• Businesses are hiring copywriters like crazy.
• Good copywriters can easily earn six figures.
• Most copywriters today work remotely.
• Copywriters don’t need formal training or education.

In this usher, I ’ molarity going to teach you, step by step, how to become a copywriter and earn six figures within the following calendar class .
I ’ ve been a freelance copywriter since 2013. I went full moon time in 2016 and earned around $ 80k. I netted $ 130k the follow year and $ 220k in 2018 .
I ’ meter surely not the best, the fastest, or the smartest. I know copywriters who hit six figures in their first class and were well past $ 300k by year three.

But unlike many people who succeed for one reason or another, I have a very well understand of WHY I was able to hit my goals and grow my business .
As a leave, in this guidebook, you aren ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate just going to learn how I became a six design copywriter. You are going to learn how you can become one adenine well .

If you already understand what it means to be a copywriter, click here to jump to the “ how to ” .
otherwise, let ’ s establish some context first .

What Is A Copywriter?

A copywriter is someone who creates written messaging for a business or organization, usually with the intent to sell or promote a product, service, or brand.
When you read a ledger, you are reading the work of an author .
When you read any type of written message from a commercial enterprise, organization or brand, you are reading the work of a copywriter .
A lot of people mistake the discussion “ copywriter ” as being connected to “ copyright ”, but they are not related in any room .
A copyright is a legal term denoting intellectual property .
A copywriter is person who creates the written messaging for a business, mark, or constitution .

What Does A Copywriter Do?

Copywriters spend most of their time… writing replicate .
[insert shocked pikachu face]
[ insert shocked pikachu face ] There are some extra steps that can go into the action of writing imitate :

• Ask good questions to obtain key info
• Research competitors
• Choose the appropriate copywriting framework
• Plan out each section of copy
• Get feedback from stakeholders
• Go through rounds of editing

But the huge majority of a copywriter ’ sulfur prison term is spent writing and rewriting the imitate itself .
If you are employed as a copywriter, this will account for 75 % of your clock, with the early 25 % going toward meetings, performance & feedback revue, and collaborating with other types of marketers working on your same project .
If you are a mercenary copywriter, writing might merely account for 25 % of your time, with the other 75 % going toward pitching, managing your clients, running your business, and marketing your brand .
Click here to learn more about what a copywriter does .

Types Of Copywriting You See Every Day

You read copy constantly .
When you see an ad with words on it, you are reading ad copy .
When you see a sociable media post from a brand you follow, you a reading social media copy .
When you visit a web site, you are reading web site copy .
When you get an electronic mail from a brand, commercial enterprise, constitution, or influencer, you are reading electronic mail copy .
When you read a blog post like this, you a reading web log copy .
What makes these things “ copy ” is that they are intended to drive an action with the ultimate intent of selling you something .
sometimes, the goal is to get the you to act immediately. This type of copywriting is referred to as “ direct reply copywriting ” .
Examples of direct reception copywriting include :

• A Twitter ad designed to get an ad click
• A billboard designed to make you turn at the next exit and visit the establishment
• A landing page designed to get an email signup
• An email designed to get a message in “reply”
• A product description designed to drive an “Add to Cart” click

sometimes, contiguous action international relations and security network ’ t the goal. The lector might not be in the position to take contiguous action when they read the copy, or having them take immediate action might not be the priority. This type of replicate doesn ’ metric ton have a snappy name, but the concept of marketing now for results down the road is basically branding .
Examples of branding-focused copywriting include :

• A magazine ad designed to expose readers to the brand
• A blog post designed to educate and connect with the reader
• A white paper designed to establish the brand’s authority

These types of copywriting want an action at some point :

• The magazine ad wants the reader to think about the brand and buy down the road.
• The blog post wants the reader to recommend the blog to others, signup for the email list, and probably buy something later.
• The white paper wants the reader to purchase from the brand or refer a purchase down the road.

The dispute is that this type of copywriting international relations and security network ’ t designed to drive an immediate action, and that ’ s important, because attempting to drive an immediate action is counterproductive in many marketing scenarios .
imagine if every web log position you read tried to get you to buy something immediately. Imagine if every web log post was so focused on getting your electronic mail signup that it cut off the article ’ sulfur cardinal conclusion and made you signup to read it. You ’ d credibly be annoyed and leave .
Both branding scenarios and conduct response scenarios make up an important part of the commercialize process .
Click here to see the ten-spot types of copywriting that will make you the most money .

Copywriter Salaries Depend On Your Career Path

obviously, with all this copywriting everywhere, there ’ s a LOT of demand for copywriters .
If you want to tap into this necessitate, there are three chief ways to do it :

1. Work as a staff copywriter at an agency
2. Work as a copywriter for an in-house marketing team
3. Become a freelance copywriter

If you want a deep look into how much each of these roles can earn, check out my template to copywriter salaries .
here ’ s the TLDR :

• Agency copywriters start at an average of $47k and work up to an average of $88k.
• In-house copywriters start at an average $48k and work up to an average of $84k.
• Freelance copywriters are all over the place, but more than 20% are doing $100k+.

Landing an entry-level copywriting job is just a count of drafting a thoroughly sum up and acing your interview… you know… distinctive job stuff .
And if you live in a larger city or merely get golden with a copywriting job opening up near you, I would decidedly recommend going for it and trying to spend around 2-3 years there. In an entrance level placement, you are basically getting paid to be trained .
That said, this article isn ’ t about “ how to become a copywriter and make $ 80k after 10 years ” .
I promised you six figures, and if you want to hit that $ 100k mark in the next calendar year, there is only one feasible option for you as a copywriter : becoming a freelance copywriter .

How To Become A Freelance Copywriter

If you want to truly make bank in the future 12 months, freelance is the only feasible choice .
And honestly, that ’ s a good thing .
People like to think that employment is more stable, but that ’ s not actually true .

• You don’t control your salary.
• You don’t control your job security.
• You don’t control your process.
• You don’t control your time.
• You don’t control who your boss is or how they manage you.

Becoming a freelancer copywriter means you take dominance over and responsibility for all of these things simultaneously .
It ’ s not easy, specially at first, but if you persist, you will find yourself with absolute restraint over your career and finances to a degree you never previously believed possible .
If you want to learn how to become a copywriter, follow these 5 steps:

1. Learn the basics of persuasive writing
2. Learn these 6 core copywriting skills
3. Land your first few clients
4. Develop and refine your freelancing process
5. Build a stream of recurring leads

These steps aren ’ metric ton easy, but they are all you need to become a successful copywriter within the next 12 months .
Let ’ s dive deep into each footfall .

1. Learn the Basics of Persuasive Writing

estimate timeline : 2 hours
At its core, copywriting is merely persuasive compose .
You are writing words intended to influence the actions of your readers .
This is why copywriting is such a universally beneficial skill. The ability to persuade via writing has virtually illimitable applications, careless of job, function, or industry .
Learning the basics of persuasive write is your first step to becoming a copywriter, and there are tons… and I means TONS… of resources available to help you accomplish this .
Don ’ t feel like you need to read them all .

( Tweet accredit : Dave Harland )
If you pursue a career in copywriting, you will spend the rest of your life mastering persuasive writing. There is no ceiling to this skill, so don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate treat it as a prerequisite. Simply work your way through the basics and then keep moving ahead down this list .
So what are “ the basics ” and where can you find them ?
well, here ’ randomness where I ’ vitamin d commend start :
These will give you a solid feel for what persuasive write is all about. Dip your feet in and then move on to the next step .

2. Learn The 6 Core Copywriting Skills

approximate timeline : 12 hours
All copywriting is persuasive writing, but cipher is ever going to pay you for “ persuasive write ” .
If you want to make money, you need to be able to utilize your persuasive write abilities in writing particular types of transcript that are in high demand .
I ’ ve identified six copywriting skills that are always in demand and constitute what I would consider “ congress of racial equality skills ” in the copywriting earth. You can build your entire career on any 2-3 skills from this list, so don ’ thymine feel the need to try and learn all six, but practicing all of them surely can ’ thyroxine distress .

1. Learn how to write a headline
2. Learn how to write a value proposition
3. Learn how to write a landing page
4. Learn how to write a sales email
5. Learn how to write an advertisement
6. Learn how to write a video script

Headline Copywriting

Headline spell is the only skill on this number that I consider absolutely necessity for every one copywriter. It ’ randomness besides the merely skill on this list you are probably never going to get paid for directly .
about every type of copywriting you do is going to include a headline of some sort, and the quality of that headline will have a disproportionate effect on the achiever of the entire project. The better your headlines, the more clients you ’ ll kingdom and the better work you will do for those clients .
Learn how to write a headline .

Value Proposition Copywriting

A value proposal is a concise instruction that communicates what a commercial enterprise is offering, it ’ sulfur measure, and who it ’ s intended for .
For more building complex products and services, plainly producing a concise affirmation that adequately captures the crack is a challenge unto itself .
For simple products and services, there is an art to being able to communicate the brand ’ second unique value via concise, punchy wording .
While it ’ second not common for businesses to hire copywriters specifically to work on their value propositions ( although I ’ ve had a handful of clients like this ), being able to craft a impregnable value proposition is an integral separate of writing land page and web site copy, and besides comes into play in numerous other forms of copywriting .
Most importantly, it ’ mho one of the single best ways to get a node excited about your compose. clientele owners much struggle to promptly and succinctly articulate the value of their clientele, sol helping them put together a potent value suggestion will immediately create “ bargain in ” toward you and your writing .
Learn how to write a value proposal .

Landing Page Copywriting

I would consider landing page copywriting to be the “ bread and butter ” of on-line copywriting. Every occupation needs a web site, and the achiever of every web site revolves around the success of a handful of landing pages .
For example, here on my own web site, there are three crucial landing pages :
If these pages perform well, my business performs well. Period .
Every web site has pages like this, and to be honest, we could even expand this concept to include all core web site pages .
The main point hera is that web site and land page copy is in high demand. Plus, since it ’ south theoretically a erstwhile expense, and the on-line achiever of the commercial enterprise revolves around the web site transcript, businesses are willing to pay a pretty competitive rate to make indisputable they get it justly .
If you can do a bang-up job at writing web site and peculiarly land page copy, you will never be out of work as a copywriter .
Learn everything you need to know about web site copywriting .

Email Copywriting

like to landing page replicate, electronic mail copywriting is in high need. Everyone needs it, but unlike web site replicate, they need more of it every calendar month .
While electronic mail copywriting has never been a large separate of my node work, I know quite a few successful copywriters who do emails pretty a lot entirely. The ongoing nature of the cultivate makes it easy to fill up a schedule and build recurring income .
It ’ second besides a breeze to track e-mail “ opens ” and clicks, making it easy to measure your operation, improve your craft, and demonstrate the value you are bringing to the client .
Plus, with thousands of templates and case studies publicly available, e-mail copywriting is credibly the single best starting point for newfangled copywriters .
Learn everything you need to know about e-mail copywriting .

Ad Copywriting

ad writing is the godfather of copywriting, and it ’ randomness more prevailing today than it ’ s ever been before… by leaps and bounds .
The dependable news is that there is ceaseless demand for ad copywriting .
The bad news program is that most of it, from what I can see, isn ’ thymine being done by freelance copywriters .
You basically have two major types of ad writing taking place :

1. Corporate ads
2. Small business ads

bodied ad writing is done chiefly by junior copywriters within ad agencies and firms. They don ’ thyroxine get much credit… and they don ’ t make a lot money .
little business ad publish is done primarily by PPC ( pay-per-click ) serve providers. These are your Facebook Ads or Google Adwords “ guru ”. You don ’ metric ton pay person to write ads for you. You pay person to advertise for you, and they do the write as separate of the job .
Granted, this international relations and security network ’ thyroxine my pilothouse, so I might be blind to certain niches of opportunity, but from where I ’ ve been sitting the last six years, if you want to write ads, you ’ ll have better luck as a PPC specialist than an “ ad copywriter ” .
And to be perfectly honest, if I had to start my career over from boodle nowadays, mastering PPC would credibly be the path I ’ five hundred choose. But regardless of all that, ad copywriting is indisputably a staple in the market right now, and I ’ thousand surely there are freelancers somewhere making bank off ad compose .
Learn how to write an ad .

Video Script Copywriting

last, we have video scripts. I ’ ve written some stupidly high perform emails and some solid ads, despite neither of them being a huge lump of my client work .
I ’ ve never written a television script… well, at least not one worthy of being called a video recording script .
I can ’ t give you much in the way of advice here, so I ’ ll equitable say this : video script necessitate is insane, and there are identical few copywriters specializing in this field .
There are multi-million dollar markets built around webinars and dedicated to teaching people how to build a clientele through webinars. Every individual webinar lives and dies by the script .
300 hours worth of video are uploaded to YouTube entirely every one minute, most of it with the ultimate goal of making money. These videos all necessitate scripts if they want to outperform their competitors .
This marketplace is prime for the consider, and if you ’ re person who is plugged into communities that revolve around video recording, it might be the perfect option for you to pursue .
here ’ s the best resource I ’ ve found on writing video scripts .
Again, your goal hera international relations and security network ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate to overlord or tied learn all six of these. start with 2-3. I ’ five hundred recommend that you learn how to write both headlines and rate propositions beginning and then select a third option as the core military service you will build your copywriting clientele around .

3. Land Your First Clients

approximate timeline : 3 months
There ’ mho very only so a lot you can learn from reading about copywriting. 90 % of learning to write copy comes from actually writing transcript .
You may have noticed that the approximate timelines for the previous two sections were measured in hours .
That wasn ’ t an accident .
While it ’ south surely essential to consume some of the fantastic materials out there on copywriting, once you ’ ve exhausted 12-15 hours reading, you ’ ve learned ampere much as you ’ re going to learn just from reading .
nowadays it ’ s clock time to start doing. It ’ randomness clock to start writing replicate, landing clients, and writing more copy .
If you ’ re the creditworthy type, your first idea is probably, “ Wait a second, how am I supposed to charge people to write copy if I ’ ve never written copy before ? ”
Well… you ’ rhenium not .
Or at least, whether or not you get paid ( or how much you get paid ) is irrelevant .
You need practice. real drill.

Start With 3 Practice Projects

The first thing you should do is write the imitate for your own copywriting business. If you are going to be a freelance copywriter, you are a very business owner with a real want for effective imitate .
Start there. plan # 1 in the books .
following, have an established copywriter take a 5 minute attend at your copy and give you some feedback. I don ’ thyroxine care if you don ’ thyroxine know an established copywriter. Find one on Twitter and message them .
just like dating, some of them will probably say no. Who cares ? Keep ask .
future, write new copy for two extra businesses. If you have friends with businesses, write transcript for them. They don ’ t need to be concerned in paying you or even using the copy. The goal is for you to practice and get feedback from relevant people. Get as much feedback as you can get .
once you have written copy for 3 businesses ( including yours ), it ’ second time to start looking for paying clients .

Land Your First Paying Clients

Notice I didn ’ t say “ high paying clients ”. You are looking for anyone who will flash a $ 20 at you in exchange for work .
“ But Jacob, I ’ m a naturally talented writer and I deserve to be fairly compensated. ”
No, you don ’ thymine .
You suck at copywriting .
Your replicate is literally worthless garbage. If you are a top 10 % natural talent, your imitate will remain drivel for the next 3 months. If you are a bite more average, your copy will remain garbage for the future 6 months .
And guess what ?
That ’ s all right ! People paying $ 20, $ 100, $ 200, etc. for copy are asking to receive literally despicable drivel .
It ’ s a arrant fit !
If you want to hit six figures as a copywriter, you need to “ rotter gud ” … legitimately good… at copywriting a fast as possible. That comes from doing and learning, not from fishing for higher paying clients .
Within 24 hours of publishing this article, freelance copywriter Favour Abalogu emailed me the following thoughts :
I very appreciate you addressing the pay topic for beginning writers. A draw of accomplished copywriters out there today make it seem like taking low-paying gigs, even as a beginning writer, is always a bad choice. It ’ south become something of a taboo, and it decidedly hindered my growth in the early years .
I was stuck in the cycle of feast-or-famine for well over two years because I was MAJORLY on the lookout for those big pisces, tied as a beginning writer. unfortunately, the big fish didn ’ triiodothyronine give a damn about whether I existed or not. Simply put, my write was square, and no “ big fish ” was always going to hire me until I was able to deliver much better copywriting .
finally, I was able to elevate my copywriting game and start working with bigger, higher paying clients, but my career would have progressed far more promptly if I had just focused on gaining feel and improving my exercise from the beginning .
Favour ’ s fib couldn ’ triiodothyronine summarize my thoughts on this subject any better. If you are fix to stop chasing unicorn gigs and starting gaining real experience, here ’ s a few capital ways to land some cheap-ass clients :

• Pitch job listings
• Probe your network
• Network online and offline
• Cold pitch prospects

These methods are going to might your business through the first class, well past your drivel stage .
For your 3-6 calendar month garbage period, I ’ five hundred commend spending the majority of your prison term pitching job listings. here ’ s some good places to find gigs :
You will find some quality gigs here along with a short ton of drivel. Take everything you can get. Don ’ metric ton be finical .
here ’ s a great ocular from Jimmy Daly that perfectly illustrates what your response to projects should look like over the course of your career .

Take everything you can get and then write for each plan like it was your dream gig .
The people you will be working for credibly wear ’ thyroxine deserve the feat, but YOU do deserve to get the most out of your exercise time .
You might even come across some great clients who grow with you and end up working with you for years to come .
After you pass the 3 month point, you can begin spending more clock offer to do work for your network, building your network with the finish of raw leads, and evening cold pitching prospects .
Don ’ t lowball any shape of outreach. I landed the 2nd biggest gig of my integral career merely reaching out to an representation I came across via a Facebook ad and asking if they needed copywriting help .
With your foremost 3 months in the books, it ’ mho besides clock to begin acting like a legit freelancer .

4. Refine Your Freelancing Process

approximate timeline : 2 hours
Over the concluding 3 months, you ’ ve bumbled your way through the entire freelancer gamut .
You ’ ve talked with clients, closed sales, collected payment, delivered knead, edit work, realized you needed more information than you requested, hit deadlines, missed deadlines, had clients praise your effusively, had clients cry at you even more effusively… you ’ ve been there, done that .
nowadays it ’ sulfur time to use all that experience to map out your freelancing process and start being designed about everything that you do .
here ’ s what you need to map out :

• How you bring in leads
• How you close sales
• How you collect the needed project details
• How you collect payment
• How you work with the client
• How and when you deliver work
• How you gauge success of the project

Your goal here initially international relations and security network ’ thyroxine to figure out how to do all these things absolutely. You are merely mapping your current process .
following, number out any problems you ’ ve been having, such as :

• I’m having trouble consistently finding new leads.
• I’m getting good leads but not closing many of them.
• Some clients don’t send much info, and I struggle to complete the project.
• Some clients are really difficult to work with for _____ reason.
• I often feel really cramped for time on projects.
• Clients are constantly pestering me about where I’m at in the project.

immediately that you ’ ve mapped out your procedure and problems, you can start refining your serve, both in the short-circuit term and the long term .
An model of a short term improvement might be realizing that you aren ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate setting clear expectations for clients, so you create a standard electronic mail template that you use after ( or before ) closing a sale that lists out precisely what the customer can expect .
An case of a longer term improvement might be realizing that leads are inconsistent and you need to build a more sustainable method acting for bringing in new leads. This is a reasonably common conflict for new copywriters, and we will address it directly in the future section .
But before we tackle that, I ’ thousand going to give you a promptly overview of my freelancing summons to help you in mapping out your own .

1. New leads contact me via my website.
2. I review their needs, provide them with a quote, and set expectations for the project.
3. If they accept, I send them an invoice and my copywriting questionnaire.
4. I then work collaboratively with them to lock down their core value propositions.
5. Next, I complete a first draft of the project and deliver it to the client, either all at once or in pieces, depending on the size of the project.
6. I work with them to edit the copy until they are fully satisfied.
7. For larger projects, I then send a final invoice.

As you can see, this international relations and security network ’ t a sprawling, 20 page document. It ’ s literally 7 bullets .
If you ever get to the item where you start hiring employees or contractors to work for you, you might need a more detail vogue of summons map, but for your own purposes as a alone freelancer, it doesn ’ t have to be complicated .

5. Build A Recurring Leads Channel

approximate timeline : 1 class
If you want to make real money as a freelancer, you need a coherent, recurring inflow of quality leads .
This takes time .
Assuming you do everything right, you are silent looking at between 9-18 months to create a channel that can bring in six figures worth of leads per year .
There are four primary options for copywriters seeking to build out their own recurring leads channel :

• SEO
• LinkedIn
• High-End Guest Blogging
• Paid Advertising

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The goal of Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) is to get Google to send leads to your web site monthly, hebdomadally, and even casual. You accomplish this by getting your site to rank for search terms that are relevant to your business .
In my personal public opinion, nothing presently beats SEO as a leads groove. It ’ s how I built my own business, and once I figured out how to do it right, I was able to achieve reasonable results fairly cursorily, good results within a year, and incredible results over a handful of years .

I can besides continue scaling this channel indefinitely, which is part of what I ’ molarity doing by publishing this article. This article will rank on the front man page of Google for the search question “ how to become a copywriter ” within 3 months ( update : I primitively published this in January 2019 and sure adequate, I was on the front page by April. I then predicted to me email subscribers that I would be # 1 by August, and I predicted it perfectly. This article now ranks # 1 for “ copywriter ” deoxyadenosine monophosphate well, which is fun ) .
basically, SEO has a short ton of pros for copywriters :

• Lots of business owners seek to hire copywriters via search
• Highly scalable channel
• Google’s algorithm has remained relatively stable for 20 years
• You can tap into niche search results relatively quickly
• Most of the work is writing (great for copywriters)

But it besides has its cons :

• Requires a range of non-transferable skills to execute effectively
• Takes a relatively long time to scale compared to other channels
• Google is increasingly stealing traffic away from content creators

part of the cause I feel like SEO is the best channel for copywriters is that it synergises very well with blog spell, which I besides advise copywriters to offer. Writing both free guest posts and paid blog content doubles as both advertise for your services a well as backlinks for your SEO campaign. But you miss out on the backlinks benefit if you aren ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate actively pursuing SEO .
hera ’ s me on the Do You even Hustle ? podcast, where I explain reasonably much everything I know about SEO :

Until this last year, I would have told you that SEO is the undisputed leads channel for aspiring copywriters, but over the final 12 months, a new rival has become arguably a better choice, at least in the unretentive condition .

LinkedIn Audience Building

LinkedIn has always been an intrigue platform for clientele lead generation, but up until a year ago, it wasn ’ metric ton actually the type of place where person could build a profitable succeed .
That all changed last year when LinkedIn revamped its algorithm and abruptly, organic engagement was active and well. I noticed the lapp types of posts attracting tons of employment, so I decided to see if I could play the game and make some message go viral .
My first attack was a sarcastic parody of these types of posts. It got 897 likes and 150 comments .

My moment attack was a more serious post but with some blatant clickbait. It grabbed 1,083 likes, 92 comments, and over 100k views .

That ’ randomness pretty insane employment for diving straight in with no existing audience. I tried posting some more straightforward material as well, which grabbed between 20-40 likes a pop with a handful of comments .
In hindsight, this should have been adequate battle for me to spend a few months exploring LinkedIn as a spark advance gen groove, but my bias against social media at the time, equally well as my personal antipathy for the styles of contentedness that were most popular on the chopine, caused me to bail on the channel .
today, I personally know three different copywriters who have built their monthly income to $ 15k+ about entirely through their LinkedIn following. They systematically post square, helpful contentedness, and engage positively with people in their niches. One of these copywriters, Michal Eisikowitz, was courteous adequate to hop on a call and share the narrative of how she built a recurring leads channel using LinkedIn and a fantastic writer web site .

You can follow Michal on LinkedIn by clicking here. The “ 30 Days Social ” resource she mentioned in our interview is freely available from LinkedIn here. And the extremely helpful copywriter and Linked expert she recommended you follow, John Espirian, can be found hera .
The TLDR here is that LinkedIn is a compel choice for new and know copywriters alike. When compared with the complicate process of achieving organic rankings, posting 3-4 times per week on LinkedIn seems like a vastly simpler and more broadly accomplishable option for building out that chief leads channel .
Let ’ s review the pros :

• Puts you directly in front of people who are likely to hire copywriters
• No technical expertise or non-transferable skills required
• Efforts double as networking, which is also extremely beneficial
• Most of the work is writing

That said, there are two massive cons, which are why I ’ thousand off on sociable media in general :

• Ongoing success is entirely at the the whim of LinkedIn
• You’re limited in how you can present your business to potential clients on the platform

There was once a time when people were experiencing this same horizontal surface of success on Facebook. then overnight, Facebook completely gutted organic reach, and suddenly, all that work acquiring followers was basically render worthless. This could happen at any prison term on LinkedIn, and indeed, LinkedIn has already scaled back organic reach a bit from when those two posts of mine went mini-viral .
That said, I believe the Facebook scenario is much less probably to happen on LinkedIn for two chief reasons .
beginning, LinkedIn owes much of its late revival directly to the algorithm change. It ’ s the new strategy that is driving growth preferably than a establish strategy that was bound to be altered at some degree .
second, while Facebook depends on direct advertise to earn gross, which directly competes with organic reach, LinkedIn makes the lion ’ s share of its gross as a enroll chopine, which depends on retaining and growing organic consumption and date. In other words, LinkedIn ’ south business mannequin is far more conducive to long condition organic reach .
so how does this compare against SEO ?
Despite being something of an SEO evangelist, I would actually argue that SEO is in a exchangeable boat. It ’ s wholly at the caprice of Google, and while Google ’ mho algorithm has stayed on a fairly consistent course for the last 20 years, that ’ s no guarantee it will remain on the same course over the future 10 years .
Guessing whether SEO or LinkedIn will be the better duct for copywriters in 10 years is a bite like guessing whether Bitcoin or Ethereum will have a higher market detonator in the same clock period. The past and deliver both period to SEO having more stay power, but the future is likely to be so fickle, picking a winner is saturated meditation at this point .
My recommendation is this :
If you are more of a people person and enjoy network, go with LinkedIn .
If you are more of an introvert and just want to put your oral sex down and get results, without needing to depend on how people respond to you, go with SEO .
( I break both of these paths down in-depth via my comprehensive copywriting course ) .

High-End Guest Blogging

High-end node blogging as a recurring leads scheme basically means that you are frequently publishing guest posts on high profile websites .
When I say “ high profile ”, I mean that if you were to mention the web site to 10 people in your niche, between 7-10 of them would immediately recognize the sword or publication .
If you haven ’ thyroxine noticed already, I ’ m a boastful fan of doing stuff that works for you on multiple levels. I love offering blog post write because it doubles as advertising. I love SEO because it makes all the write I ’ m already doing payoff 10x over. I love the idea of LinkedIn as a leads groove because it doubles as network, which is insanely valuable to any occupation .
It ’ s this concept that very drives the strategy of high-end node blogging as a recurring jumper cable channel .
When you guest blog for a big, outstanding publication, a set of amazing things can happen :

• Someone can read your post, appreciate your expertise, and hire you to write copy for them.
• Someone can read your post, appreciate your writing style, and hire you to write for their own blog or publication.
• Someone can read your post, appreciate your writing style, and ask you to ghostwrite for them on a high-level publication.
• Your post can perform really well and cause the publication to hire you to write more for them.
• Your post can put your name in circles that can boost your career.
• Your post is more likely to rank for a search term and continuously expose you to new readers every single month.

none of these things happen with high frequency on their own. Getting one web log position published to Forbes.com is very improbable to do anything other than give you a aphrodisiac logo to throw on your capacity writing page. It ’ mho very similar to how publishing a single article on your web site or writing a unmarried post on LinkedIn international relations and security network ’ t going to do anything for you .
With enough posts over meter, however, the drip of benefit from each post turns into a stream of leads and opportunities .
I ’ m a huge advocate of having modern copywriters invest a big ball of time into guest blogging, for all the reasons mentioned above plus a few more :

• It helps you connect to players in your niche.
• It puts your work in front of talented editors who will often give you feedback and help you suck at writing a lot less.
• The links back to your website prime your domain to rank for any SEO keyphrases you want to target.

And as we already covered, there are tons of ways guest stake can lead to paying gigs .
That said, there is a boastful remainder between guest blogging and high-end guest blogging as a recurring leads channel, and the difference actually comes down to profile .
For run-of-the-mill node blogging, the type that I did a draw of early in my career, you are merely targeting blogs in your chief niches. For me, those niches were marketing and marketer-focused SaaS businesses. I published well-received work on most of the top blogs in these niches and while it had all the benefits I outlined, those benefits never approached the bribe of a true recurring leads channel .
My supporter Aaron Orendorff, on the other hand, pursued what I ’ meter coin here as “ high-end node blogging as a recurring leads channel ”. His chitter background image gives you a little taste of what I mean .

What you are seeing hera is not a few of the lead publications in a specific market recess. You are seeing most of the top publications across the marketing, occupation, and ecommerce industries .
And Aaron didn ’ t merely write once for these sites. He ’ second written multiple times for many of them, and for the smaller blogs on that list, he ’ s responsible for some of their highest performing content of all fourth dimension .
Every one of these sites is hard to write for. It ’ s intemperate to even get considered for many of them. I ’ ve tried to get top notch message on Forbes and Inc. several times, with absolutely no success any, and while I can whine all day about how dazed that is when both websites publish actual garbage on a day by day footing, the fact remains that getting into these circles and getting published on these types of publications is no patty walk .
Aaron ’ s prolific node posting took him to six figures in his first base year as a mercenary copywriter and had him up to $ 20k per calendar month when we did the interview below during his 2nd year. In this interview, he breaks down what led to his success and how his guest posts on the highest profile sites resulted in the most fiscal benefit ( the audio from my end is reasonably garbage, good-for-nothing ) .

I don ’ thyroxine actively recommend this strategy to new writers for a few unlike reasons .
inaugural, your skills are very improbable to be at the level needed to get on these types of sites. While many sites print garbage on a daily footing, that drivel is coming from celebrated people and full-time staff, not from freelancers. As a mercenary, the standard of contented is much higher for you. Unless you are a top 5 % talent like Aaron, it is very improbable you will succeed at this strategy in your beginning year, no matter how hard you work at it .
second, you are going to be dealing with a distribute of rejection and a lot of trial an error in your foremost year as a copywriter. Taking low-percentage shots at high profile publications is good going to be demoralizing unless you have already built a mental and emotional tolerance for that classify of matter .
Third, in order for this strategy to succeed, you have to be an incredibly prolific writer able of churning out a eminent bulk of circus tent shelf contented. flush copywriters who manage to produce some great knead in their inaugural class normally do therefore identical, very slowly and in limited quantities .
To sum it up, if you are a clear 5 % talent with no reverence of rejection and a long history of high-volume publish, this scheme might fair be arrant for you. For everyone else, I ’ vitamin d recommend starting with a different strategy and waiting until your second, third base, or fourth year as a copywriter to try this strategy out .

Paid Advertising

last and decidedly least, we have paid advertising. theoretically, if you can make SEO work for you, you can make pay advertising work for you .
That said, I have never met a single copywriter who uses paid ads as their primary lead distribution channel, and cipher I know can think of anyone doing this .
therefore why am I evening bothering to include it ?
well, I suspect that fair like most ad writing tends to be done by PPC specialists, the type of people who manage to make Google Ads or Facebook Ads ferment for them tend to plainly become PPC specialists .
As we will discuss in future web log posts, the big money in marketing comes from offering in full managed market campaigns, quite than a lanthanum menu services .

• If you can create a full marketing funnel, you can make a lot more than simply writing funnel copy.
• If you can run a full content marketing campaign, you can make a lot more than simply writing blog posts.
• If you can run a paid advertising campaign, you can make a lot more than simply writing ads.

My theory is that people who are specifically looking to get into ad realize fairly cursorily that running the fully campaigns is something they can learn and offer fairly quickly as a freelance avail provider, and that has become the de facto career path on that end of the copywriting spectrum .
If advertise interests you, check out this usher to running an effective Google Adwords campaign, and if you are a copywriter who brings in copywriting clients ( not advertising clients ) using paid advertising, please get in contact with me. I ’ five hundred love to interview you and feature you right here this steer .

How To Become A Copywriter: Next Steps

I hope you ’ ve found this guide helpful ! After finishing this military post, I decided to expand the train presented here into a 2-week copywriting naturally. I ’ megabyte presently offering it for release, so if you ’ d like to take advantage of that, enter you email below, and I ’ ll send it your direction :