Alex Cattoni says great copywriters do what bad ones can't: say the same thing in half the words. Long copy is easy. Short copy is hard. She quotes Mark Twain on why brevity takes time, then tells copywriters to stop charging by the word and raise their rates instead.
I'm often asked, what's the difference between a good copywriter and a great copywriter? And if I had to sum it up, it would be great. Copywriters can say the same thing in half the amount of words. It is really easy to write long copy, to just go on and on and weave in all these beautiful anecdotes and stories and words and synonyms and metaphors. And writing long copy is easy, but as Mark Twain so famously said, I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one. And I think about that with copy, too. Which, by the way, is why copywriters should never charge per word. It is way harder to write short copy. So if you want to become a great copywriter, my advice is to practice saying what you want to say in half the amount of words, and then double your rates.
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