If you do not use screen capture software like TechSmith Camtasia, or its free alternative Jing, to monitor your copywriting habits, you need to adopt this habit immediately. Using Camtasia screen videos to record yourself writing copy will ensure you maintain focus on your copywriting jobs, provide documentation of the hours you worked, and keeps a personal record for yourself about what you changed in your sales letters, and why.
The first reason to use it is that a Camtasia recording is like having a boss looking over your shoulder. While you are recording everything you do on-screen, you will not be checking e-mails or surfing forums, you will be writing that sales copy.
Next, recording Camtasia videos will train you to give great sales critiques. People will pay you $97 for a one-hour sales letter critique, so if you can master this skill, you are building yet another stream of copywriting income. Critiquing your own copy is not that different from critiquing other peoples’ copy, especially if you come back to a sales letter you wrote even a few days ago.
There is something about keeping the videos recording, and psyching yourself out thinking you are creating a video product, that gets you to explain everything. If the cameras are not rolling, you probably will not explain your changes as well.
Finally, Camtasia videos provide copywriting documentation, both for yourself and others. If you need to go back and look at previous versions of your sales copy, you can simply rewind the video and watch. You do not need to worry about saving a copy of the sales letter every step of the way just to retrieve a single lost phrase or headline. You can also hand the videos over to your clients either as free bonuses or proof that you actually worked the number of hours you claimed.
With computers getting faster and hard drives getting bigger, there is no reason not to record videos of yourself writing copy. Actors and sports player videotape themselves practicing, so why shouldn’t you record yourself to find out where your copywriting and productivity bottlenecks are?
