How To Become A Copywriter

One of the things I get asked about the most is how to become a copywriter.

Every someone will ask me a copywriting question, refer a friend of theirs to me with a copywriting question, or contact me on LinkedIn.

The truth is, I don’t think any single copywriter is an authority on copywriting. Myself included. I’m still learning, and that’s the way it should be. Industries will never stay the same, which means the way we market ourselves and our services will need to adapt to meet the demands of the industries for which we write. Digital copywriting and marketing services are fluid -- so stay open and do your homework.

To start, here’s what I’ve learned during my time as a copywriter. Note that I did not do these steps in order, but after reflecting on my process, this is the order in which I would try to do these if I could go back in time and do it differently.

1) Don’t Quit Your Day Job

If you look very closely, the milk foam pitcher has a hidden message that perfectly encapsulates how I felt about my pre-freelancing job.

If I could go back in time and do any one thing differently, it would be to have kept a day job for a while so that I didn’t feel so financially strained. 

I don’t regret quitting the job I had before I started freelancing. It was soul-sucking, hard on my mental health, I actively cried at least once a week at work premises, and I was unhappy pretty much every day for almost a year because of it. I absolutely dreaded going in to work after my days off, and I had actual nightmares about the clients I had to deal with.

However, I didn’t really make ends meet for close to six months after quitting my terrible job… and let’s just say that my savings support ran out well before then. A few years distanced from that time in my life has made me understand that I would have likely been happier with at least a part-time job to back up my copywriting skills.

2) Get A Professional Website

Squarespace, WordPress, and Weebly make it easy to create a site that markets you and your personality.

Another thing I would have done differently? Put my website together IMMEDIATELY.

It saves so much time to have a website to point potential clients to, rather than having to return to your portfolio and pick out specifics to prove to potential clients you can do the work they want you to do. It took me losing my “bread and butter” client to COVID budget cuts to understand that I truly needed a website.

Here’s what I’d recommend for your site:

• A compelling home page with an overview of your expertise, services, and work style

• Clear and concise lists of the services you offer on a separate page

• Testimonials from former copywriting clients

• An about me page which shows your potential clients exactly what type of person you are

• An FAQ page to prevent answering dead-end emails

Really, a website is a huge time saver, but it is also a way to show you are professional. Plus, it gives potential web copy clients a concrete example of your work!

3) Advertise Your Services

You don’t need to recreate Times Square to get your services seen by potential clients.

I hate to agree with capitalists, but it does actually help to spend a little money in order to make a little money as copywriters. With five years of full-time copywriting experience, I am still working on ramping up my advertising and raking in more full-time clients than I currently do. Here’s the process I have used/still use which works well for me:

• Get social media accounts and handles. Get whatever speaks to you, but try for more than one! I have a Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook page, but struggle with considering an Instagram account for my page.

• Stay active on social media. Post several times a week at least, and understand how to use the tools in a way that works with your lifestyle! If you don’t have half an hour every day to post on your social media pages but do have a chunk of time on the weekend, spend that chunk of time scheduling posts that fill a week, coordinating hashtags, and strategizing your posts to increase engagement.

• Advertise on Craigslist. Would it shock you to know that I actually have found some of my very best and favorite clients on Craigslist? I love Craigslist, because it takes me an hour about once a month to generate posts around the country and I usually pick up at least 1 long-term client from Craigslist per month. It’s a huge time saver.

• Get on & post on LinkedIn. I was extremely anti-LinkedIn when I first started copywriting.
  
  It felt like a social media brown-nosing experience at worst, and an awkward place for interactions at best. I was even hit on on LinkedIn once -- I gave someone I thought was a potential client my phone number (big mistake) and he proceeded to text me several times a day for the following few days until I finally confronted him about what his motives were… they weren’t work related.
  
  But copywriters can and should use LinkedIn as a way to advertise their work and get quality client leads. I’ve gotten a few more clients since hopping on the LinkedIn train, and it’s definitely boosted my web traffic.

4) Get On Freelancing Sites

Spending a day creating portfolios on major freelance sites can get you places more quickly than you’d expect.

Freelancing sites are where I started, and I still think they’re an effective tool for starting freelancers to build a portfolio. I still use UpWork (I’m a top-rated freelancer on their platform), but have used all of these sites at least once since starting work as a freelancer:

• Tongal

• Upwork

• Freelancer.com

• Fiverr

• AngelList

• Rev

5) Build Up Your Portfolio And Get Reviews

The more green happy faces you get, the more work you get!

Now comes the hard part -- getting reviewed. 

Potential clients are just like you. They don’t want to get scammed out of their money, so they’ll be looking for ways to verify you are a quality copywriter.

Freelancing sites like UpWork actually push the client review process, and as soon as you get past the 4-star mark on many of these sites their algorithms automatically place you as ideal candidates above other writers. Unfortunately, on freelancing sites, you’ll encounter people who want to take advantage of you by asking you to work for far less than you normally would. I did this a few times to build up positive reviews on my profiles, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you can do it any other way. I find these clients are usually the hardest to work with and the most demanding, which is funny because they don’t pay well.

If you opt to avoid freelancing sites, one way you could provide potential clients with reviews is by asking for testimonials from anyone you’ve ever written for -- friends, family, co-workers. Use those testimonials on your site, and as you gain more clients ask for their permission to show their testimonials on your site. Then, provide potential clients with a quality portfolio of your writing, as well as a way to contact your testimonial references. This has always been fine for my clients, so I would hope it would work for yours, too.

6) Set Up Your Own Blog

Plan and stick to your posting schedule to build up credibility!

I really struggle with personal blogging. 

It is hard to attend to your personal writing when you spend between 4-10 hours per day writing for other people. I wish I had gotten my own blog set up earlier, because if writing blogs for others has told me anything, it is this-- a well-formed, SEO-optimized blog can do wonders for your business in terms of credibility and popularity.

7) Set A Financial Goal & Hit It It Before Making It Your Full-time Hustle

You probably won’t have a first dollar bill you pin up on your wall like a restaurant would, but that first sale feels so good!

Your first financial goal doesn’t have to be huge. It doesn’t even have to be enough to support you part time! Your first goal could just be to have someone pay you to write something for them. This goal will be crucial, however. It will help you determine just how much work you will need to do to make your copywriting skills a full-time job. It will also help you understand whether it is something you really want to do with the rest of your life.

Because, believe it or not, I don’t write a lot for opinion blogs, travel blogs, or political blogs. Would I like to? Absolutely. But that’s not where the money is for most people.

I write a lot about small blogs for car businesses, HVAC systems, cryptocurrency startups, and even pretty gross topics for medical experts (I can tell you a LOT about diabetic foot ulcers). But the important thing is, I actually like doing this. It’s fun to learn about new things, and now I know what regular maintenance I should perform on my car and what to do to avoid getting a foot ulcer when I’m old.

8) Re-evaluate And Set New Goals

Be like a rock climber -- you’ll reach the top time and time again, but you’ll always keep climbing.

When you’re a copywriter with your own business, or a freelancer of any sort, you’re your own boss. You set when you wake up and go to sleep in the morning. You draw the line at what you’ll write about (yes, I’ve turned down clients for asking me to write about things I fundamentally disagree with). But in order to stay in business, you’ll need to consistently re-evaluate what services you provide and how you provide them.

So, once you hit a goal, make another goal. It doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate the goals you’ve reached. You should, after all. Making it as a copywriter in a society that devalues all forms of art is an accomplishment in itself.