The Fast Way To Money: Writing As a Service (Sales & Marketing)
Enough with slow growth.
The fastest way to money isn’t through building a side hustle that takes years to grow.
That’s what we want to do because it’s cool and it’s passive, and it’d be great if we could sip Margaritas on the beach while money just took care of itself.
Plus, we’ve been told it’s so easy…
Just be you.
Just write every day.
Blah blah blah.
Let me turn off that professional porn and slap you with the truth: making money as a creator takes a lot of time.
Years.
Yes, even if you buy the courses of the freakin Dalai Lama’s of the online world.
Yes, even if you invest in cool software tools and social media ads.
If you want to make at least $50K per year (which you should for a normal life), you’re looking at 2 years minimum and that’s if you do everything right and hang a horseshoe on your door.
But what if you want to become a solopreneur now?
What if you want to quit your job now?
What if you need the money now? Like, next week, ideally.
Well, if that’s the case, stop waiting around for passive income and serve, solve and scale as a service provider.
Money follows value, and writing as a service is the fastest way to deliver high value directly to clients.
The Writing Magic Webinar is happening tomorrow! Learn from Substack bestsellers & publisher authors David Mcllroy & Veronica Llorca-Smith and get your questions answered. Supporters will find the link below.
In this issue of Smarter Solopreneurs:
The potential of writing as a service.
What kind of service to offer.
How to identify your ideal clients.
Where to find your ideal clients. (for paid subscribers)
How to get your ideal clients to work with you. (for paid subscribers)
How to run a service business without burning out. (for paid subscribers)
The potential of writing as a service.
Selling knowledge works.
Selling entertainment works.
But selling “I’ll do it for you/with you and you’ll get great results…” Nothing works better than that.
We’re lazy by nature. We like saving energy. Anytime we can get someone to do something for us, it’s a YES!
Service businesses are the easiest to start. Start one now and you could start earning next week.
How much exactly?
Nicholas Cole has built a multi-million-dollar service empire by offering ghostwriting to founders.
Ayodeji Awosika is coaching his students on adding an extra $5-$10K to their monthly income by creating an irresistible service offer.
Georgia Austin is a top freelance writer on Fiverr and one of the winners of their million-dollar award (an award that Fiverr sends sellers who’ve earned $1 million on the platform.)
The potential of a service business is huge and the best part? You can literally start it right now with the skills you already have.
And you don’t need to make millions right off the bat. Let’s aim for those $4K per month, which is a great solopreneurship income.
And I promise, you can get it!
Let’s see how.
What kind of service to offer?
If you offer just “writing” or “writing articles”, you become a commodity. ChatGPT could replace you. Why pay you anything, let alone a lot?
Instead, consider what people consider valuable when it comes to writing.
Based on my experience working with over 2200 clients, big and small, here’s what most founders / marketing managers consider valuable:
Writing e-mails: promotional, newsletters, freebies and more.
Writing website copy, especially SEO optimized & customer-focused.
Writing direct response copy (also known as sales copy): landing pages, sales letters, ads and more.
Ghostwriting: writing on LinkedIn, Twitter, company blogs and more.
To make your writing business both easier and more profitable, I recommend you focus on one of these and become an expert in it in the next week. (Yes, you can.)
If you want to write e-mails, you need to understand e-mail marketing tools and terms like open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, etc.
If you want to do ghostwriting on a specific platform, you better know that platform inside and out.
If you want to do sales copy, learn copywriting.
The best thing to do? Come up with an ongoing service where you can get paid month after month.
This is easier with e-mail and ghostwriting, and more difficult with promotional content and website copy — but it’s doable with everything.
If you're a paid subscriber, you have DM coaching with me, so if you struggle with this, message me and we’ll figure it out. ;)
How to identify your ideal clients.
The easiest way to start getting clients fast with your new offer is to identify an industry you want to work for.
Ideally, it’s an industry:
You know
You keep learning about
You believe you can solve a problem for
For example, when I do cold outreach, I focus on businesses in the creator economy. I know creators — their ideal audience — which means I can write for them.
Regardless of how you’ll go about finding clients (and we’ll discuss a few ways below) focusing on one industry will make it much easier to reach the right people and to sell to them.