I'm in the planning phase for the redesign of my SaaS application as it launches out of private beta and into the wild. Part of that is writing the sales and marketing copy including explaining what the product is, it's benefits, calls to action etc.
Writing decent web copy isn't a strong suit of mine but I would like to get a better grounding in some of the basic principles. Do any of you have any tips or pointers to good source material I can read up on? I don't expect to turn into Don Draper overnight, but I'd like to be able to avoid common pitfalls.
Failing that, do any of you have any experience with decent copywriters and, given that I'm a bootstrapped single founder who has finite runway (i.e. I don't have tons of cash to throw at this problem), any personal recommendations for individuals you've worked with?
EDIT: Spelling, grammar and, er, general copy :/
It was written a few years ago, so it doesn't have the latest techniques for maximizing conversions for SaaS products.
However, it's written for direct response advertisers and not brand advertisers, so it covers the basics of getting sales, tracking, split testing, etc very well.
You can take the techniques Hopkins presents for writing short, effective classified ads and apply them very effectively, with minimal modification, to your AdWords ads and landing pages.
These techniques have been tested by dozens of advertisers since, and they work VERY well.
A good copywriter will usually charge $10-$15K plus a percentage of sales. I would strongly recommend bringing your copy skills to "Good enough" and doing it yourself.