3-how-to-make-10kmo
Intro To Selling Copywriting Services:
Making money as a copywriting freelancer is one of the fastest ways you can bring MONEY IN when you are starting from 0. You don't need thousands of dollars of capital You don't need to be highly proficient in the beginning. You just need the internet, an email address, and a working brain. If you want to easily replace your 9-5 income and be able to quit your job in 3 months or less, keep reading. First thing you need understand is you will never be "ready" In the beginning you'll feel like you aren't good enough, that you don't know enough, that you need "experience" before you start reaching out and before you start charging. But that's just your brain figuring out a creative way to disguise your cowardice. A wise man once said, "Sometimes in life you just need to bite the bullet." Charge from day one or agree to a performance based payment if necessary. I've seen too many so-called copywriters waste YEARS of their life doing free work to "get ready" to charge for their services...
The Sales Process
Let's get started. You can't just go out find a prospect and pitch them on a big fat monthly retainer right out of the bat. ESPECIALLY if you don't have any previous experience. Instead you're going to steal an approach from the Wolf of Wall Street. If you remember from the movie, Jordan didn't pitch his wealthy investors on thousands of dollars of pink sheet stocks on the first sales call. No. He would start with a small trade with a relatively safe investment in a big company like Kodak or IBM In his script he called this initial deal a "benchmark for future business"
Watch this scene from the movie to understand
The entire point of that first deal was to give the prospect a super low risk way to test out Oakmont and establish trust before Jordan and his team would pitch him on the big deal that made them a lot of money. This is the guiding principle for how we are going to handle our outreach game. You are going to make sure that the value you bring at each stage far exceeds what you ask for and that the risk to them is as low as possible. You are going to start small and trade your way up with each client for bigger and bigger engagements The fastest way you can get clients when you are first starting after you’ve tapped your own network is cold outreach. But make no mistake, I'm not talking about blasting out spam messages to unwilling recipients, We're going to do something more effective than that. We're going to lead with value. Imagine for a second you are a prospect and you get an email like this: Hi there <First Name>, <Specific Compliment or comment that can only apply to them> I was looking over your site and had an idea for a way you could increase your sales for <name of their product> I actually went ahead and put together <value for them, ie: a 3 email sequence for your list> I'm curious what you'll think about it. Would you like me to send it over as a gift? <Signature> Now ask yourself, What is the potential upside to the prospect? What is the potential downside? Do you see how this makes it almost a no brainer for the right prospect to respond yes? Now, I recommend you do not actually create the free value you're offering until they respond that they want it. Waste of time any other way. And pick something small and easy to test like emails or FB ads, nothing drastic like a sales page. Once they respond positively, you sit down, create the value you promised (great way to develop your skills) and send it over. Here is an example message: Hi <First Name>, I attached the <free value> below. Here is what I suggest, * *If you liked what I put together for you we should set up a time to discuss ways i can bring value to what you're doing. If not, no worries, just let me know so I can take you off my follow up list. Fair enough? <Signature> If they say yes you set up a meeting and have a sales call.
In the call take some time to build a little rapport, get to know their business, talk about their goals, You will notice things that you can do to help them. Don't be tempted to pitch them on a big project here. Remember Jordan Belfort. Once you've gone over their situation, Tell them you like to do what you call a "discovery project" for everyone to get a feel for what it's like to work with each other. You can even say some of the same things Jordan does about it being a benchmark for future business. I like to tell people that my secret plan is to blow them away with how well the project works that they will want to work with me forever. Pick something small. An email series, a few FB ads or maybe a small page rewrite. Charge a couple hundred bucks. This is literally nothing for most business. Again put yourself in their shoes. What's the upside? What's the downside? Make it a no brainer, an offer they can't refuse. Then take their money, do the project (and maybe a little extra) and blow away their expectations. Then they will be asking you how they can keep working with you and what projects you think they need done. And then its up to you to find the right arrangement, Whether thats a monthly retainer or a bigger project, etc. Always charge based on the value you're bringing. If it makes sense, do a revenue share. If you're going to do a fixed fee, estimate how much money you'll be earning them, multiply that by 20-30% and that's your fee. (Quick note - never charge by the hour, you aren't a shitmuncher employee)
Now is a good time to steal an ethical version of the mindset described by Matthew McConaughey's character in the film
Force yourself to come up with a new idea at the end of each project to help them grow their business. Never stop. This is how you make more and more each iteration with your clients.
How To Perform Cold Outreach
First things first you need to pick a niche and build a list of prospects. (I'm going to be describing cold email here but you can adapt the process for other channels like IG or Twitter) You can find prospects by googling "Top 100 X" looking though similar accounts on IG, or finding big indexes online for your nice. Pick prospects that have some kind of audience to start with but aren't the big dogs in the space. Somewhere in the lower middle to start. You can get their email address using a tool like hunter.io or any similar products. Put together your list in Google sheets. Download Streak CRM (free) and connect it with your gmail.
Streak CRM allows you to insert custom variables into your email like their name and specific compliments etc and send emails out in batches which saves you a ton of time. Get their free google Sheets add on to import your leads from your spreadsheet.
https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/streak_crm_importer/1008328246438
You don't need a dedicated business email or website, but if you have one it helps. Make your site simple. Like a business card. Starting off you wont be able to wow them with anything but you should try to not do something stupid that will turn them off. Once you have your leads in your email its time to start testing. First thing you do is come up with your own version of the emails I shared above. Obviously if you all write the same things it wont work. Come up with your best guess for a winning first email. Next you need to find a winning subject line. Test different subject lines in batches of 10 and don't stop until you get an open rate of 80% or more. Anything less and you won't have enough eyeballs on your message to know if it's good or not. A couple good places to start are: - quick question - <First Name>? - An emoji related to the nice Come up with 10 or so and start testing the ones you think will work the best. Once you have a winner, start tweaking the message until you have a 10% response rate or better. By this point you will most likely have had a few sales calls and be working on a few discovery projects. In the beginning shoot for at least 40 emails per day. For follow ups reply to the original message with something like "Bumping this in case it got buried" just to get eyeballs on the original message again If they say they aren't interested don't fight back just say thanks and move on to the next prospect. Remember your focus on SPEED and MONEY IN. The goal is to use cold outreach to land 2-4 solid clients who you can continue to upsell and service until you're bringing in 10k/ month or more. This is hard work. But it is something you can control nearly 100% Follow the process and you'll not only make a lot of money but you'll become a skilled copywriter along the way. Time to work.
Getting cash from cold email is a step-by-step process of optimization.
It's like picking a lock, You have to take care of each tumbler, one by one before you can open the lock.
Step 1 - Get your open rate over 80% - Test different subject lines until you find one that consistently gets you over 80% open rates.
Step 2 - Get your reply rate over 10% - Follow the skeleton email template above and then use the personalization lessons in the video below to get replies to you message.
Step 3 - Get your free value to booked a call rate to over 50% - This is where you need to up your copywriting skills so that once they see your writing they desperately want to work with you.
Step 4 - Get your sales call close rate to over 80% - Study the sales resources, learn how to show up and help any business achieve their goals, Get good at packaging discovery projects to where they cant say no.
It's going to take you at least 100-200 cold emails to get these 4 elements dialed in.
How to customize your Cold Email Outreach
If you just copy and paste the template above for your cold emails, you'll get mediocre results at best. You need stick with the core framework but build on that framework with the right level of customization.
Sales Calls 101
I'm going to share the “S-P-I-N” questions and how to use them to supercharge your sales calls Some of you are still a little timid of the idea of hopping on a sales call with your prospects and asking for $$$$$ You’re not sure exactly what to say or how to direct the conversation. The SPIN questions will give you ammunition you need to have more lucrative sales calls with your prospects. (I learned about the SPIN questions early in my ‘career’ and they have driven a lot of the success I’ve had) The SPIN questions give you a framework for understanding the client’s business, their problems, and connecting that pain to working with you. SPIN stands for: Situation Pain Implication Need/Payoff Now let's explore each one. SITUATION QUESTIONS During the beginning of the call, after you’ve built a little rapport with your prospect, you segue into Situation questions like: “Tell me about how you got started” “What are the steps in your current funnel?” “What things have you tried to market your products so far?" “How many subscribers do you have on your Email List?” The point of situation questions is to get a picture in your mind of their business as it is now and the different variables at play surrounding their problems. Don’t ask too many situation questions or you’ll come off as some kind of interrogator. PROBLEM QUESTIONS Problem questions are used to identify their pain. Remember, you aren’t a ‘copywriter’. You are a problem solver. Before you can pitch your services you need a problem to solve. “What problems are you seeing with your current marketing?” “What issues are you running into with selling to your email list? etc. Sometimes you don’t even need to ask these questions because the prospect will often come right out and say “We’re having a problem with XYZ…" after they answer one of your situation questions If that happens just move on to Implication questions. IMPLICATION QUESTIONS These are the questions that dump gasoline on the fire of their pain. Implication questions are how you “piss in their oasis” and amplify their pain so that they ACT. People find all sorts of ways to become comfortable with thier pain and problems. Implication questions help wake them up to the second and third order consequences of not solving their current problems. “How much money are you leaving on the table because of your 10% open rate?” “What will happen to your business if you keep looking 250 subscribers per month?” “Besides missing out on revenue because of your poor sales page, what do you think it’s doing to the relationship you have with your audience?” Once you’ve found that pain, agitate and amplify with implication questions. These questions also set you up as more than just a commodity but as a partner who is helping them solve long term problems as well. NEED/PAYOFF QUESTIONS "How would doing X be valuable to your business?” “How much would your revenue increase if you had a better welcome sequence with an upsell?” Here is where you segue from problem and pain to opportunity. You get them to sell themselves on the solution. Once they answer it’s pretty easy to move into setting up that first discovery project and ending the call. __ The SPIN question framework will help you show up on the call and become a trusted advisor that “gets” where they’re at, what they’re dealing with and can help them solve their problems. And that is the kind of person who closes more deals and gets paid way more than a mere “copywriter”