Q. I have been following the advice in your books about starting my copy-writing business. I may be going overboard on this (engineers tend to do so) but I’m looking ahead to see what other things I should be doing to help me build a list of potential clients – besides cold calling and letter mailing. You have an ezine and I understand you have recently started a blog. I’m wondering whether I need to start thinking of these. Of the two which do you believe draws more potential clients, the ezine or the blog.
A. Both my ezine and blog I do for my readers, not my clients, so I don’t get clients from that. In Back for Seconds, there’s the story of Lisa Sparks (p. 99; or p. 166 in the updated edition of TWFW), who built her copywriting business around her ezine. That’s a good model to follow if you want to go the ezine route. Just remember, in either case, it’d better be good and relevant content if you want people to subscribe and STAY subscribed. I’m not convinced a blog is necessary starting out unless you have a particular niche and you’re going to, again, provide, good relevant content to those prospects and practitioners in your field. If not, you could spend a whole lot of time talking to yourself (the story of most blogs…).