Hi all,

Please forgive me if this has already been discussed elsewhere...

A client has asked me to work on improving its website's conversion rate. Can any of you recommend any articles about fee structures for copywriting/conversion rate work. The client is willing to consider a "pay-for-performance" deal. Do any of you have any tips for how to do it , particularly the "nitty gritty" (payment structures, legal agreements, etc).

By the way, I've just bought Alan Weiss's "Value-based fees" book, kindly recommended by someone on this forum. I'm aware of Jay Abraham's book of legal contracts, but I haven't bought it yet.

I love this forum, by the way. Thanks for all the great posts, y'all.

John

Hey John,

About contracts:
Sorry to say, but many copywriter's that I know don't even use contracts. I think many look at their up-front fee as a contract... Not sure, but I think many copywriters are afraid they are going to scare people off with the "formality" of it.

I sometimes use them and sometimes don't (probably should every time).

If you want to find some really cheap "prewritten" contracts that you can tweak for your own needs, you can try legalzoom.com

If you're "super serious" and a heavy player, get yourself a good attorney.

One of the best investments I ever made was when I paid $100 to a contract attorney "before" signing a $40,000 agreement with a contractor I was doing work for (it saved my ASS-ets... BIG TIME).

Concerning fee structures:
There is a gal who actually has a fee structure she gets from polling her list of copywriters, but who knows whether they are telling her the truth or not.

I just did an interview with Clayton Makepeace last week and this topic is something Clayton touched on... (fee structures).

I was actually surprised to hear what he had to say about it, but he made so much sense (of course he would... he's Clayton Makepeace).

I won't reveal "exactly" what he said (yet) as I promised my site members that they would get the interview before it was sent out to the general public.

Hi Stephen,

Thank you for your advice.

(I think I'm going to have to get my hands on that Clayton Makepeace interview!)

Kind regards,

Karl

Hi John,

I do a lot of work in the area of boosting conversion rates of key web pages. (Usually subscription pages.) I never agree to a pure pay-for-performance arrangement. There are too many problems with that approach. However, I do negotiate a flat fee plus a bonus should conversions increase by a certain amount.

A question I often ask is, "How much more revenues will you generate per month if the conversion rate increased by 15%?" The answer is a great starting point to price negotiations.

Does this help?

Steve

Great answer.

Allow me to go on a slight tangent for a moment...

Folks, please help me welcome Steve Slaunwhite, who's not only a Canuck like yours truly, and a top copywriter but also the author of the hugely popular Self-Counsel Press book, "How to Start and Run Your Own Copywriting Business."

Here's the link:

Amazon.com: Start & Run a Copywriting Business: Books: Steve Slaunwhite

(I own a copy of that book for many years now. I highly recommend it.)

Nevertheless, welcome Steve!

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your reply. Yes, that helps a lot.

Kind regards,

Karl


P.S. I've used Amazon.com's "Look Inside This Book" feature to read the contents of your book about setting up a copywriting business. It looks great.

John... are you also Karl? A little split personality?

Errrr.... yes, I always get those two names muddled up.

You know what, I'm sure this comment was well-intended, but to an author, this is NOT a compliment! Think about it.

Marcia Yudkin
Author of 11 books

P.S. And about contracts... I do get a simple agreement signed by the client when the fee is over a certain amount. I point out to the client that this protects them, because without my signature, they do not legally get ownership of the copy after the job is complete and the final installment of the copy was paid. Put this way, no one will balk at signing.

And it's no joke that this protects the client... and you. I had a sticky situation once where a client wanted to reuse copy I wrote in another project. (Basically he wanted to include my copy in an information product of his, as opposed to using it as sales copy.) This wasn't in the scope of the original agreement, so I was within my rights to ask for additional payment. His lawyer sent me over a contract that was so complicated I had to ask my lawyer to review it. I asked for some simple changes in the language and his lawyer changed it, but not in the way I asked for, so I refused to sign. It was too broad. The client was then stuck between his lawyer (whom he later fired, wisely, in my opinion) and me. I wouldn't budge, even for more money, until they changed the language in the way I asked. So there was no agreement and they couldn't use what I wrote in the info product.

On the whole, life is much easier if you use contract language that the ordinary person can understand without a lawyer.

Hi Marcia,

I did buy Steve's book in the end. Those pesky people at Amazon hadn't indexed enough of it.

Thanks for your great comments about the need for contracts. I think I'm going to go for a legal agreement written in plain English, as you suggested.

Alan Weiss's book arrived this morning. I have only read one chapter so far (the one that's conveniently titled "If you only read one chapter..."!) He gives some good advice about getting an agreement in principle before you send a contract.

I'd welcome any further suggestions.

Kind regards,

Karl