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Awhile back, someone posted a question here in /r/entrepreneur asking about the simplest ways to make money online. I suggested online copywriting and had a slew of replies, and tons of PMs, asking me how I got started. It has been hard to keep up with all of the messages, so I've decided to share a little bit more about my journey and tips for those looking to replicate my business.
During my freshman year of college, I was looking for new ways to make money online. I had done a lot of web design in high school and also dabbled in a few other PayPal money” type niches. I got involved in Internet Marketing (IM) and realized that there was a lot of money to make in copywriting.
I started writing on sites like Textbroker (TB), a website that pairs writers with businesses looking for copy, and eventually began acquiring private clients through here and other websites.
I grew the business and employed several freelance writers, stopped personally writing articles completely, and generated around $4-5k/month in revenue and $2-3k/month in profit. Towards the end, I was working a max of 3 hours per week to manage this process.
I closed down operations last August because I was putting less work into it, it was slowing down, and I took up a career in consulting. It served its purpose for me and was a great learning experience.
The first bit of money that I made was through TB. I had looked into various freelancing websites, but for strict writing this was easily the best place to launch. I was able to maintain a minimum of a four-star rating, which allowed me access to some of the better paying work.
In the beginning, I was taking any of the articles that were available on topics I enjoyed. For the most part, my articles were accepted with the first submission and did not require any edits. Short articles were great for quickly accumulating payout, as well as getting some positive reviews under my belt.
When I started to understand the system, I noticed that often, one client ID would submit a ton of requests for articles. I would try to complete several articles for that client so that they would notice my consistent work. I had several clients message me for direct order requests, which allowed me to charge my direct rate, rather than the normal public rate.
Private clients are a good jumping off point for understanding how to service private clients. The only issue with private clients on TB is that you are supposed to keep all communications within the system, which is restrictive for building a personal client list.
Within a month of casual, daytime writing during my summer off from college, I had amassed approximately $1000 in income from TB, spending maybe 20 hours per week working on it.
I decided to get off of TB and try to build a private client list. The hardest part of this was getting my first client.
You'll want to have some sample articles to show prospective clients. They should have impeccable grammar, high quality, and be around 500-750 words on a few different niches.
This set of five sample articles should be enough to satisfy most clients. If a client asks you for a custom sample, send them 300-500 words about their niche. Beware of low reputation users, because some will ask many writers for samples and use them as their articles.
The first step is identifying a market of people who need copywriting services. Most small businesses and the like write their copy themselves, so there is really no point in looking towards brick and mortars for this, as some people asked in my PM box.
You want to find forums focused on Internet marketing, SEO, and affiliate marketing. These are where you will find your clients. There are lots of people trying to build passive income online, and the majority of these people tend to outsource their writing work. Here are the three basic steps to getting started:
Sign up on several IM forums with the same username. If you need cross-references for trustworthiness, this can help.
Most forums have a section for those looking for a freelancer. People will post in there looking for articles ALL the time. Try to bid on these jobs via PM and leverage your TB reputation and sample articles.
It is that easy - just be persistent about bidding on jobs and trying to get your first real non-TB client.
Growing your client base is the hardest part of this process - you should be looking for clients who consistently have a need for copywriting services. These people usually fall into one of a few categories:
These were my three main types of clients. Surprisingly, out of the three, my favorite to deal with was the fake review providers as they were willing to pay the most.
Often, when they're in a pinch, these people will post an immediate need for articles in a freelancer” section of a forum. If you can nab one of these orders, and perform, you're golden. I got my biggest client ever from one of these posts. He needed me to finish 100x500words in 48 hours, back when I was still writing on my own. After that, he came to me monthly with large orders that sometimes accounted for 30% of my total monthly revenue.
These buyers are also great because people in IM have large networks of other marketers that they know. Getting good reviews from one of these guys will not only look great on the forum, but they'll often give you a word of mouth referral, which is worth more than gold in the IM community.
I wrote this up pretty quickly, but I felt like it was a good intro into the business. I'll answer any questions posted in this thread and, if there is enough interest in this, perhaps make this a series detailing some more parts of my journey and how you can replicate it.
I left some fairly important things out, such as how to get writers to work for you, and pricing strategy, but I wanted to give a guideline on the basics of getting clients, which is the hardest part.
I started doing this in 2011 and stopped in 2014. I did not reach the monthly averages in the title until early 2012.
Honestly, not getting burnt out was easy for me considering I was 18 years old and home for the summer between freshman and sophomore year. Other than writing articles, the only responsibilities I had were web design, and filling in at my high school job when people called out. (2-3x a week at my family friend's business.)
I would wake up, go lift, and then tan in my backyard while I banged out articles for a couple of hours.
At a certain point, hiring a proofreader becomes well worth it. Then you can look for a writer who has an engrossing tone, good structure, knowledge in your niche, etc. without worrying so much about the occasional typo.
Great writers cost more than great proofreaders, so if you're building out your own content at scale you can actually save money by hiring both.
Interesting look on it. I'm actually both a writer and an editor by nature, so I can fill both roles efficiently. I think my big issue has always been... I guess the best way to put it is "trust?" Business-wise, you can't do everything yourself if you want to make it work. But a lot of businesses fail because of bringing on the wrong people for the job. I don't have the expertise, I don't feel, for handling the matching. Generally when I look at someone's writing, it is pretty quick and easy to say "yes" or "no," and that's usually based on how much work I feel I'd have to put in to get things to a more acceptable standard. I highly pride myself on what I do, and that reputation for being the absolute best is something I am always afraid of losing if I brought others on board.
I think it's really a mindset that I, for whatever reason, can't break myself out of. Sort of like the boss that is overseeing his employees 24/7 because he's afraid the second he walks away his business is going to fall to shambles (and based on local business owners I know, some of their businesses DID tank every time they were away). I think a lot of it is that view we get from all the failures, rather than looking at the successes. Undercover Boss definitely helps contribute to that as well - seeing how inefficient a lot of businesses are because the bosses aren't micro-managing really affects at least my train of thought.
I know I'm sort of rambling here. This is just something I know I absolutely have to work on, but I guess I don't know the "how." Like how to break out of that mind-set. What I should be focusing on instead. Things like that. This has also kept me from being able to really be an entrepreneur, because every time I have a solid idea, it brings in the "I don't know how to do insert thing here. But can I trust someone else to do it properly?" mentality. I've tried out partnerships in the past and they have all failed due to (quite honestly) the other parties not wanting to put in equal work and time. One, for example, wanted me to do 90% of the work and give them 50% of the business in return, with the argument being that they have a family and therefore don't have as much time to devote to things as I would. It's led to the idea that a partnership wouldn't really work for me, and that protection-wise, it'd be better to pay others to work on behalf of a business. Which then leads to the compensation issue with a start-up, as well as learning how to do the hiring.
For what it's worth, I read through this subreddit a lot. I've been working on trying to overcome these problems, and I hope that at some point I can.
I struggle with the same challenge in my business every day, but I've gotten much better at it. For me, the key is thinking about the ROI of micromanaging vs not. The opportunity cost of proofreading an article myself vs paying someone else to do it and using my time to focus on the bigger-picture stuff that no one else can do for me (working on my business instead of in it).
You have to think about what's core to your business and what's not, and what you're really qualified to deal with and what you're not (and what you're overqualified to deal with as well).
You might be able to write an article twice as well as someone else, but if you could have spent that time closing a big sale or creating a strategic partnership, doing the writing yourself just came with a huge opportunity cost.
There will always be inefficiencies in your workforce, but that doesn't mean ironing them out is the right use of your time.
You mean it's horrifying that there are people out there willing to produce content this way, for that cheap? Or, that this is similar to what you do, and you don't like him lifting the veil?
It's only horrifying in the sense of how commoditized content has been across all channels. That commoditization makes businesses like the one run by /u/ bsnsplsr/ possible, and in that regard it's been an amazing example of creative destruction in the market.
It's been bad for people who don't control their own destinies (looking at you, newspaper journalists and other W2-employed content producers) and for those who operated in the low-middle to middle of the market. The former lose out because this kind of work is now priced on a unit basis (which doesn't reward doing 1-2 longform pieces a week) and the latter because so many of the low-middle clients have gone with commodity providers.
I don't mind him lifting the veil because what he does and what I do are very different things. Just like there are businesses that will only buy content on the cheap, there are also those that will only buy if it's an engagement for thousands or tens of thousands of dollars a month.
People buy what they buy for lots of reasons - the work product is only one of them, and often not the main motivator.
Thanks! Yes, it's scary how commoditized everything is becoming. I wonder how this will shake out in this industry and others.
Also, so true about why businesses buy - price and actual work product are often way down on the list
I think you were in this industry at the right time but unfortunately it isn't in demand as it was a few years ago.
I work in SEO and can say that although it definitely is still an active aspect of my industry, link building is not the cash cow it once was. The days of popping out mediocre articles and having them posted on link farm blogs are long gone. It is still done (and works) but once you get bigger clients the chance of them being willing to risk Google penalties for small ranking gains lessens.
SEO agencies with bigger clients will still connect with freelance writers to produce content, but it most likely isn't going to be used as it may have been up until 2 years ago. Now it they may be used to produce content for on site resources, shopping guides or internal blogs (for e commerce sites). Since the brands name will be on it, it has to be of much higher quality and use the brands voice. So, handing job off to a minion who can put together a few sentences won't work anymore.
It comes down to building content that the brand is willing to represent them, instead of a crappy article about Top 5 Fall Fashion Accessories on a sketchy blog with a link to their site (link building).
You can definitely still be a part of the Internet marketing industry as a freelance writer, it will just be a lot harder. The market is too full of writers.
A lot of the time, the research was done by one of the writers doing it. Million Dollar Copy Very seldom did they provide more information than a few paragraphs.
Honestly, the high paying clients weren't looking for subject matter expertise as much as they were looking for interesting articles with a good keyword density. More than anything they're after positive SEO rankings.
It seems that more and more, with every update, Google is favouring "interesting articles" rather than simply "good keyword density". What would you suggest one can do to write interesting articles? Any books you recommend? Ways to practice?
Honestly, I have no idea how to game Google's interesting article system. Uniqueness is definitely important, so you can run your articles through Copyscape and make sure they're unique.
Otherwise, I would just hone your skills. I wrote for a few other websites throughout my years so that probably helped.
I'm sure my reddit responses make me sound illiterate, though. Typing from a phone because I'm traveling for my consulting gig.
If you look in one of the posts above, I just answered how I hired writers. I had a lot of connections at top US colleges, so it was easy to find smart people that could handle the work.
Compile at the end of the week, proofread a few random articles from each writer, and send off the package to the client.
I know some people will criticize the fact that I did not proofread each article, but my writers were very skillful and took pride in their work. I can count on one hand the complaints I had in the 3+ years, and I always made sure to fix any issues and then hook the client up with a cheaper rate for the next batch.
Congrats! Just gonna bring something up that I saw someone else mention: that what you're doing isn't actually copywriting. It's just article writing. Titles like "SEO Copywriter" are also misnomers.
Copywriting is a very different thing involving a different skill set. It's writing to persuade and sell. And that involves a lot of research (taking days, weeks, or months) before even beginning to write. You won't be able to do 100 projects in 48 hours.
These copywriters usually charge $Xk-$XXXk because they have such a high impact on sales. So while these all involve writing, their purpose and impact is much different.
For those who do want to write articles, I suggest avoiding the article-for-$5 stuff. People are commonly paid a few hundred per quality post so don't waste your time by starting there.
I did sales and email copywriting occasionally - once I had a bunch of clients on those forums, there was no type of writing that I turned down. My team and I covered everything from SEO articles, to website content, to brochure text, to social media posts, to sales copy.
Basically, if someone offered me the job, I took it. If none of my writers could figure it out, I'd either learn it myself or they'd just figure it out on their own and I'd review. Throw them a few extra $$$ for the time and everyone is happy.
It was never an issue - my writers were all college students in the US. I would send a weekly email asking how many words they could each handle for the week and break it up depending on their responses, the rates I was paying each, and the quality of their work.
I first focused on getting clients and was able to tackle the majority of it between myself and one of my roommates. As I grew the business, it was easy to find more writers quickly through my connections at my school and others.
I simply answered and made this guide because I had some many questions after posting in the "legitimate work from home jobs" thread.