

Ask HN: Would free copywriting assistance appeal to you? - zacharye

As a recovering Marketing / Biz Dev guy currently considering taking the plunge and starting a company, I find myself seriously lacking with regards to engineer contacts. I'm in the NYC area (yes, I'm going to try to hit the meet) and I know there are plenty of great minds here; I just don't know them.<p>In brainstorming ways that I might remedy this situation, I had a thought. Many startups whose sites I pass by seem to have a common issue - Copy. For a number of reasons, an invaluable sentiment escapes many companies large and small: You can build and launch the greatest product in the world but if you can't tell people about it, it’s all for naught. Companies big and small have this issue - typos, grammatical errors, inefficient structure, verbosity, and so on.<p>In my eyes, the big guys have no excuse. For small and emerging companies however, money is a huge factor. Hiring a wordsmith is the obviously the last thing on your mind when deciding whether to spend a few hundred dollars on XYZ... Or eat. At the same time, poor copy puts you at a serious disadvantage in your market.<p>No, I’m not offering to write copy for entire websites free of charge. What I am considering is to take a look at your homepage, marketing sheet, mass email, elevator pitch, or whatever other single item you need the most help on, and refine / polish it. This will be the start of an infinitely more professional image and may even help put some minds at ease just a bit so that focus can be where it should be: On the product. The clear benefit to me will be working with intelligent and technical people immersed in interesting projects, all while expanding my contact list. No I’m not going to pitch people who approach me on my idea, but perhaps you have a talented friend currently looking for the right founding opportunity to potentially break him/her out of a corporate rut. That might be something we discuss while refining that document you’d like me to look at...<p>So is this something people here on HN might find appealing? This is an issue that I’ve seen mentioned numerous times here and as such, I’m posing a potential solution that may benefit everyone involved. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
======
zacharye
Awesome - so glad to see enthusiastic responses! Let's give it a go then...

As I said in the OP, I will be more than happy to assist startups with one
piece of marcom at no charge. No I'm not a dealer handing out free fixes, I
just don't have the time or independent wealth right now to be able to offer
more assistance. Believe me when I say that I love to be challenged creatively
and I love variation. If I did have the time and independent wealth, nothing
would make me happier than to do this for a living. The sentiment behind yan's
/ ia's suggestion above is something I've wondered about plenty in the past.

So here is what I ask of you:

1\. Please send me an email and introduce yourself. Tell me a bit about your
company, your core product(s), your target audience, your ideal customer and
so on. Then tell me about the one problem item that we'll be tackling, be it
product sheet, homepage, elevator pitch, mass email, etc.

2\. Please be thorough. No one knows your product better than you so
highlighting key features is of the utmost importance. When you've been
eating, sleeping, breathing and living something for XX months, it becomes
very easy to forget how to look at it from an outside perspective (this very
fact is half the reason marcom people have jobs). Make sure you think about
the key messages / features that you are hoping to highlight with this
particular piece.

3\. Please be patient. I promise that I will respond to each and every email
sent. In fact, if you don't hear from me a few days after sending an email
then by all means resend it. Regarding deliverables, please be understanding
if I estimate a turnaround of six days and you haven't received anything from
me on the seventh. I have no reason to believe that keeping an open line of
communication will be difficult but at the same time, I do have other things
on my plate. Re: time zone, I'm just outside of Manhattan (EST).

4\. Please be clear. If there are elements of any job that should be
considered confidential please ensure that you make me aware of them. I will
not be sharing anything we discuss or work on but this relates to item 1
below.

5\. Please include your HN username in your intro email.

What I ask in return:

1\. Portfolio building - In the event that my own project does not pan out, I
will likely end up re-entering the marcom world at some level. Your permission
to include whatever we work on in a future portfolio would be greatly
appreciated. If for any reason this is not a possibility, just make sure to
specify that (item 4 above).

2\. Friends and family plan - Please keep a few things in mind as I perform
this service for you. I am in fact hoping to find a technical co-founder to
work with me on my own SaaS so if you know talented and motivated people who
might fit the bill, an intro would be greatly appreciated. I'm not going to
ignore people who don't open their intro email with, "Hi. My buddy is ready
and waiting to build your vision!" At the same time, bear in mind that
networking is indeed my not-so-ulterior motive. Even if all you can do is
connect to me on LinkedIn and write a two-sentence recommendation that might
help me sometime in the future, I would appreciate it.

3\. Your ear - Once my work for you is complete, feel free to ask me about the
SaaS I am considering. The opportunity to bounce ideas off of intelligent
people "in the thick of it" is something I will never refuse. It is perfectly
understandable if you are too busy with your own business to chat along these
lines. No harm, no foul and good luck to you in your endeavors. I hope I was
able to make a difference for you.

4\. 2% equity - Calm down, that was a joke...

So with all that behind us: My name is Zach, I have nine years of small-
company marcom experience under my belt, I'm now seeking more out of life and
my email is in my profile. Looking forward to doing what I can to help.

~~~
sgibson12
Whenever I see the words "Free" and "New York" in the same sentence I get a
little skeptical. As the followup comment from the author indicates, his
primary goal is to find someone to build his million dollar idea in exchange
for shared equity. There's nothing wrong with that, but do him and yourself a
favor. Respond only if you are interested in assisting with his million dollar
idea or if you know someone who's a good lead for him to follow up with. Just
clarifying for those who are going gaga over the prospect of free copy review.

~~~
zacharye
Thanks for your insights. I too might be skeptical if the shoe was on the
other foot, but I did my best to convey my message and the general responses
seem to indicate that I did a pretty good job of that.

My advice? If you need help, email me and we'll talk. As I tried to make clear
above, I won't be pitching anything to anyone unless they specifically ask me
to. In my experience I find that entrepreneurs generally enjoy talking shop.
In discussing my idea (with someone who I have just helped with their own
startup, mind you) I am not expecting them to flip a switch, close up shop and
found a business with me. I am looking for valuable feedback from active
founders and leads in the event that someone has a contact who may be
interested in working on such an endeavor.

That said, I'm also perfectly happy helping with the job at hand and going our
separate ways. "That's ridiculous," you might think. It's not though. I've
just helped an entrepreneur move one small step closer to his/her vision,
challenged myself in the process, added an item to my portfolio and gained a
contact that may prove valuable in the future on any number of levels. I've
also just begun to build a solid reputation here on HN, which is hardly a
trivial thing to do. That may sound crazy to some and it may be unconventional
but the fact is no one has anything to lose.

So if you email me and I try to sell you on my "million dollar idea", go on
about your business and you've lost five minutes of your life. If I help you,
then you've gained the assistance of an experienced marcom voice and you might
just benefit from it. You have also gained a contact yourself who may prove
useful again in the future.

------
yan
Great idea and thank you for offering your services.

I've always wondered if we can just pool the talent available here, with
people advertising what they're good at. For those that aren't deeply involved
in their own start ups, this can almost be fun. If someone has a good idea of
something they want to hack up, just try to pull a few people from this ether
of talent, and try to build something very quickly. I'm talking about maximum
of a few days of highly-parallel work.

If it grows into something above an assignment, there's your tiny start up. If
not much comes out of it, the experience of being part of a small team working
on something together can be worth much more than the time spent on it.
Creating worth that is more than the sum of its parts.

And this post highlights that it's not just hackers/coders that can
contribute. Illustrators, d esigners, copywriters, law students, etc. There is
very little limit because of little hierarchy.

~~~
ia
i agree. it would be fun to help out fellow hackers and work ad-hoc on small,
discrete chunks of side-projects. additionally, if no one with the required
skills is available for certain mini-projects, this could be a nice reason to
learn something new for those willing. my skill set: writing, hacking (for
now, in that order)...

anyone need a poem written?

------
bkovitz
I would _love_ to hear an expert's (free!) suggestions on how we can improve
our copy on decisionero. I believe very strongly that, especially on the web,
short copy that gets the message across is crucial--and short copy is the
hardest to write.

Our current home page is the one I'm currently most eager for suggestions
about, particularly the two paras at the bottom:

<http://decisionero.com>

There are two other pages that present our message in a little more detail:

<http://decisionero.com/decisionero/about>

<http://decisionero.com/decisionero/origin>

If you'd like to post here to HN to demonstrate your style of analysis and
feedback for others to see, please feel free. Or, if you prefer, email me at
bkovitz "at" acm "dot" org.

~~~
petercooper
Your page is selling features, not benefits. Are you specifically aiming at a
technical sort of user who understands exactly what a wiki is, or do you want
to reach people who want to make decisions full-stop?

This is hardly a full rewrite since I really don't know what your product is.
But just as a taster, your two key paragraphs could be simplified and made a
lot punchier, like so:

 _Making group decisions is hard, with many opinions and choices to consider.
With everyone talking at once, how can you make a decision?_

 _Decisionero makes group decision making easy. A simple framework is provided
within which to structure information and opinions, ensuring that your group
acts with more insight than any one person. With a central store for
information and opinions, misunderstandings can become a thing of the past._

I'd strongly suggest, however, putting together a list of both product
features and benefits and then distil them into an easily scannable bullet-
point list for your front page.

Oh, and you totally need a screenshot on there. Even a bad one beats nothing.

~~~
urlwolf
I think your idea is great and I'd like to get your advice on my copy too.

But! Is it just me, or are the above two paragraphs too salesy? Group decision
making is hard, and I don't think a web service would make it easy overnight.
Misunderstandings will never be a thing of the past. Pitching should not
involve large blanket statements. I'm missing exactly how this web app will do
it. In a paragraph. And if possible, why the idea is so compelling that I need
to move my team to this service.

So I'm missing how and why. The two above paragraphs sound like blowing hot
air to me.

This doesn't mean that I don't trust your copywriting ability. Maybe my
intuitions are wrong and lay people go gaga with the above write-up.

~~~
petercooper
I haven't used the product and, like you, I don't _really_ know what it does,
so I had to write in a very generalist way.

The key to _really_ good copywriting is a back-to-front familiarity with the
product or service you're writing about. If you don't have that, you're just
making minor improvements to match a certain sound, rather than actually
writing something that can push a product's marketing a long way forward.

------
bootload
_"... No, I’m not offering to write copy for entire websites free of charge.
What I am considering is to take a look at your homepage, marketing sheet,
mass email, elevator pitch, or whatever other single item you need the most
help on, and refine / polish it ..."_

Hey Zac this is an interesting idea but looking at your contact suggestion and
work flow:

\- intro email

\- detail of requirements (clear idea of company & wants)

\- your analysis (is it worth doing)

would it not be better to find a way to mechanise this where a potential
client enters these details into a form (using
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http://wufoo.com/about> for example) then letting
the client see the progress? If there is one way to build a project it would
to be build an App that allows writers and people who want stuff written about
them to meet.

An example of this process I have in mind is <http://99designs.com/> where
designers pitch for a clients brief. The advantage of this approach is the
client is required to pay upfront a fixed fee.

------
Frocer
This would be extremely appealing to us. We actually hired a marketing
copywriter but had to let her go due to price. How could we reach you? :)

~~~
lux
Us too! (and I'm sure many others on here as well)

On a side note, a business idea could be simply to offer a "we review x for $y
in 1 week" set price system. Marketing Express, like 37signals used to offer
an express design service of 1 feature in 1 week for a set price. This would
produce a tangible benefit/result for the startup or small business, while
limiting their risk and investment, and likely it would cause them to bring in
many more individual items over time.

~~~
lux
And our startup (that would be interested) is <http://www.dojolearning.com/>
:)

------
Alex3917
This is a really good idea. I keep sending the product description for my YC
app to people and asking them to help wordsmith the value proposition, and I
keep getting emails back with marketing ideas and questions about logistics.
This has happened three times in the last week.

------
sweetweb
This post couldn't have come at a better time. I really need your help with my
elevator pitch/sign up frame. My name is Tommy Nguyen, I'm the co-founder of a
site called www.ratemyideas.com

Its a rating/voting where users submit made or market ready cool
products/gadgets/inventions/ web sites etc.

We are not officially launching till next week but during testing people are
confused at the purpose of the site. They think its "submitting ides that
haven't been created yet" I wanna convey its a place to submit finished
product that is new and undiscovered.

please advise thanks! Tommy

------
radu_floricica
I looked hard for something like that (in Romanian, not English). What I found
was either freelancers who offered to work for free (the job was small) but
ultimately bailed, or big companies who didn't even want to talk to me. I
ended up writing my own texts and feeling better for it. Anyways, I just want
to tell the OP: if you're good AND professional, you should be rich soon :) Or
at least too busy to care about money.

------
wafflesrevenge
Zacharye it sounds like you have a valuable skill and could get something out
of this, go for it and grow your connections.

I have similar skills and would want to build upon them in a similar fashion
so if you find yourself with more then you can handle let me know @
mattyfo@gmail

@yan ad-hoc sounds like an awesome way to get things off the ground and keep
costs low...how to implement?

------
jwesley
I'm in a similar position to the author of this thread. I can hack well enough
to set up and customize sites with open source CMS, but my strongest skills
are copywriting and marketing.

I would like to collaborate with people with complimentary skills. Email or
ping me at johncwesley@gmail.com, I'd love to hear about what you're working
on and offer marketing advice if I can.

------
zhyder
I'd love to have help with our copy. More generally, our team lacks
Marketing/BizDev expertise; perhaps you'd be interested in more than just
editing our copy. Contact me at zhyder AT dabbleboard DOT com.

The startup is at <http://www.dabbleboard.com> . We launched on HN 1.5 months
ago.

------
davidw
I'd love it if you wanted to have a go at one or more summaries on Squeezed
Books ( <http://www.squeezedbooks.com> ). I'm currently running a contest
where the winner gets a free book, which isn't much of a prize, but might be
some free publicity, and isn't a lot of work either.

------
Tichy
I must admit I would feel a bit weird about the foggy trade agreement. I get
something for something unspecified in return, I would feel like I owe you
"something". I prefer clarity - make a price, I pay, done. Otherwise the issue
will remain lingering in the back of my mind, which is wasteful.

------
boucher
Seems to me like you should just pick a company you'd like to work for who you
think is in need of your skills, and then prove it to them by doing exactly
what you suggest. Why wait for them to come to you?

------
pyroman
I think this idea is great. This site has been pushing me towards quitting my
comfortable job and going for some of the crazy ideas I've had. I just might
be contacting you in the future.

------
nickb
I'd love to hear what you'd say about what we're working on.

~~~
bprater
Agreed. Give us a teaser about your project idea.

