Copywriting In-House: Make Six Figures While Learning to Write

Julie brought her support team with her when she moved cross-country to take an in-house copywriting job.

Copywriting might be one of the most flexible career paths in the world. Once you make the decision to go for it, you can design your schedule however you see fit. Possibilities range from 20 hours a week working from anywhere in the world to raking in up to seven figures a year working 50-plus hours per week for top newsletter publishers.

As you begin to master your copywriting skills, many options will unfold right in front of you. You’ll soon find you’re free to choose how and when you want to work based solely on what you want your life to look like.

Over the last four years, I’ve done it all (sometimes simultaneously), so I want to walk you through four exciting ways to make a great living in copywriting today.

All of them vary greatly. They all have their pros and cons. They offer a wide variety of benefits. And they all require a slightly different preparation and skillset.

The great thing is … once you choose a path, you’re never stuck with it! Each one will teach you valuable lessons you can transfer to your next project, client, or employer.

The four paths I’m going to walk you down this month are:

1. In-house copywriting jobs
2. Freelance copywriting
3. Copywriting for a freelancing agency
4. On-call overflow for advertising agencies

Let’s start this week by looking at in-house copywriting jobs.

How it works: Larger direct marketing publishers have begun building up in-house teams of copywriters to write long-form promotions and the copy required to drive traffic to those promotions — like ads and emails. You are generally part of a “copy team” ranging from 5 to 20 other copywriters working in the same room.

You’ll have one or more copy chiefs who will approve your ideas and monitor how you progress through each promotion you write. Often, when you are just starting out, some copy chiefs will have you update older promos and write “collateral copy” (like emails, ads, or renewals) before you move on to writing full-scale promotions.

What a typical day might look like: Arrive to the office between 8:30 and 9:00 a.m. Chat with your copy chief and your fellow writers about how your current project is going. Depending on the day, you might have a pitch meeting where you share your best ideas with the marketing team. You also might have a group copy review where you sit down with the team and critique each other’s work. Other days, you could find yourself wearing noise-cancelling headphones all day long so you can focus entirely on researching, outlining, and writing. By 5:00 or 6:00 p.m., it’s time to head home.

The amount of flexibility you can expect: This isn’t the most flexible of your four options. That’s because the publishers generally like to encourage collaboration among team members in the office. But, as you move up and publish one successful promo after another, you’ll gain a little more leverage. Some in-house copywriters have a set number of days they work from home each week. All of it is negotiable as you build trust and deliver great results to the publisher.

Which industries/niches this is most common in: You will find this model mainly in the financial and health niches. Some information marketers are also moving toward this model.

What you can expect to get paid: Depending on the industry, in-house copywriting positions generally pay one of two ways. The health and financial industries pay a salary plus royalties. Information marketing often pays a flat salary. These salaries can range anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000 and up. Royalties tend to range anywhere from 2.5 percent to 5 percent of net sales, depending on your experience and the price point of the product you are selling.

Where you can look to find this type of work: Publishers looking to build an in-house team are almost always present at AWAI’s Bootcamp and Clayton Makepeace’s conferences. They also post ads on LinkedIn and on DirectResponseJobs.com. Generally, you will find that copy chiefs and marketing managers at these companies are quite responsive to cold inquiries, because it’s a rare day they’re not looking to add great people to their teams. So feel free to email them directly to introduce yourself.

How you can best prepare yourself: First, sign up for the free email lists at the large publishers. You’ll get to see what they’re sending out, and you can begin determining whether your skills are a match for the kind of work they do. If you don’t live near any of the major publishing hubs (like Baltimore or Delray Beach), you likely will need to consider moving — even if it’s just for two to three years. Study how to write long-form video sales letters and spend a fair amount of time watching and dissecting the ones that publishers are sending out.

That’s a quick walkthrough of what you can expect working in-house. Some people call this path paid training, because you usually receive direct coaching from some of the most talented, innovative copywriters in the entire industry.

Next week, we’ll look at how this path differs from a freelance career, and what it takes to be successful when you’re 100% independent.