Learn Copywriting Free | How to Start Your Copywriter Career

I’m going tell you how to learn copywriting — I’ll even show you how you can learn copywriting free without paying for a course.

I used to be like you.  Frustrated. Confused.  Dying to know how to write copy and make big money.

However, it wasn’t until I got a torch stuffed up my butt that I finally figured it out.

via GIPHY

By the end of this post, you’re not going to have any excuses for not learning copywriting.

But before we get started, I want to tell you that if you’re not fired up to do this — STOP READING NOW.

Why?

Because what I’m about to show you requires work, dedication, and time. And if you don’t have these 3 key elements, you might as well forget it.

The good news?

If you follow my advice, you’ll know how to learn copywriting free and become a paid writer.

So, let’s get started.

How to Learn Copywriting Free – A Tactic I Learned as a Kid

I became a professional jazz trombonist in just 5 years.

When I say professional, I mean I made my entire living off of my horn.

I got 2 benefits from that experience.  First, I got a trade I could make money from, and second, I learned how to learn.

Yes, I’ll repeat it: I learned how to learn.

Going from zero to pro in just 5 years wasn’t easy.  I had all kinds of obstacles in the way. My old man, being a janitor couldn’t afford to buy me a trombone, so I had to get a job washing dishes at the local Moose Lodge.

(However, my dad got a job as a bartender at that same lodge, so he kicked in most of the money. I had a great Dad.)

The reason why I’m bringing this up is that I’m a firm believer in the Total Immersion Learning System (aka TILS).

For the first time in my life, I had something I was hyper-passionate about. I spent every second I could practicing my instrument. I sought out every private teacher, signed up for every competition, went to school early, came home from rehearsals late, and volunteered to play in every organization I could.

And my practice sessions were epic.

It wasn’t unusual for me to put in at least 4 hours a night.  My mom would beat on my door at 10 PM because the neighbors were complaining.

Why I’m Bringing Up My Childhood Passion

As I got older, I realized that if I wanted to learn something bad enough, I would have to immerse myself in it.  If you put enough time and concentration into a subject you would get some great benefits.

• Saving time – You could learn a skill or subject much faster than normal.
• Expertise – You would have a skill you could carry with you for the rest of your life.
• Sense of accomplishment – You would gain confidence in the fact that you have another skill.
• A proven system – A way you could learn things over and over again.

However, when you use a system like this you have to be careful. You can’t learn 20 new things at once; you can only learn one subject at a time and some of them will take you years to master.

If you’re going to become an architect, it’ll take most of your life to become good at it. The same principle applies to learn music, math, or even copywriting.

The good part is you don’t have to become an expert at a skill to make money with it.

Once you hit a certain proficiency level with a vocation you can make good money. (You can also keep getting better at it too.)

You can use this same method of totally immersing yourself to learn copywriting free.  I say “free” because of the methods I’m going to teach you are free. You won’t need to pay someone a pant-load of money to learn how to do it. All you’ll need is a fire in your belly and a conviction to never give up.

How I Got Validation From the World’s Greatest Copywriter

Gary Halbert is the undisputed champion of direct response copywriting.

When you speak of him to other copywriters you better do it in hushed tones and get down on one knee.  He had an amazing track record of bringing in massive amounts of money for his clients and himself.

I never met him personally, because he passed away several years ago (2007).  However, I’ve read and studied his work considerably.

The reason why I say I got “validation” from him, is that his method of learning copywriting was very similar to my musical education.

In other words, he immersed himself in learning everything he could about it.

When I started reading how he acquired this skill, I related immediately to what he was saying.   He practiced his craft every chance he got, sought out the best copywriters, collected and studied their ads, bought every book he could on the subject, etc.

In other words, he became the Bruce Lee of direct response copywriting.

via GIPHY

Gary Halbert’s Learn Copywriting Free Advice

So when I read Mr. Halbert’s advice on how to learn copywriting free, I immediately agreed with his method.   In the same way, I immersed myself in learning music, he used similar principles to learn copywriting.

When you think about it, great examples of this are everywhere in every kind of discipline.  Pick a sport, art, trade, or career of any kind and you’ll find other’s who have used these methods to become great at what they do.

So, here is Gary Halbert’s advice on how to learn copywriting free:

Step 1: Learn the Basics of Advertising Principles

He said that you are to read the following books and nothing else.  (He also said NOT to take notes while you do this.)

• “Scientific Advertising” -by Claude Hopkins
• “The Robert Collier Letter Book” -by Robert Collier
• “Tested Advertising Methods” -by John Caples
• “How To Write A Good Advertisement” -by Vic Schwab
• “The Gary Halbert Letter” (all back issues) -by Gary Halbert
• “The Boron Letters” -by Gary Halbert
• “The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches”-by Joe Karbo
• “Break-Through Advertising” -by Eugene M. Schwartz
• “7-Steps To Freedom” -by Ben Suarez

Read through these without taking notes as fast as you can.  Make sure that you keep copies of them because they will become reference books you can read over and over again.

Step 2:  Copy This Stuff Out by Hand

Now some of the serious work can start. (I told you I was going to teach you how to learn copywriting free not how to learn copywriting easy!)

The next step Mr. Halbert said to do was to get copies of the 9 following advertisements:

1. “Do You Make These Mistakes In English?”
2. “What Everybody Should Know About This Stock And Bond Business“
3. “The Nancy L. Halbert Heraldry Letter“
4. “How To Burn Off Body Fat, Hour-By-Hour”
5. “At 60 Miles An Hour, The Loudest Noise In This Rolls Royce Is The Ticking Of The Electric Clock”
6. “Why Men Crack”
7. “How To Collect From Social Security At Any Age”
8. “The Admiral Byrd Transpolar Expedition Letter”
9. “The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches”

I have found some of these ads for you online and provided the links above. It would be a good idea to save them as PDF files onto your computer hard drive.

What you’re going to do next is copy these suckers out by hand.  Gary’s suggestion was to do it by hand and he was very specific about it.  I’ve heard that some copywriters have used their computers to copy them, but since Mr.H is a genius in this realm, I’d do it exactly the way he said to.

Step 3: Create a Diagram

You are now going to take those ads and create hand-drawn layouts of each one.  I think a lot of people skip this step, but I would still do it.

When I took a music composition course years ago, my class had to learn the fundamentals.  We started by studying the earliest compositions of Gregorian Chant.  (No kidding.)

Why?

Because it was an early building block of how music is composed.   So, if you’re going to learn all you can about how to create great advertising copy, practice the basics and diagram them out.

A lot of ad agencies are still using some of the old formats, believe it or not. I picked up a copy of Reader’s Digest at the store the other day, and there were still full-page advertisements in them that followed the older formats.

Another reason why I’d learn how to do this is that some of you may move into different areas of professional writing.  You may want to write articles for magazines which is a different area of copywriting.  Many magazines, like Reader’s Digest, use dynamic layout schemes like this:

Even though it seems “old school” to learn to do it this way, you should follow Gary Halbert’s advice and do it.

Step 4: Get One of Your Pieces Typeset

The next step is to take one of your ads and its layout and get it typeset.

When Gary wrote these instructions it was before computers dominated all aspects of our lives.  If you’re good at using Microsoft Word, you can edit words and pictures into a layout exactly as you want them.

You can also hire a company like Mayfly Design to typeset your ad for you.

The main reason why you’ll want to do this is to get experience working with a company that can provide services like this to you.  Just like any other business, you’ll never know what problems can occur with the layout of your ads, so getting your ad professionally typeset is a valid and good experience.

Step 5: Reread and Take Notes

I know I told you I was going to show you how to learn copywriting free, I didn’t say I was going to show you how to learn copywriting “easy”.

When you read this stuff, you start thinking, “He’s out of his mind. Nobody would go through all this trouble!”

I’ve read a lot of what Gary Halbert has written about his quest to become a copywriter.  He was so driven to become the best, he would hop on a plane just to go to a distant library to read a book on the subject. (Thank God we now have the Internet and online stores like Amazon!)

So, don’t think for a second he’s kidding around about this.

Now you’re going to pull all of those books out again and reread them, this time taking notes.

Gary also said to go back and reread all of his newsletters too.  You are going to write down all of the great ideas you can get from them.  By the time you’re done, you should have hundreds of notes.

Step 6: Write Out All The Best Headlines

Take out those 9 advertisements and write out the headlines from them.  Also, take out the books he told you to get and hand write any headline examples that are in them too.

He then wanted you to get your hands on issues of Cosmopolitan Magazine and National Enquirer and hand copy out any headlines you found that were repeated (or similar).  You are then going to copy the headlines from the covers of these publications.

Note: You can easily access almost any kind of magazine cover you want by using Google.  Just type in the name of the magazine you want to access and then click the “Images” button at the top of Google’s search results. You’ll be taken to a page that looks like this:

Since these magazines pay mega-bucks to get these cover headlines written,  it would probably be sufficient to use them in practicing your headline writing. There are thousands, if not millions of images of magazine headlines you could access this way.

Here are a few other magazines with covers that produce great headlines:

• Success Magazine
• Men’s Fitness
• AARP (Currently America’s most-read magazine.)
• Reader’s Digest
• Woman’s Day
• Maxim
• Us
• Money
• Seventeen
• Guideposts

As mentioned above, if you see very similar headlines repeated over and over, concentrate on those.

Step 6: Compile All this Stuff on Notecards

Take out all those notes and headlines and write them out onto 3 by 5-inch notecards.  Once you’re done doing that, put them all into shoeboxes.

Step 7: Take a Break

via GIPHY

It is now time to take a break, according to Gary.  His instructions were to do whatever it was you normally do and not even think about it for a few days.

Step 8: Begin Writing Your First Advertisement

This could be an advertisement, online sales letter, direct mail piece, or anything similar to these formats.

You are now going to collect and read every successful ad you can find that is similar to what you are selling.  If you’re selling a service or product online, find all of the best websites about them you can.

(If you’re using a website copy, print them up and keep them close at hand too. An easy way to do this is to use Evernote.  Evernote has an app which will convert a webpage into an easy to read page for you, taking out all extraneous ads and other bothersome web junk.)

Also, if you are using online resources like this as examples, make sure you find out how successful they were first.  You don’t want to study a webpage’s copy only to find out that it was a piece of crap that got low conversion rates.

One good way to do this is by using Ubersuggest.  This service will show you the sites and blog posts with the most shares on them.

Step 9: Repeat Step 7

Yep, you read that right. Take another couple of days off.  (Look, I didn’t invent this system; I’m only reporting on it.)

Step 10: Find Your Fortress of Solitude and WRITE!

Now you should be ready to write the first draft of your sales letter, advertisement, or website sales page.  You will need to isolate yourself in a room or place of your choosing.

The fewer distractions you’ll have, the better.

Make sure that you take your shoeboxes with all your note cards in them and start scanning them.  Take out the ones which catch your attention and have relevance to what you’ll be writing about and read them. Think about how your ideas and headlines could be used on your project.

Mr. Halbert suggested that you think about how the headlines could be modified to fit your project.

Here’s an example Gary Halbert used for this point:

So basically, you’re taking other people’s headlines and changing up a bit to suit your copy.  It takes time and practice to learn how to do this.  I read an article recently where a copywriter said she wrote her blog post headlines about 5o different ways before she settled on one.

Keep going through your index cards and keep reading them. Write down ideas as they pop into your head.  He also suggested shuffling the note cards as if they were like playing cards while writing down any dumb headline ideas you think of. You’ll also start writing down headlines that sound darn good, too.

Also, write out these suggestions:

• Write out “How to…” Headlines
• Write out Number Headlines (“23 Ways to…”)
• Write, write, and write some more.

Step 11: Write Like a Madman (Or Madwoman)

If you look at the original Halbert Newsletter article (I posted the link further up the page) with Gary Halbert’s advice in it, he was saying stuff like, “Go Go Go Go, Write Write Write Write…”

In other words, just let all of your ideas flow from your brain and write as fast as you can without editing too much.  Just get excited and get all of your ideas out into the open.

Step 12: Take Some More Days Off

Rest a day or two and contemplate how awesome it is you’re getting to learn copywriting free. (I added that last part, myself.)

Oh, while you’re relaxing, watch this video…

Step 13: Get Back to Work (Again)

We are now directed by the “Prince of Print” to sequence what we’ve already written out previously.

Here’s the sequence:

1. Say something that gets attention
2. Tell your prospects why they should be interested
3. Also, tell them why they should be interested
4. Prove that your information is true
5. List and describe all the benefits
6. Tell your audience how to order the product or service
7. Tell them to order now.

Step 14: Edit

Now that you’ve finished with the sequence above, it’s time to start editing.  Check your spelling, grammar, and take out any extraneous words and phrases which make your copy sound complicated.

Once you’ve cleaned up your copy a bit, read it aloud.  You will uncover any weird places in the copy that may sound complicated or weird.  You’ll hear how your copy doesn’t flow easily from one sentence to the other.

Reduce your sentences and paragraphs and make them shorter if you can. (This is called making the copy tight.) He also suggests using one-word sentences and paragraphs.

Gary finally tells you to use subheads to make your copy interesting. If you’ve read the books that he told you to, you should be very familiar with subheads and how to write them.

Learn Copywriting Free From A Titan of Marketing

Another titan of copywriting and marketing is Dan Kennedy. He has written one of the most definitive books on copywriting ever – The Ultimate Sales Letter.

His method of learning how to write direct response copy is pretty intense too.  Mr. Kennedy claims, ” I sucked at everything and had a slow crawl to competence.”

So, for 25 years he had a routine that looked like this:

1. Read a book a day. (Books, magazines, newsletters, anything relevant to his goals of copywriting and marketing.  Not Harry Potter.)
2. Visited the public library weekly.
3. Learned a needed skill very thoroughly that he became an expert at it.

In order to get really good at copywriting he:

1. Studied copywriting at least an hour a day.
2. Listened to recorded material on it constantly.
3. Sought out and networked with the top people in the copywriting field.
4. Collected the best direct response ads and copied them out by hand 21 times each. (He did that for 100 ads.)
5. Gathered over 200 books on the subject and immersed himself in them.
6. Built organized files of great copy (aka swipe files) that would fill a room.
7. Traced all of the masters of copywriting back through each copywriter so he even knew the genealogy of them.

Dan Kennedy is really good at writing long copy.  I once got a direct mail piece from him about an information marketing seminar he was running that was about 30 pages long.

If you can get your hands on some of his marketing materials, do it.  He also has a great magazine/newsletter that you can subscribe to that is excellent and packed with tons of great information.

You Don’t Have to Learn Copywriting Free

If you want to spend some money on courses, go ahead.

The worst it will do is it will accelerate your learning curve in the game of becoming a great copywriter.  Here are some of my recommendations of people you can learn from who are excellent in their abilities and courses.  (I make no money from any of the courses listed below.)

Serious Money Courses

Dan Kennedy’s Copywriting Mastery and Sales Thinking Bootcamp.   There are 9 CDs with this course and 2 books with rare, hard-to-find information about learning the art of writing copy that sells. Price $997.

Colin Theriot’s Cult of Copy Courses.  This guy is a real genius when it comes to writing copy, generating tens of millions of dollars for his clients.  The only way you can access the courses he offers is by having a Facebook account.  (If you don’t have one, get it and get on board with this guy.) $99 a month.

Nevill’s Kopywriting Kourse – This guy is not only a great copywriter, but he’s also pretty funny and makes the process of learning fun.  However, you can get seriously good by taking his course. ( Or is it, “Kourse”?) $900 a year subscription.

Modestly Priced Courses

Jon Morrow’s Blogging and Writing Courses – Jon Morrow is the uber-blogger on the planet right now. You can make decent money as a copywriter by writing for company blogs and web pages.

John Carlton’s Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel course.  This is one of the most popular copywriting courses ever and I think it is a great value at a mere $199. (You can make 3 monthly payments of $77, too.)

Conclusion

Obviously, you have to put in some serious time if you want to get good at copywriting. You can get on board with all the great copywriting courses you want to, but if you don’t “bank the time” you’ll never get good at it.

One last suggestion I’d like to make is that you get a good book on time management.

Most people whine about not having any time to write, but I’m pretty busy myself and I still find the time to get it done.

The key thing is commitment.  If you want it bad enough you’ll find a way to get it.

If you have any suggestions of your own on how to learn copywriting free, please leave them in the comment sections below.