How I went from making $300 to $3000 as a copywriter in about 6 months...
Hello again! I hope your week is off to a great start my friend. Have you done any research on copywriting yet? (I hope so!)
So far we’ve covered from the birdseye broad view…
Why copywriting is a great gig for moms
What copywriting actually is
Where to look for jobs, and
How to actually write this stuff
And I challenged you to do some self-reflection and research on copywriting. Did you do it?
If you’re like me, you may have said, oh these are all great ideas, but then…
Some little person was hungry.
The dog needed to go outside.
And that laundry in the dryer was getting more wrinkled by the minute…
I totally get it.
Give yourself some grace. But seriously, try to carve out some to explore all of this.
Okay, on to this week’s topic – how I started making money as a copywriter.
I’m not gonna lie, it was slow at first…and pretty hard with two teens and a new baby underfoot.
But I kept at it and today I charge a pretty high rate for my services and rarely work more than 20-25 hours a week.
I stuck with it because my choices were:
1) make it work, or
2) go back to work.
And I didn’t want a full-time job that took me away from them.
Your situation could be different. And you might make different choices. My hope is that you take this and adapt it to what works for you.
The beginning….
What attracted me to copywriting initially was an ad on Pinterest. It was for an organization that taught copywriting courses.
And boy could their copywriters write!
I was seriously enticed by the promise of big bucks…six figures in my first year, sign me up!
Only one problem - I couldn’t afford to take any of the courses at first. 😕
So I looked for free information and found enough to get me started. Eventually, I bought an ebook online (for a whopping $5) that gave me a game plan.
As someone with no experience, the game plan worked for me. And I’m going to share it with you now (for free). :)
9 Steps that took me from $300 to $3000/month in 6 months
Step 1: Set up a profile on Writers Access, take the writing test and get approved to work on jobs.
Step 2: Pull jobs off the Writers Access job board and do a lot of work for very little money.
Step 3: Set up a profile and upload samples to Upwork + get the monthly “connects”. (today you have to buy these but they are very cheap and I believe it’s worth it)
Step 4: Create a “template” cover letter to use for applying for jobs on Upwork & personalize it for each job I apply for.
Step 5: Set a goal to apply for X number of jobs every day. (I applied for 5 per day)
Step 6: Accept a job that pays very little but do a good job on it and get a 5-star recommendation. (I wrote 1000 words on housecleaning for a whopping $5 😫)
Step 7: Set a low, but reasonable rate, keep applying and land more jobs on Upwork. (I set my rate at $15/hour and worked at that rate for a few months before moving up)
Step 8: Serve your clients well and get good ratings and try to land some ongoing projects for consistency.
Step 9: Gain experience, get positive reviews, take some courses, and/or read some books to level up your skills. (Find projects you’re good at, focus on those, and price your projects appropriately.)
Okay, now that you’ve got the steps, here’s how the experience went…
The first freelance job board I used, Writers Access was fairly straightforward.
Clients needing articles written posted them in one of two places:
First come, first serve
Apply for the project
With the first come, first serve type jobs, all you had to do was be the first to claim it! You’d pull it from the site, write the content, submit it and once it’s approved, you’d get paid.
These jobs did not pay much at all. I generally made somewhere between $8 and $12 per article that I wrote.
I recently went back to Writers Access and found jobs at $35, so it looks like it pays more now.
But it served its purpose. I gained experience and confidence.
As time went on, I lost my enthusiasm. I was busting my rear to make a couple of hundred bucks each week.
Next, I tried a few other freelancing platforms including Zerys and Upwork.
I didn’t like Zerys at all. Not sure if the platform has changed, but at the time I tried it, you had to write the beginning of the project (around 200 words I think) with no guarantee that it would be approved or that you would be hired. I felt like it was a lot of work for nothing.
So I moved on to Upwork.
What scared me about this platform is that you actually had to interact with potential clients!
You couldn’t just pull a job off a job board and do it.
I liked the comfort of anonymity and no risk of rejection. But I knew that if I wanted to earn more money as a writer, I had to step out of my comfort zone.
And so I did.
The first job I landed was writing 1000 words on housekeeping for a whopping $5. Lol
My strategy was to get one project under my belt at any cost so that I could get a review. It worked. The person who hired me gave me a great review and asked me to write another article for $5. I politely declined.
Next, I landed a weekly project that paid $15/hour for 5 hours of work per week. $75 a week to sit at my computer for a few hours and write about landscaping services. I could totally do that!
In fact, I stuck with this project for about 6 months. Even after gaining some larger projects at higher rates of pay, I continued with my little landscaping job because:
1) it was steady money each week, and
2) it helped me build credibility on Upwork.
At this point, I was simultaneously pulling cheap projects off of Writers Access and trying to land better-paying ones off of Upwork.
Eventually, as I gained success on Upwork, I stopped taking jobs from Writers Access.
These 9 steps worked for me. I went from earning $300 to $3000/month in just 6 months.
As I gained more experience and reviews, I continued to increase my rates and earn more income.
Today I charge $125/hour for most of my clients and I work an average of 20 hours a week.
Was this the best approach? I don’t know. I didn’t have any experience as a writer…and it worked.
If you don’t have any professional experience, but you’re still interested in copywriting, YOU CAN DO THIS!
If you do have marketing or writing experience already, you can probably skip a few steps and start out at a higher rate than I did.
Or, you may want to ditch the freelancing platforms and launch your career on LinkedIn or with your own website. Those are options too!
But this is how I made it work.
That’s all for now my friends! Next time we are together, we’ll talk more about using freelancing platforms, and how to set up your profile.
Jenn
P.P.S. Upwork Women is hosting a live huddle on August 23rd at 11 am. I am a Community Manager for the group so I’ll be there live to facilitate.
To participate, join Upwork Women and there you’ll find the zoom link.
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