A lot of people have found that skills they may have previously sat on could be a lot more valuable to their potential careers than expected, especially post-lockdown, when many of us had to re-consider our livelihoods. One such career is that in writing. If you have a knack for writing and have already started making a little money from it on the side, you might be wondering how to turn it into a real career. Here are few tips on how to do it by copywriting.
Hurry up and wait
The first thing that you need to do is to get to know the market as best as you can. Know the different kinds of copywriting careers, from freelancers to internal copywriters, and which you’re most likely to able to fit into given the opportunities around you. There are plenty of guides from experienced hands like Jacob McMillen to help you get started and learn how to find your first clients. Don’t be too demoralized if you’re not making bank immediately. It can take a while for your methods of finding and converting clients to take a while to become well-oiled enough to start providing regular work, and you’re not going to be able to charge a huge amount for your services initially.
Start selling yourself not just your services
If you find that you love copywriting enough to do it full time, then you’re going to want to continue building on the successes that you earn. A lot of copywriters spend too much time doing anonymous work that they get no credit for and it doesn’t help them advance their career in any direction. If you look at some of the most successful copywriters out there like Jason Capital, their journey shows that they didn’t just sell their copywriting services. Your experience and the various expertise niches that you build are also going to help you grow the value of your services and how much you can reliably charge your clients. Build your own website, work on a portfolio, and make efforts to get your name picked up by writing for online publications.
Keep working on new copywriting skills
You might already be a decent, good, or even fantastic writer. However, making the jump to copywriting means being able to apply a few new standards and skills to it. You might need to learn the basics of writing amazing webpage copy, or press release copy, or marketing copy, or other kinds. Similarly, rather than trying to hone down on one niche too soon, you should play the field. You are going to find that there are some topics that just click with you much better than others so there’s no point closing yourself off from them just because you already have a single niche.
Be Willing to Go Beyond Copywriting
Yes, 100% you read that right! It honestly never hurts to go beyond copywriting. Actually, most copywriters do that at some point in their careers. Some will turn into editors, others will become script writers (like for YouTubers), and some will go for blogging, journalism, and even writing their own books! Yes, really, some even become authors!
While yes, you will need to learn how to promote your book if that’s the route you’d prefer to go into, it’s something that you need to have enough patience to do. Seriously, just like with any writing career, you can’t just write something and expect to get loads of money and loads of opportunities. It all takes a lot of time. However, copywriting is a real career, and all of these other routes are real careers, too.
There are no guarantees you can make quite as much money as some of the top earners in copywriting. However, there is plenty of potential to turn it into a full-time career and to make real money from it. Hopefully, the tips above help you see that.
