 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rossell here bringing you this video from my usual location the home office But a slightly different setup. Thanks to my dear friend Marcus James fascinating guy Someone I know in real life and a YouTube subscriber So it's a bit weird for me because usually the people in real I know in real life Aren't aware of my colorful internet existence and the two Groups never path as such and Marcus is the exception. He's someone I know both from real life and from the wacky Worldwide web So thanks Marcus for the tip Cloud green stuff next is this white space. We will get there. It's a slow iterative process and Okay, I want to talk today about I uploaded a video about a year ago and I took it down because I was a little bit shaky about is this really want it what I want to go out there and say and As time has marched on I'm more confident. I'm more emboldened that I want to say this I want to talk about content writing. I'm not sure how I'm gonna title this video I might say do not call yourself a content writer Why you why you don't want to call yourself a content writer being a content writer is a lazy career some permutation because I really do want to It's a strong opinion and I want to get it across and here I'm get here. I'm doing that So I want to talk about my career and only for three minutes So it's I don't know waffle on about me for this video But I wanted just I want to talk about my career so I can explain why I've come to this belief or conclusion So I'm 33 years old But once upon a time I was I was a young man full of ambition and I got into writing when I was in college I was actually studying law Because I don't know I think my family wanted me to have a respectable career, but I loved writing I'm a creative through and through and My initial plan when I was sort of doing law school in Ireland But not really very enamored by it was to become a writer I started writing for the local college newspaper Got obsessed with the writing lifestyle interviewing people going to gigs having a lot of fun with it Started my own news website which became sort of a This is back in the day when not everyone had a website or a blog now. It's every single person, but so it was a lot of fun I loved it and My plan is actually originally to go into journalism at some point it did a second degree in journalism came back to Ireland and took my first Real job I E not my little own ventures with a good friend of mine called Brendan Very good guy company called eCanvas or political technology and that was a marketing communications job for a really really small start up We were like four people and you know when you're at a four person start up And you're the marketing guy you do it everything so my job title was marketing communications manager and I did the PR and I did the writing and I did the Media monitoring and writing the sales materials and writing the support materials and helping out with the developer a little Great job loved it But I left the job to move to Israel and that was just a personal thing because I'm Jewish And it was a life dream to move to Israel So my career kind of took a little bit of a break while I transitioned countries I came to Israel and After the usual choppiness of the first year adjusting to a new language and culture Work environment and also was only one job under my belt. So not like super experienced I got another job doing more calm Also like that job at an industrial IOT company and then I started doing Getting before I got my first job here in Israel. I was taking on content writing projects because I was looking for work I came here with you know a small amount of money to cover my IKEA bill and that was kind of it So I had to like hit the ground running and start earning pretty quickly So I did that and I started picking up content writing work because I Figured I was actually looking for jobs at the time and companies kept approaching me saying do you want a freelance for us? So I was like, all right, let's do freelancing freelance content writing And that was my introduction to the world of content writing and since that time that was about 2015 Content has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and content writing has emerged as a very popular Career path within marketing and also as a very it's a very very easy thing to freelance, right? If you're a freelance writer these days, there's a high high likelihood You're doing content writing what used to be called brand journalism and everyone's forgotten that word But in my opinion brand journalism is almost a more accurate description because you know I always say what is content is the back of a cereal box content is So content isn't very descriptive so Content and why I so firstly that was 2015. We're in the year 2022 for the past seven years. I have been freelancing Working in-house marketing communications Twice here in Israel I have been remote a remote worker halftime contract. They've done a lot of different permutations and As I continue doing content writing There is the first year of young content writing and you know If you're whether you're freelancing or you're trying to make a full-time living out of this or doing it for a company You tend to take on whatever work comes your way. You do the kind of scrappy SEO keyword stuffing rubbishy content work that no one really wants for content mills And then you work your way up the food chain And that's how it was for me you increase your rates you get better clients you build up a portfolio and And There came a point when I left my Marketing communications job here in Israel because I had enough freelance work After starting it before the job I had enough freelance work then that I could leave the job to do it full-time and I did that for about a year and then I kind of began thinking this is very limiting very limited and very limiting Marketing communications as I said a lot of different aspects to it But let's broaden this back out now from my own particular context of my career experience Here's why I think content writing is not a good For that to be anyone's job title I would firstly recommend against that for that for anyone to say content writing is my career choice That's what I do for living those are all things I've been very very careful to not describe myself as I also have now tried to all at all times Avoid using the word freelance because I prefer self-employment. It's a business. It's not a little side venture for for me but content writing specifically denotes a very low-level skill and it grossly undersells Here's the crux of what I'm trying to the point I'm trying to get across here Describing oneself as a content writer Having a job title as a content writer in most cases unless it's a really really entry-level Limited job grossly undersells the value that writers bring to companies And there's a huge problem in the writing industry, which I'm not really involved in anymore But there's a huge problem of undervaluing right the thing about writing is that it's got a few things not going for us as A job or as a freelance career in brand journalism. Let's say firstly Barriers to entry are very low. There's no certification process. It's not licensed Secondly, there is a lot of people that can do it because it's easy to become a content writer It also means there's a lot of content writers out there and something I noticed when I've been doing this for, you know Three five years is companies don't always want to pay more for better. They just want someone who's barely competent so Here's what I I had there was there was a point in time and I remember the meeting distinctly I met a friend here who lives near me in Jerusalem. He's also a marketer and We met for you know coffee and to have a chat and to catch up and I asked him at one point, you know, would you he was telling me about the projects? He was working on and I was telling him about the projects I was working on He's a branding consultant and we were talking about the type of the quantity of money and you know for content writing you're probably talking about Four figure sums maybe to stretch and doing this project. They're paying me 400 bucks for this blog They're paying me $1,000 for this white paper And we were talking about the same industry talking about the technology industry We were talking about not the same clients, but very similar clients But there was an enormous disparity in the sums of money I was trying to run a business on by cobbling together $500 $500 $500 and the amount my friend was able to charge and That was kind of the eureka moments It was actually that and I also had a client that raised series B like 10 million and funding and they were trying to get me down By $100 on you know some writing deliverable a blog post So I was coming into this meeting with my friend frustrated saying he's older more experienced So I kind of looked to him as a mentor figure and I said look what's going on here? Look, we're doing similar work Similar clients You have more experience, but not vastly more experience, but you're charging, you know $10,000 retainers and I'm getting clients pushing back on $500 because they want to pay $400 What's going on here? It doesn't really make sense. So we had a great discussion and It really goes it really boils down to value and the way a lot of companies perceive writing Writing when you come in and position yourself as a writer. You're saying I can write competent English. You're reducing your Professional package and your acumen and your credibility to the level of really anyone that can write English Which is probably hundreds of millions of people in the world now What what is the higher level work that writers do? something another eureka moment you'll have if you haven't had this yet in your career when you go into Companies and you begin hiring freelancers and I've been also doing this for a while and you hire branding agencies and you hire Other types of agencies content agencies. You'll discover that a lot of the work they do is exactly what you're doing For as a writer and you'll start to see these invoices. I guarantee this will happen at At some point if it hasn't happened to you already you'll see the invoices and you'll have the same moment I had of you're seeing these people other marketers charging a multiple of what you can charge as a writer And you'll say hey, this isn't fair. So let me explain it comes back again to skill set the What is the skill of a writer? Now the best way to make money in writing in my experience anyway is to do something is to narrow Narrow yourself down from one of many to one of few and I know this sounds like not rocket science or not game-changing commentary But indulge me for just a few more minutes, right? It's a translation exercise So if you're dealing with very complicated clients in the world of let's start with B2B tech But that's too broad again. So let's go down to cyber security, right? If you know because I'm using this as an example because I happen to have done a bit of work in Was in the cyber sec space and it's well paid, right? So if you're doing work for a cyber security company, they're selling B2B and they want you to write meaty stuff Okay, when you get to that point you can have a conversation with the client and say Charge not exactly what you want, but charge decent money And the reason that you can get to that point as a writer without rebranding yourself and keeping the writer hat on is because you're you've now positioned yourself not just as a writer you're a subject matter expert and a writer so I would say writers there's no such thing really as a writer the only people who hire Writers are the type of clients and the type of companies type of clients You don't want to have and the type of companies you don't want to work for the only only people who hire writers or people who just need Grammatically coherent copy written and by the way, this is there's a lot of chatter at the moment now about artificial intelligence AI and This if you know there's discussion within writing communities for a couple of years now What effect are AI bots going to have on on freelance writing? Can we continue as a freelance writer when the bots get good? That's the concern the AI the AI bots and my answer if you want to hear it is It will be a good thing if that happens because the type of bots the type of work that the bots are going to the AI chat bots the AI Automated writing bots the type of work. They're going to make redundant is the type of soul destroying crushing keyword stuffing hapless work that Turns a lot of people off freelance writing for good reason because it's miserable and it's lowly paid and clients don't want to do it So yeah, that's how this was probably going to be go to the chat bots so it's going to be a good thing for writers because Writers are going to collectively wake up and realize at some point that if you are serious about your profession You have a lot more to offer than writers. So my sort of thinking would be well Do you know marketing strategy and are you leveraging that skill in your writing work without? Doing it right? It could be the case. Do you've experienced that? Do you have a do you have public relations experience? And are you leveraging that? Expertise in the writing work you do it can happen Do you have SEO experience and are you leveraging that work in the writing? So when you start looking at it like this the actual writing work is the last Little thing right you have this you have the subject matter experience You have the marketing strategy experience and you can write okay now You've got a whole package that's valuable, but if people only see the end product the writing That's why writers get I don't know you say screwed over But they get the small breadcrumbs in the marketing budget because the big the big chunks of the pie are going to the strategist the marketing strategist in the agency work What you'll commonly see is that writing is actually a subcontracted job, right? There's an agency above you charging a lot for strategy and Public relations perhaps and they'll fish out the writing projects to a writer So the best thing you can do as a writer is elevate yourself to the next level in the food chain and don't describe yourself as a writer because Just my experience you're going to be Under underpaid underappreciated and end up frustrated. What did I do after? going from marcom to freelance writing and thinking that was a right thing to do because it was Specializing and being very specific about the scope work I offer. I don't do anything except writing. I am a writer that's what I did and horrible mistake horrible move, but I don't regret it because it's all part of my journey and for the last year that I was Last year 2021 really I actually spent most of that year instead of doing writing projects doing larger projects more consulting projects with Content strategy plus writing as deliverable. So I did almost no pure writing work in 2021 and 2022. I'm doing a Job now for someone in the non-profits actor. That is a communications job Which with writing as a component but far from the whole job and it's firstly is much more enjoyable Secondly, the value that you bring is much clearer And it's great to not be operating that level of dealing with companies trying to minimize their spend save every penny Argue over nickel and dimes because they see what you do as very very small in the last piece In the in the process that's going to actually bring them revenue and therefore they want to pay less for it that's the reason you'll see companies raising ten million dollars series bees and Trying to haggle their rider down by ten dollars So I have to go now and think about how do I want it? What title do I want to use for this YouTube video that's going to get this thought across but I'm going to stop speaking here If you enjoyed this video, thank you for watching Thank you for spending the last 15 minutes with me here If you like the backdrop, let me know as well. I'm quite proud of it and yeah, lots of friends in freelance writing and I think that a lot of them could brand themselves slightly differently on think about their Value offering and USP slightly differently repackage their services and that I think is a way to get past Bum clients not just raising your rates because that's typically what writers think is the be all and end on solution Just charge more just charge more. You'll get rid of all the cheap people Those don't really work like that when there's still a lot of writers and you're still only explaining what you do according to the The mode through which you ultimately deliver value. All right guys gonna end here I'd appreciate any thoughts or comments do drop me a do drop me a comment on YouTube or wherever else I post this video Thank you guys for watching and if you want to get more videos from me on marketing Linux technology Israel many different topics feel free to hit the subscribe button and join me for the adventure here on YouTube Have a great day