A stint in writing copy for online sellers
Summer series: Tales from jobs past
The job of writing copy for websites was just one he picked up on the side, sent his way by people he’d worked with in a call center in Jerusalem before he finished college.
It paid about $10 an hour, not bad money a decade ago, in exchange for some time spent writing a little copy on the weekends. It helped pay the rent.
But the products he was writing about for websites began to shift from things like replica watches and bootleg sunglasses to even sketchier adult-oriented items. It didn’t take long for Daniel Dzodin to decide it was not something he could do anymore.
“I was finding myself pushed more and more into content that I didn’t want to write,” recalled Mr. Dzodin. These days he works at the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council, Downtown, signing up students for classes and working to place them where their needs can be best served.
It’s work that allows Mr. Dzodin to make an important contribution and to help people learn to better communicate in a challenging or new language.
Still he concedes that some ideas he was exposed to in those early jobs — both in handling customer complaints at the call center and in creating copy that met very specific guidelines meant to appeal to automated search engines — continue to be useful.
“Even a job that I have not enjoyed and I do not look back on fondly, I can see how it sort of refined and produced ways to hone my communication skills,” Mr. Dzodin said.
His exposure to the odd jobs of themodern age began in 2004 when hestarted working at the call center in Israel, which was run by a company handling work for America On Line. At that point, AOL was still blanketing the market with discs offering free trials.
As Mr. Dzodin, 32, remembers it, his time on the phones began as customers were starting to shift away from AOL to other services. “I was tasked with keeping people from canceling,” he said.
The call center staff was advised to craft a plausible persona,