TUNE IN: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher

Looking for closed captioning or a transcript? Watch the episode on YouTube!

A Sneak Peek at the Episode

[3:19] There is NO benefit in hand-copying ads when you’re trying to learn copywriting. Instead, Nicki and Kate encourage students to analyze copy out in the wild, as that focuses on the principles and strategies that went into creating that copy.

[10:16] Many so-called copywriting gurus will tell you that “the riches are in the niches.” But choosing a niche when you’re just getting started unnecessarily limits yourself and is not the smartest move when you don’t yet know what you’re going to like or not like.

[15:22] Clients, by and large, are looking for a depth and breadth of experience across different industries and different types of copy. Copywriting itself is your niche.

[18:20] The perception is that you can charge more when you have a niche. In reality, if you only have very narrow experience, you are not providing more value and it could be a red flag for clients. Breadth is valuable and makes your work more varied too!

[23:28] Copywriting and content writing are not the same. Using blog writing as a way to break into copywriting is bad advice because they are very different skill sets–plus, content writing is not paid anywhere near as well as copywriting. If your goal is to be a copywriter, then you should focus on writing copy and getting experience writing copy.

[29:41] Using job bidding sites like Fiverr and Upwork is not the best way to start landing work. Pitching and following up is a much more effective strategy for getting clients, and gives you more control over who you work with and what you charge.

[35:57] New copywriters tend to worry about bothering people who don’t need their services. But when you send a pitch that is based on providing value, clients are much more likely to hang onto it and call you when they do have a project.

[38:57] Don’t undermine your own copywriting skills by leaning on templates and formulas. The challenge that you’re going to be solving is going to be very specific to that company, that target audience, and that tone of voice. By all means use them for inspiration but remember it is your own creativity that will create great work.

[42:00] When you volunteer to work for free, you are essentially saying that your skills are worth nothing. Even if you don’t have any clients yet, you have experience, which means that you have skill, which means that you should be paid for it (even if it’s friends and family!).

[49:33] The internet has created an echo chamber of bad advice, so be discerning about where you get information. Taking advice from people who are successful and have been successful for a while will prevent you from veering off the path to success.

Must-Hear Takeaways

“Our brains want things to move really fast, we want that instant gratification, we want that instant yes. The analogy I like to use is it’s like planting a garden, each pitch is a seed that you’re planting, and the follow-ups are like watering it and eventually it will sprout into a big, beautiful, and wonderful garden. It’s a long-term strategy, it doesn’t have to take tons of time, it’s just not necessarily going to happen overnight. And so I think people do that, get discouraged, go to Upwork because they think, ‘well I can just go to this platform and tomorrow I’ll have a client’ and then they spend hours on Upwork and realize ‘Oh I’ve just wasted weeks and weeks of time on Upwork because I thought it was going to be easier, I thought it was going to be faster’ and then they came back to pitching and realize that that is actually the most effective way.” – Kate

“You may not have clients yet, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have experience. Again, our CCA students know, you’re going through the action sheets, you’re getting feedback, you are honing your skills, we have a lot of action sheets in there, we have a lot of opportunities for you to practice and to get feedback and make changes on that feedback and improve. So yes, you might be at the moment that you do not have any clients yet but you have experience, which means that you have skill, which means that you should be paid for it.” – Nicki

“One of the things that I’ve learned in my career and just in my life–and I’m glad that I did–only take advice from people who are successful and have been successful for a while at what it is you want to do.” – Nicki

Mentioned on this Episode

• 5 Ways to Improve Your Copywriting
• Why Choosing a Copywriting Niche is Terrible Advice
• What’s the Difference Between Copy and Content?
• Artificial Intelligence Copywriting: Do You Need to Worry?
• 1 Copywriting Tactic You Should Avoid at All Costs
• What is a Copywriting Test and Should You Do One?

Related Links

• How to Avoid the Copywriting Niche Trap
• What’s a Copy Test?
• Content or Copy: How to Tell the Difference and What Should You Charge
• The Real Math on Job Bidding Site “Success”
• Should I use job bidding sites like Upwork?

Tell us what you love about the podcast and what you hope to hear next! When you do, you can get access to an exclusive bonus recording featuring five wildly successful entrepreneurs who share what they do (and don’t!) look for when hiring copywriters. You do not want to miss it! 

Get all the details on how to get your recording here »

About the Build Your Business Podcast

Ready to turn your love of writing into a successful copywriting career?

Join professional copywriters Nicki Krawczyk and Kate Sitarz to get the tips, tools, and training to help you become a copywriter and build a thriving business of your own. Nicki and Kate have 20+ and 10+ years of experience, respectively, writing copy for multi-billion-dollar companies, solopreneurs, and every size business in between.

Whether you want to land an on-staff job, freelance full-time and work from wherever you want, or make extra money with a side hustle, the best place to start learning is right here.

See Previous Episode

Ep. 164: Changing Roles Within Your Current Company – Joseph’s Story

The post Episode 165: Terrible Advice New Copywriters Get All the Time appeared first on Filthy Rich Writer.

Those freelance bidding sites like Upwork or Fiverr or Freelancer where you can submit quotes on copywriting projects seem like a great deal. You get to just scan through listings, submit a quick proposal and quote to potential clients, and land tons of work.

Great, right?

Wrong. 

Freelance bidding sites are great for clients … and a waste of a good copywriter’s time.

How Freelance Bidding Job Sites Work

First, let’s make sure we’re on the same page and recap exactly how these sites work for copywriters. Say Client X wants some copy written for his website. The client writes up a brief description of the work, possibly mentions the project budget or hourly rate, and then posts the job listing to the website.

From there, the copywriters on the site read the listing, write their own proposal of why they’re best for the job, and submit that along with a quote for the work.

At first blush, this can seem like a great deal for copywriters. After all, why go out and prospect for work when you can just troll these sites and pick up jobs that people are already looking to fill?

But if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. After all, if it were that easy, why would anyone ever leave the house? Ad agencies and in-house agencies would be scrounging for copywriters, desperately trying to compete with these bidding sites. And…that hasn’t happened.

But if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If it were that easy, why would anyone leave the house? Ad agencies and in-house agencies would be scrounging for copywriters, desperately trying to compete with these bidding sites. And that hasn’t happened.

Why Freelance Bidding Sites Are Terrible for Copywriters

Charging by the Word Slashes Your Rate by More Than 50%

To really drive this home, I want to show you part of an email I received from one of these companies, showcasing their writing talent.

(I blurred the faces for their anonymity.)

This email is promising me writers with more than five years of experience who are writing for just 10 cents per word!

The Real Math on Job Bidding Sites for Copywriters

Writing for less than 10 cents a word is absolutely insane. But let’s really do the math on this.

I recently wrote an email series for a client of mine. It was a five-email series, and because I’ve been working with her for a while and she sends me referrals, I give her a bit of a discount.

I wrote those five emails and charged her $500. The word count of those emails was 2,578.

If I were one of the writers in this email, the most I could hope to earn for all the time I put into those emails would be $258. Oh, and that’s the top-paid person on this list. What if you’re making six cents per word? Go ahead and slash that down to $155.

You’d be forcing yourself to take roughly between a 50% and 70% pay cut on every project you write!

Let’s spread that out across the year: Are you comfortable making $24,000-$40,000 instead of the $80,000 you deserve to be making just because you’re using these sites instead of finding your own clients?

You’re paying a fee of at least half of your income just to work for these sites!

That is an absurd price to pay for “convenience.” And, if you ask me, having to blind bid and put in all that work with a low chance of getting the work isn’t that convenient at all.

Job Bidding Sites Offer Low-Paying Copywriting Work

I strongly discourage copywriters from using job bidding sites to find work. And people love to try to argue that with me. Case in point, here’s an article someone posted on one of our ads to “prove” that people can make six figures on Upwork.

I’ve never said that you can’t make six figures on Upwork (or any of the others)—only that it’s a completely unnecessary and utterly exhausting way to do it. 

Let’s look at the math from the copywriter in the article:

This is an absolutely crazy way to work—totally unsustainable and totally unnecessary! WHY would you be okay with working 18-hour days to make $2,700 when you could work a six- or seven-hour day to make the same amount? And how could you have 27 jobs in your queue—or 40 to 50!—and not burn out?

Also, to average $60 an order for a 100-word email and average $150-$200 an hour, he’s writing two to three emails an hour, potentially for 18 hours a day. (And that doesn’t include research!) What kind of quality can his clients possibly be getting?

And as our head coach Kate noted, when I posted this image in our student-only Facebook group: 40 to 50 jobs in the queue should be closer to a YEARLY total. I get stressed out at just the thought of having 40-50 projects to do in a month, much less a day!

Job Bidding Sites vs. Pitching

There is absolutely no need to be working these kinds of hours and at this kind of breakneck pace—especially since you can’t possibly produce consistently great work for your clients at that pace and, if you can’t do that, what’s your value to them?

Job bidding sites are just NOT the best way for a copywriter to get consistent and high-paying work (read: the kind of rates that our high level of skill deserves). They seem “easy” and they seem “less scary” than pitching…until you learn to pitch correctly and give it a try. 

Which is how most new things work, right? They might seem scary or intimidating, but once you follow the steps given to you and just do it (and with some support from other people who are doing the same thing), you discover that it’s a lot easier than it seems.

And wouldn’t you rather reach six figures (no promises, of course—you’ve got to put in the work) by working six or seven hours a day rather than working 16 or 18? That’s literally working from 6:00 a.m. to midnight as many days as you need to. What seems “easy” turns out to be so very much harder in practice.

Want to hear more about why job bidding sites are bad news? Take a listen to the podcast episode on why they’re not set up for copywriters and what you can do instead that will get you on a path to success.

The Smarter, More Lucrative Way to Land Freelance Work

So, what do you do instead? Find your own clients and use these job listing sites.

If you want to get work, get paid well, and build your portfolio, the exact worst route to go is the (so-called) easy route. You’ll have much more success by reaching out and prospecting for clients. You’ll face less competition, you’ll get far more clients who are looking for quality copy instead of cheap copy, and you won’t have to slash your rates to get work.

To use an analogy, it’s like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette TV shows. On freelance bidding sites, you’re like any one of the women (or men) vying for the bachelor or bachelorette’s attention. The odds are not in your favor. It’s one client with any number of freelance copywriters (plus, freelance bidding sites make it so easy for clients to look around!). 

But when you take control and send clients wildly effective pitches, you’re like the bachelor. You’re one person with any number of potential clients that you can pitch! (With the added bonus of an online portfolio that shows your work, not the work of hundreds of other copywriters!)

Now, it’s yourcareer. If you want to give these kinds of sites a try, that’s up to you. But if you really want to build your portfolio and make good money, “easy” and—ahem—lazy—sites like these aren’t where you’re going to find your success. Start prospecting and start trulybuildingyour career.

The “easy” way isn’t really that easy at all—and it requires a huge cost. (And people wonder why they can’t make a living as a writer!)

Put in the extra effort to find your own clients. It’s the only way to make your copywriting career successful—and you’ll give yourself an automatic 50%-70% raise.

Remember: Freelance bidding sites are great for clients…and a waste of a good copywriter’s time.

Watch More

Want more insight into why copywriters (and freelancers in general!) should stay away from job bidding sites? Watch the video below to hear Nicki and Kate break down the ins and outs of these platforms, plus the far more effective way to land work (and get paid what you’re worth!).

Your Turn!

Have you tried any of these freelance bidding sites? Let us know about your experience in the comments below!

The post The Real Math on Job Bidding Site “Success” appeared first on Filthy Rich Writer.

The first thing to understand is that anyone can call themselves a copywriter. And, in fact, that’s what plenty of would-be copywriters do. One day, a person who likes to write decides that he’d like a career in copywriting, starts calling himself a copywriter, and starts trying to get work.

But the fatal flaw in that is that calling oneself a copywriter doesn’t equate to knowing how to write copy.

Professional Copywriters vs. Amateurs

There are principles and techniques and tactics that make up the toolkit of a copywriter, and they aren’t things that are innate or that can be picked up just by reading a few ads.

Copywriting is a career and, like any other career, it requires training. And whether from arrogance or from naiveté, plenty of people ignore this and try to get work doing something that they don’t know how to do.

This is part of the reason that you’ll see people on job boards, job listing sites, and content mills willing to work for so little.

• First, they often don’t know what the reasonable rates are.
• Second, they don’t have the skills and portfolios to command reasonable rates.
• Third, they don’t know how professional copywriters go about finding work.

Professional Copywriters Aren’t Using Content Mills

Professional copywriters don’t use job listing or job bidding sites like Upwork and Fiverr to find work. Here’s a post about why that is, but the quick and crucial takeaway is that professional copywriters are partners with their clients. They look for ways to add value to their clients’ businesses versus waiting for clients to send work their way.

Plus, professional copywriters have a proven system for finding and landing clients. They control who they’re working with and their income. They don’t undercut their rates in hopes of landing work. And if they write content, it’s at their copywriting rates.

Take Advice From People Who Are Successful At What You Want to Do

The “copywriters” who are loudest, by the way, are often also the ones who will tell you that “copywriting is hard to get into” or “it’s hard to make money as a copywriter.”

Well, yes: If you don’t know how to do something, it’s hard to get people to pay you to do it. I don’t know how to design a house. I could call myself an architect, but as soon as it’s clear I don’t know any of the principles or techniques of architecture, no one will be willing to hire me.

Or, equally as bad (if not worse), someone may hire me and then word would get around that I have no idea what I’m doing!

(Here’s a little more insight into the three steps to career change.)

As a successful copywriter who’s been doing this for 20+ years — and who also knows plenty of other successful copywriters — I can assure you that it’s very possible to become a copywriter. But it takes training and practice and much more than just one day labeling oneself a “copywriter.”

Watch More

On episode 25 of the Build Your Copywriting Business podcast, Nicki and Kate are digging into exactly how much you can earn as a copywriter. Like any career, there is variability in your income based on experience and how much work you take on, but it is absolutely possible to earn six figures as a copywriter. Watch more to hear the breakdown.

Want more insight into copywriter salaries? On episode 41 of the Build Your Copywriting Business podcast, the Comprehensive Copywriting Academy’s head copywriting coach, Kate, digs into her actual salary numbers over several years of freelancing.

If you’re curious as to whether she charges clients the same rates, average project prices, average earnings per client, and more, you’ll want to listen to this episode! Kate gets transparent and you won’t want to miss the end when she shares what she earned in 2020 (in the midst of global pandemic, in case you forgot!).

Your Turn

Have you seen other places where copywriters are willing to work for “peanuts?” What did you think? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Why Do Some Copywriters Work for Content Mills (and for Peanuts)? appeared first on Filthy Rich Writer.

We’ve talked before about how copywriting job sites—sites where you post a profile and bid for work—are trouble. But today I want to show you just how much you could be losing.

Our team receives a lot of questions about copywriting job sites or freelance job listing sites in general. They seem like a great deal: You create a profile, then people who are looking for copywriting help post a job they need done and field proposals from writers.

Sounds great, right? People who want work done come to you!

Except it isn’t great. In fact, the reality is so not great that I strongly discourage students and readers from wasting time on these sites.

And an email I got from one of these sites really drove that home for me—but more on that in a moment.

Copywriting job bidding sites like these require a lot of effort for very little promise of return. First, you have to take the time to create a profile.

Then, for each and every job you’re interested in getting, you need to spend the time to create a proposal.

Don’t forget, too, that you’re blindly competing against anyone else who wants that job. And what’s the best way for people to get attention for their proposals? They drop their rates. Want to stay competitive? Expect to have to deeply cut your own rates.

People who post copywriting jobs on sites like that are usually looking for the highest quality they can get at the lowest rate. (Which is natural—but not practical.)

What they usually opt for, instead, is mediocre quality at a low rate.

Do you really want to compete with that?

Some of these sites, too, require you to set a “price per word” which, as we’ve discussed before, is exactly the wrong way to charge for copywriting.

In fact, charging per word actually penalizes you for doing a good job as a copywriter!

Not only does charging by the word fail to take into account the time you spend thinking about the strategy behind your writing, it penalizes you for being concise and on message.

And to really drive this home, I want to show you part of an email I received from one of these companies, showcasing their writing talent.

(I blurred the faces for their anonymity.)

This email is promising me writers with more than five years of experience who are writing for just 10 cents per word!

That is absolutely insane.

But let’s really do the math on this.

I recently wrote an email series for a client of mine. It was a five-email series, and because I’ve been working with her for a while and she sends me referrals, I give her a bit of a discount.

I wrote those five emails and charged her $500.

The word count of those emails was 2,578.

If I were one of the writers in this email, the most I could hope to earn for all of the time I put into those emails would be $258.

Oh, and that’s the top-paid person on this list. What if you’re making six cents per word? Go ahead and slash that down to $155.

You’d be forcing yourself to take roughly between a 50% and 70% pay cut on every project you write!

Let’s spread that out across the year: Are you comfortable making $24,000-$40,000 instead of the $80,000 you deserve to be making just because you’re using these sites instead of finding your own clients?

You’re paying a fee of at least half of your income just to work for these sites!

That is an absurd price to pay for “convenience.” And, if you ask me, having to blind bid and put in all that work with a low chance of getting the work isn’t that convenient at all.

So what do you do instead?

Find your own clients.

Develop your pitch emails and start with local small businesses. When you’ve got some of those under your belt, move on to solopreneurs, and then small design studios. Move on from there to ad agencies and in-house agencies.

(If you’re a student in our Academy, you’ve got the step by step plans to do all of this.)

They all need your help, but you’ve got to reach out to them.

And, the extra wonderful thing is that once you’ve been doing this for a while, you’ll start generating referrals like crazy and won’t have to prospect nearly as much.

The “easy” way isn’t really that easy at all—and it requires an absolutely huge cost. (And people wonder why they can’t make a living as a writer!)

Put in the extra effort to find your own clients. It’s the only way to make your copywriting career successful—and you’ll give yourself an automatic 50%-70% raise.

Your turn! Have you had experience with this copywriting job sites that make you bid for work? What happened? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Copywriting Job Sites Will Cost You BIG Time appeared first on Filthy Rich Writer.

As a copywriter you need an online portfolio. But, if you put your work up on Behance, do you still need your own site, too?

Short answer? Yes.

Longer answer? Yes, yes, yes.

Keep Prospective Clients Focused on Your Work

With so many great sites out there dedicated to hosting your online portfolio, you might be asking yourself why I’m so adamant about you creating your very own site.

If you’re not familiar with it, Behance (and other sites like it, such as the less-used Creative Hotlist) are sites that host many people’s portfolios. They usually give you the ability to upload your pieces within their prescribed template and a place to write a bio about yourself.

They host many people’s portfolios and offer employers and clients a way to search for talent and then contact the candidates they like. You can certainly get business from Behance. And you can absolutely put your samples and bio up on these sites if you want to.

Now, for the downside of these sites, all we have to do is go back to the last paragraph’s first sentence: These sites offer people a way to search for other talent. And that means that if you provide your client with “www.creativehotlist.com/[YourName]” as your portfolio site, they can go there to check out your work—and then search through the listings for other writers.

Now, I’m not saying that every potential employer will do this. But look at it this way: If you needed to hire a plumber and your plumber gave you a link to a site that listed him but also many, many other plumbers, wouldn’t you at least look around?

All I’m saying is that you don’t want to give people the opportunity to be distracted by other writers when what you really want them to do is go through your pieces and read your bio. You want to keep them single-mindedly focused on you.

When you send them a link to Behance, they have the opportunity (whether they take it or not) to then also search other writers. But when you send them a link to your website at your dedicated URL, the only thing they’ll be focused on is you,  your talent and deciding whether or not you might be a good fit for their needs in.

Stay in Control of Your Client Outreach

When you send prospective clients to your own, personal portfolio site, you control the interaction much more so than when you send them to a portfolio listing site.

Behance isn’t like Upwork. On Behance, clients can reach out to you about potential projects, but you still have the ability to turn that work down and talk through rates. On Upwork, clients propose the projects and any number of creatives can submit proposals for the work. That means you’re spending tons of time on proposals that may not be selected (which is often the case since clients on Upwork want the best work for the cheapest rate). It’s a race to the bottom.

But on any of these sites—Behance or Upwork (and others like them)—you’re still putting control of your career in other hands. The best way to avoid freelance dry spells and control your income is to control your client outreach. And the best way to do that? Value-based pitching.

Should you go ahead and set up a listing on a site like Behance? Absolutely. But you also need to set up your own portfolio website. And that URL is the one you need to be sending out to potential employers and including on your resume/selected credits resume.

Watch More

On Episode 22 of the Build Your Copywriting Business podcast, Nicki and Kate dig further into why copywriters need an online portfolio. Learn what most online copywriting portfolios are missing, plus what you should keep off your online portfolios and how you can make your portfolio stand out.

Your turn! Do you have a standalone portfolio site or a page on a portfolio listing site? Or both? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Why Every Copywriter Needs a Standalone Portfolio Site appeared first on Filthy Rich Writer.