 Welcome back to Writing Wednesdays, where I share content around helping you become a better writer and copywriter online. In today's video, we're gonna talk about freelance writing and specifically how to get started if you're working in a nine to five or you're looking to get your start in online entrepreneurship, how to get started as a freelance writer, even if you're a complete beginner. So I'm gonna take you step by step through this process of becoming a freelance writer in 2021 from scratch and also share why I believe this is the best way to get started in online entrepreneurship and to develop your skills and why specifically writing. So my story as an entrepreneur, everything that I've done since my start in 2015 has been around writing. One of the first businesses that I started was an SEO agency where I was writing SEO articles and helping people rank in the Google search engines. And I was doing this for local businesses. And then I started an e-commerce store, which is what actually allowed me to quit my job. And what I was doing there was I was writing emails to my list and I was writing Facebook ad campaigns to sell physical products. And then from there I started an agency. So I was writing campaigns, lead generation campaigns, cold email campaigns, LinkedIn campaigns for other businesses, helping them to generate leads, generate phone calls and get clients. And then now I'm creating information, digital products and coaching programs and consulting. And what I'm doing here is I'm using writing to create emails and create sales pages to sell my solutions. And I'm also teaching people how to write better in my actual products itself. So everything I've done has been around writing and you as a freelance writer, you can specialize in any of these areas. So this industry of writing, it's so huge. There's so much potential here. You could be a content writer or a copywriter. You could write e-commerce product descriptions or emails. You could focus on writing lead generation campaigns. You could focus on writing sales pages or sequences to help people sell more of their stuff. So many different opportunities with freelance writing. And I wanna talk about how you can get started as a freelance writer this year and basically pick any specialty that you want. So let's jump into the steps right now, how you become a freelance writer in 2021, even if you're a beginner, let's dive in. So step number one is to review your existing body of work. Now what do I mean by body of work or your existing skills, your expertise, your knowledge and things that interest you, right, your background. So how do you do this? Well, I just want you to take out a piece of paper or you can go on a Google Doc and make a list of all your hobbies, your experiences, the things that you're good at. Maybe you've traveled to cool places or there's things that you're interested in, questions that people ask you that they wanna pick your brain about because you are knowledgeable on, content that you follow, content you consume, books you read, TV shows you watch, movies you watch. Make a list of all these things that interest you and skills and expertise and knowledge that you have because this is gonna help you pick an area to focus on in your freelance writing business. Which leaves me to step number two, which is to pick your niche. Now, if you've gone through step number one, you made a list of all the things that you're interested in, your skills, your hobbies, your expertise and things that interest you, things you're passionate about, this step's gonna be a lot easier. So let's just say that you're really into video games. You love playing video games, you love learning about them. Well, you could be a content writer for video game companies and eSports companies. So you could help them grow their social media accounts through your writing, right? Writing tweets for them, writing social posts, writing articles, you could become a content writer for video game and eSports companies. Or let's just say that you're really into working out and personal training and fitness. Well, you could become a writer for fitness companies and fitness brands, helping them sell their food, helping them sell their equipment or supplements or workout programs. So whatever interests you, that's gonna help you pick an area or a niche to focus on for your freelance writing business. Now, it can take a while to find the right one, right? I jumped from a few different niches or niches before I found the right one. So don't worry about picking the perfect one from the start, just pick one that interests you, get started, get going. And if it's not working out for you down the road, you can always pivot and change later. But make a list of all the things that interest you, pick an industry that you wanna help with your writing and there you go, you've picked a niche. Step number three is to paint a clear picture of your ideal client. Now, how do you do this? Well, you're gonna immerse yourself deep into the niche that you picked. So you're gonna be learning about the different pain points and problems that they have, their desired outcomes, the language that they use to explain their problems and explain what they want to achieve in their life or their business. So you're learning their language, you're learning where they hang out, what groups or publications or websites or influencers do they follow? What do they do for a living? What is their job title? How big is the companies that they work at? So you wanna make a list of all these things so that when you're reaching out to these companies and you're reaching out to these prospects who you wanna become clients, you know how to communicate with them. You know how to explain to them how you can help them. So for example, when I was writing my agency growth response and we just started back in 2017, we were targeting SaaS founders, software as a service founders and software as a service companies. And I didn't really know much about the industry when I jumped into it. All I knew was that they sold software. So I had to join Facebook groups. I had to read about SaaS companies in magazines and online publications and websites and learn more about the language that they use to explain their company, explain their problems and explain the things that they wanted in their business. And I used all these things that I learned. I spent a long time learning about these companies. I used everything that I learned about them when I was communicating with them. So when I was jumping out, when I was jumping on sales calls, when I was reaching out to them, prospecting messages, cold emails, LinkedIn messages, I was using all these different things that I learned about them in my messaging, in my communication. When I was jumping on sales calls, I was talking about their problems on these calls. So it's important that you're able to speak the language of your ideal client. And the only way that you're gonna do that is by painting a clear picture of the ideal client by researching them and diving deep and immersing yourself into the niche. So that is step number three, dive into the niche and paint a clear picture of your ideal clients. Step number four is to pick your writing service. And this is really gonna depend on the niche and the ideal client that you pick. So for us, we had SaaS companies, B2B SaaS companies, and they sold software, high ticket software to other businesses. So what they needed most were phone calls, where they can jump on a sales call and actually sell their solution at $10, $20,000 or more. So our writing service for these companies was lead generation campaigns. So we would write their cold email sequences and we would run those. We would also write their LinkedIn sequences and run those. And the goal of our campaigns, of our writing was to generate phone calls so they could sell their software solutions. Now, if you're targeting something like an e-commerce company, someone who's selling low ticket physical products, then booking phone calls is not gonna work. What they really need is sales. So you might write their email sequences. You might write their product descriptions or their sales pages or their upsells. So there's so many different things that you can write about or offer as a writing service. There's Facebook ad campaigns, there's YouTube ad scripts, there's social media content. There is just content creation or white papers or blog articles. So there's so many different writing services that you can offer. Maybe I'll make a separate video about that. But you wanna pick one that helps your chosen niche solve a problem and also achieve their desired outcome. So if that's sales, then you might do emails or sales pages or something around those lines. If it is growing their brand awareness and maybe they're a video game company, e-sports company, they just want more views, you might write their content on social media like Twitter or Facebook. If they're looking for phone calls, then you might do something like cold email or LinkedIn, lead generation campaigns. So your writing service, you're gonna pick one that actually applies to your niche. So I can't tell you exactly what that's gonna be. Maybe I'll make a separate video of the best writing services that you can offer there. Let me know down below. If you guys wanna see that, comment below that you wanna see writing services. So that's step number four is to pick your writing service. Now step number five is to create a simple portfolio website. If you wanna see examples of mine, you can go to growthresponse.io, which is my services website. Or you can go to Sean Anthony Deco, which is my personal brand website. Its purpose is not to get you clients, at least not in the beginning. You're not gonna get a ton of traffic to this site. All it really is is to make you appear like a real professional person or business owner and not just like a scammy person who's trying to take someone's money and run away with it. So it's really to just help you look like a real person when someone looks you up. And of course, if you have any samples of your work or if you're creating samples and you're practicing what you should, you can post it on this portfolio website. Now there are super inexpensive, cheap, or even free software services that you can use to get your website up quickly. There's platforms like Squarespace and Wix, which are 10 bucks a month or something pretty cheap around those lines. Or there's something I recently came across that is called CARD, C-A-R-R-D, where you can get a one page website up for free. So it's perfectly fine to start with something simple and easy. The main thing is that you have a website up so that if someone wants to look you up, they know that you're a real person, that you're not some fake or some person that's trying to scam them. So get this website up, the simple portfolio website. The main point is that you don't take weeks to do it. Get it up quickly in a few days max and just tell people who you are, what you do and who you serve. So list your niche up there and the type of writing service that you have. So for example, I might say I help B2B SaaS companies book more meetings and book more sales calls with cold emails or with LinkedIn messaging. So just tell people on your portfolio website who you help and how you help them with the writing service that you have. So step number six is to start signing up for freelancing platforms and professional writing platforms. Now the reason these platforms are so good is because you already have potential clients who are posting jobs looking for people with writing skills and offering writing services and they're looking to hire freelancers. So these are already people with intent. They are looking for people to hire who have certain specific writing skills. And let's just say that you're an email marketer, email copywriter, or you write social media content. You can go and search for those jobs and apply to those jobs on whatever platform that you're on. So some examples of some platforms that you might know about Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer.com. There's other writing specific ones like Copy Blogger, Contently, Skyward. I will link to all of these below. There's a list here I'm looking on the screen where it has all these freelancing platforms. I would recommend signing up to these freelancing platforms, creating a profile and starting to apply to jobs of people who are posting jobs in whatever your writing skill and whatever your writing service is. And this is the easiest way to get your first few clients, even if they're paying less, I would recommend taking these jobs so you can build up your portfolio, build up your skill set and experience and use that to land even bigger and bigger clients over time. Now, step number seven is to start contacting companies directly through cold messages. And let's just say that in the previous step, you've already signed up for freelancing platforms, you're applying to jobs on those platforms, you created your profile and you're looking for people who are hiring for your certain writing skill set and writing service, but you wanna move faster, you wanna increase your outreach, you have time on your hands and you wanna increase your chances of getting a client. But what you can do is start to reach out directly to companies. So building a prospect list and reaching out to them with a personalized message. Now the key here is to personalize your message. A couple of years ago, you used to be able to write a simple message and automate it and use a tool to just blast it out to as many people as possible. I do not recommend doing that anymore because everyone is doing it, everyone is using the same message. So it's important that you spend some time researching your prospects, learning more about how you can personalize your message, maybe picking out a snippet or a podcast episode or interview they're on and using that in your message to relate to them and to get their attention. Now if you want more information on how to write good cold emails and good cold messages that get responses, then I'm gonna link to a video that I have either above this or below here that he choose you exactly how to do that. The bottom line here is to send personalized messages, don't pitch from the start, think about how can you help them? How could I provide value to them so that they would want to reply back to me? And that might include writing a sample email for them or suggesting that you could do that for them to get their attention. So don't be afraid of offering value or offering some kind of free sample or free tester in order to get their attention, especially if you're just getting started and of course make sure that you are personalizing your message to the person that you're reaching out to. Now step eight is to create content and build relationships. Now everybody can send a cold message, right? Anyone can just pick up their Gmail account and send out a cold email. Anybody can do that. But content is what is gonna help you stand out, especially if you're publishing consistently, it's gonna help you stand out and build relationships and make your life a lot easier for getting clients and making more money and growing your business, your freelance writing business. So how do you create content and publish content, especially if you're a beginner? Well, what you wanna do is build in public. I've talked about this in a previous video, Digital Marketing Trends. I'll link to it somewhere so you can watch it. But also to be learning new things every day, right? Reading books, watching interviews, watching videos, right? Listening to people who are talking about, or who are in your industry, who are talking about topics that your audience cares about and sharing that in the form of how to content or value content or things I learned or mistakes that people are making in your niche. These are all types of content that you can share on a daily basis on any platform that you want. So LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, Clubhouse, Quora, Reddit, there are so many platforms, right? Twitter, I love Twitter. This year especially, I'm going hard on Twitter and I'm sharing all my content there. So pick a platform where your niche is hanging out. Learn every day, make it a habit to spend an hour or two learning new things every day and diving deeper into your niche and creating content and publishing and sharing content around that, right? Building in public and sharing your journey. And that's gonna help you build a relationship with your target market, with your niche and help you get clients a lot easier because when you are publishing content and people can see that, it's a lot easier to start a conversation and be like, hey so and so, I've been publishing content around email marketing for e-commerce companies. How can I help you? Is there anything I can help you with or anything that I can answer or dive deeper into for you? And if you can start a conversation like that, let's say that you are targeting e-commerce companies and you wanna get clients for email copywriting services and you are publishing content around email copywriting on a daily, weekly basis and you are adding people in your network who are e-commerce companies. If they're seeing this on a daily basis, they're a lot more likely to have a conversation with you than someone who is not posting any content and just sending out a cold email. Anyone can send a cold email, right? So creating content is more important than ever for building the relationship and lowering people's guards and letting them see what you're good at by publishing and building in public. So create content, build a relationship and make your life a whole lot easier and of course, make a lot more money when you're getting more clients. Now step number nine is not really a step, it's more of a way of life and a mentality and that is to think of yourself like a business owner and not a hobby, okay? So every day you should be putting in the work, you should be consistent and have a plan and every day you should be prospecting and applying to jobs and creating content and publishing content and learning new things and being consistent, right? You can't just do this for two days and then quit because nothing's happening. You need to be consistent over a long period of time if you want to build momentum and if you want this to actually work in the long run. So think of it like a business, treat it like a business even if you are still working a job and this isn't your full-time thing yet, treat this like an actual business. Be consistent, have a plan and put in the work every single day, put in the daily reps even if it's not a ton of work, make sure that you're consistent every day with prospecting, with learning more, with reaching out and connecting with people, with publishing content and sharing your ideas and sharing your insights. Treat this like a real business because eventually I'm hoping that it can be a real business for you. So if you're not consistent, you're not gonna see results, plain and simple. You can't just do this for two weeks and expect to make a million dollars. You have to be doing this over a longer period of time and be consistent and sharpen your skills. That is the only way that you're eventually gonna see success is if you're doing this on a daily basis and you're sticking with it. So think of this like a business, not just like a hobby. So there you have it, those are the nine steps. If you wanna build a freelance writing business in 2021 even if you're a complete beginner, those are the nine steps that you would take if you found value in this, you enjoy this, give me a like and make sure you subscribe if you are not subscribed already. Now what I'm also gonna do is if you're interested in email copywriting and you wanna learn how to write emails that sell and offer that as a writing service, I'm gonna link to my super fast sales email challenge below so you can check that out. It's $29, it's gonna teach you how to write emails that sell and also how to get clients for email copywriting and email marketing. If that interests you, link to that below. If not, no worries. Next week I'm gonna tell you how I grew my audience on Twitter and got over a hundred thousand impressions in less than 30 days from scratch from writing essays. So that's what we're talking about on the next Writing Wednesdays. I'll see you there, take care.