Free copywriting resources to help you market your business
Want to learn more about copywriting? Need useful, understandable information on marketing? Browse my favorite resources, below. You'll find links to helpful marketing and copywriting websites and blogs and a list of recommended books.
Bookmark this page and visit often. Resources—all unaffiliated with MarketCopywriter—are updated frequently.
Websites
www.bly.com
This is the website of uber copywriter and mensch, Bob Bly. Check out his For Writers Only link for loads of useful how-to articles.
www.wellfedwriter.com
Peter Bowerman's website always has practical career tips for freelance copywriters. You can sign up for a free newsletter to learn about other freelancers' career-building strategies.
www.kuraoka.com
Advertising copywriter John Kuraoka's simple text-only website provides a treasure-trove of excellent advice for new and experienced writers. His how to write a brochure instructions give these versatile selling tools the thoughtful attention they deserve. John offers a FREE mentorship to hardworking, aspiring advertising copywriters.
www.yudkin.com
Tons of free, helpful information is packed onto the website of Marcia Yudkin, copywriter and marketing consultant. You could spend many happy hours clicking through her Recommended Resources.
www.marketingprofs.com
Marketing Profs’ Know-How Exchange lets you participate—or lurk—in over a dozen useful online forums where you'll find answers to your most pressing marketing questions. If you're as analytics-challenged as I am, try eavesdropping on the research/metrics forum where hand-patting pros talk shop and pass out useful, free advice.
Blogs
Marketing Prof's Daily Fix
Marketing Prof's stickily named Daily Fix is my favorite antidote to writer's block: Try reading at least one or two posts before settling in to ponder your shimmering blank screen and looming deadline.
Future Now's GrokDotCom
Finally: Metrics-savvy marketers who speak the same language as us tech-challenged, humanities-centric copywriters. At GrokDotCom, Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg interweave web metrics, psychology, Meyers-Briggs personality types, art, poetry, literature—yes, yes, yes!—to create "Persuasion Architecture," their brilliant approach to online marketing. Check out Future Now's superb Archives and We We Monitor, a free interactive tool that helps you assess customer-focus of your copy.
Seth’s Blog
Don't worry if you can't suss out the most crucial new marketing books, skim dozens of newspapers and trade journals, sniff out remarkable blogs and social networks or schmooze with artists, politicians and celebrities. Marketing "Agent of Change" Seth Godin will do it for you. All you have to do is read his blog posts and click a few links to stay on-trend and in-the-know.
Giraffe Forum
This blog's tagline, "Customer-centric. Not organization-centric.” speaks volumes. Gerry McGovern's pithy treatises on online writing—including his essential 10 rules of writing for the web and Seven deadly sins of web writing—are fail-safe primers for anyone who writes for the Web. You know how copy experts always tell you to "write like you talk?" Well, Gerry writes like he writes. Umm, just go check out his incredibly readable and helpful posts and you'll see what I mean.
Copyblogger
E-commerce prophet and prolific Copyblogger Brian Clark's daily posts are packed with practical copywriting and marketing tips you'll use immediately. Now if only I could find time to mine his fab archived material...
Zen Habits
This extraordinary blog is not about copywriting though its sensei—I mean creator—is copywriter Leo Babauta. Trawl Zen Habits regularly and soon you’ll improve productivity, organize your office, work better from home, lose weight, exercise regularly, spend meaningful time with your family—Leo has six children!—budget frugally without deprivation and cherish life's small beauties.
Books
The Copywriter’s Handbook by Robert W. Bly
Not only is Bob Bly one of the country’s top direct mail copywriters, he's also a prolific author and godfather of the how-to-become-a-copywriter book genre. Bob's Handbook tells you everything you need to know about writing brochures, newsletters, ads, feature articles and much more. I've started more than one project with five sweaty fingers on the keyboard and the other five clutching Bob's Handbook.
On Writing Well by William K. Zinsser
A disciple of Faulkner’s "kill your darlings" writing school, Zinsser sagely reminds you that "Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident." and "Rewriting is the essence of writing well." Professor Zinsser's chapters on Simplicity, Clutter, Usage—every single chapter in the first half of the book, actually—are worth reading over and over and over and over.
The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman
Peter gives you the nuts and bolts of starting a freelance copywriting career, including advice on cold calls, time-saving organizational systems, self-marketing and project pricing. Many helpful copy samples included.
Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy
Read it and use it. The late master adman's practical advice is as timely now as when he wrote it in the pre-Internet Dark Ages: Reverse type, caption-less photos and arty gimmicks still decrease readership and sales. Before-and-after-pictures, long copy and editorial layout still increase readership and sales.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Trout and Ries
Whatever you’re hired to market, from soda to healthcare to information services, this book can help you dig deep and discover differentiating features that position your client’s products and services.
Persuasive Online Copywriting by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg and Lisa T. Davis
The authors of this book insist that online "users" are real people who want to buy stuff from your client’s e-commerce website—and that your copy should help them. What a concept. Using principles from their Persuasion Architecture, the Eisenbergs show you how to craft copy that helps qualified buyers confidently click through your client's site.
Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
Back in 1999 cultural prophet Seth Godin predicted the demise of "interruption marketing." Today "permission marketing" is universally embraced by everyone from panicked admen to gleeful Cluetrain Manifesto acolytes. Seth's book, Permission Marketing, fills you in on today's increasingly empowered—and expressive—consumer and discusses effective ways to get her to "raise her hand" and join the marketing conversation.
The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rodale
My blood pressure lowers noticeably when I open Rodale's Synonym Finder. The battered tome—this is the second hardbound edition I've decimated—signals I'm in the Deadline Home Stretch. Synonym Finder is indispensable when your copy is at second draft and needs a final prune and polish.
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