Start a Freelance Copywriting Business
Launching a freelance copywriting career is not only possible, but profitable as well. Here are some steps to get you started.
Contents
Steps
- Spread the word. Start telling all your friends and relatives about your career change to get the word out. They may not be able to help you directly, but they're bound to know someone else who needs your services.
- Learn about others' experience. Read personal experiences about others who have had success starting a freelance business. For this you can check out websites which are specially about copywriting or you can check job portals. It's a common practice for job portals to maintain their own blogs.
- Print business cards with your contact information to hand out at parties or other social gatherings. Any time you land a client, make sure you hand out multiple business cards.
- Upgrade your skills. Take a writing or grammar class at your local community college if you are worried about the quality of your writing. Or you can join a short certificate copywriting course.This will also help you in networking with like-minded people.
- Build your portfolio. Accept writing projects from charities or non-paying clients to build up your sample portfolio.This will be very helpful as your potential clients will be in a position to gauge your skills based on your work. Also non-paying clients may allow you certain freedom in terms of creativity.
- Build a network. Try to find other freelance copywriters in your area to create a network. If they have extra work, they can pass it on to you. If you don't know anyone in your area then you can search for Facebook community groups. You are sure to find one with the members who are in the same business as yours.
- Buy a book, such as Writer's Market, that lists available writing markets and guidelines.
- Call marketing firms in your area to see if they hire freelance copywriters. The worst thing they can do is say no.
- Create a brochure or postcard advertising your services and mail it to local businesses.
- Continually check online job listings. Copywriting jobs tend to appear and disappear quickly, so check often.
- Always spell-check your work before submitting anything.
- Consider scoring your copywriting effort against a database of historically most effective sales copies and ads using an automatic solution, such as Glyphius.
- Go online. In this world where a lot of important things happen online you cannot afford to miss out. Be active on social media and mention in your 'about me' section your contact information for your potential clients to contact you. If possible create your own Facebook and Twitter pages exclusively for your business. Invite your friends to 'like' your page or 'follow' you on twitter. This will also act as your portfolio and if a potential client notices you it they can directly get in touch with you.
Tips
- Don't be discouraged if your career doesn't immediately take off. It may take several months to establish a client base that hires you on a regular basis. With determination, you will have a steady amount of work and income.
- Use a sales letter generating software to help you get started. You'd be surprised how many people would rather outsource this work than purchase the software and do it themselves.
- To work on your copywriting skills, you could purchase a pack of PLR (private label rights) articles and rewrite them. Make them into an eBook and then sell in on Clickbank.
- Make sure to compile a "swipe" file as you go along in which you can store most effective and compelling sales copies. It will serve you invaluable service when in doubt or lacking inspiration.
- People in the Internet Marketing field are always looking for someone to write a great sales letter. Sales letters are the meat of any good IM business. Advertise your services on places like Craigslist, Scriptlance or Rentacoder.
- A great way to get into the business is to offer to rewrite articles. Bloggers are always looking for content and often have articles or posts that need to be rewritten in order to make them unique. Always use a service like Copyscape to run your articles through once they are rewritten to ensure that they are unique.
- Even if all you get is requests, never be pressured to work for free! After all, you are putting your time and possibly money into doing things for people. Do charities or personal projects if you enjoy them, to add to your portfolio. It's better to do charity work than cheap work, as that may send the wrong message to potential clients of your regular fee. Keep branching out to different websites in the online community until you get offered commissions. Exposure is your best friend.
- Don't rush to scale your business too soon. Rapid growth can leave your bank accounts depleted and your clients unhappy. Because you might miss the quality in achieving the quantity. So, focus on your growth and deliver quality work to ensure the good reputation of your business. Overtime, your market share will increase when you offer value to your clients.
Warnings
- Just because it is good to be active on social media and promote your work does not mean that's what you do most of the time when online. This may annoy your friends and followers and they may end up blocking you or report your account as spam.
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