1. You're Writing to Persuade

Copywriting is writing to persuade, and often to sell. Primarily you'll write sales and marketing materials. These materials can consist of anything from tiny ads to complete video scripts, and even product manuals.

Copywriters tend to specialize. You may decide to specialize in direct response mail or in copywriting for the web for example.

You'll earn as you learn, and as your experience grows, you'll work for larger clients and take on larger projects. The better the results you deliver, the more you can charge for your services.

With the growth of the Web, there's a huge number of writing jobs available for copywriters -- even new ones.

2. Know Yourself, Know Your Customers

To become an effective copywriter, you need to understand yourself, thinking about your own motivations and drives, so that you can put yourself into the mindset of others.

An understanding of psychology is useful, too. That said, you're not learning this in order to be a charlatan, in fact if you don't believe in a product, it's wise refuse the project. Top copywriters are honest both with themselves and with their clients, as well as in the copy they write.

Your sincerity and honesty shine through in the copy.

3. "What's in It for Me", and Your Calls to Action

"What's In It For ME", or WIIFM", is something you should keep at the back of your mind when you write copy. Your customers are motivated solely by their own concerns, so you'll need to find triggers which will jolt them into action.

Everything you write is written in order to get a customer response, be it a click on the web, the customer placing an order, or calling a phone number.

If your copy doesn't get a response, it's useless. You get the response you want when your calls to action are powerful: you should make customers offers they can't refuse.

If you can do that, you're well on the way to becoming a great copywriter.