If you want to get more clients, you probably have an ezine with a subscriber list. But what if you are just starting up your ezine and your list is small? Or what if you have alway done face-to-face networking and now you’d like to expand to online marketing?

When you’re starting a new website or targeting a new audience, an e-course might make more sense. For example, suppose you are not sure if your market will be responsive enough to invest time in an ezine. And once you promise an ezine, it’s hard to cut back and decide not to publish.

Or maybe you want to go on vacation or deal with a personal challenge. Your website will still be attracting visitors. Some of those visitors will be potential clients. There’s no need to let all those visitors disappear without a trace. You can capture their names and email addresses with an e-course.

An e-course is a series of emails, each containing a short piece of information. You call each email a lesson. You set up a system to deliver these emails to those who opt-in with a specific request for your e-course.

But you have to follow a few guidelines.

1. Begin by writing a sales letter to promote your e-course. Why will readers want to sign up?

2. Choose a straightforward topic that addresses a specific, painful challenge. “Never be afraid of cold calls again” will probably draw more readers than “Introduction to sales.”

3. Keep courses short. Most readers tend to tune out after five to seven days.

Once you are established in your market, your readers will welcome longer courses.

4. Time your message for every day or every other day. Readers have short memories. They’ll forget you if you wait too long between messages.

5. Use copywriting strategies to hold reader interest and motivate them to view you as a resource when they’re ready to take stronger action.

6. Aim for one take-away and one action step in each message. You’ll give readers a taste of what to expect if they sign up to work with you. Most won’t actually take these steps but they’ll understand where you’re coming from.

7. Sign up with a mailing system that hasn’t been universally banned for overzealous mailings. There’s no way you can manually track who’s on which lesson. And you’ll want an automated record of subscribers so you can follow up.

Independent professionals often struggle to develop landing pages that convert browsers to buyers. Many fail because they don’t realize that landing pages are not the place to display your creative talents. They follow formulas that are have been tested over and over again. They use very specific copywriting and design techniques. And they are completely open about their purpose: getting visitors to take one specific action before leaving the page.

(1) Decide exactly what ONE action your visitors should take. Do you want them to sign up for your ezine? Buy a product? Call for a free sample consultation? Develop the page to motivate readers to take that one action.

(2) Help visitors resist temptation to click away to another page. If you have a traditional website, your home page is designed to motivate readers to click away to other pages. If you are a service professional you want visitors to go to your “about” page and your “services” pages. But your landing page should be completely self-sufficient.

(3) Create an invisible design that readers won’t notice because they’re so busy reading the message. Choose black type on a white background. Use images to direct readers to follow the message you create in your text: arrows, underlines, big exclamation points. Handwritten marginal notes have become trendy.

(4) Create headlines and copy to solve the visitor’s painful problem. People browse for fun stuff while they’re sipping cappuccino in a live bookstore. They go online when they’re lying awake all night, wondering how they’ll ever get answers to their toughest challenges.

(5) Make the copy easy to read. Use bullets, lots of white space, colors and headlines. On the web, most readers will scan your copy. Some readers will just skim through the bold and highlighted copy, all the way to the end. So apply bold type to the phrases you want your readers to notice. Then read through the copy to see if your bold text makes sense without reading anything else.

(6) Force your readers to choose. They can leave the page but if they click on anything, they’ll go to your shopping cart. Period.

Independent professionals often want to include a link to their free ezines or even another product. If you do, then create an exit pop-up with the message, “Not ready? Then sign up here…”

(7) Direct traffic to your landing page. Whether you use Pay-Per-Click, article marketing, press releases or any other traffic building technique, send readers to your landing page, not your home page.

Domain names and hosting have become cheap. So many savvy marketers create keyword-rich domains for every product they want to promote heavily. Then they create 1-page web sites with just the landing pages.

In case you need another reason to learn copywriting: The whole idea of creating a website or ezine is to attract clients, right? But I’m constantly surprised to find websites that not only fail to attract clients. They actually insult their readers.

Example 1: Writing for his ezine, a self-styled marketing expert compared troublesome clients to a serious fatal disease, which he named. Get rid of the disease and restore the health of your business, he advised.

He acknowledged that he could be criticized for bad taste. No kidding.

The author has a good point. it’s important to screen clients and your website can actually do this for you. But you can frame the challenge as skimming the cream, cherry-picking or some other metaphor that suggests you love your wonderful clients. No need to insult those who are all wrong for you. Maybe they’ll be just right for you someday.

Example 2: Writing in her ezine, a well-known consultant vented her frustration with audiences who moan about advertisements on her complimentary calls. As she moved from presentation to conversation mode, she heard some loud groans along with, “Do we have to listen to this?”

Hopefully we all realize these teleseminar calls always come with a brief promotion. Otherwise why would anyone offer them? My own audiences have been gracious and friendly, so I never hear so much as a whimper of complaint.

But this consultant treated her ezine readers to a rant. “Would you rather see me on the street begging?” she asked.

Gimme a break. I would just share my announcements, ignore any complaints and maybe keep the call in organizer mode a few minutes longer. There’s a good reason most of us mute our participants these days.

Chances are the moaners are also alienating their fellow audience members. And while they’re loud, I bet only 1 or 2 are doing all the talking. The rest loved the class and want to hear more.

Example 3: One copywriter’s home page sneers, “You think you can write your own copy? No way.” And a web designer’s email advertisement warned, “If you are like so many other coaches you need every last cent to build your business and keep food on the table.”

Okay, we want to target a target market’s pain. But we can still honor them.

“Sure, you can write your own copy,” you can say, “But are you ready to invest countless hours and thousands of dollars to learn from the pros? And is copywriting the best use of your time?”

And if you’re worried about putting food on the table, you probably need to grab a job or find a business that attracts clients faster than catnip attracts cats and peanut butter attracts dogs.

When we catch ourselves grinding our own axes, it’s time to review the basics. Why did we want to do this in the first place? Do we need an energy boost?

I have to resist writing this way myself after I’ve had a bad day or week. At those times, I find I’m better off escaping — walking the dog or reading my favorite murder mystery — instead of writing articles, ezines and website content.

To attract clients online, your website needs to showcase your talents, skills and experience. So you create an “about” page. Often you will also be asked to submit a bio as part of a proposal or bid or a consulting project.

When I work with clients on website copywriting, I often hear, “I don’t want to boast. I don’t know what to say.”

The truth is: Writing your bio means you want to send a message to your potential customers: “You are dealing with the professional who is best qualified to help you at this time.”

So I would encourage clients, “Think Terrific Copy, not True Confessions.”

(1) Use your bio only to help prospects say yes. Usually your early childhood memories won’t make a difference. But suppose your service involves bringing together teams from different countries. You can say, “I was born in England, grew up in India and went to college in the United States. As a result, I have first-hand experience with different cultures.”

(2) Use strong action statements to demonstrate your strengths. Instead of saying, “I am a good listener,” give examples of how your close listening led to strong, positive outcomes.

(3) Create a context by demonstrating your range of experience. For instance, you can say, “I’ve worked with over 100 firms, ranging from two-person consulting firms to Fortune 50 companies.” Or you can summarize: “Over 20 years of providing web solutions to over two thousand clients…”

(3) Show how your experience transformed the way you do business. For example: “Max discovered his clients achieved a great deal of financial success - but they kept saying something was missing in their lives. So he created a program…”

(4) Include credentials and credibility-boosters. Have you been interviewed by a recognized media source? Won awards? Earned advanced degrees and certificates from accredited universities and programs? Passed your CPA exam? Worked for clients whose names are household words? Now you’ve got some great material for your bio.

(5) Help readers visualize where you are now, professionally and geographically. For example: “Now Joanne consults and writes books from his home on the Oregon Coast. Clients come by email from all over the US as well as Europe, Africa and Australia.”

(6) Include lifestyle touches that help relate to your target market. You have to decide whether to talk about living with a partner, your hobby of gourmet cooking, and your six Siamese cats. What’s friendly to one market will seem flaky to another.

(7) Use copywriting techniques to present yourself as strong, confident and capable. Your bio is a sales tool and you need to come across as strong, confident and capable.

Copywriting for independent professionals means creating web pages to display your skills. But most indie professionals feel self-conscious when they describe themselves. They don’t want to brag. And they realize that vague promises (”I am a good listener” or, “I help clients find solutions”) aren’t very convincing anyway.

Telling success stories about your work is the best way to convince prospective clients that you are the best possible resource to help them reach their goals. Whether you need to develop a new accounting system or a new mindset, you can use a few techniques to demonstrate how you deliver results.

My own clients call when they want a website makeover that will attract more business with less effort. Often they have trouble clarifying the benefits they deliver. They may be unaware of what makes them unique. Before I write copy and create content, I ask them to write out at least 3 stories.

These success stories will help you identify the benefits you provide your clients. Often you will also recognize why you are unique: your approach, process and experience.

Success stories differ from testimonials because you write them yourself. They tend to be longer. You can disguise names and details, so you protect your clients’ privacy.

Here are some ways to write your own success stories quickly, so that you will attract the prospects and clients you want for your online business.

(1) Review experiences you have had with your own clients. Choose stories about clients who most resemble your ideal target market. If you target women over 40, don’t base your story on a twenty-something male client.

(2) Explain your client’s situation before you were hired. For example, “John’s business was going well and he was just starting to enjoy life. Then a crisis developed…”

(3) Explain what you did after you were hired. For example, did you use any processes that you created? What were your first steps?

For example, you might say, “I have worked in the industry for ten years. So I can get all the information I need in a four hour visit. The competition takes three days. Who needs a consultant parked on the job site for three days?”

(4) Highlight what was visibly different after you completed your project. Look for tangible outcomes. Try to dollarize your results, if at all possible. Otherwise look for scores and numbers.

For example: “After my training section, the Director said my evaluations were the highest they had seen.” An even stronger result would be, “After we implemented my suggestions, my client ‘Susan’ was able to create reports faster with fewer staff.”

(5) Use your stories to create your promotional materials, including your website. You can also add a page of success stories to demonstrate how you help clients. Now you’ve shown what you can do — without bragging or boasting.

Follow these steps and you will have success stories that communicate your value to your prospective clients. Show how you deliver unique services and your success stories will become the foundation of your promotional strategy.