If you’ve heard about all the money there is in copywriting, and wonder how you can get started, read on.

If you can write an email message that makes sense, and which gets the results you want, you can write excellent copy with a little practice. Your skill with grow with time.

Copywriters write many different forms of copy. Let’s look at five popular forms.

1. Businesses love brochures

Brochures are short. Some brochures contain just a tagline, a short description, and information on how to respond. Some businesses produce brochures for hundreds of products - think of realtors, and manufacturers.

2. Overviews or white papers are fundamental in business to business

Many businesses are in business to business markets (think health) which frowns on blatant sales pitches. These businesses produce overviews and product information copy sometimes called white papers, although they can be called anything.

Most white papers are just a few pages long, and are strictly informational copy, rather than sales copy.

3. Press releases - publicity generators

Businesses small and large hire copywriters to write press releases, with the hope of getting coverage in major newspapers and magazines, and even on television. So if you get some practice writing press releases, you can become a PR copywriter.

There’s a strict format for a press release; you can find this format in a book on PR at your library, as well as online.

4. Write radio spots - write for performance

Some copywriters specialize in writing for audio, primarily radio advertising, or “spots.”

When you’re writing for listeners, you must remember that people can’t go back and reread something they missed. If they don’t get the point of a radio spot, the energy and money which went into producing it are gone forever.

Radio spots are short. Tape some ads, and transcribe them so you can see how it’s done.

5. Ultra short copywriting with taglines and slogans

Although writing a slogan or tagline seems easy - they’re short after all, it can actually take a lot of time to get the right collection of words which is truly memorable.

I know one new copywriter who launched a whole career when he wrote a tagline for a store. The store owner loved the tagline so much he introduced the copywriter to the head of an advertising agency.