The goal of every skill you will learn is to get you closer to attaining your full earning potential and copywriting is no exception to that rule.
So in today’s article, I will show you 7 different ways you can turn into a successful copywriters that I learned from the biggest copywriters of our time.
Step 1 – Learn the basics of Copywriting
Before you start wanting to make any money with a skill it’s just commonsense to start by learning the basics. In fact, once you start mastering the basics, it will be much easier to start attracting clients because you’ll be able to see the flaws in their messaging, their offers, their emails…
In the copywriting ABC for beginners, we were going deeper on the different type of copy you’ll have to write and their characteristics. If you haven’t read it yet feel free to do so.
Step 2 – Choose Your niche
Have you ever heard of the saying ‘the riches are in the niches’ ? Well, it means that in order for you to make the kind of money you want to make, you’ll have to specialize in the different types of copy.
A good analogy is the pay difference between a doctor and a brain surgeon. Who is better paid ?
The brain surgeon, right ! In the same way, you’ll have to niche down in two ways if you want to be in the top 10% of earners.
Niche down your industry
Even though, it’s gratifying for your ego to write for every type of industry, you’ll more likely to be successful if you decide to work and focus in ONE single industry.
Why ?
It’s simple. If you want to be amongst the top earners in the copywriting fiel, you need to bring value and insights that none of your competitors have so that you charge more than your competitors.
It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to gather enough data in all the industries consequently you’ll fade and fit in the mass production market.
You don’t want, do you ?
That’s why you’ll have to choose to focus on ONE industry and gather as much data as possible about that industry so that your knowledge become invaluable to the businesses you will be working with.
Specialize in your writing
After you have chosen your niche, you need to niche down your writing which means that you’ll want to focus on up to 2 types of writing and double down on them.
There are different types of copy you can write : sales pages, emails, advertising… Each one requires a set of rules that you’ll have to follow in order to make the best out of every time you will spend working.
Now, understand one thing : at the very beginning, you will have to write all types of copy because you will have to build a portfolio and your experience. But ultimately, your goal is to find the writing niches you are the most comfortable with working and only focus on them.
Once you get very good at writing, people will start to notice your writing signature just like Jon Carlton was known as the father of bulletpoints in copy.
Step 3 – Get the right mindset
Copywwriting is a business and you need to treat it as is. Most people tend to thing about copywriting as a gig. No, it’s a mistake.
First, copywriting is one of the rarest skills where you are paid to fail and learn. That way, you are given more possibilities to have an impact on people’s businesses and lives.
Bear with me for a second : The goal of a copy is to make people believe something or take a defined action. Yet, no copy can have a 100% success rate. Most of the times, the rate of success is way below 30% which means that you have failed to convert 70% of your audience.
Now, you can see it as a failure or decide to look at the numbers, make adjustments and do another campaigns. Most often than not, the businesses you’ll be working with will choose the latter because even though you’ve failed 70% of the time, you may have increase their conversion rate which is still a WIN for them.
Second, as a copywriter, it’s your duty to make results based on the data you have and not based on assumptions.
A copywriter is a scientist of the words and a human behavior student. Every single word that is typed or every script written only has one goal : to make the reader take action. Because of that paradigm, you need to learn to put aside your assumptions, your feelings and beliefs.
Step 4 – Dive Deep in your industry and analyze their offers
As a scientist, it’s your duty to dive deep in your industry and analyze your competitors offers. As a copywriter, keep in mind that writing is the EASIEST part of your job. That’s where most copywriters get stuck (I’m guilty of this behavior too 😁).
Before going all out to write your killer copy, you have to do the grunt work.
What is the grunt work, you may ask ? The grunt work is all the unglamorous part of copywriting. It’s your market research, your competition research, finding your ideal customer’s desires, needs, and buttons.
It takes time to do a proper market research even though it’s now easier than ever.
That’s the reason why #2 is to niche down. When you write enough copy and do enough market research about different products/services in your one industry, you will start having ‘feelings’ about what their desires and wants are thus pointing directly your message.
Step 5 – Be part of a community
I will tell you one thing : The lone wolf idea is a trap meant to get you overwhelmed. Regardless of how hard and successful of a cpywriter you become, you will never beat a group of copywriters.
It’s the same in life. You should find a community of copywriters on Facebook groups, Quora, go to meetups… You don’t have to be alone. Writing, in itself, is lonely and hard enough. Don’t make it even harder.
Find people that are going through the same things as you do. It will help you find like-minded people, get you inspired on your days off and increazse the likelihood that you’ll be more successful.
Step 6 – Market Yourself
When you start copywriting, one of the question you will most likely to ask yourself is : How do I get my first copywriting client ?
I know because I’ve asked myself the same questions.
You have different ways to answer this question
Write for FREE
This may seem counterintuitive to write for free when you want to make money but you need to understand that when you’re starting out you need to build a portfolio of work that you will show to businesses.
Unless you are very lucky and find a work right off the bat, writing one landing page or a some emails for free is a sure way to get the attention of the businesses you want to work with.
Go to freelancing websites
The second way you can use is to go tofreelancing websites like Fiverr or Upwork. You can create a free account and start promoting your skills to a broader audience. The benefit of using these types of websites is that you won’t have to work for free and will build up a ton of experience.
Answer questions on Reddit/Quora
This idea is more like the first one where you’ll work for free except that you will help people around by answering their questions while promoting yourself. Since those forums have millions of visitors daily, you will have bigger chances to attract clients if you are consistent enough.
Step 7 – Organize your work to better use your time
Your most valuable asset is your time so you need to learn how you can use it more proficiently.
It’s even truer when it’s about copywriting with the short deadlines that are involved sometimes.
Copywriting is a work that can easily take up all your time and imbalance all your life if you are not organized and disciplined enough.
When you’re beginning, you will not have that much work but if you want to be in the top 10%, it will be crucial for you to understand yourself, make the most out of your ‘power hours’ by doing the biggest of your work.
All in all, even though, it’s not efficient to try to find the perfect balance between your life and your work, it’s always better to avoid to burn yourself out.
What Next ?
These are the same rules I’m using to find new clients and the ones that I learned in all the different courses that I took.
Yet, the most important lesson you might want to thing about is this one : You need to learn to be consistent. Only through consistency and discipline will you be able to break even and attain financial freedom in your copywriting career.
