Terms of service

About these terms

These terms cover two different relationships, and it is worth being clear which one you are in.

Part A — Website terms applies to everybody who reads this site. By browsing it you accept them.

Part B — Service terms applies once you engage me for paid work. They are incorporated into every proposal I send. Where a signed proposal or statement of work says something different from Part B, the proposal wins — these are the defaults, not an override.

Nothing here limits rights you have under the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, the Fair Trading Act 1986, or equivalent mandatory consumer law in your own country.

Definitions

Part A — Using this website

You may read, print and share anything published here for your own personal or internal business use, including running the checklists and frameworks on your own website. That is what they are for.

You may not:

• Republish substantial extracts of the articles as your own work, or under someone else’s byline, whether or not the source is credited
• Scrape the site systematically, or use it as training data for a machine-learning model without written permission
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of the site or its hosting
• Use the contact form to send bulk, automated or unsolicited commercial messages
• Use the site in any way that breaks the law where you are, or where I am

Intellectual property in site content

All text, structure, design and code on this site is my copyright unless stated otherwise. Quoting a paragraph with a link back is welcome and needs no permission. Reproducing a whole article does need permission — ask, and the answer is usually yes with a canonical link.

The site is provided as it is

The articles are professional opinion drawn from client work, not a guarantee of results in your business. Markets, search engines and platforms change. Nothing on this site is legal, financial or tax advice, and you should not treat it as a substitute for advice about your own circumstances.

I aim to keep the site available and accurate, but I do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free. I may change, move or remove pages at any time.

Part B — Proposals, quotes and acceptance

Every engagement follows the same sequence, deliberately:

1. Free fit call. Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation on either side.
2. Written proposal. Sent within two business days, setting out scope, deliverables, fixed fee, schedule and any assumptions.
3. Validity. Proposals are open for acceptance for 30 days, after which prices and availability may change.
4. Acceptance. A project is booked when you accept the proposal in writing and the deposit is received. A verbal yes reserves nothing, which protects you as much as me.

Quotes are fixed-fee, not estimates. If I have misjudged the effort within the agreed scope, that is my risk, not a variation you get billed for.

Fees, deposits and payment

If an invoice is more than 21 days overdue I may pause work on any project for you, and reasonable costs of recovering the debt may be added. I would much rather send you a reminder than a demand, so if cash flow is tight, tell me early and we will find a schedule that works.

What I am responsible for

• Delivering the deliverables described in the proposal, to a professional standard, by the agreed dates
• Doing the research the proposal describes, rather than guessing
• Telling you promptly if something is going to be late, and why
• Including the agreed number of revision rounds without extra charge
• Keeping your confidential information confidential
• Being reachable during a build for questions about the copy, at no extra cost

What you are responsible for

• Timely feedback. Consolidated comments returned within 10 business days of each draft. This is the single biggest cause of project delay.
• One decision-maker. Nominate the person whose approval is final. Conflicting feedback from multiple stakeholders is a scope change, not a revision.
• Accurate source material. Facts, figures, claims, testimonials and permissions you supply must be true and yours to use.
• Access. Analytics, existing brand documents and the customer introductions described in the proposal.
• Legal and regulatory compliance. I write to the brief; you are responsible for whether a claim is permissible in your industry and jurisdiction. If you work in a regulated field, have your compliance reviewer see the copy before it goes live.
• Payment on time. As above.

Timelines, delays and postponement

Schedules in the proposal assume the feedback windows above are met. If material is late, dates move by at least the length of the delay — my calendar is booked in advance and a slot missed cannot always be recovered immediately.

If a project goes quiet on your side for 30 days, I may treat it as postponed. Restarting after that requires an available slot, and a restart fee of up to 15% of the remaining fee may apply where research has to be refreshed. If a project goes quiet for 90 days, I may close it, invoice for work completed to date, and hand over what exists.

Revisions and scope changes

Writing projects include two full revision rounds. A round is one consolidated set of comments returned together. Sending three separate emails over a fortnight is three interruptions, not one round, so please collect feedback before sending it.

Revisions cover refining the work as briefed: tone, clarity, emphasis, structure within the agreed page. The following are scope changes, quoted separately and honestly before any extra work happens:

• Changing the target audience, offer, positioning or price after the messaging stage is signed off
• Adding pages, emails or articles beyond the agreed count
• Rewriting to fit a design that changed after copy was delivered
• A new stakeholder joining late and reopening settled decisions
• Translation, localisation or a second regional variant

Additional revision rounds beyond those included are charged at NZ$180 per hour, always quoted and approved first. You will never receive a surprise line item from me.

Ownership of the copy

You own the deliverables. Full copyright and all associated rights transfer to you on receipt of final payment, permanently, worldwide, with no licence fee, no attribution requirement and no restriction on how you use them. Use the copy in ads, decks, packaging, print, video scripts — it is yours.

Until final payment, I retain copyright and you have no licence to publish. This is standard and rarely matters, since almost everyone pays.

Two carve-outs, stated plainly so there is no ambiguity later:

• My methods stay mine. Frameworks, templates, checklists, questionnaires and processes I bring to the work remain my intellectual property. You get the output, not an exclusive right to the method that produced it.
• General knowledge stays mine. Skill and experience gained while working with you is not confidential information and I may go on using it for other clients — as long as your confidential material never travels with it.

Confidentiality

Anything you share that is not public — strategy, financials, unreleased products, customer lists, pricing logic — is treated as confidential. I will not disclose it to anyone other than a supplier who needs it to deliver your project and is bound to equivalent obligations, and I will not use it for any purpose other than your work.

This obligation survives the end of the project indefinitely. It does not apply to information that is already public, that you later make public, that I already held lawfully, or that I am legally compelled to disclose — and in that last case I will tell you first if I am permitted to.

I am happy to sign your own NDA. Send it with the proposal rather than after the deposit, so it does not hold up the start date.

Portfolio, case studies and testimonials

Once your copy is publicly live, I may link to it in my portfolio and describe the work in general terms. If you would rather I did not, say so at any point and it comes down, no explanation required.

Anything more than a link — naming figures, quoting internal results, writing a case study, or using a testimonial you gave me — requires your written approval of the exact wording first. Unlaunched work stays private until you launch it.

Cancellation and refunds

I may also end an engagement — refunding any fees paid for work not yet done — if the brief turns out to require copy I am not willing to write. That means claims I believe are untrue, persuasion techniques designed to mislead, or content that targets people in a way I consider harmful. This is rare, it is always discussed before it becomes a decision, and I would rather lose the fee than write it.

Results, and what I do not guarantee

I guarantee the work: researched properly, written professionally, delivered on time, revised as agreed.

I cannot guarantee outcomes, and you should be sceptical of any writer who does. Conversion rates, search rankings, revenue and enquiry volume depend on your offer, price, market, competitors, traffic quality, design, site speed, sales follow-up, seasonality and platform changes — most of which sit outside a copywriter’s control. Any figures on this site are historical results from specific projects, described as such, and are not a prediction for yours.

Third-party platforms and services

Where work touches your website platform, email service provider, analytics or advertising accounts, those services are governed by their own terms and I am not responsible for their availability, pricing, policy changes or the decisions they make about your account.

Limitation of liability

Where you engage me in trade — that is, for business purposes — the parties agree that the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 does not apply, to the extent permitted by section 43 of that Act. Where you engage me as a consumer, your statutory guarantees apply in full and nothing in this section limits them.

Subject to that:

• My total aggregate liability arising out of an engagement is limited to the total fees you have paid me for that engagement.
• I am not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, lost opportunity or reputational harm.
• I am not liable for loss arising from information you supplied that turned out to be inaccurate, or from changes made to the copy after delivery.
• Nothing in these terms excludes liability for fraud, or for anything that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Indemnity

You agree to indemnify me against claims arising from material you supplied — including claims that a fact, figure, testimonial, image or trademark you provided infringed someone’s rights or breached advertising or industry regulation — and from changes you or a third party made to the deliverables after I handed them over.

Events outside our control

Neither of us is liable for delay caused by events genuinely beyond reasonable control: serious illness, bereavement, natural disaster, extended infrastructure or platform outage, or government action. Whoever is affected will tell the other promptly and we will agree a revised schedule in good faith. If the delay runs past 60 days, either party may end the engagement and settle for work completed.

If we disagree

Talk to me first. Almost every dispute in this line of work is an expectation that was never written down, and one honest conversation resolves it.

If that does not work, we agree to attempt mediation through the Arbitrators’ and Mediators’ Institute of New Zealand before either party starts proceedings, sharing the mediator’s costs equally. This does not stop either party seeking urgent injunctive relief where genuinely necessary.

General

• Governing law. These terms are governed by New Zealand law, and the New Zealand courts have non-exclusive jurisdiction.
• Entire agreement. The signed proposal plus these terms form the whole agreement and replace earlier discussions.
• Severability. If a clause is unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
• No waiver. Not enforcing a term once does not waive it later.
• Assignment. You may not assign the agreement without my written consent, which will not be unreasonably withheld.
• Subcontracting. I write the copy myself. If a project ever needs a specialist — a translator, a technical editor — I will tell you before engaging them, and I remain responsible for their work.
• Notices. Written notice by email to the addresses in the proposal is sufficient.
• No partnership. Nothing here creates an employment, partnership or agency relationship.

Changes to these terms

Website terms (Part A) may change at any time, and the current version is the one on this page. Service terms (Part B) are fixed at the date of your proposal for the life of that engagement — a change published here does not alter a project already under way.