Apprentice copywriter job – Casual role, work from home

July 27, 2015 • Glenn Murray

Are you a great writer who wants to become a great copywriter?

I’m after an apprentice copywriter. Someone I can train up to be as good as me. Hopefully someone who’ll stick with me for a long time.

Why an apprentice?

I’ve tried outsourcing to experienced copywriters in the past, and it just doesn’t work. They’re either too expensive, they don’t get my clients or they don’t care about the results. (In fact, in a recent interview with Kate Toon and Belinda Weaver, I said outsourcing was my biggest business mistake ever. It’s cost me a lot of money and caused a lot of grey hairs.)

So after 13 years in business, I’ve decided to do things differently. Instead of simply throwing the occasional job at someone and hoping they can do it, I’m going to invest some time teaching them.

How it would work

Unless you live near me, most of my teaching will be remote (Skype, screen-sharing, phone, email, etc.), and it’ll be mostly ‘on the job’ stuff, where I get you to work on a job and coach you where you need it. I don’t have much time, and my workload is up and down, so I can’t commit to a certain number of hours per week, or anything like that.

And on that note, work would be intermittent. At least to begin with.

The pay

This is NOT an internship. You’ll get paid for each job you do (UNLESS you deliver late). How much? We’ll have to figure that out as we go, but it won’t be squillions, sorry. I’ll be investing serious time training you, so for quite a while, you’ll actually be a cost to my business. Of course, once you start making me a profit, we’ll come to a different arrangement.

The requirements

The first two are equally important.

1. You must already be an awesome writer. I don’t care about experience, but I won’t consider anyone who’s merely ‘proficient’. You have to have flair. You have to be bold. You have to make me want to read your stuff – whatever it is. I’ll be teaching you the skill and business of copywriting; I won’t be teaching you how to write. There’s a very big difference.
2. You have to be able to figure out what needs to be said, not just how to say it. This means putting yourself in the client’s shoes, and in the shoes of their customer. It means you have to have common sense and an interest in human psychology and business. And because clients rarely provide enough information, it also means you need a lot of smarts to fill in the gaps. This is just as important as your ability to write.
3. You have to be curious and a fast learner. Versatile and excited by challenges, not daunted. You’ll be writing about everything from nanotechnology to male sex toys. And you’ll be writing heaps of different stuff (web copy, scripts, press releases, case studies, ads), in different styles (usually conversational-professional but occasionally colloquial or formal).
4. You must live in Australia (I’ll be super excited if you live on the Central Coast), and English must be your first language.
5. You’ll need an Australian Business Number (ABN) before I can pay you.
6. You must be able to accept guidance and work independently.
7. You must have a computer with a modern version of Microsoft Word.

More info

• To see the sort of stuff you’d be working on, check out my copywriting portfolio and copywriting case studies, as well as my copywriting services page.
• To get an insight into who you’d be working for, read my copywriting bio, and check out my copywriting blog (particularly this post and this post). Maybe check out my personal blog too, just in case you’re a racist, a libertarian or a Liberal party voter.

To apply

Send 5 samples of your writing to glenn at divinewrite dot com dot au, along with anything else you think I’ll be impressed by. As I said above, I’m not too worried about experience, but you MUST be an awesome writer already. So you must send me the samples, otherwise you won’t get a look-in. I don’t care if they’re not copywriting samples or even if they weren’t written for real clients (e.g. you wrote them just for me). All I care about is whether they knock my socks off.

If you can also prove item 2 from my list of requirements above, that’d be awesome. It’s a tough one to prove, I know, so don’t go tying yourself up in knots to do it. But I’ll definitely view it favourably if you can.

Note that if I don’t choose you, I won’t have time to explain why. Sorry. I’m after something very specific, and because I’ll receive hundreds of applications, there’s no way I can provide constructive feedback to everyone.

Oh, and also note that it could take me a while to get back to you. I want to get someone on-board ASAP, but as I’m currently my only copywriter, client work comes first.