Getting Started - Welcome to My Brand New Blog!

October 23, 2013
Next to the Valleyview Ferry
Richmond, Kentucky

This is my first journal entry as I take up the task of learning how to write ad copy.  I have been an entrepreneur off and on for the last several years, but mostly I have been a teacher in a private school. Over the years, I've learned a lot about marketing and how to run a business and how to deal with people.  I've had the opportunity to live all over the world and learn about how people work and what makes them tick. The reason for this journal so that I can chronicle the processes that I have taken in my journey to become an ad copy writer. Learning how to write ad copy is not easy, nor will it be an easy business once I get it started. Even though I have taken several courses in ad copywriting from two or three very fine writers in this field, as well as reading as many books as I can on the subject, there is still much for me to learn by way of experience and practice. One of the best ways that I could motivate myself as well as check on my own progress is to write down my thoughts and ideas on the subject.

After I finished taking a course or two on ad copy writing, I decided to join an online network called the "Warrior Forum" which has several fine writers that are well tuned to this trade for some advice and guidance. Believe it or not, there were quite a few people that were willing to help me learn as much as they could in their spare time on the art of writing advertisements. To these people, I am very grateful and wish to extend my thanks for all the help that they have given me so far.

Much of the education that I have received in this area so far has been merely a preparation for what must come next, which is the constant practice of writing this type of material and all of the blood, sweat, and tears that goes along with it.  One of the first things that I learned from people working in this field was that in order to be successful at it you had to write, write, write and then write some more. Just like any other kind of writing that you would have to learn through experience, ad copy writing is not nearly as easy as it would seem while you're taking some of these courses. As a matter fact, whatever amount of time that you put into taking a course from a brilliant ad copy person you to multiply that by about 1000 times and you would probably still not have practiced your craft enough.

Fortunately in the land of advertisement writing, there are a lot of people that have preceded me that have done enough groundwork that I can learn from. As I go through my Journal writing over the next several years, I will be bringing up in writing about many of these individuals; marketers, writers, entrepreneurs and others that have become very successful in their fields and how I have learned from them.

If you are a person that is interested in being an entrepreneur of any kind, this journal may help you. It may be a guide to different resources and people that can help your business out, or you can actually learn from my failures and achievements themselves, because as we all know, it is the experience of others in which we can build our education about any particular subject we want to know, whether it is good or bad.  So, I hope that if you find this journal over time you can go back and look at some of the early writings I have done as well as some the other lessons that I have produced in this chronicle of my own quest to learn how to write ad copy.

-- Mark "Elmo" Ellis