I used to think I knew exactly what “sales” was: it involved someone with a fake smile and cheesy one-liners conning people into buying things they didn’t want or need. I briefly tried sales jobs on a couple of occasions when I was desperate for a job, any job. One was teleselling advertising space, the […]
If you copy from one source, so the old saying goes, that’s plagiarism. If you copy from two sources, it’s research. I don’t copy from anywhere (that would be unethical and unprofessional, not to mention that I wouldn’t get paid) but I do have to research a lot of topics I know nothing about. And
This is my first blog of 2015, so I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year. Mine was quiet but enjoyable: a lot of great conversation and Trivial Pursuit. So for the first time I can say that I’ve been in business since last year, which makes me feel that I’ve moved
It’s my first Christmas as Nick Blatchley Copywriting, and I feel a real sense of achievement getting here – and especially getting here with business growing all the time. So I just want to wish a Merry Christmas to all my customers, everyone who’s given me advice and everyone who’s simply shown interest and been
Everyone has different skills. I can keep very basic accounts, but I’ll need to hire an accountant if things ever start getting complicated. In the same way, I can offer my services to write copy, but in practice everyone needs to get things down in writing themselves at times. Very often, people who can explain
Reblogged from Writer Beware®: The Blog Writer Beware is a blog mainly aimed at writers of fiction, but its latest post by Victoria Strauss is a chilling warning for both freelance copywriters and anyone who hires them to watch out for scams. I’m reblogging the piece in its entirety, but I’d recommend anyone concerned about
So what has ancient Greek philosophy got to do with modern approaches to business? Let’s take Epicurus, perhaps the most misunderstood of all the Greek philosophers. His doctrine is often portrayed as advocating pure hedonism, and his name’s become a byword for the extravagent gourmet lifestyle, but that’s a long way from what he advocated.
In my last post, I mentioned that Halloween was quietly replaced in the seventeenth century by Guy Fawkes Night, because it was seen as suffering from the double whammy of being both pagan and catholic. The fake sacrifice on the Samhain bonfires became an effigy of Guy Fawkes, and the night gradually became nothing more
It’s Halloween today, so here’s a very brief history of the holiday. A complete history would probably run to several volumes. Halloween’s a lot more than just a modern excuse for kids to get sweets. It goes back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, marking the transition of summer into winter and the night when
A spellchecker is a great tool – as long as it’s used in conjunction with a human brain. It’s main shortcoming, of course, is that it can’t read your mind. It doesn’t know what you meant to say; it can only tell you whether the word you’ve used exists. Even if it’s completely the wrong