey on this trust by pretending to be real critics.

So, how do you tell the difference between a real critic and a scam writer? Scam writers make sweeping generalizations without details or specifics. Real critics review products, services or companies in detail and with citations.

Scam writers try to create fear about getting scammed without stating any provable facts. They pretend to be real critics without actually critiquing anything. They don't use or promote objective quality standards.

Scam writers also don't like being asked to prove their assertions. Honest critics prove their assertions within the critique itself.

A variation: Some affiliate marketers use a sales letter that starts "I've reviewed all the (courses/programs/seminars/mentors) out there, and most of them are total scams. Here is the one that really delivers! (Substitute any small number of "good" products.)

Whoever wrote this did not really review all the stuff out there. The affiliate marketer makes money from referral sales. Honest affiliates will say they checked the product carefully and welcome any negative comments or reviews about it. Dishonest affiliates will tell you the ocean is made of spun glass if it draws a 10% commission.

This variation is why I refuse to write about specific people here. I've bought a grand total of one copywriting course from a website. I got a binder with a transcript, two audio CDs and 2 PDF "books".

It was not worth the price I paid. I don't have the money to buy these products, I don't have the time to read them and I'm not going to lie about it. So, no specific reviews on courses, programs, bootcamps or people.

3) Lots of courses at different price ranges. If you notice that the mentor in question is offering a huge range of courses ranging from $99.95 up to thousands of dollars, you have to wonder. The $99.95 course is probably designed to get you to buy bigger and bigger packages for the "real scoop". Either you'll never get that scoop or you could have gotten a full journalism degree for the same amount of money.

4) No relation to normal book prices. I sometimes have to pay through the nose for textbooks. New textbooks can easily run between $50 to $250. However, real textbooks can also break your bookbag, have rather thin pages, and lots of dense text. In other words, a textbook offers a ton of information.

Art History by Marilyn Stokestad, a common book for art history college students, was once the biggest textbook in the world according to the Guiness Book of World Records. It used to be so heavy that airbag systems counted the book as another passenger in the car!

Fortunately for my shoulders, bags, and sanity, it was eventually broken up into two volumes. The two volumes together run about $233.34 according to Amazon. If you study both you get a detailed overview of the entirety of art history from Paleolithic times to modern day.

If a book so detailed, informative and well researched costs just over $200, why pay an equal amount for a bunch of mostly blank workbooks and a "textbook" shorter than a Hemingway novel?

5) Bundling a "course" without piecemeal options. What if you just want the book? What if you don't listen to CDs, don't need mostly blank workbooks and don't want more binders cluttering the office? Don't pay extra for stuff you don't want. It's a poor investment.

Bundling a course together instead of selling it piecemeal is a great way to make you think you got more value. They hope you're less likely to notice that you paid money for fluff if they put lots of pretty packaging on it and send it in a huge box.

6) Tell you the oodles of money they make. Can copywriters make good money? Of course we can and often do. However, real copywriting mentors are less interested in telling you how rich they are and more interested in telling you how to write copy.

Do you expect a professional graphics designer or interior decorator to ramble on about how prosperous he or she is? Copywriting takes about the same amount of education and requires the same professionalism.

7) Repeatedly state how big of a copywriter he or she is. If the mentor asserts fame in the copywriting field, ask for a portfolio or references. If he or she says anything to the effect of "If you don't already know who I am, you're not ready to be a copywriter," then leave as fast as you can. Any writer who won't give prospective clients or students verifiable references is not a copywriter.

Just FYI, a portfolio is a collection of work created for the public view. It does not mean every piece of work the copywriter has ever done. It means a few samples of the writer's past work. Some copywriters these days keep their portfolio online so it's easy to access.

Copywriters give references to potential clients. If you're going to pay a copywriter, you're a potential client.

8) No warnings about work, risk or ego bashing. If you're going to learn a new skill, it's going to involve both work and risk, period. It's also going to involve critique and blows to your pride. Any online copywriting mentor who isn't upfront with students about this aspect is either unethical or insane.

Even if the course has a "money back guarantee," you're still risking your most precious commodity, time. What if you find out you hate copywriting? There's a lot of time wasted, right there.

Professional copywriting is not easy. It is not simple, it isn't something you can learn over the weekend and it will take actual work on your part. Ray Bradbury burned his first million words because they weren't up to snuff. I store mine in archives so I can remember how dumb I was.

If you're going to offer your professional services as a writer, get ready to be insulted. You will be critiqued and whoever is critiquing you will not be "nice" about it. This isn't grade school and clients don't care about your feelings. You'll have to take it with a smile, separate the useful critique from pointless criticism and do what the client wants.

9) No warnings about the pitfalls of business. If you decide to go into business as a freelance copywriter, you are taking a risk. Anyone who starts a business is taking a risk. If a copywriting mentor doesn't at least identify common areas of risk in the field, you are not getting your money's worth from the course.

You should also get business books on your own, of course. A copywriting mentor doesn't always have an MBA while business book writers do. Plenty of good books with referenced content represent a great investment. Lots of fluff books that say the same things over and over again are not.

10) Fluff statements with no backup. "You have to get into the head of your target" is a fluff phrase that's been around since the dawn of marketing. If there aren't some specific instructions on how to do that right afterward, you bought fluff.

Stating that you should do split testing is fluff. Giving concrete techniques and statistics on how to use pay-per-click ads for split testing is not. Real courses teach you hands-on ways to write copy instead of regurgitating marketing truisms from the beginning of time.

11) Emphasis on motivation and de-emphasis on education. I don't care how motivated you are, if you can't write with reasonable proficiency in your native tongue then you can't be a copywriter. You should at least be able to write a college paper.

Does that mean you must have a degree to be a copywriter? No. I'm still working on my college education in my spare time after screwing up a National Merit Scholarship as a teenager. What can I say, I was really dumb back then. If I could go back and hit me upside the head. . .

What I did have was a PhD in English for a teacher from eighth grade through senior year in high school. I was lucky and went to a private school. Oh, how I hated her when I was a kid and how I love her now. She ripped me up, my writing came back covered in red ink, and she critiqued me without regard for my pride. We're still in touch today.

Running a successful business takes the same skills as education does. Copywriting doubly so. You must be able to read and write to a college level. You must enjoy study and be able to do it efficiently. You must practice persistence, patience, and self-control.

If you don't have a college education, put your money towards that instead of a high priced course. If you want to be a copywriter, go for a journalism or marketing degree.

12) The mentor claims to still be copywriting. How? I generally spend 2 hours a day running my business and 8 to 10 hours a day researching and writing for my clients, weekends often included. How can you run an entire series of courses on top of that?

Some copywriters run a copywriting firm where other people now do the work of writing. However, these writers often edit the copy in order to keep a reputation. They may offer a few courses or a lot of books, but not a series and teleseminars and live appearances ad infinitum.

13) Everything offered has a similar copyright date. If the entire product line has the same copyright date, it can't have taken very much time to write. Real information takes time and lots of it.

I occasionally participate in National Novel Writing Month in November. The idea is to write 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days. It's a grueling pace at 1,666 words of fiction each and every day.

If it takes a month to write 50,000 words of pure fiction, imagine how long it takes to write 50,000 words of non-fiction. Non-fiction needs research, references, and an index. In addition, 50,000 words is only about a mid-sized novel. An actual textbook is much longer.

14) Lots of white space or blank pages. Copywriters have to use white space effectively on the Internet. Setting off a site's prose with white space is one of those webcopy "must do's."

Websites also don't cost anything to read. Do you want to pay for extra white space? You buy a book for the content, not the pretty paper. Why pay $350 for $10 worth of information?

15) No grace notes. Acknowledgments, an index, a basic glossary and a bibliography are all reasonable standards when writing a non-fiction book. They're also time consuming. Doing referencing and bibliography work on an article often takes me as long as writing does.

Scammers don't want to take the time to research, reference or index their work. Bibliographies, indexes and glossaries make quality checking easy. Acknowledgments can be checked for accuracy and reflect a basic level of politeness. Scammers want none of the above.

16) Prices that make you wonder. If they want more than $500 per day for their time or $100 for their book, don't go there. You'll be a lot better off taking a writing course at your local community college.

17) Circle marketing. A common trend I've noticed is that everybody in the copywriting market endorses everybody else. Mentors A, B and C market slightly different products or to different niches, so they all give testimonials to each other. If you surf enough "copywriting mentor" sites, you'll see the same names come up over and over again.

Are there a few top names in each field? Yes. Will they often know each other? Yes. Real experts commenting on each other is called "peer review" and represents necessary self-regulation within a field.

However, these experts will clearly identify themselves and give thoughtful, detailed reviews of each other's work instead of breathless testimonials.

18) Testimonials from who? Real, voluntary testimonials give first name, last name, and something resembling contact information. Without this level of reality, I can make up testimonials from a dozen different fictional people, too. I can even talk one of my friends into writing it so it doesn't look too "professional".

19) Excessive SEO techniques. Squeeze pages, keyword stuffing, link buying, site cloaking and bad writing are all signs of a black hat SEO scheme.

• A squeeze page is a website landing page that provides no links to real information unless you give up your name and email address.
• If you see a title or description on the search engine results page that's nothing but a long list of keywords, a keyword stuffer lives there.
• Link buyers are harder to see through. These people purchase links from high ranking sites for breathtaking sums of money. The only reason to purchase a link is because you can't get an honest one. Lots of fluff doesn't earn honest links. If you find a page that has a good inbound link but offers only fluff, the site owner probably bought the link.
• Site cloaking means that the SE sees one page while the human reader sees quite another. Also hard to spot if you don't know much about the technical side of the Internet. If what you saw at the SERP and what you see after clicking just doesn't match up, wonder.
• "Robot" writing is a sure sign of excessive SEO work, and a dumb one at that. If they try to sell courses on copywriting, the least they could do is write decent copy!

18) Lots of urgent words. I have an entire file under my desk of direct mail marketing adjectives. Words like "ground-breaking", "secrets", "operation" and so on live in that file.

If you really want to see an excellent example, pick up a tabloid the next time you're in the supermarket, flip to the back and read the headlines on the ads. If you see distinct similarities between these ads and the advertising for the course you're checking out, go slow and ignore pressure.

The only time I wouldn't run is if the course is about direct market copywriting. The copywriter who wrote the course is a direct mail specialist and has written like that for years. Writing style is a habit that's hard to break. Still, go slow. Direct mail marketers excel at hard selling so you need to keep your guard up.

19) Lots of pressure to get more expensive products. If a relatively cheap product has a call to action for more expensive products, don't bother. This is called a back-end marketing model. The idea is to sell you something stupid cheap, get your contact information, try for your loyalty and pressure you to get their big ticket items.

A call to action reads something like. .

"You've finished the book, but you need every edge you can get! Sign up for <expensive product name here> and watch your bank account explode!"

Watch out for this in ezines, too. Doing a bit of buildup to a product launch is one thing, constant pressure to buy high priced stuff is another. Some of these "products" cost more than my car! I bought an economy car, but should any seminar cost as much as a brand new vehicle?

20) "You must be special for this product" hype. Related to the "fill out a form to qualify" gimmick. It's one of the oldest and cheapest tricks in the copywriter's book. Give your product an air of exclusivity and people will flock in. The trick is that the "criteria" are completely subjective so readers will want to prove they're "qualified".

The biggest earmarks for this ploy are:

• you can't find out what the price is until after you submit a form.
• the "qualification" form does not ask for a sample of your writing.
• when you get the phone call, the only real question is how much can you afford.

This writing trick plays on the human need to feel and prove superiority. If you "qualify" then you're "smart." If the writer convinces you that only smart people purchase the product, you'll get it too in order to be "smart."

The criteria for becoming a copywriter are as follows:

• You must be able to read and write better than a rabid rhesus monkey.
• You must be willing to apply seat of pants to office chair and fingers to keyboard for hours, days and months on end.
• You must be willing to apply critique and advice you get from any and all sources. You must be willing to learn and improve.
• You must possess or learn honest self-evaluation skills.
• You must be willing to start now and keep going for life.

Will, education, persistence, talent, empathy, honesty, grace and humility are required. High credit limits and expensive products are not.

21) Loud or constant warnings that prices will go up and time will run out if you don't act now. This is both annoying and obnoxious. It's one thing to offer a prelaunch price, early bird reserve price or sale. It's another thing entirely to threaten price raises on a constant basis.

A variation on this theme is to have a small popup with a countdown graphic saying, "Only 5 copies/spots left!" or "You have 1 day to take advantage of this price!" Come back in three days and see what it says then.

22) Automatic debiting of credit card with purchase of product. Ever since the software responsible for automatic debiting hit the Internet, too many people have been losing too much money.

Think hard about any month to month automatic debiting agreement you're looking at. If you agree, write yourself a sticky note and stick it on your office wall so you remember it's there. If you don't get decent value for the money, discontinue as soon as possible.

23) "I'm rich, I don't do this for the money." Come again? If I had complete financial independence, I wouldn't spend the time to hustle a class. I'd work on my personal goals, like going back to Paris before I die or working on my art history doctorate.

I'd write books, I'd sell those books, I'd take copywriting contracts that interested me and I might even take an occasional copywriter student for free. I would not put in the time and effort it takes to personally teach multiple students.

24) Asking for a commitment contract. A commitment contract often comes with a high priced, month to month coaching or mentoring product. You sign a contract that states you'll pay for the month-to-month services for a period of time, usually a year.

No sane educational course does this. A college wants your money upfront, thank you. If you drop out before a certain point, you get your money back. If you drop out after that point, you don't.

Copywriting mentors or teachers don't often have the education qualifications needed to teach at a college. So why should they charge more and demand more of a commitment?

25) Fake names, screen names and no contact information. Fake names represent fake people. Fortunately, you can spot fake names if you know what you're doing.

The contact page or about us page should have at least a city and state. People who work from home offices may not put their entire address up online, but a general location is just sound business practice.

Plug city, state and the business name into the online Yellow Pages. If you can't find a match, worry. If you suspect a fake name, worry. Copywriters have pen names for writing, not for teaching or contracts. Take the time to perform an Internet search or check public records in the local area before you hand over hundreds of dollars.

Of course, some people just possess strange names. People with hippie parents often suffer this. My real name is Loni L. Ice. You can find it in Douglas County, KS public records if you want. Just don't ask me to tell you what the middle initial stands for, ok?

In Closing

Copywriting looks like a good career choice to a lot of people these days because of the flexibility and earning potential. However, it isn't the right field for everyone. There are a lot of pitfalls to being a copywriter just like any other career. Freelancers face even more challenges.

Desperation can push people to excel, but it can also push people to buy scams. Don't let your desperation to make more money, work at home or be your own boss propel you into ruin.

Want more about copywriting? Sign up for the free CopywriterInfo.Com ezine. It comes out once a month stuffed full of how-to techniques, analysis tools and solid information.

If you want to know anything else about copywriting courses, please contact me with your question. I'll answer personally within one business day.

If you want to keep this checklist handy, please bookmark it!