It's crazy to think most of the public still hasn't figured out you can get paid to write from the comfort of your own home and make more money than a doctor, lawyer, or top-level CEO, all while sitting in your underwear writing tweets, threads and simple emails.
Well, folks, it's true. And I'm about to tell you how I went from being an overworked, broke electrician to making $50k+ per month with copywriting…
Here’s how to become a copywriter and land clients in under 3 months:
It’s important to note, all copywriting has a similar structure.
It follows this format:
There is little deviation from this basic structure.
But once you know it, you can choose to break the rules when the time is right.
The hook.
Your hook or headline has one main purpose…
You want to lure your reader in.
So, do this:
7 tips for your headlines:
1. Ask a question
2. Create curiosity
3. Hint at a benefit
4. Use simple words
5. Use the words “you” and “your”
6. Start in the middle of the action
7. Keep your opening sentence short
The entire goal of the headline is to get the reader to continue reading further.
I mentioned creating an open loop and here’s exactly what I mean.
You want to hint at something, present an idea, but not give away the answer.
That’s exactly what an open loop is.
An example of a headline that contains an open loop might be:
“7 ways to get a better night sleep than 97% of people
Use my 3-2-1 method:”
The real open loop here is the introduction of the “3-2-1 method.”
This leaves the reader with a huge question mark in their mind.
They ask themselves - “What is the 3-2-1 method?”
And they’ll never know the answer to that question if they don’t keep reading - Mission accomplished.
The reader keeps reading, your client is happy and you collect a fat cheque for a job well done.
The lead is the “big promise” you make to your reader.
It gives them more reason to continue reading.
It also provides more context in relation to what the entire piece of content is about…
But it doesn’t spill the beans - there still needs to be something left unsaid at this point.
Continue to build the curiosity of your reader and send them further down the page.
An example might be (if we continue on with our sleep hook):
“50% of people struggle to fall asleep at night…
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
I’m about to show you a 7 step routine you can use to:
So, let’s get into it.
7 ways to get a better night sleep than 97% of people:”
This would be an example of the kind of lead you might see on Twitter.
This is the “meat and potatoes” of your copy.
This is where you get into the actual subject matter itself.
People love content that provides value and actionable advice.
This is one thing we’ve always kept in mind with the writing we do for our agency clients.
We always include actionable steps for the reader to follow and implement in their own life.
This builds trust and good will with them. It makes them more likely to buy something in the future as well…
And from a social media standpoint, it encourages people to share your content more because people like to help their friends.
If the content is valuable, people are more likely to share it.
With our agency and copywriting mentorship program, we teach our writers and students something called the What-Why-How Framework.
This can be applied to all writing but for this example, let’s focus on tweets.
“The What, Why, How Framework:
In each part of your tweet, tell your audience:
• What you’re talking about
• Why it’s important
• How it’s applicable
This makes your content useful and to the point.”
This framework works incredibly well for writing tweets but can be used for writing:
A call to action or “CTA” is exactly as the name sounds.
You are asking your reader to take a certain action.
These actions can vary based on the goal of your marketing campaign.
For example, you might tell your reader to:
The list goes on and on, but a CTA is a crucial part of all copy.
Without a CTA, there is typically a huge difference in conversion rates.
People need instructions on what action they should take - you’re just helping them make a decision.
Social media ghostwriting has become a fast growing copywriting niche in recent years.
Twitter ghostwriting, in particular, has blown up, but ghostwriters are capitalizing on LinkedIn and Instagram as well.
My friend Taylin who scaled to $40,000/ month, myself and all of our Growth Ghosts mentorship students have chosen ghostwriting as their main service offer.
Many of them have had huge amounts of success.
Here are a few examples below:
[insert screenshots of trust pilot reviews/results]
If you want results like these, click here to watch my free webinar to learn more.
So, when my agency was at its peak, we were doing 50k per month.
I worked with personal brands — wealthy CEOs and founders with plenty of money, but no time.
That’s exactly why they need YOU to come in and help them.
They need ghostwriters who can take their story and distill it down to tweets, threads and content for social media.
More and more people are learning about the value of having a personal brand.
With the direction the world is heading and the digital economy moving ahead at full speed, there is really no denying that a personal brand can be leveraged for:
Twitter or “X” is now one of the big players in the social media space and is technically in its infancy again since Elon Musk has taken over.
So, it’s a perfect time to get into ghostwriting.
And an even better time to get into Twitter ghostwriting.
If this is starting to sound appealing to you, then stick around to the end where I’ll tell you about the ghostwriting mentorship program we run…
And how we can help you to make 10k in 90 days with ghostwriting.
All businesses need a landing page or website.
So, there is no shortage of work for copywriters who can write effective copy for landing pages.
Landing page copy needs to be clear.
It needs to be dynamic and punchy and it needs to convert.
When someone lands on a website, you only have seconds to capture their attention and send them down the page.
Because of this, effective landing page copywriters can demand a lot of money.
Some of our ghostwriting students also go on to write copy for landing pages as an additional service they offer for clients.
Email copywriting is another hugely popular niche.
This one is often an even easier upsell from ghostwriting.
A lot of our ghostwriters will repurpose their clients' threads into emails.
They’re able to do this in a fast and effective way that makes it well worth it for them and the client.
Part of the problem with social media is you don’t own your list.
Thankfully many personal brands have learned this and are building their email lists.
If anything was to ever happen to your social media accounts, you’ll always have your email list.
Copywriters who understand the value of this can easily sell prospects and existing clients on having a newsletter or sending more emails.
So again, there is no shortage of work for great email copywriters.
Every ad that you see on social media, every billboard you see on the side of the street, was all written by copywriters.
You can write ads for clients for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter or for print ads, or even infomercials.
Ad copywriting is one of the oldest forms of copywriting around.
The greats like David Ogilvy, Gary Halbert and Dan Kennedy all wrote copy for ads.
Video script copywriting is becoming more and more in demand these days.
This is especially true since the skyrocketing popularity of short form content.
Because short form videos are so popular right now, there is a high-demand for copywriters who can write short, punchy hooks and scripts.
With that said, there are also writers who specialize in long form video as well.
The reality is that most content is scripted before it ever hits the video screen.
That’s why video script copywriting is an excellent niche for writers to consider.
I have a confession to make: I've never sent a cold DM in my life.
The reality is, I never had to.
I just focused on creating great content and the rest took care of itself.
I got so busy that I had a waitlist of clients who wanted to work with me.
One of the best things about copywriting is you’re learning how to sell with words.
Because of this, you’re able to sell your services using content marketing, instead of cold DMs.
A lot of marketers waste countless hours sending cold DMs and cold emails…
But the best copywriters can just write a great thread, distribute it out to hundreds of 1000s of people and generate inbound leads with the click of a button.
This is exactly how it worked for Taylin, myself and many of our students in Growth Ghosts.
It’s something you’ll learn as well if you join our copywriting mentorship program.
We’ll teach you how to generate inbound leads with your content.
Twitter is easily one of the best platforms for generating inbound leads.
Twitter’s algorithm works in a way where users tend to see content which they’re genuinely interested in.
So, when you use terms like copywriter or ghostwriter in your tweets and threads, you have a higher chance of getting your content in front of people who are already looking for your services.
For Taylin and myself, Twitter was our “bread and butter” - the main place where all of our leads came from.
LinkedIn as well is a gold mine.
An interesting statistic about LinkedIn which makes it unique amongst other platforms:
Only 1% of users on LinkedIn write and post content.
Everyone else on the platform is a consumer.
Because of this, LinkedIn has incredible organic reach.
Even if you don’t have a ton of followers, you can post content on LinkedIn and generate a significant amount of attention.
More copywriters should be using LinkedIn to generate inbound leads.
SEO is an excellent way to generate leads.
It is a bit slower than attraction marketing on social media and definitely slower than paid ads.
But it’s more cost effective and comes down to writing blog posts and content that ranks you in Google’s algorithm.
The powerful thing about SEO is it lasts forever.
When you post on Twitter, your post usually dies down after 24 hours.
The same is true of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc.
But with good SEO for your website or landing page, you can be ranking for years.
The best type of leads are those that come from referrals.
Referrals are when someone in your network, a colleague or a client recommends you to another person who is looking for your services - copywriting.
These leads have a high probability of becoming a client because they already have confidence you can do the job.
That confidence comes from the person who referred you, telling them you’re the best person to work with.
Another way to generate leads is through outbound messaging.
Two of the main types of outreach that copywriters tend to use are cold DM and cold Email.
Cold DM refers to direct messaging prospects, who don’t currently know you, on social media platforms.
The platforms people use for cold DM include:
It’s an incredible way of generating meetings, but it does take a lot of volume.
Meaning, you need to message a lot of people in order to find those who are looking for your services.
Cold Email refers to sending emails to prospects who don’t currently know you.
Its biggest advantage is that it can often be automated.
You can write one email and have it go out to hundreds or even thousands of prospects at a time.
You can test different messaging sequences and see which messages get the best responses.
The disadvantage of cold email in comparison to cold DM is that it’s harder to build social proof with email than it is with social media and cold DM.
This is a big part of the work we do as copywriters.
One method of research that we recommend for all of our copywriting mentorship students is to host interview calls with their clients.
These interview calls are typically 1-2 hours long.
On these calls you ask your client questions about their life.
You learn about their achievements and challenges along the way.
Learning all of this is what allows you to write in their voice and effectively tell their story when you begin writing content for their social media pages, landing pages, emails, etc.
The research phase is probably the most important part of what we do as copywriters.
After you’ve done an interview with your client, this is when you start the actual fulfillment.
So, what does that look like?
We usually recommend that our students use an AI transcription software to record their calls.
This way when you go back to watch and listen to the calls, you already have an entire written transcription you can refer to.
This makes it easier to start writing the content for your client.
The writing you do for your client will depend heavily on the platform and mediums you’ve both chosen would be most effective for them.
Many of our students have chosen twitter as the platform they use to write for clients.
So a Twitter ghostwriter specifically would begin to pull the best stories out of the transcribed call they had with their client and turn those into tweets and threads.
This is also why the questions you ask on your interview call are so important.
They often dictate the way the entire call will go.
And if you ask those questions in the right way then the content will often write itself - not literally, but you get the idea.
Copywriters will typically start with a rough draft and then go through one or two edits before getting to the final draft.
You typically also send the content to your client for approval and once they’ve given it a thumbs up, only then do you go ahead and schedule the content and/or distribute it to the given medium you’re working with.
Again, that could be email, a landing page, a short form video, etc.
A great copywriter will also analyze what content is performing the best for their client and continue to produce more content that is similar to that.
Because if it worked once - it will work again.
A copywriter specializes in writing content designed to sell.
People often refer to this writing as "copy.”
The main job of a copywriter is to persuade the reader to take a specific action, such as:
A copywriter can do:
What separates good and bad copywriters is research.
A bad copywriter doesn't spend enough time on research and, because of this, doesn't "speak" to their reader.
A good copywriter will spend hours researching their client's:
They understand their customer’s pain points and know how to persuade them to take action.
Business owners don't pay copywriters just to write, they pay them for results — sales, followers, subscribers, leads, etc.
You don’t need a degree to get into copywriting.
Let’s put it this way, my background was working hard labor jobs.
Before I got into copywriting, I worked at Dominoes and then became an electrician.
Your best bet when getting into copywriting is to literally just start writing — that's what I did.
The two main ways to get started:
Or…
I did it the first way.
The good news is, social media has made it easier than ever to get into copywriting.
As you develop your copywriting skills, you also get better at writing content for yourself.
This allows you to attract more prospects to your offer, which gets you more:
Your writing improves.
You attract more clients.
Your clients get results from your writing.
Next thing you know, they're referring you to their friends.
You can see how this begins to snowball, right?
You’re probably wondering how much money you can make as a copywriter — and that’s a great question.
What you get paid as a copywriter comes down to:
And other factors like your:
Some copywriters choose to write for:
Some even choose to be an agency owners.
Being an agency owner is the most profitable in the long run because you can leverage other writers' time, instead of your own.
Let’s run through the numbers.
Copywriters working for an agency can expect to make 2 - 10k per month.
Copywriters working as part of an in-house team can expect to make 5 - 20k per month.
A freelance copywriter could make anywhere from 2 - 30k per month
An agency owner could make anywhere from 10 - 100k per month per month.
Now let’s get into the pros and cons of each.
Working for an agency:
The pros:
The cons:
In-house marketing team:
The pros:
The cons:
Freelance copywriting:
The pros:
The cons:
Agency owner:
The pros:
The cons:
When I got into copywriting, I chose ghostwriting as my niche.
I’ll get into exactly what ghostwriting is a bit later…
In a nutshell, — “I pretend to be people on social media.”
At its peak, my agency was doing 50k/month.
But I’m not the only person who’s had success with ghostwriting.
My good friend Taylin Simmonds is a perfect example.
I mentored Taylin and helped him escape his 9 - 5 job.
Before ghostwriting, he was making 40k per year as a public school teacher.
Now he makes 40k in a single month — while only writing for 3 - 4 hours a day.
A few months back, he got his agency up to 100k per month, but decided to scale back so he could enjoy more time freedom.
You see, a career in ghostwriting can give you the exact lifestyle you want.
Want to work 1 hour per day and make 5k per month?
It’s possible.
Want to work 4 hours per day, with a couple writers working for you and make 40k per month?
That’s totally possible too.
Copywriting is also 100% remote work.
Meaning, you can work from anywhere in the world.
Taylin and I live in Panama but there are people who do this while living in:
The list could go on and on.
It’s the perfect business for someone who wants to travel and live the digital nomad lifestyle.
It’s the perfect side hustle for someone who wants to work a 9-5 but make more money.
Copywriting can give you this kind of freedom and flexibility.
I hope this gave you an idea of what’s possible with a career in copywriting.
Still here?
Well, then it seems like a career in copywriting might be what you’re looking for.
So many people out there struggle to even make 40, 50, 60k per year with their jobs.
They sit in traffic for hours and drive to a stuffy office.
They put up with their crabby boss who treats them like crap.
They do all of that just for a mediocre salary.
The truth is - they hate their job.
Maybe they even hate their life.
But they don’t know of any other options.
They probably haven’t realized “WIFI money” is real.
But you, you’re already better off than them.
How do I know this?
Because you’re here on this page.
You’re already one step closer to getting the life of your dreams.
A life of freedom and fun and doing something that brings you joy.
A life which allows you to travel anywhere in the world whenever you want.
A life where you don’t have to ask your boss for permission when you want to take a holiday, spend time with your kids, wife, girlfriend, dog or cats…
Yes, I’m telling you, it’s possible to live a life like this.
I know because I did it myself.
This is the exact life I live today.
I’m here in Panama living with some of my best friends, writing copy for a living and teaching other people how to do the same.
That’s why I’m so passionate about all of this - I love seeing people escape the rat race and live their absolute best, peachy keen life.
Copywriting just happens to be one of the best vehicles to turn your dreams into a reality.
So, if you’re tired of living a life that isn’t giving you the freedom you deserve…
If you want to make more money but don’t want to sell your soul in the process…
If you hate your boss and can’t wait to hand him a resignation letter ASAP…
If you’re serious about changing your life and you love writing - this is definitely for you.
Click the button below to sign up for my free webinar.
I'll tell you all about our copywriting mentorship program and how we’re helping our students hit 10k per month and beyond in just 90 days.
Dakota Roberton
Owner of Growth Ghosts
I show you how to build a high-paying creative business without doing work you hate.
