Previous episode: The Goo-‘Roo
THUD!
Your time-travel remote lands you a few feet in the air … and you collapse to the ground.
You look at the remote.
It sparks a bit.
(It seems to be getting a little less reliable with where it lands you. Maybe that’s going to lead to some crazier adventures to come …)
You shove it into your pocket, stand up and brush yourself off.
You’re in front of a door.
You push it open …
and see this:
What the …?
Children with carrots?
Kangaroos?
Chickens?
Where on this crazy parallel-world island are you now?
“Ahoy there!”
You hear my voice … and turn to see me waving.
“Welcome to a private part of my parallel-world copywriting lab compound I like to call …
“The Copywriting Petting Zoo!”
I shove a bucket of carrots into your hands.
“Come with me and I’ll show you the animals,” I say, pushing you along. “Don’t worry, it’s enclosed and totally safe … that’s why my kids are here. Yes, that’s them. No, I’m not showing you their faces. This is the Internet, you know. Never know what creepers are reading this. Anyway now. Let me show you who’s who in the copywriting zoo …”
The American Writing Alpacas Institute (A.W.A.I. for short)
The alpacas from this institute are usually among the first animals to run up and ambush you when you enter the copywriting world. (They can smell the full bucket of carrots that new visitors to the copywriting zoo carry with them.) You go up to them, thinking they might be interesting — and you come away a few minutes later with an empty bucket, covered in spit, and wondering where the promised “passive income” for writing one sales letter a week is going to come from.
“Copywriting-Course Chickens”
One of the most common animals at the zoo, these dumb creatures like to scratch in the dirt and run around chasing the next shiny object they find. You’ll feed one a carrot and it will start eating it, only to abandon it after a few bites, to go and start pecking at the next carrot someone tossed it.
When you ask one for any courses (let alone copywriting jobs) it has successfully completed, it simply clucks and runs away.
The “Direct-Mail Donkey”
Also known as “A-List Eeyore” to its friends (whom it also calls “A-Listers” in return — they like to award each other this title as a sign of status over the other animals in the zoo, but it really just makes them look old).
This grizzly creature is well past its prime, in the days when copywriting was all about magalogs and letters that you actually posted people. It likes to remind all the other animals of how much money it made back in the day in direct mail, and tries hard to convince you that everything that worked in the 1980s still works because “salesmanship doesn’t change”, even while it grumbles about how the “kids these days” don’t have any idea.
Has a newsletter it insists on calling “Eeyore’s E-Zine”. Gmail sends it straight to spam for some reason.
The “Goo-‘Roo”
Yes, you’ve met this fellow before, haven’t you? Don’t worry, ours are still babies. As you know though, the adults cut an impressive figure, sometimes reaching to 8-figures tall or more.
It also tends to draw a lot of crowds, and people like the social proof of taking a selfie with it. However, the truth is it doesn’t actually belong in the zoo and really has nothing to do with it at all. (If you asked it to actually write some copy, it would stare at you and idly scratch its ear.) It just comes up to the fence, takes your carrots, then hops off without leaving you any better for it. (And if you don’t hand over the carrots right away, it threateningly stalks you and retargets you until you relent.)
“Reddit Rabbits”
Despite the name, these stupid beasts are found in droves in any copywriting group online (but most often in Reddit and Facebook). You’d be hard pressed to tell them apart, because they all look and sound the same, and run around en masse. They are not very smart, and tend to gather around the feet of the goo-‘roo in charge of the nearest community, hoping for a scrap of approval.
They tend to breed quickly, and new entrants to their groups are rapidly indoctrinated in which courses/experts/teachers are to be followed.
The “Copywriting Hamster”
The copywriting hamster is an annoying little animal that—
Hm.
That’s weird.
I don’t see any of them here right now.
Where have they gotten to?
(Maybe you’ll encounter them at some later point in this sequence, perhaps?)
Suddenly—
BUCK-AAAAWK!
You hear a panicked noise from the copywriting-course chickens …
… as a black shape swoops into the enclosure … picks one up … and zooms off with it.
The other chickens cluck madly as they scatter.
And then—
BLAM!
A gunshot rings out …
… and in the distance, the black shape falls to the ground.
“Filthy freeloading vermin!”
You look beside you … and see me holding my still-smoking Email Copywriting Compendium gun (now in the form of a hunting rifle).
Yes … I just took out another:
“Freeloading Falcon”
These scavengers swoop (alternate spelling of ‘swipe’) email lists at rapid speeds.
No, literally. They sign up with email addresses that say “swipe” or “newsletter” or “mail”, and have zero intention of buying anything, or even engaging. They just want to take as much free stuff as they can … even if it’s just to fill up a ‘swipe file’ of someone’s emails.
Some people don’t care … but I hate these things with a passion and make it my mission to eliminate as many as possible.
***
Anyway, that’s just a few of the creatures you will come across in this world.
No doubt there are many more we have not yet brought into the zoo.
Some are simply annoying … while others are truly harmful to your career.
Either way, the best way to protect yourself from any of them (or worse, from BECOMING any of them) … is to arm yourself with this trusty Email Copywriting Compendium here, which is affordable while also being extremely effective for copywriting. A rare combination in today’s world.
Check out the Email Copywriting Compendium here:
And then return to your inbox for your next email …