Writing them everyday is good writing practice. Flexing my writing muscles everyday felt good. It provided me the opportunity to try out new things that I've learned.

On the flip side it takes mental energy and time away from my freelancing work. Writing and editing posts takes already limited time away from actual freelance work.

Because of the time and energy drain I've decided to post on a weekly basis. This will give me time to brain dump and then ruthlessly edit my posts. This will be my last lightly edited post.

Freelance Update

Here's what I've been doing the past ~2 weeks.

Everyday I review job boards, websites, subreddits, etc to find leads. My time is spent on 2 tasks. Finding a good lead and finding that leads email address.

Finding good leads

30% of my effort goes here. These are the questions I ask myself when reviewing a potential lead.

1. Is their copy crystal clear? If so, next lead. If not, go to question 2.
2. Does their meander? If so, reach out. If not, go to question 3.
3. Does their copy have a clear audience in mind? If not, reach out. If so, go to question 4.
4. Do they have a blog? Either way, reach out about doing a guest post.

When I reach out I've been adding 1 tidbit of advice on improving their copy. This is to give the appearance that I know what I'm talking about.

Once I've identified a good lead I move on to the other 70% of my time.

Finding an email address.

Finding the lead's email address

This is hands down the most difficult part of pitching. Finding someone's email address is incredibly hard. I know understand why there are so many services that make it easy to find anyone's email address. Damn near any pricing is worth it considering how much of a time sink this is.

How am I doing thus far?

Thus far I have made $0.00. I've pitched ~40 leads with no response. Unfortunately I don't know why they aren't biting. I think it's because of my lack of results and content to show.

How I'm going to fix this

I'm going to implement 2 changes. One is to publish a long-form (1K+) piece each week. I chose long-form because Google seems to love it and it gives me ample space to practice my editing.

Last change is to drop adding advice to each pitch I send. Coming up with an actionable tidbit takes time and really slows down my pitching velocity.

Hopefully these changes help.

Until next week,

Thy

#freelance #writing

Their key feature is personalization. No one likes copypasta in their inbox. I receive oodles of those already and refuse to add more to the universe.

I picked where to pitch. It's a combo of job boards/online groups and lists of online businesses.

There'll be ample prospects across them. With those I should be more than able to hit my goal of pitching 20 prospects per week.

Tomorrow the pitching begins. Hopefully it's as fun as today.

Until tomorrow,

Thy

#freelance #writing

There were 2 tasks for today.

1. Create a freelancing process
2. Define pricing structure

Create a Freelance Process

This was clear-cut. My process is based upon a working 6 figure per year process. The process is the same sans for a couple of small tweaks I made to accommodate how I work.

Battle testing the process will start soon. Most likely the beginning of next week.

Define a Pricing Structure

On the flip side this is proving to be difficult. I need to do 2 things to define my pricing structure. One, find the rates of other copywriters. Two, find the going rate for different kinds of copy (email, website, blog, etc).

The rates of different jobs are easy to come by. There are loads of marketplaces that have jobs listed.

The rates of copywriters are not. I'm avoiding sites where price is a race to the bottom such as Fiver or Upwork.

Searching for the different kinds of copy writers yields many results. Yet many of them do not publish or make it easy to find their rates.

I suspect this is because highly paid freelancers / consultants use value-based pricing and not time-based pricing.

To prevent me from spending too much time on research I'm going to allot 1 more hour of research. If I can't find any numbers within that time then I will go with time-based pricing since that information is easier to find.

Until tomorrow,

Thy

#freelance #writing

1. Write the copy for my website.
2. Make a site.

Writing Website Copy

Writing the copy was difficult. It really forced me to focus in on my brand and value proposition. I believe I did a good job but only my results will tell.

Goals & Systems

Speaking of results I have not publicly defined my goal. Or my system for accomplishing it.

My goal is to hit $5K revenue in 1 month. My current total for December is $0.00 (heh).

I'll talk about the system in another post once it's actually working.

Making a Website

The website was less of a pain. My initial issue was fighting the temptation to design, code, and host my own site. Since I'm a technical person my first solution to a lot of problems is to build something.

That approach is wrong.

The website's purpose is to advertise my special way of writing. Designing, coding, and hosting my website won't serve that purpose at all.

After my realization I discovered there's a cornucopia of website builders. I spent some time evaluating several of them (Webflow, Squarespace, etc). I decided they were all far too complex for what I wanted.

All I wanted was a simple yet aesthetically pleasing website that I could connect to my domain.

In the end Google Sites won out. The builder is simple and straight forward. It does not give you a swath of customization or options.

This forces you to focus on your content. Similar to write.as' editor.

I'm happy with my website...for now.

Until tomorrow,

Thy

#freelance #writing

I decided I want to make money with writing. What kind of writing? Why naughty novellas of course!

Well...that was the original idea. Me and Reality had a long talk. They mentioned how I enjoy eating, watching Netflix, and paying my bills on time. So we decided that the starving artist isn't really my thing or my look.

Copywriting it is! Today my declaration. Tomorrow my site.

Until tomorrow,

Thy

#freelance #writing