Wall of Fame
AWAI Member Since: 2006
Age: 66
What’s your current occupation?
Owner – M. A. Ervin & Associates
What’s your former occupation?
VP of R&D, E. I. DuPont
What are your current projects?
My current project is the development of a content-rich informational marketing website on patents for inventors and small-business owners that will act as a lead-generation tool for my business.
My next milestone – after I get to about 125 pages – is to start up a newsletter and grow a mailing list. Over time I am hopeful that it will grow traffic to the site.
What’s your favorite niche to write for?
Intellectual Property
What’s your income goal for this year?
$125,000
What’s your writing routine?
My primary writing routine is the writing of patent applications for my clients. I arrive at my office at around 7:00 a.m. and focus on my clients’ needs until about 2:00 p.m. (with a lunch break). Then back to the house (about 10 minutes away) and get some exercise and do chores. After dinner I spend about 90 minutes on website development. My goal is to add at least two new web pages per week. I have been exceeding that goal. It is the way of the tortoise.
Please give us an example of how your life has changed since becoming a copywriter.
My client development in my patent business was for years based on nothing but referrals. Toward the latter half of 2008, I decided (based on what I had learned about writing and information marketing from AWAI) to use an information website to do lead generation. Although I’m only 6 months into it and only have about 95 pages on my site, I have been very impressed with the reach I have achieved. My previous website never generated a client in 6 years. This one – still growing – has brought me three new clients in the past three months. That alone has justified the work.
But I can see now, as Nick Usborne teaches, that I’m creating an asset that will pay me back for years. If my website continues to generate three clients per quarter – I’m booked for life! This first quarter may have been an anomaly with that many clients that quickly – but I fully intend to grow this site to several hundred pages over the next few years, so I am very confident this will change my business. Not only all the clients I need – but a much better portfolio of clients. And eventually I intend to monetize the site in other ways – but I am approaching that very carefully and deliberately.
I talked with Bob Bly at the 2007 AWAI Bootcamp, and he advised, “Make yourself a guru in your field.” I now see a way to do that.
What success tip would you like to share with your fellow writers?
Work constantly on your writing voice. The thing that really hit me from studying copywriting from AWAI and from Nick’s Money-Making Websites program is the importance of connecting with your target client. Most legal (intellectual property) websites are written in a legalistic and numbing style. I try, as Nick recommends, to imagine myself sitting across the table from a small-business owner who is considering getting a patent for the first time, and just explaining to him what to think about in that decision. My first feedback from new readers of my site was, “You just sound like someone I can trust – can you help me?” It works.
When did you realize you were living the copywriter’s life?
I began to realize that this informational marketing approach really works when I started to get inquiries from readers. This never happened from my old website.
I read somewhere the other day that the tagline for informational or content marketing is: “Don’t pitch, don’t sell, and don’t interrupt. Educate, inform, and provide value. Your business will grow.” I was skeptical at first, but I now believe that. If you’re a service provider of any kind, you can use informational marketing to grow your business.
