Text Content Marketplace and Relevant Professionals: An Inside Look
Slowly but surely, copywriting is recognized by the Internet community as an independent segment of the market, and for it even appear its analytical reviews (for example, here ). However, analysts repeat the same mistake from year to year: they mix all the “writing” specialists in the same boiler, applying the same metrics to them and getting the “average temperature in the hospital”. I want to tell you that this market is more complicated than it seems at first glance.
I focus on the fact that the opinion presented in the article is my vision of this market, and I don’t want to offend anyone. In my reasoning, I focus on the unique content market, which is only slightly in touch with translations (when it comes to adapting a foreign language text), while not addressing the issues of creating technical documentation.
For an outsider, a copywriter, a technical writer, and sometimes a technical writer is one person. He is ordered a certain text, he gives the result in accordance with the TK, receiving a fee for it. It would seem that everything is cool: there is demand, there is supply. In the daily mailing of projects from freelance exchanges, I see orders from such “uninitiated” thousands. And responses to such projects are usually dozens, often with the wording “texts of any subject, quickly and efficiently”.
But a similar approach to the question gives rise to too many dissatisfied customers and multi-stage rework of the same. In order not to get involved in this quagmire, the customer needs to at least get a little insight into the specifics of his task and appropriately choose the performer (as before buying expensive household appliances: read reviews, choose factors important for us, select the models of interest and then buy).
The way to solve any task should be based on the essence of this task itself. Therefore, the first question that, in theory, any performer should ask himself (and better the client) is: why does the customer need to write the text?
Of course, the ultimate goal of any business is sales. But customers of texts are already more or less adept at Internet marketing and printing terminology, therefore, a copywriter usually comes with a more detailed request. More often, customers plan to receive several bonuses from paid content at once, but imagine that we have laid out possible requests into some of the most popular “simple components”:
')
Texts for search engines:
Texts for "visibility":
The customer wants ...
Texts for people:
The customer wants ...
I do not pretend to be a complete list, but this list will help me build a further story about the market.
If the customer has no desire to satisfy the curiosity of the visitor (i.e., the text is needed to create any visibility or satisfaction of the search engines), it saves the maximum on the quality of the content. It is in this segment that bulk orders for texts of one subject appear without any specificity and prices from 10 to 50 rubles per 1000 characters with spaces (by the way, this metric in itself requires a separate conversation, but about this later on). Part of this segment is served by content exchanges, the other is taken up by beginner rewriters and copywriters who massively advertise their services on the freelance market and are ready to grab any topic, just to make it possible to earn money.
Since the optimization of texts for search engines requires certain knowledge beyond the necessary ability to link two words (at a minimum, understanding the principles of search engines), the segment has generated a huge number of specialized terms that artists like to fill customers with. Here, as in system administration: some experts consider the ability to express themselves in “professional jargon” as one of the ways to confirm qualification. Although, I do not argue, without some terminology in communication here is not enough.
As usual, if someone needs additional knowledge, the accompanying training and consulting market appears, where coaches, textbook authors and course organizers successfully earn money. This segment provides a tool for ranking performers (at least for courses attended / books read). But it is important for the customer to understand one thing: he can be anxious about the choice of the author of texts for search engines, but it is enough for the developers of the search engine to change the algorithm a bit, and all attachments will be meaningless. Therefore, the very direction of the texts for search engines - "a thing in itself." Although, in certain markets (for certain goods and audiences) this is a necessary thing.
The texts "for visibility" and "for search engines" refer to the low price range. Although most often they reach the site to the final client through an intermediary - promotion specialists, website developers, etc. Sometimes intermediaries recruit a whole chain - “promoter”, content exchange (or agency), etc. - each of them, of course, takes his “bribe”, i.e. The final client can pay for the content many times more, but the client does not need to build relationships with the crowd of newcomers to the writing business himself.
The abstract filling of pages with coherent text (i.e. filling in of product cards, pages with services) in theory does not take much effort from the artist, i.e. cost is not expensive, sometimes - at the level of the text "for visibility". But practice shows that such “abstractionism” simply should not exist in nature. Almost always the customer wants both the elements of the “selling” text, and a competent explanation of the essence of the offered product or service (differences from competitors, for example), but can not always correctly form their expectations in the TK. A performer from a low price range is unlikely to get his “crystal ball” from the pantry in order to read the client's thoughts and supplement the clearly stated TK. As a result, he seemed to have done everything as requested, but the client was not satisfied. Those. In this market segment, there is both demand and supply, but almost always order acceptance is accompanied by frustration, since the customer receives less than he expects.
The next “level” of immersion in the client’s perspective is selling texts.
From a philosophical point of view, sellers can be called any text about a product ordered by the manufacturer of this product. But in this case, I would like to limit the scope of consideration to “classics” - a short promotional offer calling for a purchase based on its value to the buyer. Such texts are written in simple language, they are not replete with technical details, they are simultaneously optimized for search engines and are oriented towards a strictly defined target audience.
Although there are a lot of specialists in the writing of sales texts, in this segment there is also an edge in the problem of meeting customer expectations. On the one hand, some customers are just waiting for miracles from selling texts, on the other - not all performers are able to competently work with these expectations. Miracles sometimes happen (good and “hit the target audience” text for a stable business can really increase the flow of customers), but it all depends very much on the situation: the product being sold, the audience, the author’s understanding of the text and the recipient of the work, etc. P. But the possibilities of any miracle are limited. Business cannot be taken out of the “loop” of a business with a simple selling text.
It is important to remember that guidelines for writing sales texts are usually based on the sociological conclusions of advertisers, for example, "70% of readers want the text to be no longer than 1 screen" (example taken from the ceiling). But not a single customer who addresses a professional writer of selling texts does not ask questions about the sample on which such conclusions were made. What if the target audience of the advertised product is in fact 30%, who likes to scroll through the pages of text? Similar tricks with statistics are well reflected in the famous joke about cucumbers ( here ).
The example of cucumbers, of course, is exaggerated, but my thought quite illustrates: not every product and not in any market sells well with “classic” selling texts.
As with SEO optimization, a whole infrastructure of agencies, consultants, trainers and trainings, online courses, seminars, professional literature, etc. has been formed around selling texts. Moreover, the entire industry just "pounced" on a beginner who wants to learn the techniques of writing selling texts, and at the same time on the customer who chooses the artist, because the competition in this segment is very high. And the pathos of the situation is that it’s impossible to compete with their authors among themselves selling texts (the benefit in this market is more or less able to write them).
Figures published in various analytical reports on the market of copywriting and related services, i.e. market volumes, average prices, etc., are a reflection of the previously mentioned “for visibility” and “for sales” text segments. Moreover, the research methodology is usually quite “interesting”: “Let's choose the TOP 100 copywriter sites in the search engine and look at the cost of services on their sites”. Thus, from the market "imperceptibly" they throw out all writing specialists, who present their services through a portfolio on the stock exchange, who have not coped with the task of SEO-optimization of their own website, who provide services on a closed list of clients (not looking for new ones), as well as a whole writing segment about which I will tell further.
As soon as we are talking about a non-standard market, its narrow segment or technologically-complex products, in the text it is necessary to move from “sales based on value” to “sales based on knowledge”. Those. here we are already talking about the next level - a readable, meaningful text about events in a company or its products, which educates consumers in understanding the market segment.
As I noted above, texts of this level are constantly “forgotten” by those who try to analyze the copywriting market. Sometimes it is even explained by the minimum segment volumes. But the need for such texts is higher than it seems at first glance.
A good example of a market where “knowledge-based sales” and related “textual support” have long been used are digital SLR cameras. The consumer is first taught how to understand the technical characteristics (with emphasis in the right places) so that the client subsequently makes a choice in favor of the advertised decision. True, the product in this case really should have optimal characteristics for the audience, otherwise all this training will be in vain. But the client does not just make a purchase, succumbing to emotions, but often becomes a real fan of the brand, actively telling his friends about it.
But I was distracted by sales. Let's return to "our sheep".
The peculiarity of the texts, “sharpened” for sale on the basis of knowledge is that the author himself must deeply understand the problem. Therefore, announcements about the writing of texts of any subject are not here and can not be. Not surprisingly, there are not so many performers in this segment. Going into copywriting for value-based sales is not easy. Exchange of articles is not here at all, copywriting agencies for such tasks are taken not often (more often they use "classic" sales texts where it would be possible to proceed to explanatory work). But in this market advertising agencies are actively working with their own pool of authors who serve large corporate clients, providing them with publications in professional media. Here the professional media themselves are “feeding themselves”, which can place not only advertising, but also “paid” reviews from manufacturers “as advertising”.
In my experience of understanding texts for sales based on knowledge, as a separate segment, there is not yet a market. Customers often try to combine such text with the “classic” corrupt, and even key phrases for search engines in abundance to insert there, which sometimes does not affect the best way on the result. Even more interesting, when a customer tries to measure the result offered to him, for example, according to the degree of uniqueness (in my opinion, if a sales text or “text for appearances” can be copied from somewhere, then it’s rather difficult to “steal” a treatise ; only if the entire product or service is copied). Performers also often “float” in terminology, trying to present this market segment as “selling premium articles” (I met such definitions on copywriter websites). But, anyway, the segment is developing, and it pleases. In the end, for me personally, reading such texts is much more interesting.
How to estimate the volume of this part of the market is not very clear to me at this stage. If you can indirectly judge the sales texts of supply and demand by freelancing exchanges, here the exchange is not an assistant. I constantly follow the projects in the field of writing texts and client problems, where texts for knowledge-based sales can help, are found no more than several times a month. But on the other hand, such specialists (as opposed to one-time performers for copyright) are searched through sites with permanent vacancies. True, they call this specialist differently: either a copywriter, or a text-writer, or a technical journalist.
I hope you have not yet bored with my arguments about the market. I wanted to dot the “and” before embarking on more detailed arguments. I plan to consider common metrics and tools for assessing the quality of textual content, and in this topic one cannot do without classification.
I focus on the fact that the opinion presented in the article is my vision of this market, and I don’t want to offend anyone. In my reasoning, I focus on the unique content market, which is only slightly in touch with translations (when it comes to adapting a foreign language text), while not addressing the issues of creating technical documentation.
For an outsider, a copywriter, a technical writer, and sometimes a technical writer is one person. He is ordered a certain text, he gives the result in accordance with the TK, receiving a fee for it. It would seem that everything is cool: there is demand, there is supply. In the daily mailing of projects from freelance exchanges, I see orders from such “uninitiated” thousands. And responses to such projects are usually dozens, often with the wording “texts of any subject, quickly and efficiently”.
But a similar approach to the question gives rise to too many dissatisfied customers and multi-stage rework of the same. In order not to get involved in this quagmire, the customer needs to at least get a little insight into the specifics of his task and appropriately choose the performer (as before buying expensive household appliances: read reviews, choose factors important for us, select the models of interest and then buy).
The way to solve any task should be based on the essence of this task itself. Therefore, the first question that, in theory, any performer should ask himself (and better the client) is: why does the customer need to write the text?
Of course, the ultimate goal of any business is sales. But customers of texts are already more or less adept at Internet marketing and printing terminology, therefore, a copywriter usually comes with a more detailed request. More often, customers plan to receive several bonuses from paid content at once, but imagine that we have laid out possible requests into some of the most popular “simple components”:
')
Texts for search engines:
- The customer wants to bring his site to the top of the search engine results for certain keywords (i.e. attract visitors), for which he orders articles in which the necessary formulations should be inserted in certain positions;
Texts for "visibility":
The customer wants ...
- something one-time fill the site, for example, the sale of plastic pipes. He needs texts about what a plastic pipe is and to whom it is useful, just so that the pages are not empty;
- regularly update the site (using news or press releases) so that the search engines and incoming customers see some activity;
Texts for people:
The customer wants ...
- just fill in the cards of goods / sections with services;
- place the “selling” text so that incoming visitors rush to buy the presented goods, only due to familiarization with the content;
- publish really interesting news and readable press releases in order to attract the target audience of the product to the site;
- explain the essence of your product to a potential client (on the website or in the publication for ordinary consumers);
- "Light up" in the professional edition, that is, in fact, also explain the essence of the product, but professional audience.
I do not pretend to be a complete list, but this list will help me build a further story about the market.
Texts "in the air"
If the customer has no desire to satisfy the curiosity of the visitor (i.e., the text is needed to create any visibility or satisfaction of the search engines), it saves the maximum on the quality of the content. It is in this segment that bulk orders for texts of one subject appear without any specificity and prices from 10 to 50 rubles per 1000 characters with spaces (by the way, this metric in itself requires a separate conversation, but about this later on). Part of this segment is served by content exchanges, the other is taken up by beginner rewriters and copywriters who massively advertise their services on the freelance market and are ready to grab any topic, just to make it possible to earn money.
Since the optimization of texts for search engines requires certain knowledge beyond the necessary ability to link two words (at a minimum, understanding the principles of search engines), the segment has generated a huge number of specialized terms that artists like to fill customers with. Here, as in system administration: some experts consider the ability to express themselves in “professional jargon” as one of the ways to confirm qualification. Although, I do not argue, without some terminology in communication here is not enough.
As usual, if someone needs additional knowledge, the accompanying training and consulting market appears, where coaches, textbook authors and course organizers successfully earn money. This segment provides a tool for ranking performers (at least for courses attended / books read). But it is important for the customer to understand one thing: he can be anxious about the choice of the author of texts for search engines, but it is enough for the developers of the search engine to change the algorithm a bit, and all attachments will be meaningless. Therefore, the very direction of the texts for search engines - "a thing in itself." Although, in certain markets (for certain goods and audiences) this is a necessary thing.
The texts "for visibility" and "for search engines" refer to the low price range. Although most often they reach the site to the final client through an intermediary - promotion specialists, website developers, etc. Sometimes intermediaries recruit a whole chain - “promoter”, content exchange (or agency), etc. - each of them, of course, takes his “bribe”, i.e. The final client can pay for the content many times more, but the client does not need to build relationships with the crowd of newcomers to the writing business himself.
Texts for people
The abstract filling of pages with coherent text (i.e. filling in of product cards, pages with services) in theory does not take much effort from the artist, i.e. cost is not expensive, sometimes - at the level of the text "for visibility". But practice shows that such “abstractionism” simply should not exist in nature. Almost always the customer wants both the elements of the “selling” text, and a competent explanation of the essence of the offered product or service (differences from competitors, for example), but can not always correctly form their expectations in the TK. A performer from a low price range is unlikely to get his “crystal ball” from the pantry in order to read the client's thoughts and supplement the clearly stated TK. As a result, he seemed to have done everything as requested, but the client was not satisfied. Those. In this market segment, there is both demand and supply, but almost always order acceptance is accompanied by frustration, since the customer receives less than he expects.
The next “level” of immersion in the client’s perspective is selling texts.
From a philosophical point of view, sellers can be called any text about a product ordered by the manufacturer of this product. But in this case, I would like to limit the scope of consideration to “classics” - a short promotional offer calling for a purchase based on its value to the buyer. Such texts are written in simple language, they are not replete with technical details, they are simultaneously optimized for search engines and are oriented towards a strictly defined target audience.
Although there are a lot of specialists in the writing of sales texts, in this segment there is also an edge in the problem of meeting customer expectations. On the one hand, some customers are just waiting for miracles from selling texts, on the other - not all performers are able to competently work with these expectations. Miracles sometimes happen (good and “hit the target audience” text for a stable business can really increase the flow of customers), but it all depends very much on the situation: the product being sold, the audience, the author’s understanding of the text and the recipient of the work, etc. P. But the possibilities of any miracle are limited. Business cannot be taken out of the “loop” of a business with a simple selling text.
It is important to remember that guidelines for writing sales texts are usually based on the sociological conclusions of advertisers, for example, "70% of readers want the text to be no longer than 1 screen" (example taken from the ceiling). But not a single customer who addresses a professional writer of selling texts does not ask questions about the sample on which such conclusions were made. What if the target audience of the advertised product is in fact 30%, who likes to scroll through the pages of text? Similar tricks with statistics are well reflected in the famous joke about cucumbers ( here ).
The example of cucumbers, of course, is exaggerated, but my thought quite illustrates: not every product and not in any market sells well with “classic” selling texts.
As with SEO optimization, a whole infrastructure of agencies, consultants, trainers and trainings, online courses, seminars, professional literature, etc. has been formed around selling texts. Moreover, the entire industry just "pounced" on a beginner who wants to learn the techniques of writing selling texts, and at the same time on the customer who chooses the artist, because the competition in this segment is very high. And the pathos of the situation is that it’s impossible to compete with their authors among themselves selling texts (the benefit in this market is more or less able to write them).
Figures published in various analytical reports on the market of copywriting and related services, i.e. market volumes, average prices, etc., are a reflection of the previously mentioned “for visibility” and “for sales” text segments. Moreover, the research methodology is usually quite “interesting”: “Let's choose the TOP 100 copywriter sites in the search engine and look at the cost of services on their sites”. Thus, from the market "imperceptibly" they throw out all writing specialists, who present their services through a portfolio on the stock exchange, who have not coped with the task of SEO-optimization of their own website, who provide services on a closed list of clients (not looking for new ones), as well as a whole writing segment about which I will tell further.
Segment which is not
As soon as we are talking about a non-standard market, its narrow segment or technologically-complex products, in the text it is necessary to move from “sales based on value” to “sales based on knowledge”. Those. here we are already talking about the next level - a readable, meaningful text about events in a company or its products, which educates consumers in understanding the market segment.
As I noted above, texts of this level are constantly “forgotten” by those who try to analyze the copywriting market. Sometimes it is even explained by the minimum segment volumes. But the need for such texts is higher than it seems at first glance.
A good example of a market where “knowledge-based sales” and related “textual support” have long been used are digital SLR cameras. The consumer is first taught how to understand the technical characteristics (with emphasis in the right places) so that the client subsequently makes a choice in favor of the advertised decision. True, the product in this case really should have optimal characteristics for the audience, otherwise all this training will be in vain. But the client does not just make a purchase, succumbing to emotions, but often becomes a real fan of the brand, actively telling his friends about it.
But I was distracted by sales. Let's return to "our sheep".
The peculiarity of the texts, “sharpened” for sale on the basis of knowledge is that the author himself must deeply understand the problem. Therefore, announcements about the writing of texts of any subject are not here and can not be. Not surprisingly, there are not so many performers in this segment. Going into copywriting for value-based sales is not easy. Exchange of articles is not here at all, copywriting agencies for such tasks are taken not often (more often they use "classic" sales texts where it would be possible to proceed to explanatory work). But in this market advertising agencies are actively working with their own pool of authors who serve large corporate clients, providing them with publications in professional media. Here the professional media themselves are “feeding themselves”, which can place not only advertising, but also “paid” reviews from manufacturers “as advertising”.
In my experience of understanding texts for sales based on knowledge, as a separate segment, there is not yet a market. Customers often try to combine such text with the “classic” corrupt, and even key phrases for search engines in abundance to insert there, which sometimes does not affect the best way on the result. Even more interesting, when a customer tries to measure the result offered to him, for example, according to the degree of uniqueness (in my opinion, if a sales text or “text for appearances” can be copied from somewhere, then it’s rather difficult to “steal” a treatise ; only if the entire product or service is copied). Performers also often “float” in terminology, trying to present this market segment as “selling premium articles” (I met such definitions on copywriter websites). But, anyway, the segment is developing, and it pleases. In the end, for me personally, reading such texts is much more interesting.
How to estimate the volume of this part of the market is not very clear to me at this stage. If you can indirectly judge the sales texts of supply and demand by freelancing exchanges, here the exchange is not an assistant. I constantly follow the projects in the field of writing texts and client problems, where texts for knowledge-based sales can help, are found no more than several times a month. But on the other hand, such specialists (as opposed to one-time performers for copyright) are searched through sites with permanent vacancies. True, they call this specialist differently: either a copywriter, or a text-writer, or a technical journalist.
I hope you have not yet bored with my arguments about the market. I wanted to dot the “and” before embarking on more detailed arguments. I plan to consider common metrics and tools for assessing the quality of textual content, and in this topic one cannot do without classification.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/293788/
All Articles