Hey, it’s Paul. How’s your Tuesday so far?
Did you know Tuesday is named after Tiw, the Norse god of law and war?
Yep. And now you know!
But anyway, enough trivia -- let’s get to work!
In our last email I asked you to create a list of 3 to 5 passions, hobbies, or areas of interest that could potentially serve as your writing niche.
So you should now have an idea of some niches you might like to write for.
As you’re thinking about those niches, let me share something with you.
It’s from a Forbes article I read a couple days ago titled “I Worked With Elon Musk And Learned Intelligence Is Not The Key To Success”.
The article was written by Jim Cantrell, an entrepreneur who was part of the SpaceX founding team alongside Elon Musk.
In the article, Mr. Cantrell argues that intelligence is only a tiny part of what’s needed to be successful. (Great news for a dunderhead like me!)
Instead, Mr. Cantrell believes success is based on a convergence of three different things.
And these three things offer a simple formula for writing success:
1. Do something you’re passionate about. Without passion, work becomes a chore and you’ll struggle to be as successful as the people who truly love their work.
2. Do something you’re inherently good or talented at. What’s something that comes relatively easy to you? For example, maybe you’re a total boss at blog posts or an expert at writing emails.
It makes more sense for you to double down on your talents than it does for you to try and get good at something you’re not so good at.
3. Do something that creates value and serves a starving market. If you want to make money writing, you’ve got to write stuff people will pay money for. It seems so obvious, right?
And yet, I’ve seen plenty of writers who struggle because they’re simply not writing for a starving market.
So how do these three things relate to you starting a writing business?
Well, we’ve already talked about how choosing a writing niche based on your passions, hobbies, or areas of interest is a good idea.
The next two points bring us to an important part of our journey where we need to answer the question:
What Writing Services Will You Offer?
As you’re choosing a niche it pays (literally) to decide what kind of writing services you’ll offer to clients.
And as you’re making this decision, I encourage you to keep these two things in mind:
- What kinds of writing am I already good at?
- Is there a market demand for the kind of writing I’m good at?
Let’s dig into these two questions, shall we?
What Kinds Of Writing Are You Good At?
As a freelance copywriter you’ve got oodles of options when it comes to what you could potentially write.
These options include: emails, white papers, brochures, web pages, blog posts, long-form sales letters, video sales letter scripts, training manuals, etc. etc. etc.
This is just a small sampling of the writing options available to you.
But how do you choose?
Start with a self audit.
Think back on all the different things you wrote over the past 30 days. What did you really enjoy writing that you’re also good at writing?
“But Paul”, I hear you protest, “I don’t have any clients yet. So I didn’t write anything.”
Au contraire!
I can almost assure you, my friend, you did in fact write plenty of words … and those words could be the secret to starting a successful writing business.
To show you what I mean, let me share a personal example.
As some of you know, I lived in South Korea for seven years.
Seven years is a long time to be away from family and friends. So I found myself writing TONS of emails to stay in touch.
Family and friends told me these emails made them feel “like we’re in Korea with me”. And as I wrote more and more of these emails, I got better and better at it.
At the time, I would have NEVER thought anyone would pay me to write emails.
But flash forward to today, and about 80 percent of the writing clients pay me to write are emails.
In other words, I took a writing skill I’m good at (emails) and leveraged that into a full-time writing business.
So what about you?
Do you write a lot of emails? Blog posts? Facebook posts? Memos?
Make a list of what you’re already writing, and what you’re good at writing, and use that as a starting point for deciding on what writing services you’ll offer.
But as you’re thinking about what writing services you’ll offer, keep this question at the front of your mind:
What Are Clients Paying For Your Writing Services?
I cannot stress this enough:
If you want to make money writing, you’ve got to write stuff people are willing to pay for.
You’re writing business will struggle, and you’ll end up stressed and frustrated, if you fail to focus on writing services with a strong market demand.
So how do you determine if there’s a market demand for the kind of writing services you want to offer?
Simple:
First, choose a writing service you might potentially offer.
In this example, I’m going to use email marketing, which includes newsletters, broadcast emails, autoresponders, etc.
Next, take one of the potential writing niches you came up with based on your passions, hobbies, or areas of interest.
We’ll use the “brewing beer at home” example from the previous email.
What you’re going to do now is search Google to see what’s out there in this niche.
So if I go to Google and do a search on the term “brewing beer at home websites” I get a whole bunch of websites and blogs that pop up in the search results.
Now I’ll look around these websites and blogs to see if they’re currently using any kind of email marketing.
For example, do they have an email opt-in form on their homepage or in their blog posts?
In this case, it looks like quite a few of these websites and blogs do indeed have opt-in forms.
So I’m reasonably confident they use email marketing.
At this point, I’m going to mark “brewing beer at home” as a possible candidate for both the niche I’d like to write for, and the writing services I’d like to offer.
And then I’ll move on and go through the same research process with the remaining 3 to 5 niches I’m interested in.
So that’s your homework assignment:
Choose a writing niche and services based on passion, ability, and market demand.
As you’re doing this it might help to take a look at this document:
>> How Much Should I Charge? (PDF)
This document, created by The Writer's Digest, is from 2014 / 2015.
But it still gives you a decent idea of what clients will potentially pay for your writing services.
Obviously, setting fees is a BIG topic and we’ll go into it in more detail later. But for now, have a look at this document and use it as a general guide.
One final thing:
Like you, I’m trying to build a new writing business over the course of this 90 Day Writing Challenge.
And right now, I’m deciding on my niche and the writing services I’ll offer.
A few of you wrote to say you’d like an “over the shoulder” look at this process.
So that’s what we’ll focus on in the next email.
Until then…
Stay hungry and keep hustling!
Paul |
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