If you don't already read geekpreneur, check them out. They provide a lot of quality content and recently had a piece about what I do.

http://www.geekpreneur.com/to-write-or-not-to-write-your-own-copy

Pro: Land a professional copywriter and you will get professional results.

Copy isn’t just about words.

While the words you choose are crucial, it’s more than just that. The purpose of effective copy is to build instant credibility, make a compelling statement, tell a persuasive story and last but not the least, get your reader to take action. It answers any objections your reader may come up with, increasing sales in the process and reducing the amount of returns and refunds.

A lot of clients became clients simply because they have no idea what to write on their website. Many people make the mistake of thinking that their copy should be about them. They talk about the company and its history, or launch a tirade on the X-amount of features their product has. Professional copywriters know and understand that to get a person to buy, they must know the benefits of what you can offer them. People don’t buy quarter-inch drills — they buy quarter-inch holes.

A professional copywriter will take your product, understand the benefits it has to offer, and most importantly communicate those benefits to your readers in such a way that it inspires action from them. Many times, the sales you’ll achieve from hiring a professional copywriter far outweighs the cost of hiring him in the first place.

Con: Professional copywriters who know their worth are very expensive.

Michel Fortin charges at least $3,000 per job. Dan Kennedy costs about $9,600 per day. The rates for other, lesser-known copywriters are lower, but you can expect to be billed at least a thousand dollars for one quality salesletter.

This can be out of the budget for the startup, who often is bootstrapping his operations and can’t afford to eat up a huge chunk of their budget on any one endeavor. Hiring a professional copywriter is sometimes more of a gamble than an investment, as you don’t have a guarantee that sales will come in as a result of hiring him.

**Fortunately, Crooked Tree Press is not that expensive!

Pro: You’re focused on the things that matter.

Marketing/advertising and copy writing are two very different things. Marketing and advertising brings people to look at your website, where your copy can do its job of convincing the customer why he or she needs your product.

Both activities eat up a lot of time, money and effort. You might have the best sales letter on your website, but if you don’t market the damned site itself then nobody’s going to see it. Outsource your copy writing, and your priorities can be spent on growing your business and selling more of your products.

Con: Quality copywriters are hard to find.
**Not Crooked Tree Press

On the other hand, there’s no sense in spending all that time marketing your website if it can’t do a good job of selling your product. Almost anybody can come up with hype-laden copy writing and outdated methods of persuasion, and many groups of people are particularly turned off by this type of copy. They do not want to feel like they’re being marketed to, even though they are.

In addition, copywriters who REALLY know their stuff are quite a rare breed. I love the folks at Elance, but a majority of them come from third world countries without English as the first language. I’m not bagging on these people (after all, I come from such a country myself) but the chances of you hiring an overnight copywriter are much, much higher. If they’re making basic grammatical mistakes, how can you expect them to write effective sales copy for you?

Pro: You know your product well.

Who better to write about your product than you?

Since you know the ins-and-outs of your product, then maybe you’re the best person to communicate those benefits to your customers especially if you yourself are part of your target market. You will know their pain points and the specific problems they encounter, and you’ll be able to express how it is exactly your product can help them get rid of these annoyances.

Knowing the product inside and out, you’ll also be able to highlight specific features and tell your readers the exact benefit for them. A copywriter who has two weeks to write something about your product might not be able to dig in as deep as he should be into your business, and might miss a couple of important points that he should otherwise emphasize.

Con: You know your product too well.

If the hypothetical situation in the beginning of this post resonates with you, then chances are it’s because you know your product too well. Can such a thing really happen?

Unfortunately, yes. It’s tough to realize it, but your mind could be so entrenched in the details of your product that looking at it from an outsider’s perspective is damned near impossible. Much more writing about it so an outsider will understand. It’s now your baby, and nothing less than perfect is good enough for it. So you delay releasing it and work on your copy for a little bit. Then you realize you’re not satisfied, so you delay it again. All because of that oh-so-evasive sales letter.

You could also be so overworked from making your product that the last thing you want to think about is writing the copy for it. You could be so sick of thinking and writing about the topic your ebook is about that you just want to flush everything down the toilet. Good luck writing persuasive copy then (it is exactly because of this why I’m an advocate of writing your copy first, or at least before you’re in too deep of the product creation process).

http://ourcrookedtree.blogspot.com/2008/06/jack-of-all-trades.html

Dear Santa Barbara,

It has taken me 16 years to write this letter. Although it’s been a long time coming, we both knew it had to happen. How could you do this to me? To us? I grew up with you. I loved you as a child. Your constant 72 degree year round temperature, your picturesque mountains and sweet blue seas; I took your beauty for granted. I took my first solo dive off of your Channel Islands. I raced BMX out in Goleta in glorious sunshine. You taught me the joys of Rusty’s pepperoni pizza, the rigors of Junior Lifeguards at East Beach and how to bask in the freshness of citrus and avocados on demand. You shielded me from the raw elements; a trip to the snow was a treat, a vacation to the summer heat of Phoenix was an excuse to swim in a relatives’ pool. And always, you were there with open arms to await my return; to the ocean, to the cool climes and the mellow winters.

And much like the boy in Silverstein’s Giving Tree, I wandered away to blaze my own trail, to urinate on life’s other fire hydrants. I escaped to college to the North with your less glamorous granola-munching sister San Luis Obispo. You should know, by the way, I cultivated a love affair with her that continues unabated. But I digress. I experienced living in Alaska (good and bad). I meandered all around and one day ended up in Missouri, a fireman with roots no deeper than a dandelion when it came to a sense of home. We needed to reconnect.

So I traveled home on an unexpected trip to visit my father as he came to grips with aging and the associated health issues. Eight Days. Seven if you count the one day trip to visit San Luis County, which meant nothing, I swear. I was there for you. To spend time. To remember why we’ve drifted apart over all these years. Sure, you still have all the trappings of your seductive environment. I believe I counted five clouds on my entire trip. I ate fresh seafood at your harbor. I took in a leisurely drive along foothills that would be considered mountains by the part of the country that resides east of the Rockies. But something’s different. You’ve changed. Don’t try to hide it.

You always were the bastion of the noveau riche and Stuffy Old Money. Previously, that segment always kept to Hope Ranch and Montecito, respectively. The rest of town was still accessible. Working class folks raised working class hellions. State Street was where the kick-ass arcade / movie theatre was and the derelicts hung out. There were hardware stores and auto parts shops and old warehouses where the really cool guys shaped their own surfboards. Now it would seem that all of your inhabitants are vying for the kind of notoriety Paris Hilton enjoys. You’re a town of labels, of high end trends. Quite frankly, it’s ugly. Vapid shallowness is the realm of People Magazine, Barbara Walters interviews and the “music” of Ashlee Simpson…not you. Gone are the smoke filled bowling alleys and Pony baseball. Now the only joints that have any sort of credible seediness seem to be the ones that are affecting skuzzy irony, and that’s wrong. Wrong, you hear me! One of your residents proclaimed to me “Santa Barbara….where everyone either has a gardener or is one”. Smug fools abound in “smart” cars and golf carts in order to garishly prove their commitment to an environment…..YOUR environment, now held hostage by second tier Hollywood burnouts and aging hippie-professor-activist types who are drowning in their own rich liberal guilt. Damn you, Santa Barbara, why have you done this? YOU were my roots, my foundation, the reason I was born to be a cynical optimist (after all, who can really compare to your first love?). Now I find out that you’ve made the decision to price out all the working class kids who dream of owning a home. $900,000 for a 1000 square foot dump? Who do you think you are? Where do you get off? I’ll tell you what...you’ve got some nerve trying to pull that one on me. Rob Lowe may think that your homes are worth more than the GDP of Trinidad, but I knew you when you were just an upstart with some palm trees and ugly Mexican architecture. And I embraced it. But you decided to Big Time me. It’s more than just annoyed me, SB. I hate you for it.

I loathe you for your transition from a laid back coastal town to a haven for roving gangs of the Brazilian Idle Rich. I despise the fact that your residents tend to use the word fabulous in every other sentence. It irks me to no end that every restaurant has to be associated with some media darling. “Oohhhh you have to try THIS restaurant…Kevin Costner is a partner in it! Fabulous!” Does this sound like sour grapes? Well, it is, and they are. I have soured on you. I am envious of the coffee and Baileys my brother enjoys in his hot tub in the morning, followed by the Patron margaritas for lunch with some sushi, followed by a fit of yelling at his Mexican gardening crew, culminating in some culinary and debaucherous delight that evening. I’m mad as hell that you’ve seen fit to accommodate him, the movie-star types and that damn gang of Brazilians while leaving faithful old me to smolder here in a life of public service and bitter shame. So don’t call me anymore. I hate you, Santa Barbara.

P.S. I’ll never, ever stop loving you.

*My friend wrote this letter to his first love upon his return home this week. I think he is a great writer and continue to encourage him to do so. He does not blog or do much writing anymore. Maybe the comments the letter receives will encourage him even more!

During dinner tonight, Little Man asked me if I had ever ridden in a helicopter. I told him yes, when I was about six years old. Granddaddy had an old Coast Guard buddy pilot that took us for a ride. Little Man then said "so about twenty years ago". He is such a little charmer.

There is one on every daycare. The one that all the other parents talk about and wonder when they will get kicked out. When Little Man was in daycare and about a year and a half old, he was bitten about a dozen times; by the same girl! How do I know this you ask? He told me! The teachers are of course, sworn to secrecy to protect the innocent. The innocent! The poor boy is getting eaten alive! The school was normally pretty good about calling after each incident but I recall one occasion when during bath, hubs noted a large bruised area on Little Man’s shoulder. It had teeth marks. This girl meant business. We asked Little Man who did this and he told us. “Betsy Biter” bit me mama. On the days it would happen we would pick him up from daycare and he would say “no, no Betsy Biter”.

Fortunately, Little Man never picked up the habit and only bit twice. I was horrified. I wanted to write a note to the parent apologizing. Then again, if it was Betsy I didn’t really feel bad. I am not sure what is worse, to be the parent of the biter or the bitee. As the bitee, you feel bad for the other parent because you know they are horrified. Or, at least you hope they are. As the biter you are horrified and prayer your child was just hungry, or teething, and will never do it again.

There is debate whether this habit is learned or innate. In Little Man’s case it seems it was learned. The Babe, however, is a different story. You see, The Babe has not had the privilege of daycare yet. The Babe has never been bitten. The Babe is a biter.

I watch the scenario unfold. Little Man and The Babe are playing outside at the water table. Little Man grabs something from The Babe. The Babe wants it back but big brother is not giving in. The Babe begins to groan, and stomp, and then lean in. Mouth opens. I leap. Nooooooooo! Sometimes I make it, others I don’t. The Babe sees cousin Luke has a blanket. The Babe wants the blanket. Luke holds on tight. Is he kissing Luke? Nooooooo! Sometimes I make it, others I don’t.

I realize, or hope, this is a phase based on the inability to communicate. Little Man was an early talker and even today speaks beyond his age group. I am sure this contributed to the fact that he was not a biter. What is a mom to do. I have now experienced both sides of the coin. I am horrified. Do I follow him around when he is around other children? Do I spank him? Do I bit him back? Do I give him a time out and a teether? I want to go back to the hitting phase.