I’m going to share with you my 11 freelance writing tips which will help you be 2x income and productivity.
Let’s say you want to break into copywriting.
I’d start with a sub-niche and then carve out a process.
Here are some profitable sub-niches in copywriting:
Just pick one and start.
I chose Ghostwriting on Twitter (now X).
Here’s the process I carved out for myself and shared on a podcast with Chris Do:
The way you can brainstorm markets is by choosing the intersection between your interest and a market with demand:
Once you've listed out several markets, you have to pick the best opportunity.
There are 4 elements of a great market:
1. Do they have money?
Make sure your target audience has the financial means to purchase your offer.
Some college students could want ghostwriting, but they’re broke and can’t afford to pay you.
In the beginning, you may need to do some free work but do it for people who have money.
Don’t work with broke people:
2. Do they want your offer?
Make sure your offer solves a problem or provides benefits that your target audience is interested in.
Agency owners want leads, wealthy people want followers.
3. Would they get value from your offer?
Make sure the benefits of your offer outweigh the cost and address the pain points or desires of your target audience.
A prospect may know how to grow, but not have the time. Another prospect might know how to grow, but be bad at generating leads.
4. Is there a large enough market to go after?
If the size of your market is too small, there might not be enough demand to support your writing business.
You can hyper-niche down to lead gen ghostwriting for financial AI forex trading software companies, but it’ll be hard to find clients.
The problem with most freelance writers is they don’t get results.
If you can’t get results, it makes it harder to get clients and charge more money.
You’ll wind up getting stuck on these gig websites like Fiverr and Upwork.
Trust me when I say this, you don’t want to do that.
Get results for someone else or do it for yourself first if you have to.
These 7 copywriting books taught me more than 4 year college degree:
The way you command higher rates and land more clients is by educating yourself so you become more skilled than 95% of your competitors.
Take the principles you get from these books and apply them.
There’s a reason why Elon Musk is one of the richest people in the world.
One, he's a genius.
Two, he has a cult-like audience and a massive personal brand.
My personal brand helps funnel leads into my Ghostwriting Agency.
I don’t need to send cold DMs or do cold email outreach.
People want to work with me, for me.
And you don’t need to be a genius to build a personal brand.
You just need to do this:
"How do I make my personal brand stand out from everyone else?"
Stories.
If I went to 95% of accounts on here, it would be the same copy/paste content.
They're a commodity.
If they disappeared tomorrow, nobody would care.
This is the ultimate cheat code.
Nothing is 100% original and you need to swipe inspiration from other skilled writers.
That doesn’t mean copy their work, it means study and understand how it works.
Every time:
Put it into a swipe file on Notion.
You can create a massive library of copy which you can emulate.
Don't be afraid of AI.
Embrace it.
AI isn’t going to replace you.
It will replace the unskilled copywriters who just use it to copy and paste.
Instead, find ways you can incorporate chatGPT into your workflow to pump out quality copy faster.
You can use AI to generate ideas, do research or write a rough draft for an article or script.
Then take everything you’ve learned about copy, apply it and make heavy edits.
Nick Verge told me this and I’ll never forget it.
Lazy writing is just lazy research.
You want to understand everything about your prospect.
You need to become a detective and figure out what keeps your clients up at night.
What are their desires?
What are their deepest, darkest fears?
You can use chatGPT as a springboard to start and then interview people to further understand your market.
Other places you can look are reddit, youtube comments, forums and Amazon review sections.
But the best thing you can do is talk to people 1-on-1.
The founders of Hush built a multimillion dollar business by calling customers up and asking what they wanted.
Be able to show some samples of your writing to prospects.
If you don’t have a website yet, build one and host all your samples on there.
Your website portfolio should have these:
About me
Make sure your photo is on the page. Tell them about your journey and be personable.
Experience
Let them know your level of experience, work history and the clients you’ve worked with.
Client testimonials
Ask your best clients for testimonials. If you can get video testimonials, even better.
Contact
This one is a no brainer. Make it easy for them to reach out to you.
While you’re building up your portfolio, you can start SEO on your blog to attract more inbound leads.
You can pitch in email but higher ticket clients might want to get on the phone.
If that’s the case, here’s how you should structure your sales call:
• Ask questions to find out their situation
• Probe on their pain points
• Position yourself as the solution
Make a simple pitch under 2 mins that’s simple and runs through the process
But seriously, anyone who says we live in the worst time in history is 100% full of it.
You can learn a skill on YouTube for FREE.
You can start a business for FREE.
You can use business software for FREE.
And scale to $10K-$50K a month.
Always stay curious and keep trying to level up.
I show you how to build a high-paying creative business without doing work you hate.
