FREE 1-Hour Copywriting Course For Beginners In 2023

in this free one hour copywriting calls for beginners I'm gonna take my 20 years of copywriting experience and condense it into a four-step process that I would follow if I was starting out as a beginner copywriter today with no experience no portfolio and no clients so make sure you watch this free course all the way through because I'm going to share with you the story of how I went from almost failing English in high school to becoming a highly paid copywriter you'll learn the fastest and easiest way for beginners to learn copywriting how much you should charge when you're just starting out easy copywriting exercises that will improve your writing skills and abilities and how to build an impressive portfolio plus nine tried and test strategies to get your first or next copywriting client so if you're someone who loves to write and wants to become a successful copywriter working part-time from anywhere in the world then this free copywriting course is for you ready to get started let's Dive In I want to start by sharing just a quick story about who I am and so you know where I've come from and that this journey is absolutely possible for you so in my early years of school I was diagnosed with having mild dyslexia dyslexia is a learning condition that makes it difficult to comprehend and read and write because of this I was often in the bottom of my classes throughout my school years I almost failed my final English exam in high school I barely passed and because of that I never attended University I was interested in becoming a psychologist but I just didn't have the marks or the grades to attend University because of that I worked many odd jobs many dead end jobs really everything from stacking shelves in a supermarket washing dishes in a restaurant telemarketing and calling people at dinner time and even a ship Porter which means you know carrying bags on and off ships so that's a photo of me uh as a kid I discovered copywriting at in 2004 when I was 21 years of age it was during a sales job that I really hated but one of the great things about this sales job is that they had a library of marketing books and one night when I was working back late I discovered one of the books on the Shelf was about copywriting it was called advertising secrets of the written word by Joseph Sugarman and we'll get into that in just a few minutes on how to learn copywriting that's one of the books I discovered and I just fell in love with the idea of writing and writing persuasively and getting paid to write I thought it was amazing so I read every book I could get my hands on I'll be recommending some of the books later in this course and I started practicing writing daily so every day I would spend you know anywhere from 10 minutes to one hour practicing writing and I'll be sharing some of those exercises you can do in just a few minutes when I felt my confidence had grown and I enjoyed and understood copywriting I then started my freelance copywriting career at 21 years of age uh with just five dollars in my bank account right so many years ago at that age I had no idea how to get clients remember I'd worked a bunch of random jobs I didn't know anything about getting clients and I started networking online and offline which meant joining different forums online and also attending in-person seminars in my local area hoping to meet business owners that could hire me I started to get my first few clients by doing those activities and I'll be sharing nine different client getting activities later in this course so stick around for that but I wrote for all types of different niches and businesses everything from Japanese toothbrushes dating workshops Financial Services everything you can imagine I've written for in fact I've written for over 153 different Industries I was even lucky enough to write for Jay Abraham who some of you might know is one of the Godfathers of you know direct marketing and of course many top entrepreneurs over the last 20 years in fact one of my absolute copywriting gurus one of the Legends who I studied when I was first getting started uh his name is Gary Halbert and he actually gave me a really lovely review after I sent him the Japanese toothbrush that I wrote about I wrote a landing page I sent it to him I said Gary would you mind reviewing this and he said Jesse I think the copy is fantastic properly exploded it will make millions so that was a highlight of my career that I wanted to share if you're familiar with Gary Halbert he's an incredible person you can learn from also the author of the Gary Halbert letter which is a great resource to learn copywriting he unfortunately passed away a few years ago so I got so busy writing for my clients and using some of the strategies that I'm going to share with you later in this course that I couldn't handle all of the clients that wanted to hire me so I started my own agency copywriting crew back in 2010 right and I was able to grow that agency at one point we had 20 writers editors and a project manager helping us manage all of the clients and projects we were working on as I mentioned I have clients in over 153 different Industries some of those clients when I went on to generate millions of dollars in sales revenue from the copy that I wrote or some of our writers wrote I was even invited to speak and share my copywriting tips at conferences around the world in Singapore Hong Kong and Thailand and some of the executives that attended those confidences were from companies like Chanel Disney and Sony's that came and paid up to 2 500 US dollars per person to attend those workshops all around the world I was also invited to share my copywriting tips in different online learning platforms like skillshare I've had over 35 000 different students around the world enroll in those programs items so I'm not saying all of this to brag or to try and impress you but I want to let you know that I'm someone who has Real World experience I mean I've lived copywriting for the last almost 20 years I'm not some influencer who learned about copywriting last year now calls themselves you know an incredible copywriter and is teaching a course or creating YouTube videos about this there's a lot of that I'm seeing online I want to let you know I'm not that person I have real world experience and I'm excited to be here giving back and sharing my insights and Lessons Learned along the way and I'm so glad that you've decided to enroll in this video so let's dive in copywriting 101 this is where I'm going to answer all of the questions that beginners ask me when they're thinking about becoming a copywriter or starting their copywriting Journey the first one is what is copywriting let's start in the beginning here now if you feel like you've heard or you know the answers to these questions feel free to skip ahead to the next section but I think this is really important for beginners to understand the fundamentals of copywriting so copywriting is the art of writing persuasive text with the goal of getting your target audience to take action now that action could be anything from buying a product signing up for a free trial or even clicking on a Facebook ad or even the you know a YouTube ad or even a YouTube video you know that's what copywriting is is inspiring people to take some type of action now copywriting is everywhere unless you've been living under a rock I'm sure you've seen copywriting because according to marketing experts the average person sees between four thousand and ten thousand ads or marketing messages every single day I mean even just opening up your phone and looking on any social media platform you're bound to see ads whether it's YouTube ads Facebook ads or even email promotions in your email inbox you see copywriting every single day in fact just driving down the street you're seeing Billboards and you know ads everywhere posters on the back of buses uh advertising and copywriting is everywhere and until now you may have not paid much attention to it but as someone who wants to become a copywriter it's important that we start to study successful advertising examples now why is copywriting important well it's important because it increases sales and conversion rates it's also important because it builds trust and rapport with an audience enough trust and Rapport and they're likely to know like and trust that brand and then buy from them right or take some kind of action copywriting also helps you get attention in a noisy and distracted digital world I mean as you've just seen over 10 000 ads we see every single day copywriting of the words that cut through the noise all of those advertising and they help that business to stand out get attention and then convince that person to take some kind of action so copywriting is important for those reasons now you might be wondering well what's the difference between copywriting and content writing aren't the same thing well they're not actually copywriting is about inspiring action it's about getting a target audience specifically to take some kind of action whereas content writing is very different it's more about educating informing inspiring and in building relationships with an audience so they're not the same thing you know when I told people that I'm a writer they assume that will writers can write anything but if you think about it someone that is very good at writing poetry probably isn't very good at technical writing right maybe writing about technical products or about Technical Services and someone who can write a screenplay for television may not be very good about writing you know advertising so just because someone is a writer doesn't mean they can write anything copywriters have a special skill set in being able to write persuasively whereas content writers are more about educating and informing and inspiring people so just want to make that distinction clear doesn't mean copywriters and content writers you can't learn both skills but for this video we're going to be covering copywriting so copywriting what do we write copywriters write things like websites landing pages sales Pages email campaigns video scripts white papers and much more content writers focus on things like SEO blog posts or SEO articles ebooks reports newsletters and so on so who hires copywriters well if you can think about it lots of different companies both big and small hire copywriters you know from the small shop on the corner that needs a promotion or a brochure written to you know big corporations that are running million dollar advertising campaigns all to all types of businesses need copywriters entrepreneurs and marketers whether it's a solo entrepreneur who's you know running Facebook ads or a marketing company that needs lots of different copywritten for lots of different campaigns or it might be digital agencies that do SEO or they do Facebook or advertising campaigns they need copywriters as well in fact anyone who needs help writing the words that sell products and services need copywriters so we're very much in demand nowadays so why do people hire copywriters you might be thinking well why doesn't a business just write the copy themselves why do they need to hire someone what's often because they're too busy to write their own copy right business owners are busy running their businesses doing a million different things managing a team paying invoices so many things that they don't have time to sit down and write copy or they may feel like they don't know how to write persuasively I I've worked with a lot of business owners and when you talk to them they say I I don't feel like I'm a good writer or I'm not a professional writer they'll say to me they might understand their products and services better than anyone else but they don't know how to convey the benefits of those products or services to their clients or potential clients their existing copy might be old and outdated I've worked with so many business owners that said I said why did you decide to reach out and hire me and they'll say well I just feel like our content or our copy on our website is really old we haven't updated it in years we want someone to bring in a fresh Outsider perspective that can make the copy new and interesting to our audience they also want to increase their conversion rates now this is common if they have a website and they know they're getting thousands of visitors a month but for some reason people aren't taking action those visitors are not buying their products they're not inquiring about their services they're not joining their email newsletter and as a result you know they want help they want a copywriter who understands how to increase action to come in and rewrite their copy so that it increases their conversion rates and they want that fresh Outsider perspective as I mentioned the same goes with their advertising campaigns their ads might not be converting their marketing which is Maybe spending thousands or even tens tens of thousands of dollars on running advertising campaigns because they're not getting a return on investment they want that to change they want to make money so they hire copywriters so what skills do you need to become a copywriter well you don't need a University degree or any special qualifications to become a copywriter I've never been to University I don't have a degree I don't have a marketing degree or journalist degree and I don't think you need one either some people can disagree with that but in 20 plus years of doing this I've never been asked for my credentials so I don't think it really matters anyone who loves to write and takes the time to learn copywriting can become one I really believe that if you put in the time and effort to First understanding copywriting which we're going to get to in just a moment and then practicing writing again I'll be giving you techniques on how to practice then you can gain those skills um over time now you might be wondering how much can I earn as a freelance copywriter I'm going to give you some stats here according to salud.com the typical rate for beginner copywriters ranges from 26 to 29 per hour in the United States freelance copywriters with five or more years of experience in the field have the potential to earn 75 to 125 dollars per hour now that's for freelance copywriters like myself who are working independently right we're not working as an in-house copywriter or not working as a full-time job employed as a copywriter the average hourly pay for an ad agency copyright in Los Angeles to give you an example is about 36.75 USD per hour and the average employed copywriter annual salary ranges from 40K to 80 000 with an hourly rate of thirty to fifty dollars per hour according to this Source now what I do want to say is these are stats that I'm giving you these average hourly rates it really depends right you might make a lot more than this you might make a lot less than this it really depends on the individual and different factors and that's why I want to give this brief early earnings disclaimer I'm not one of those people that are going to come out and say how to make a million dollars a year as a copywriter because I don't think that's realistic and I think that's peddling false hope so it's important to note that these figures are not definitive and can vary depending on several factors such as your location your experience level your background and the different job opportunities out there or even market conditions there is no guarantee of success or earnings and copywriting is definitely not a quick or easy way to make money said I just want to say it really varies and it depends on you let's dive into the Practical tips of how you can learn copywriting I really believe so this is the fastest and easiest way for beginners to master copywriting this is what I would do if I was to start all over again today the first thing I would do is I would read copywriting books and these are the four books that I'd recommend any beginner starts to read the first is influence the psychology persuasion by Robert ciordani a phenomenal book that talks about the six different principles of Persuasions that I still use today when I'm writing copy it's all about like psychology and human behavior it's a really interesting book there's the old classic breakthrough advertising by Eugene Schwartz or Schwartz a lot of people recommend I recommend two then there's the ad week copywriting handbook by Joseph Sugarman now you might remember at the beginning of the video I recommended Joseph Sugarman this is actually the updated title from the first book I ever read about copywriting that inspired this career and that was originally called advertising secrets of the written word this is the new updated version then of course there's a classic a lot of copywriters recommend Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy who's considered the Godfather of advertising industry I'd highly recommend that book as well so if you read those four books you're going to learn a lot of principles about copywriting so here are some of the lessons that you'll learn from those books if you read all of those books you'll notice that a lot of the same tips are recommended so this is kind of the cliff notes or the summary of some of the lessons you'll learn in those books so the 10 the 10 key copyright lessons from those books number one understand your audience's fear problems and desires number two understand the product or service so what makes it unique and different from the competition that's what we call the big idea now with these first two points it's all about understanding you have to research your target audience and understand them on a deep level before you can write to that audience often in copywriting I say you're writing to one person which is that ideal client or customer that target audience in order to write to them persuasively you must understand them the way you understand them is by researching them the same goes with the product or the service that you've been hired to write about you want to research and understand intimately that product or service why it's great what makes it different better than the competition right so make sure you do your research points one and two before you write any uh Point number three is to write an attention getting headline I'm sure you've heard about this before I intend on creating some videos giving you some headline formulas and writing templates but there's tons of content online that you can Google and how to write you know great headlines as well you're going to write a compelling uh opening that hooks the audience right what do I mean by that it's not enough to just grab their attention with the headline you also need to keep them engaged and that's with the first sentence or even the first paragraph there's a whole bunch of techniques on how to do that I have another video with 10 copywriting tips for beginners that covers that in more detail but you want to write something that hooks the audience gets them really interested so they can't stop reading really important you also want to back up your claims of proof and that might be in the form of social proof like testimonials Awards certifications anything that shows you know that backs up your claims of proof so it's not just enough to me for me to say I'm uh I'm a great copywriter if I show you by saying here are all my testimonials here are the results I've gotten for clients here are some of my campaigns that's going to be the proof that backs up the claim of me saying I'm great and we want to do that for anything we're writing about we're looking for the evidence or the proof that is behind the claims right if you were a personal trainer you might have before and after weight loss photos from some of your clients that you show to a new client they go wow he's clearly gotten results for other people so I'm going to believe what he's saying the next thing you want to do is number six tell them exactly what to do next right and that's a call to action you want to write a call to action that you know gets people to take the next step whether that's clicking a button or purchasing a product or filling out a form you want to be clear on what you want to do next you want to create a sense of urgency number seven why should they take action now procrastination is the killer of action right people will procrastinate especially when they're presented with a buying decision so what you want to do is give them a reason why they should act now that might be a limited number of seats at a workshop they better sign up because those seats might be taken it might be a limited quantity of a physical product maybe they're only producing a hundred units and so you should sign up before they sell out things of that nature are examples of urgency and of course number eight benefits and features you want to be clear and specific here about what are the benefits the results or outcomes that your audience wants that this product or service provides we want to be clear on what those are and again I have a whole video 10 copywriting tips for beginners benefits and features are something I cover in that video if you want to check that out you also want to get feedback from other copywriters it's not enough to just write the copy and not show anyone and then send it to the client I'd be sharing it especially as a beginner with other copywriters and getting their feedback and their input what they think about it before you send it to the client or before you publish it online I think that's really important because other people can point out mistakes that you might have made or ways to improve your copy even more I hope you're enjoying the free course I just wanted to take 20 seconds to tell you about copy Academy my membership website with 10 copywriting courses fill in the blank writing templates plus a supportive Community where you can share your work and get feedback from other copywriters on the same Journey as you getting feedback from other copywriters was one of the best things that I could have done at the beginning of my copywriting career to take my skills to the next level so if that's something that you would like help with then I highly recommend checking out copy Academy me for all the details simply head over to start copyright.com forward slash copy Academy or click on the link in the description below this video for all of the details now back to the course you also want to be always be testing and measuring what I mean by that is we want to test and measure our copy we want to write different headlines to test so after the client has launched that campaign or that copy made it live we want to maybe give them a couple of different headlines that they can test to see which one performs the best or maybe different hooks or openings a more different call to actions to see if we can get the copy to perform even better so I recommend checking with a client you know after they've been able to test the copy ask them how it's performing and then of course offer to give them you know new copy angles that they can use to see if they can improve the conversion rate even more now I want to share with you two of my favorite copywriting formulas or Frameworks that you can use when you're writing copy again these are covered in a lot of the top copywriting books I thought I'd share some of these with you now so the first one is the famous Ada formula which we can see here attention grab the reader's attention with a great headline or opening now when you're writing that headline you're not trying to get the entire world's attention you're trying to get just your target audience's attention right so that's something that I want to make clear you also want to grab their interest you want to generate interest by highlighting the benefits or unique selling points of the product or service remember when you're doing your research into the product or service you're writing about you want to think what makes this unique and different and better to all of the other products in this market what is the big idea or the special angle that makes this thing great right what's special about it that's what we can include to generate that interest because our our ideal clients or our target audience may have tried everything else they might be aware of all the products out there we want to explain how it's better um desire you want to create Desire by emphasizing how the product or service can fulfill the reader's need or solve their problems again when we're doing our research what are the benefits of this product or service helps the prospect to solve what are those benefits how can we emphasize them how can we explain how this product will make their lives easier more stress-free more problem-free or even solve a specific specific problem we want to think about that action that's again the call to action you want to prompt array to take action such as making a purchase or whatever else that action step we want them to take so really important that's the famous Ada principle if you haven't heard already it's really great framework for writing most types of copy I also want to talk about my second favorite one which is the Pas or the Paz formula and that stands for problem agitate solution the problem is where you identify a problem or pain point that the reader or target audience is experiencing right so let's say it's teenagers that are experiencing acne I know what that's like I had acne as a teenager if we know that's the problem that they're facing that our product solves then we can write about that in the headline and also the opening paragraph we might say acne um getting you down question mark or embarrassed by your acne question mark that could be the headline that could be the opening the reader because they have that problem I'm going to say yes then what we want to do is we want to agitate in the second step and agitate the problems by emphasizing the negative consequences or frustrations associated with it so basically you elaborate upon the problem first you introduce the problem have you got acne or is are you embarrassed by your acne then we want to explain and talk about how that's affecting their lives how is acne affecting their lives in a negative way by doing that we're going to put them in the mindset of yes I have this problem yes I can understand how it's affected my life I feel bad about it now I'm going to search for a solution right so by putting them in the in reminding them of their pain and their problems they're now in the mindset of I want to do something about it because what we learn from psychology is most people are more motivated by Pain by avoiding pain than gaining pleasure just ask yourself when do people go and buy a home security system after their home has already been burgled or robbed that's when we look at it because it's the pain that made us go out and purchase that thing or that home security system so for you you've got to think about well what are the pain or problems that my audience is struggling with can I point them out can I agitate them expand upon them make them feel them and then because of that they'll be in the mindset of I need a solution and that's where the next Point comes in Solution that's where you present the solution which is the product or service being promoted and you explain explain uniquely how this product or service or solution can solve that problem that we've just you know agitated and emphasized and how it does it better than all of the other competition and other products they may have tried the past formula is one of my favorite uh copywriting formulas out okay I want to move on to copywriting examples this is where it's really important in your copywriting journey to study copywriting examples I mean you kind of good at something if you've never studied the thing that you want to get good at right so this was really important uh for me in the beginning of my career studying examples so I understood you know what Great copywriting Looks like so what I want to do now is share with you some websites and resources where you can go and find hundreds and sometimes thousands of successful copywriting examples that you can study and learn from and by the way these examples are all in the description below this video so if you go below this video you'll see links to all of these examples and websites that I'm sharing with you all of the resources in the description box below this video so swiped dot Co and there's a link below is a great place because it's got thousands of copyrighting examples and you can organize and buy the different niches or Industries everything from dating to financial services to Dentistry you can look at all the different copyright examples in all the different niches and then you can also organize them by different types of copy whether it's you know landing pages or emails or video scripts you can organize them and filter them by the types that you're interested in studying and also the industries that you want to look at as well uh the next one is one of my favorites this is copywritingexamples.com which is exactly what it sounds like you can also if you look here on the left the column here with type and style and audience you can organize all of your different examples filter them by that and what's great about this website and also swiped is that they they also provide annotations and explanations behind different examples right so they'll not only show you the ad they'll underline and write comments on why this ad is effective so you're actually learning how to think like a copywriter because different copywriters are analyzing the examples and telling them why they worked and understanding how to think like a copywriter is super important to becoming one so copywriting examples.com a great website they also have a Weekly Newsletter which they send to you uh you know every week a newsletter with links to the latest examples as well so a great resource I highly recommend it the next website here is really good emails.com and again similar to the other two websites you can organize this by or filter the examples by both category and goal and Industry and things like that and these are obviously all about emails so we're going to see lots of different promotions for lots of different Industries you know sales emails engagement emails follow-up emails if you want to study Mr marketing this is a great place to to visit a great website to visit to learn more so check that out as well really good emails.com the next one is super interesting a lot of people don't know about this but Facebook or nowadays called meta has their own ad Library so if you look here where it says search ads you can sort the ads by industry and also category they have two categories one is advertising one is political I stay away from the political stuff but you can look at based on country or all countries or industry you for example and I've done this in the past I would type in a competitors website or their brand name for example that's not my competitor but I would type in Fiverr and it will show me right now what Facebook ads are Fiverr running right and also showed me how long have they been running each of these ads for it won't show me the performance it won't say this ad is working really well but if an ad's been running for a long time even just a few months that ad is probably working because a company wouldn't run an ad if it wasn't profitable right it'd be just throwing money away if the ad isn't performing so we know if an ad's been running for a long time it's probably successful so you could literally type in any business in here the business name and it will tell you if they're running ads right now or not and that's extremely valuable for doing competitor research and also just saying what different brands that you like are running ads so you can study Those ads and you know see what they're running at the moment a really great resource get thetest.com something that I've subscribed to for years this is actually a paid website although they do have a free trial with limitations like a lot of websites do but what it will do it actually gives you before and after or A and B versions of different ads and it asks you to pick which of these perform better so maybe they'll show you two Facebook ads side by side and they'll say which one perform better and they won't tell you you have to guess A or B and then once you've voted on whichever one it will then reveal the winner and it will explain why that ad performed better so it's a game you can play I think they send you it's like weekly sometimes even daily different uh you know quizzes and you have to choose and then it will explain why so this is a great resource you can sign up for free and then you can start you know doing the different tests and testing your knowledge about the different copywriting examples advertising examples they share with you a great resource now when I'm studying advertising on any of those websites I'm asking myself a series of questions and these are the questions you can pause the video and read them in your own time but these are the questions I ask when I'm studying advertising to try and understand and think like a copywriter because thinking is really the name of the game you're thinking about all the different things I've already mentioned the prospect the target audience the you know product or service I want to ask myself these questions when I'm studying ads to see if I can come up with the answers and test my own knowledge by doing this you'll learn how to think like a top copywriter which will help you when it comes to writing your own copy or writing copy for clients businesses all right let's move on to the next section which is improving your copywriting skills how can you improve your copywriting skills if you're a beginner maybe you've never written copy before you've only written a little bit you want to improve their skills rapidly here's how I would do it in just 15 minutes a day these are the different exercises that I would follow before we get to that I just want to remind you about the importance of making copywriting a daily habit and these are two quotes from two famous writers Stephen King and Caroline Gordon the first one is if you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others read a lot and write a lot right so studying copywriting is how you're reading the copy and then practicing writing is how you're writing the second one is the only way to do it is to do it right every day write a little bit every day and soon you'll be writing a lot the hardest part everyone is just getting started if you can say I'm just going to write for five minutes every morning that's much better and you're probably likely to write for a lot more than those five minutes once you get started once you set the barrier low the barrier to entries getting started I'm just going to write for two minutes I'm just going to write a sentence you're much more likely to get started and make it a daily habit so ask yourself what's the best time and place for me that's you to write every day if I was going to do this every day is it the first thing in the morning before my kids get up is it late at night you know when I've got some time to myself is it as I'm commuting to work as I'm on the train as I'm stuck in traffic can I have a little you know notebook and pen and practice writing when can you find the time every single day to write make that decision for yourself and then once you've decided maybe it's in the morning or night or whatever decided the time and the place I want you to set a reoccurring timer in your phone write a reoccurring timer daily timer to remind you to do the thing the writing for 10 minutes writing for 15 minutes um while you're writing find that place that's going to be quiet that doesn't have distractions or interruptions let the people around you know that you this is what you do at this time every day so they don't disturb you and then set that timer for 15 minutes for half an hour to write and do nothing but right or if you're studying study for that time don't check your phone don't check the internet try and just focus for that time it's just again 15 minutes or 30 minutes and make this a habit so you're doing every day for at least 30 days commit to yourself that you're going to do this and after those 30 days you will know if this is something you want to pursue or not pursue in the future but give yourself time to try it most people think about copywriting they talk about copywriting for years they never actually do it so they're never actually no I don't want that to be you actually try this out for real right and that way you'll know in 30 days if this is something you want to pursue as a profession whether it's freelance or in-house or not but you won't know until you do it that's what I'm recommending actually do this for 30 days and see it for yourself so what should you write about now I've given you some examples already right but I want to give you some more ideas you could try all the different types of copywriting to find out which type you enjoy writing the most right if you haven't tried writing emails try writing email promotions maybe you're interested in writing like sales Pages well try writing sales Pages pick a type of copywriting or try all of them for that month and see which type of writing type of copywriting you enjoy the most maybe you're someone who loved video scripts you won't know until you try them all you might have an idea like I'd really like to try this well try it and practice writing every single day you also might write about niches and topics that interest you or you have knowledge about already maybe you love technology maybe you love smartphones specifically maybe you know and already study in your free time you're checking out the latest gadgets and gear and that interests you well Follow Your Passion write about things you already know about or you're passionate about or maybe you have some experience in maybe you've worked in technology before whatever it might be for you think about what nations or topics you're already obsessed with or knowledgeable about and then write about those some other ideas is you could transcribe some of the successful ads by hand this is a technique that I did in the beginning I found a lot of these successful ads out there sales letters and such and I rewrote them out with a pen and a pad by hand and that helped me understand the psychology behind all of those great you know ads and sales letters you could also rewrite and improve existing ads you could pick up your local newspaper or some trade magazine and you could look at the ads in there already that are already running even ads you see everywhere it could be online on Facebook or wherever blogs and you could rewrite those thinking about how you could improve the existing ads that you find right and see if you can improve them that's another great exercise now if you're all out of ideas or everything I've said doesn't appeal to you you could use AI to generate copywriting assignments for you you could use this website to help you do that and this website again it's the link is in the description this is copywriting prompts.com the cool thing about this website is very simple you click on new prompt and it'll generate a random prompt a copywriting prompt that you can just follow so you could literally come on this website every day click new prompt and then just write whatever the assignment is in this case it's write an email or someone at Lego accidentally sending their critique of a Black Friday promotional email a day before it was supposed to go out you could write that you know just there's you don't have to share this what you're writing with anyone so there should be no fear of criticism you can literally just write for yourself and get that Writing Practice in every single day by using something like copywriting prompts.com all right so if you followed those first couple of steps you know now have you now understand copywriting you've studied copywriting you've learned copywriting all of the principles and Frameworks and formulas and tips you've practiced writing every day you've gotten your writing confidence up you understand the different types of writing because you've tried them yourself now it's time to become a copywriter right how do we turn this this passion for copyrighting this interesting copywriting into actually a career how do you build a portfolio how what do you charge how do you attract clients that's what I'm going to cover in this section of this copywriting course there's five steps to become a freelance copywriter these are the steps that I would follow if I was starting all over again today the first one is I would choose a niche or industry that already had knowledge in that I was already passionate about and I would also pick a writing type emails you know landing pages whatever it might be I would then build a portfolio based on that Niche and we'll get into more details with each of these steps in just a moment step number three is I'd establish an online presence right so how are people going to find me online what website or page do I send them to when people ask how would I see your work or your portfolio where will where do I live online that's something I want to create what am I going to charge what are my rates it's important to set your writing rates so that when someone says what do you charge you have an answer for them you don't fumble your words number five of course is Market yourself find clients and work with those clients so let's dive into each of these Steps step by step so I can give you all the details the first one is choose a writing Niche or industry and a writing type now could you write could you be a copywriter and write anything that people ask you to write yes will you be good at every different type of writing probably not and that's why it's great in the beginning to specialize in one or two maybe three different types of writing for example in the beginning of my career I loved writing sales letters or sales Pages for the self-development industry right I loved the self-development industry I was already a consumer of self-development content I knew a lot of the gurus out there from Reading their books and you know attending the seminars I was interested and excited about that industry and I was interested and excited about writing sales editors so that's what I started doing in the beginning and then I learned other things like email campaigns product launches and things like that and I studied those as well but I specialized in an industry and a writing type and that worked very well for me in the beginning I recommend you do the same so ask yourself what industry do you want to write about you know what are you knowledgeable passionate about or have experience in already that you can leverage to start your copywriting career also what brands products or topics do you already love I've already cover this already but look at the brands you already follow in social media all the products you have in your house you know that could be an indication of what industry that uh you want to write about and then what type of writing are you interested in doing I've already talked about this but it could be emails or maybe you're naturally wanting to write scripts for videos or maybe you're thinking about sales letters or Facebook ads or Google ads whatever it might be that might be what what you specialize in in the beginning step number two is once you've decided on the industry you want to focus on at least in the beginning you don't have to marry that industry for your whole career you could switch Industries later you don't have to be you know a self-development copywriter for life I wasn't I changed Industries over time uh but once you've figured that out you want to build a portfolio now a lot of beginners I speak to say well I wrote for my college newspaper I've got articles that I could put on my website um I I'm a poet as well I have a lot of poetry I can show potential clients clients don't care about that stuff you know a writing portfolio is as I've said here a collection of your best work but it's not every writing thing you've written in over your entire life it's not that it's your best examples that are relevant to the industry that you want to write about so let's say I'm writing for personal development they don't care that I wrote a technical blog post that's not relevant to them they want to see what have already written for their industry so if I can show those emails or the sales that has they've written for other people in the industry that's going to impress them more than 100 examples that I wrote for in my high school years or for in college or whatever like that whatever it might be for you so it's much better less is more to have three relevant industry examples of high quality work than 100 random examples so the good news for you is you only need to create three to five examples and add them to your portfolio for one particular industry you don't need to create dozens or countless examples to get started what I recommend for you is to intentionally create the type of examples that you want to be hired to write for in the future so maybe you want to write emails for e-commerce products or for Shopify stores or Drop Shipping or whatever might be for Amazon products if that's the case then go out there and intentionally create those examples even before you get your first client right by practicing writing by using some of the exercises I've mentioned already you want to create three to five at minimum examples for that niche in that type of writing and then you can upload them to Google Drive or other websites I'm about to recommend so that you've got a place to share your work when a client you know asks to see your portfolio and 99 of clients will ask to see your portfolio and that's where you establish your online presence so where do you upload your portfolio examples and where can clients find you if someone says I'm interested in your copywriting services where do I find out more what's your website or where do I find you online you need to have an answer so it could be your own website like yourname.com whatever that name is or it can just be your LinkedIn your LinkedIn could be where you write your bio and upload examples that clients can look at LinkedIn is a good place to start or maybe it's upwork maybe you want to create a profile and upload your examples to upwork that's fine too contently is another website and so is clippings.me you can literally upload to any of these websites but just start somewhere it doesn't have to be perfect or the place that you stay on forever it can evolve over time but you need to upload your place your examples somewhere and your portfolio and your profile somewhere it's also important to set your writing rates what do you charge now one thing I think is important to mention is that successful copywriters charge per project not per hour you do want to know what your hourly rate is what is do you want to be earning per hour but I often don't share that with clients they don't know my hourly rate what they know is what I charge per project because every project is different writing a 200 word sales email is going to take me a lot less time than writing a 4 000 word sales page right so I need to be able to calculate how many hours it takes me to write the things that the clients want me to write about okay so first thing first decide what your hourly rate is and then keep it to yourself so if you're a beginner maybe you want to start at the recommended rate from a lot of the websites which is 26 US dollars per hour we're just getting started Why not start there maybe it's more for you maybe you're more experienced and you charge fifty dollars an hour it's really up to you decide on your hourly rate then when a client contacts you and said hey how much do you charge ask them a number of questions to figure out how much time it's going to take you how many hours it's going to take you to write whatever the project is right so I'll ask them do you have a deadline do you have research materials for me you know do you have any examples of of other sales that is in your industry that you like you know you ask them to share more information with you do you have an idea on the length that you want this email campaign to be or do you know how many emails in the campaign basically ask for all the details so that you can then step back and think to yourself well how long will all of this take me now you'll have some idea well in the beginning you won't have any idea and therefore you'll guess and that's okay but you may have some idea from doing some of the exercises that we talked about in the previous section of the course when you're practicing writing because you'll start to see how long it takes you to write things but do factor in with any copywriting project you'll need to spend a few hours doing research about the target audience about the product or service you're writing about a few hours writing or many hours writing and then there may be some revisions a client might ask you to make revisions you want to factor in that might take a couple of hours as well it's going to be different for everyone but in the beginning and guess how long it will take and then you'll learn over time as you do it how long it actually takes you also want to ask for 50 up front as a beginner ask for a deposit up front and then let the client know that you expect the 50 the final 50 to be delivered upon completion and for me completion means within 7 to 14 days of submitting the first draft I will then you know expect the second 50 of the amount uh you also want to follow up with clients to ask for referrals or message clients and say you know how's the copy going how's it performing I'll also ask for a testimonial or referrals I'll keep in touch with clients every couple of months to see how they're going if they need any more help it's another great way of staying top of mind and of course getting more referrals and work from them now I want to share with you step number five which is how to get clients how do you actually Market your services and get clients well this is one of the most popular questions out there and I want to give you nine ideas things I've personally tried to attract your first or next copywriting client so step number one or technique number one or strategy number one is to ask people you already know for referrals right so even though you may not have any clients yet you do have a network think about old in companies you've worked for as an employee think about friends or family members that might be business owners literally go through your phone or through your friends list on Facebook or Instagram look through the list and think who are these people could potentially hire me or refer other people that could Hire Me Maybe it's that old friend in high school that's now running a successful business reach out to them maybe it's a family friend or friend of a friend that you know Works in a big company that probably needs copywriting help reach out to these people I would send a personal email to each of them letting them know that you've started a freelance copywriting career and you're looking to work with more companies in their industry and do they know anyone that could use the help of a skilled copywriter literally send an email or private message like that you'd be surprised at who gives you a chance in the beginning and that's your existing Network so number one and number two are kind of similar in asking people you know for referrals or asking your existing Network for referrals you can also just do a post on social media saying the same thing hey everyone I'm launching my brand new freelance copywriting career I'm looking to work with clients in this space I'm a specialist at writing this these types of copy and I'm looking to build my portfolio I'm willing to work for free which is a uh something I want to expand upon I'm willing to work for free to the for the right company or client that will get your foot in the door I don't recommend working for free for more than one or two times but as a beginner with no experience it's very easy to Market Yourself by offering to work for free because those companies will not only potentially hire you in the future at your full rate they'll often be so grateful if the copy is good then they'll refer other people I work for free in the beginning my first couple of clients were for free and then they went on to hire me and pay me my full rate so it's definitely a great way for beginners to get your foot in the door and to get your first couple of writing opportunities and then paid clients and number four is to send cold emails to 100 dream clients and then follow them up remember how I said you want to look at an industry or Niche that you already knowledgeable or passionate about let's say You're really knowledgeable and passionate about indoor plants and I say that because I'm looking at the indoor plant on my desk here can you go to Google and and type in top indoor plant companies in the United States or whatever region or country you're in Google will then serve up these are the top companies can you then write all those companies write them down in a spreadsheet then go and find the founder or the marketing manager or the content marketing manager at those companies find them on LinkedIn send them a message with the same message that I would send to you know friends or family members or people in my network bring a chance to write for them and that can be a great way of contacting people in your Niche that could potentially hire you so sending cold emails personalized cold emails is a great way to get your first or next copyrighting client what about attending in-person industry events a great opportunity for finding clients there is nothing better than meeting people face to face shaking their hands looking them in the eye and introducing yourself that is one of the best ways for building your business it's actually how I built my business in the beginning of my career as a 21 year old I went to all of the self-development seminars I networked with the speakers and other attendees I introduced myself as a copywriter and I picked up clients that way find out in your industry what are the big events that happen every year that you can attend either locally or nationally or even internationally if you have the funds to do so and then go with go there with the idea of networking and getting clients that way it's a great way of picking up clients tip number six is to apply on job boards and freelancing websites like upwork or problogger these website have new job writing opportunities posted every single day you could go there and send a personalized pitch to each of those companies that you find might be suitable for your skills and your background and experience to apply for and it's a great way for finding you know writing opportunities every single day number seven is to partner with service providers who are already working with your future clients right think of companies like web designers or digital agencies that may have businesses they work for their design websites for or they you know promote websites for their clients but they may not have a copywriter working in the house they may not have a copywriter on the team therefore they'll often go to freelance writers who they want to bring in to work on specific projects why not find all of the web design agencies or companies in your local area reach out to them and introduce yourself it's a great opportunity for letting letting them know that you exist and so when the suitable project comes along and they don't have an in-house writer they might hire you that's another way I've built my business and just a couple of agencies or web design firms can keep you busy for a long time years even with lots of different projects and writing opportunities the next one is guest blogging in exchange for exposure and leads right so you might find all of the popular blogs in your Niche you might then see if they have writing opportunities it's often a matter of just finding a link on the website that says write for me or you know guest writing or guest blogging you go there and or ghost writing you go there and you contact those companies you pitch them some ideas of blog posts that you could write for their website or blog and if they say yes you then write that article or blog post for free but at the bottom you have the author bio and that's where you introduce yourself as a freelance copywriter working for that industry and then all of the readers that read those popular blog posts or articles I have to click on your link go to your website or your LinkedIn or your profile page and then hire you it's a great way for promoting yourself on some of the most popular blogs in your Niche step number nine and the final step or strategy is to contact businesses that are already advertising let's say that I'm someone that's really into fishing and I'm a copywriter that's writing for the fishing Niche a very you know big Niche but very Niche Niche right what you could do is go and find all of the magazines trade magazines The Specialist Publications about fishing then I would go through them and look for all of the companies that are advertising that are running you know printed ads uh display ads we call them in those magazines and I might send an email or call them and say hey I'm a copywriter who specializes in writing about fishing I've seen your ad in this magazine I've noticed a couple of ways that you could improve this ad and get a lot more calls or visits to your website or whatever their call to action is would you like me to share some of those ideas with you most companies are going to say yes they're going to ask you what those ideas are or to ask you to email them those ideas and then you've got your foot in the door to further writing opportunities when they want to re-run that ad it's a great way you can do that online by finding all the websites or you could use Facebook to find you know the companies that are advertising in the Facebook ad library or you know do it offline with magazines it's another great way of marketing yourself and getting more writing opportunities getting more copywriting clients well I hope you enjoyed watching this free one hour copywriting course if you did enjoy it then please let me know by typing a comment in the comment section below clicking the like button or subscribing to the channel I really put a lot of time and energy into putting this together so I'd love to hear from you and of course if you'd like more free resources I recommend you head over to my website start copywriting.com where there's tons of free blog post articles and of course copy Academy my private members only Community where copywriters like you hang out share their work with each other and provide the all-important feedback that helps copywriters improve their skills and their career so if that's something you'd like to check out head over to start copywriting.com and I look forward to seeing you in the next video

Channel: Jesse Forrest

Views: 58,820

Keywords: copywriting course, copywriting for beginners, full copywriting course, copywriting tips, copywriting, freelance copywriter, copywriter, copywriting tips for beginners

Id: be8P9D3QxiU

Length: 61min 49sec (3709 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 17 2023