The 40-hour tax copywriters pay on every project

I blocked off a whole day last Tuesday.

Not to write. Not to pitch. Not to do any of the things that actually make me money.

I blocked off a whole day to read Reddit.

See -- I had a new client. SaaS product. Needed a landing page. And before I could write a single line I needed to know what their customers actually say. How they describe the problem. What words they use. What keeps them up at night.

So I did what every serious copywriter does.

I opened 47 tabs.

The ritual nobody talks about

Here is what my Tuesday looked like.

I started on Reddit. Searched the obvious subreddits. Read through threads. Copied quotes into a Google Doc. Then I moved to G2. Then Trustpilot. Then I found a few blog posts from people in the space. Then YouTube comments.

By 4pm I had a messy doc with about 60 quotes. Half of them were useless. The other half needed sorting. I still had not written a word of copy.

One copywriter on Reddit described it perfectly:

“I typically spend two weeks on customer research. That is just waiting for survey results and/or to run 8-10 customer interviews followed by a day or two of analysis.”

Two weeks. Before a single headline exists.

Another one said this:

“When I have a big copy project I literally block off a whole day just for voice-of-customer. It is exhausting. You are basically marinating in complaints and anxieties and dreams until patterns finally emerge.”

Marinating. That is the right word. You are soaking in other people's frustrations hoping something useful rises to the surface.

Let me do the math nobody does

A freelance copywriter charging $100/hr (which is on the low end for anyone doing conversion work) spends 20-40 hours on research per project.

That is $2,000 to $4,000. Per project. Before writing starts.

On a $5,000 project that means 40-80% of the fee goes to research. On a $10,000 project it is still 20-40%.

And here is the part that stings: most clients do not know this. They think they are paying for writing. They have no idea that “half of my project fee is literally me digging through voice-of-customer” as one copywriter put it.

You are doing $4,000 worth of work that nobody sees. Nobody appreciates. And nobody wants to pay for.

But you cannot skip it

Here is the thing.

The copywriters who charge $3K-$15K per project? They ALL do this research. Every single one.

“I am comfortable charging $8-10k for a funnel because I know I am walking in with a stack of VOC that is 2 inches thick. The copy is the tip of the iceberg. The research is the iceberg.”

That quote is from a copywriter on Reddit. And it tells you everything.

The copy is the tip. The RESEARCH is the iceberg. The reason that copywriter charges $10K is not because they write better sentences. It is because they walk in with better data.

Skip the research and your copy sounds like everyone else. Generic. Surface-level. The kind of thing ChatGPT spits out in 30 seconds.

Do the research and your copy sounds like you are reading the customer's mind.

“Voice of customer data is so helpful and makes my job so much easier. When I have a doc full of actual phrases from customers the copy almost writes itself. When I don't it feels like guessing and it takes me twice as long.”

Almost writes itself vs guessing. That is the difference research makes.

The real problem

The research is not hard. It is time-consuming.

Reading Reddit threads is not brain surgery. Copying quotes into a doc is not rocket science. Finding patterns in customer language is something any good copywriter can do.

The problem is that it takes 20-40 hours of DOING IT. Hours you could spend writing. Hours you could spend on the next client. Hours you could spend not staring at a screen reading strangers complain about software.

8 of 65 sources in our research mentioned this exact pain. Not “research is hard.” Research is TIME-CONSUMING. There is a difference.

Hard means you need more skill. Time-consuming means you need more hours. And hours are the one thing freelancers do not have.

What this actually costs you

Let me paint the picture.

You take on 3 projects per month. Each one needs 20 hours of research. That is 60 hours per month. On research alone.

At $100/hr that is $6,000/month you are spending on research. Not earning. Spending. In time.

Now imagine you could cut that to 2 hours per project. Same depth. Same quality. Same stack of quotes and pain points and objections.

That is 54 hours back. Per month.

54 hours you could use to take on 2 more clients. Or finish projects faster. Or just not work until 11pm reading Reddit threads about people who hate their CRM.

The bottom line

Research is 80% of the copywriting work. Everyone who is serious about conversion copy knows this.

The question is not whether to do it. The question is how long it should take.

Right now the answer is 20-40 hours. That is the tax. The invisible line item on every project that eats your margin and burns your energy.

The copywriters who figure out how to do the research WITHOUT the 40-hour tax are the ones who scale. The ones who take more clients. The ones who charge more because they deliver faster.

The ones who stop marinating and start assembling.