It was 2019, and I'd just bought my first copywriting course.

A complete copywriting noob, I jumped on the first freelancing platform I could find and looked at what other people were doing.

It seemed like charging per word was the right thing to do.

Little did I know, this would become a nightmare.

In fact, charging per word has to be the worst way to make an income as a copywriter.

You build bad writing habits.

You attract low quality clients.

And you don't get to apply real copywriting skills.

Within months I was tired of cheap clients who cared about word count than how much they actually showed.

I changed my pricing strategy to charge per hour.

Initially, this worked well.

I was attracting higher quality clients and enjoying the work I was doing.

However, there was one major setback:

I was limited in how much I could earn.

There are only so many hours in a day.

Which meant that no matter how hard I worked, my income was always capped.

I knew there had to be another way.

I started reinvesting my income into books and coaching and found an offer that finally worked for me.

A hybrid retainer offer.

This worked well for 2 reasons.

Firstly, it meant I was no longer capped based on hours.

Secondly, it appealed to prospects as instead of simply managing one area of their copywriting I'd take care of everything.

This allowed me to charge based on the value I was bringing to the business rather than a metric such as word count or time.

And to this day, it remains the best pricing strategy you can use when you're first getting started.

So how can you apply this to your own offer?

1) Get rid of any clients that pay per word

Start by offering a retainer.

If they don't agree look to replace them as soon as possible.

The sooner you do the sooner you'll find better clients.

2) Stop charging per hour

Unless you're charging a one off consulting fee avoid charging per hour whenever possible.

This limits your earning potential and doesn't reflect how much value you're actually offering.

3) Build your own custom hybrid offer

This is how you're going to scale your business.

"I will write XYZ a month for $XXXX a month."

Doing this will let you quickly build up a good client base and increase your income.

The more results you've got, the more you can charge.

This is the current structure I use for my business, and it's by far the most profitable.

You can also ask for a % revenue share on top of your retainer if you have a good relationship with your client.

So here's your to-do list:

• Create a new offer

• Replace clients that pay per word/ hour

Make this a priority and you could have an entirely new business going into October.

Have a great week,

Copy "Never Charge Per Word" Maverick