Ocean Copy

As a web copywriter, I know people like reading stories, so here is my tale of how I came to write websites and articles for clients all over the world.

• At Primary School I had a fantastic teacher called Mrs. Russell who encouraged me to write and be creative. This resulted in me winning a BBC Radio Scotland competition for my entry “Jack the Bucketman”.

• I studied Graphic Communications Management at Napier University in Edinburgh after leaving High School.

• I then worked for a few different printing companies in and around Edinburgh on the production side.

• My career then took me to the production department of a student promotions & publishing company. It was here my passion for writing and marketing was reignited. I was involved in email marketing campaigns for students as well as writing restaurant reviews for some great, and not so great eating establishments in Edinburgh.

• One day I saw an advert on Gumtree from a global digital agency with an office in Edinburgh looking for copywriters. I wrote some sample text and got accepted. Within a couple of months they were offering me more work than I could fit around my day job.

• Thanks to the support of my wife, I quit my ‘day job’ and took up copywriting full time. The agency I mentioned above kept me in work for quite a while, including writing around 100 websites for one of the world’s biggest hotel chains.

• The financial crisis hit and outsourcing work to copywriters was seen as an unnecessary expense, so the agency work dried up. I immediately sent out a mailshot and got around five or six good clients within a week or two (some of whom I still work for now). It was around this time I set up Ocean Copy.

If you’re a copywriter, it would be great to read your story in the comments below.