Why You Shouldn’t Work with Business Junkies
Many of you have seen the show Breaking Bad, right? Well, there’s this criminal genius named Gus Fring. He goes off about junkies in a rant. A junkie? A worthless junkie? For him, he says, “you intervened and put us all at risk? Some contemptible junkie who couldn’t keep the peace for eight hours?”
Copywriter Ben Settle talks about this a bit in one of his emails, and I got the initial idea after reading his bit. I thought the Gus Fring quote he shared was appropriate too, so I’m shamelessly swiping it as the foundation for this post. (I’m a huge fan of Ben Settle, so I hope he forgives me.)
Now, I kind of believe being aghast at working with addicts in general is just as appropriate when it comes to working with “contemptible junkies” in the business world.
Related: What Are Copywriter Jobs, Some of You Want to Know?
I’m talking about those people who get high off of jerking writers’ chains by treating them as commodities.
Of course, some writers ARE a commodity. Maybe they’re brand new, and they’re just starting to get a handle on things. Perhaps they are Starving Marvins, they’re desperate, and they’ll take any work they can get from any and all business junkies.
Who knows?
A Story of Business Junkies
For example, this publisher commissioned a guy named Steve (not his real name) to ghost-write a novella. The company paid something like $600 per week, and they assured Steve that they needed a series of 4 of these tomes.
It would be easy, they said, and the rates were “competitive” for freelancers.
It was a romance novella. No hardcore sex, nothing dirty. Just something nice that could be sold digitally on Amazon with a pen name.
Well, Steve got down to business only to find that each novella was half the length of an average romance novel. (Average length for most romance novels is 65,000–80,000 words in case you didn’t know.) Moreover, the publisher expected him to crank out the entire story in just one week.
For. $600.
The junkie publisher, on the other hand, would be selling the book as a print on demand for $7.59 forever. (Think about the potential there. The publisher has no printing or shipping costs.)
If the publisher is good at marketing, you can bet your business junkie’s syringe they’ll be banking a helluva lot more than $600.
Related: Why Use a Copywriter When YOU Can Write the Damn Thing?
Are you an aspiring copywriter wishing you could get a little hands-on experience before jumping in and working for clients? Here’s a way to make it happen.
Unscrupulous Businesses Can be a Nightmare
If the finances were the entirety of the problem, it would have been a bad enough situation for Steve. But no, a couple of weeks in, after he’d churned out two of these novellas, the publisher changed the genre on him.
It went from Romance straight to erotica. Homo-erotic erotica.
Now, no one is making judgments here, but when you agree to work for a company as a writer on ONE type of project, and then they bait and switch you …
Well, Steve just wasn’t comfortable with that.
He finally decided to cut the cord to that client, and good for him. But, the truth is that Steve made tons of mistakes right out of the gate. That’s why a business junkie accosted him.
All the time, this kind of thing happens with business junkies. But it doesn’t have to.
How Writer’s Can Break Free
Now I’m a copywriter, and I’m not cheap. I also have a lot of years behind me in the writing world.
But you might not want to be a copywriter. Steve wasn’t. He was just a guy who got laid off from his corporate job and had to find a way to feed his family.
So if you’re someone like him, and you’re someone who’s thought about dabbling in writing and maybe even taking it to a place where you’re earning a consistent income, there’s some good news.
There are proven ways of making sure that you don’t go off half-cocked, trying to reinvent the wheel.
That’s why the first thing I want you to do is to think about something that interests you.
I mean REALLY interests you… something you would be thrilled to write about every day and get paid to do it.
Discover how you can get paid to write about it at the link above.
It’s something you can do in your free time, and you can do it anywhere from 5-10 hours a week. And you can generate passive income, which means it comes in whether you’re working or not. You can be earning $750, $1,500, $3,500, or even more — month after month.
Don’t be like Steve. Get some training.
To your success, peeps.
– Will Blesch
P.S.
If you’re not a noob writer, but you have a business or know someone who does, and you need help with advertising, marketing, or sales copy, get in touch.
Related: Why Is This Copywriter Giving Away Marketing & Sales Secrets Worth $145,637 For Free?
