My first post! I am a copywriter and web optimization enthusiast

[DylanBozeman]

I have been lurking around the forums for a bit, just soaking up all of the great information here and I'd like to introduce myself here, as well as gather some thoughts and opinions on my business. My name is Dylan Bozeman, I am from the greater Seattle area and currently in school for a Degree in Computer Science. My passion for the Internet and computers started at a young age and has grown into something I was able to craft a business around. Web optimization was my specialty as early as high school. I'm no artist, so whenever someone needed a website I made it clear I wasn't going to make it from scratch but I knew how to set it up, craft it to their liking, and start on the real important factors like marketing their brand and establishing search engine traffic. I never saw the sense in spending thousands on a website when the true costs come from driving traffic toward it and having a real use out of it. Early on I gave away websites to family and friends who were aspiring for a business or needed a personal page. After that I still handed out freebies, but primarily for clients that I knew would want me to optimize their site and would pay for web optimization.

After creating countless websites and constantly working on my copywriting, I realized that my true passion was for both writing and web optimization. I decided to break down my skills and offer my services around them both. I found that if you work hard at what you do and offer quality services, people will notice. The Internet is a difficult place to compete, there's so much out there and everyone is claiming they can do this or that. I realized most of them are phonies :eek: and couldn't provide half of what they advertised, but somehow I was still struggling. I tried to never get discouraged or let it effect the way I felt about myself, I knew what I brought to the table and I worked at it until people started listening.

Being involved in this field for quite some time, I have learned the value of websites and know how powerful and important they can be. However, I know that not everyone has experienced this and some are still hesitant to spend money online. What are your opinions on copywriting and web optimization services? As small business owners, is the web something you see as important (for local business) and would you invest in quality content and traffic for your website?

[vangogh]

Welcome to the forum Dylan. That's great to have such an early start on business. Don't be surprised if you find a few more things you really enjoy over time too.

I guess our businesses are related. I'm a web design, though I also do seo work and I've written my share of copy as well. You can probably guess my opinions on copywriting and web optimization and I completely agree about the importance of website. I think very soon, if we're not already there, it's going to be very hard to run any business without also having a site. And it's going to be hard to have a successful site without continue to create content for it and optimize the site as a whole.

Welcome again and thanks for joining the community.

[KristineS]

Hi Dylan and welcome to the forum.

Websites are very important and many small business owners either don't understand that, or think a website is something magical, they put one up, no matter how awful, and sales will magically appear.

I'm a writer by inclination, and was kind of thrown into writing and developing sites for my job. It's been a useful education. There's a lot more that goes into make a website work then simply putting one out there. More businesspeople need to understand that.

[cbscreative]

Welcome, Dylan, and thank you for coming out with an intro after your lurking. We appreciate when lurkers become active members.

Obviously since I do web design, SEO, writing, and marketing, I'm going to be very biased so consider this my fair warning and acknowledgement of that bias.

Your intro was very informative, and a couple things stood out to me. Since you are still young, I understand your perspective, but to be successful in business you'll need to adjust your thinking. First of all, when you help a business succeed with their web site, that has a great deal of value. Never be afraid to charge adequately for the value you provide. If you do your job correctly, you will help put hundreds of thousands of dollars (possibly millions) into the till over the life of that web site. Charging thousands for that service is not at all unreasonable. If you want to have a nice car, house, wife, kids, and/or a life, you'll find it necessary to charge appropriately.

Even without all the responsibilities you'll face as you get older, your statement about the web being tough to compete on tells me a great deal about your situation. Ironically, as you charge more to accompany the value of the services you provide, you'll find it easier to get business. When you respect yourself well enough to not give yourself away too cheaply, it will boost your confidence. That will in turn boost the confidence your clients will have in you. You'll also get better clients because those who realize the value know they have to pay for it. Those not willing to pay are seldom if ever the kind of client you want to have.

Once you adopt this principle into your thinking, you won't view the web as a tough place to compete, you'll actually get to a place where you have to turn down work. You'll view "competition" not as competition, but as colleagues. Those of us who truly enjoy this kind of work aren't threatened by others who are good at it, we're glad to have legitimate service providers join in because the need is far greater than the supply.

There's far more opportunity out there than any of us can handle. The only catch is, you have to find it. Most business people want it cheap. The ones who realize the fallacy of that expectation clean up and let everyone else fight over what's left over. Considering the statistic that 80% of all businesses fail, you want to find out what the 20% are doing and not make the same mistakes as the 80%. Also realize that 80% of the business people won't be your market so don't let their thinking or rejection get you down. There's plenty of opportunity in the 20% group.