Now you can capture new opportunities with AI copy. And make more money.
Fact is: I was gonna write this very sales page using ChatGPT.
It was Monday morning, and I was ready to high-five AI and get my first draft ON!
But when I tried to sign into chat.openai.com, I got this:
And I thought, Hmm, I’m never at capacity at 9:15am on a Monday.
Monday is supposed to be one of the most productive of the five days of the work week. I had a workblock in my calendar to write this page for the next few hours. And I wanted to put ChatGPT to the test – I wanted to “hire” it to write the page, with my direction.
After all, that’s what this program is all about.
How to write great copy with AI as your “copy cub.”
I thought I’d demonstrate by actually writing the page with AI.
But I can’t. Because my copy cub is out sick. Or slept in. Or is too busy serving everyone else, I guess.
I’ll still be productive this Monday. I’ll just go back to doing the first draft myself…
Which brings us to an important point, as AI promises to “build a brighter, more prosperous future for ourselves and for generations to come” (ahem):
Which brings us to an important point, as AI promises to “build a brighter, more prosperous future for ourselves and for generations to come” (ahem):
You and I know… It’s probably unwise to rely entirely on AI.
For starters, AI is not going to be free.
Not the good tools, at least.
There will be down time. There will be inaccuracies. There will be copyright infringements. There will be the natural flaws that come with flawed human beings crafting a tool that’s intended to learn like a brain does but that, well, I mean, have you heard how little we know about our own brains? And we wanna build new ones?
Not to get into predictions, because that’s impossible. And dumb.
But let’s assume AI copy isn’t perfect today.
Let’s also assume it’s going to get *amazing*.
And let’s allow ourselves to get excited about that.
Except… and not to spook you or sound any alarms, but…
When the auto-flight system for Air France Flight 447 shut off in the air, the pilot suddenly had to shift from managing to actively participating in the flying of the plane. The highly advanced auto-flight system had reduced the need for pilots to solve problems. As a result, unfortunately, the pilot was unable to identify what was going wrong, and the airplane crashed.
I first heard about that back in 2016, when I was listening to Charles Duhigg’s audiobook, “Smarter, Faster, Better.” It’s about how to make decisions faster… but it also shows us the downside of outsourcing decision-making to a machine.
It’s not the fear that the machine will “take over.”
It’s the fear that we become so reliant on the machine that, when it fails, we don’t have the skills to take back control.
Which, for you and me, means we should only outsource the non-thinking parts of our work.
So:
👉AI copywriting should replace the clickity-clack of knocking out that first draft of copy.
👉It should replace the glug glug gluuug brain-drain of staring at the screen with your fingertips just hovering over the keyboard.
👉It should replace those moments when the words should be coming but they’re just not coming…
YOU still need to figure out 🧠 what the copy is going to be about.
YOU still need the strategy, the plan, the message map. 🧠
YOU still need informed inputs. 🧠
YOU still need to think. 🧠
Congratulations! When AI copywriting bots like ChatGPT came along, they made redundant the shoulder-shrugging, don’t-care-to-be-here-anyway, quiet-quitting junior copywriter. The five-cents-a-minute listicle writer. The uninspired blogger. The wordsmithing order-taker.
And they gave YOU a promotion.
With the same job description you always had.
But with this to-do removed from it:
Your SFD days are over! Long live the best parts of our job:
Now you can take that 👆 stuff, and tell ChatGPT what you want it to write. (This is where the SFD is written for you.) When it fires back copy, you push it to do better. (Now it’s just a FD.) Then you take the copy you’re satisfied with and start:
That’s the stuff you’ve always liked doing the most. And it happens to be the stuff that your clients / bosses were paying you for…
(Because even if they didn’t know it, your clients had a hunch they were hiring someone with special skills and secret tricks to get people to say yes. We’re not talking about choosing words from a dictionary here, people.)
ChatGPT is your copy cub, after all.
It’s your intern. It’s just sitting there, waiting for you to give it direction and then make it perform better with your coaching.
But how?
Let’s start with how NOT…
Here are two ways not to use AI.
#1 TERRIBLE IDEA: “Make AI write an email.”
Here’s what ChatGPT wrote when I asked it to write a welcome email for me:
I gave it this big ol’ prompt. And it wrote… a really, really shitty first draft. And that’s my fault. You shouldn’t assign it giant tasks.
#2 TERRIBLE IDEA: “I guess that’s good enough.”
When I asked the same question (as above) of Writer.com, here’s what it produced:
If you compare ChatGPT’s output to Writer’s output, you can see that there’s PLENTY of room to improve across the board. But check this out:
That “room to improve” isn’t lying off in the distant future.
It may be instant.
Because AI gets smarter. It can learn. It’s easy to forget that it’s not just a party trick or some fun new distraction like NFTs were in 2022 or like Wordle was at the height of the pandemic.
If you prompt it to do better – in your very next prompt – it just might.
You actively need to start thinking through HOW YOU THINK.
You need to know how you do your job so you know how to coach AI to do the blech parts of your job.
Because let’s say you realize that you can’t ask ChatGPT to write you a whole homepage. You have to start by asking it to write a headline. Okay, great, now what kind of headline are we talking about?
This is the sort of question that can be hard to answer if you’ve kinda sorta maybe a little bit been winging it as a copywriter.
Which means, if you don’t want to be made redundant by AI, it’s time to stop winging it. You don’t have to become a bonafide Certified Conversion Copywriter to keep paying your bills. But here’s what you do need…
You need a crash course in research, in planning, in editing like a conversion copywriter. Like a copy chief. Like a copymaster.
And that’s exactly what you’re about to get….
ChatGPT writes copy faster than an intern would. It also writes copy faster than an old pro would because it’s not bogged down by decades of conflicting insight and anecdotes it has to weigh…
But speed only benefits you when you get GOOD copy fast.
Any rando generator that’s been around since the 90s can churn out sentences that fulfill a duty but don’t persuade people to buy.
And let’s remember: you’re being paid to get people to buy.
Which is why Master of AI Copy teaches you:
With the skills to plan convincing emails and pages…
And the skills to do your own research so you can feed the copy bots with prompts that produce insightful first drafts…
And the skills to assess what the robo-writer churns out… to keep what’s good… to reorganize it so it’s great… and to edit it so it’s phenomenal…
You transform from a “copywriter” (which is a wonderful thing to be, mind you) to a Copy Chief, Copy Analyst, Copymaster, Content Strategist – to the strategic copy partner who’s got their very own automated copy cub churning out first drafts like a machine…
Either way, AI copywriting tools are here.
Which is why now is the time to make them your ally, not your enemy. You need to:
For every CMO that recognizes that a copywriter is not replaceable with AI tools, there are a dozen CMOs who hope they can maybe just maybe outsource a bunch of their work to ChatGPT.
Eventually for some, it will become clear that:
And that’s when you’ll wanna show them this badge, which you get when you complete Master of AI Copy:
That badge doesn’t merely prove to future employers that you know how to work copywriting software the way a designer knows how to work Photoshop or Illustrator.
It also proves that you’ve conquered the very thing that came here intent upon your destruction. You didn’t cower. You didn’t run. You didn’t throw up your hands and start googling how to become a life coach. You whipped out your lasso, circled it in the air and took down the dragon before it could take you. And now you ride the dragon – First of Your Name, Queen of the Conversions, Protector of the Seven Sweeps, the Mother of AI Dragons, the Copymaster of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Blockchains…
Side note: ChatGPT won’t know a lot about features and new products. So keep that in mind when you find yourself thinking that AI is coming for you.
Behind your Master of AI Copy certification badge is the following:
Module 1 walks you through the complete introduction to AI copywriting tools and what they mean for you.
Give AI tools better prompts with this selection of my favorite lessons on how to plan and structure copy that converts.
Acquire new skills to transform what AI writes for you into powerfully persuasive copy that’s a delight to read.
Sam Woods shows you how to prompt AI tools, and Lianna Patch shows you how to amp up the volume when editing AI copy.
In just under 5 hours of training, you’ll:
And perhaps most importantly:
I’ll show you how.
Sam will show you how.
And Lianna will show you how.
For the first time ever, inside this brand-new collection of lessons.
“Joanna’s trainings are incredible. Her techniques are genius in their simplicity. Her over-the-shoulder tutorials make absorbing the material both easy and fun. Even if you’re not a copywriter, you’ll be able to write with confidence and know it’s damn good.”
Marie Foleo
Host of MarieTV, Entrepreneur & Author
“Joanna is the New England Patriots of copy and email strategy. Everything is just championship calibre.”
Todd Herman
Author, Coach & Entrepreneur
It’s RIGHT to be a little bit excited here.
Because not only are you elevating your career and title from “copywriter” (which was fine but, as I’ve taught my freelance copywriters for years, has always been undervalued)…
But you’re also increasing your hourly rate.
That’s because you’re going to spend fewer hours doing the work than you used to spend.
Now it’s time for a game called…
Even better?
As a copymaster, messaging consultant or copy chief, your project rate is even better. That’s because strategy ALWAYS gets paid more than execution.
So what if you can now charge $3000 for the same project?
Your hourly rate keeps going up.
And you can take on MORE projects. Or enjoy MORE free time… while bringing in the same or even better income. And doing less tedious work.
As long as you know how to prompt AI copywriting tools like a copymaster, messaging consultant or copy chief would.
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