My Favorite Business Model for a Breakthrough Digital Business

It was the end of 2008. Something you might remember about that year — in October, the markets took a nasty fall and the global economy melted down.

I was the sole breadwinner for my family. The company I worked for was going through round after round of layoffs. The well-paying, secure job I’d had for five years looked likely to evaporate underneath me.

I had some savings, but not a ton. I had a mortgage and preschool for my three-year-old to pay for, as well as silly habits like buying groceries and having health insurance for my family.

I had been noodling around with business ideas, but I hadn’t gotten serious.

In the final few months of 2008, I had to get serious. Early in 2009, I took the leap. Here’s how I did it.

My year of living dangerously

In 2009, I felt a lot like a chicken trying to cross an eight-lane highway. It was theoretically possible, but there was a non-optimal level of stress involved.

The first thing I did was hang out my shingle as a freelance copywriter.

In a lot of ways, it was wonderful. I worked on fascinating projects that I cared about. I had lovely clients who actually listened to me. I was able to implement content strategy (which I learned, incidentally, mainly from Copyblogger), instead of sitting in endless meetings talking about it.

The main downside for me was the “you don’t kill, you don’t eat” freelance model, in which I was endlessly having to close new clients in order to keep my revenue going.

I know people who are masters of this. I was not one of them.

But it worked, more or less. I was supporting my family.

Growing the audience

One thing I’m so grateful for about that time: I had started growing my audience well before I needed clients. My original intent had been to find another job — I figured a blog would help me stand out with prospective employers.

As it turned out, I was functionally unemployable, but the blog was an amazing resource. It didn’t have zillions of readers or email subscribers — but it had enough.

(By the way, I launched an email list with a simple autoresponder before I even had that site up, which I recommend if you’re starting from scratch today. You want to capture every drop of attention you can.)

By the time I went out on my own, that blog had already started to pull a small audience together. It also connected me with like-minded people for projects, support, expertise, and eventually business partnerships.

The email list allowed me to put offers in front of potential customers — and discover what worked and what didn’t.

Finding stability

2009 was a year of hustle, and trying out all kinds of business models.

I tried freelancing, which sort of worked. I tried some content strategy consulting (we called it something else then), which also sort of worked. I put together a few simple information products with friends. I had some affiliate offers going.

My friend Gary, a business coach who talked me down from Mount Freakout about a thousand times that year, had been on my case to launch an online course with a membership component. I told him I’d get it done that year.

It was not pretty. Building the site was complicated, and I needed to hire someone to put together a variety of puzzle pieces that came from entirely different puzzles. It was fairly expensive to build. But I got it launched — in mid-December, since I’d promised Gary I’d do it that year. (Accountability is a useful thing.)

I called that site The Remarkable Marketing Blueprint, and it changed everything.

(There are still lovely and successful folks out there who identify themselves as “The Remarkables.” That makes me deeply happy.)

I launched the Blueprint at a pretty modest monthly fee. The checkout system was a PayPal nightmare, and I’m lucky it worked at all. The membership management tools were primitive, with lousy security. (Remind me to tell you about the week that Russian hackers kept putting porn into my member library. Fun times.)

That’s why I’m a bit emphatic about how much easier the Rainmaker Platform makes things. Trust me, the early tools were not so user-friendly.

But they got the job done. People bought the course. They benefited from the course.

After a short time, I relaunched the Blueprint (Gary was bugging me again) at a higher price. And that launch went even better.

I didn’t become a millionaire. But I had momentum and steady revenue. I was helping people with their problems, and in turn, I was making a reasonable living. I had a business that worked.

If you think that would be an amazing feeling … you’re absolutely right.

Come to the free webinar

Building an online course or membership community is a great business model — but it’s not a guaranteed home run. You can set yourself up for failure, or set yourself up for success.

Brian Clark’s original Teaching Sells was the course that taught me how to set the Blueprint up for success. How to structure it, how to make it marketable, how to position it, how to get the content created, how to launch it, and how to run it.

Teaching Sells isn’t on the market anymore, but Brian Clark still teaches folks how to build online courses — only these days, it’s a much more streamlined process.

Brian’s holding a free webinar on Wednesday, December 7, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time that will get you started.

Click the button below for easy (and free!) registration.

Free Webinar:
How to Develop an Irresistible Online Course People Will Line Up to Buy (and Then Actually Use)

I love this model for so many reasons.

• I won’t say it was easy, but it was doable.
• It supported me and my family when we really needed it.
• It provided steady, predictable revenue so I could catch my breath and actually plan something.
• It was conducive to my commitment to be a good parent and spouse as well as a capable businessperson.
• It connected me with wonderful customers, who became friends, and who went into the world and did amazing things.
• And it opened doors to other possibilities — the business stage that Brian Clark calls “Acceleration.”

It’s a model that works if you know how to do something really well. It’s also a model that works if you don’t have your own particular area of expertise, but you partner with someone who does. (You set the course up and run it; they provide the content and expert authority. These can be remarkably productive businesses.)

Even though we’ve been business partners for years now, I always make a point of listening to what Brian has to say about online courses. He always has new insights and points of clarity that I learn from.

So I’ll be there … and if you have any interest at all in this model, I recommend you check it out as well. You can just click the button to get registered.

Free Webinar:
How to Develop an Irresistible Online Course People Will Line Up to Buy (and Then Actually Use)

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Tim Ferriss on Finding and Focusing On What Truly Matters

Tim Ferris broke into popular consciousness nine years ago with the release of The 4-Hour Workweek. He’s gone on to create a series of books based on the “4-Hour” concept.

That’s in addition to a wildly popular blog, podcast, and even a TV show. But in economic terms, all of that pales in comparison to Tim’s success as an angel investor; he’s scored early positions in Uber, Twitter, Evernote, Shopify, and Facebook.

So, it was somewhat of a shock to hear that Tim is stepping away from new investments. And you’ll be more than a bit surprised to hear what he’s focusing on next, and more importantly … why.

Listen to this Episode Now

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How #1 Hit Podcast ‘Welcome to Night Vale’ Co-Creator Jeffrey Cranor Writes: Part Two

The co-creator and co-writer of the #1 international hit podcast Welcome to Night Vale and New York Times bestselling co-author of the novel of same name, Jeffrey Cranor, dropped by the show to talk about the importance of collaboration, deadlines, and bad writing.

In addition to producing and touring with the theater ensemble The New York Neo-Futurists, the playwright and author tours with live shows for the Night Vale Presents production banner, co-created with Joseph Fink.

Night Vale Presents now produces four podcasts that regularly sit at the top of the charts — including Within the Wires, also created by the author — and recently published two volumes of episode transcripts that include extras for fans of their original show.

Welcome to Night Vale has been described as “NPR meets The Twilight Zone,” a sci-fi broadcast about a small desert community where strange mythologies abound, and all conspiracy theory is potentially real.

If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews.

If you missed the first half, you can find it right here.

In Part Two of this file Jeffrey Cranor and I discuss:

• The power of productive procrastination
• How “making the familiar strange” produces great writing
• Why it’s really hard to be good all the time
• How the battle against expectation can surprise readers
• The art of great audiobooks as performance

Listen to this Episode Now

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Orbit Media’s Latest Survey of 1000 Bloggers

It’s time again for Andy Crestodina’s annual survey of 1000(+) bloggers. Take a listen and see how your site measures against the trends …

For the third year running, Andy Crestodina over at Orbit Media has run his Survey of 1000 Bloggers. We had a chance to chat about the most interesting findings … and talk about what a big project like this can mean for an organization like his (or maybe yours).

In this 30-minute episode, Andy and I talk about:

• The content practice that twice as many bloggers are doing this year: How does your process stack up?
• The emerging role of editors for professional content
• The most effective content formats (as seen by content creators)
• The two types of content that get the most links and shares, and how you can add both types to your mix
• What organizing a big project like Orbit’s survey could do for your business and your authority
• Figuring out how often to publish fresh content
• The power of a mighty LBOW

Listen to this Episode Now

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How to Write a High-Value Lesson Plan that Makes Your Course Easy to Sell

The demand for online education is exploding.

The global market for online courses is estimated around $107 billion. A mind-boggling figure, right?

Imagine stuffing one-dollar bills into a 53-foot truck. Depending on how crumpled your bills are, you’d need around 1,000 trucks stuffed up to the roof to transport those 107-billion dollar bills.

Would you like one of those trucks to deliver a heap of money to you?

Then you must create a lesson plan so valuable that students get excited about buying your online course.

A high-value lesson plan motivates people to both study and implement your advice. It makes students so happy about their newly acquired skills that they tell all of their friends about your course. That’s how your course starts selling like hot cakes.

Ready to get started?

Step #1: Carefully assess your students’ needs

When developing a course on your own platform, the most logical starting point often seems to be your expertise.

How can you teach your skills to others?

This common approach is asking for trouble. Big trouble.

Because it’s hard to create a valuable learning experience when you think from your own perspective rather than from the student’s perspective.

Think about your course buyers first:

• Who will buy your course?
• How will the course transform them?
• Why are they interested in this transformation?

Imagine, for instance, that you’re a social media expert, and you want to create a course to share your Twitter knowledge. You could answer the three questions above in widely different ways:

• You might want to target Twitter novices who are hoping to build a Twitter following because they want more traffic to their websites.
• You might want to target freelance writers who want to connect with publishers and influencers because they want to write for well-known publications that pay higher fees.
• You might want to target small business marketers who find Twitter a time suck; they want to promote their brands in less time.

Each of these audiences requires a different lesson plan because they have different learning objectives and different levels of experience.

So before you create your lesson plan, define who your audience is and how you’ll help them.

If you’re unsure, read questions in relevant forums and check out the comment sections of popular blogs. Or, even better, ask your own email subscribers what they’re struggling with and how you can help.

Once you understand your audience and the overall aim of your course, you can start creating your lesson plan — the foundation of a popular course.

Step #2: Assign learning objectives to each part of your course

Courses often fail to deliver a smooth learning experience because participants lose track of their objectives.

Students become demotivated when they don’t understand the value of each lesson. They don’t see how your information contributes to their goals. They might even forget why they’re taking your course.

To keep your participants motivated, break the overall objective of your course down into mini-targets for each lesson.

You can fill in the blanks of this magical sentence for each target:

Learn [how this works], so you can [achieve so-and-so].

Each module, each lesson, and each assignment in your course should have a purpose. When participants understand the value of the information and how they’ll benefit from it, they’re more likely to engage with your course and implement your advice.

And what’s more, your valuable lesson plan makes crafting a sales page a breeze, too.

You already know who’s going to buy your course and why (for the transformation). You’ve already listed features (what people learn) and benefits (why they care about learning the information you teach). So, your lesson plan is the ideal selling tool for your course.

But how do you define the purpose of each lesson? And how do you make sure all of the lessons help students achieve their overall goal — their transformation?

Step #3: Create simple, digestible lessons

Ever felt overwhelmed when taking a course?

Or perhaps you’ve studied a course diligently, but were left wondering: “Now, what?”

Ensuring your course meets or exceeds your buyer’s expectations is a tough job. You can’t leave any gaps, but you also can’t overwhelm students by inundating them with too much information.

To avoid any gaps in your lesson plan, start with listing the steps you take to complete a specific task.

Let’s look at an easy example first.

Imagine creating a mini-course for cycling enthusiasts about packing a bicycle for transportation on a plane. You can create this course by making notes of the steps you take when packing your bike.

In this case, it’s even easier to record a video of yourself and provide a running commentary. But when you’re teaching an abstract topic, like leadership or digital marketing skills, it’s more difficult.

For abstract topics, reverse-engineer your processes

As an expert, you often accomplish tasks effortlessly. You don’t think about how you create a presentation; you simply put the slides together. You don’t think about how to write an email or give a client a quote. You simply perform the tasks.

To break down your processes, start by asking yourself, “How did I arrive at this result?”

Imagine creating online training materials for senior managers. One skill you want to teach is conducting performance reviews that motivate staff members and make them more productive.

You can picture yourself going through the process:

• How do you prepare?
• How do you ask your team members to prepare?
• How do you conduct the performance review?
• What type of notes do you take?

You can mentally rehearse your latest performance reviews and break down the complicated parts. You can play back how you dealt with an underperforming team member. You can think about the questions you asked to help you understand what your team member was struggling with.

You’ll find that you often need to mix different types of digestible chunks, especially for complicated topics or advanced skills. For instance, in my Enchanting Business Blogging course:

• You learn how to write headlines, subheads, opening paragraphs, the main body text, and closing paragraphs — these are all different parts of a blog post
• You learn how to generate ideas, outline, write a first draft, and edit — these are all different stages of the blog writing process
• You also learn how to tell a mini-story, use metaphors, and include specific examples — these are all different writing techniques

You have to dig deep to distinguish different parts, chop up a process, and pinpoint techniques. You have to understand the essence of your topic and the foundation of your skills.

In the Da Vinci course from Sean D’Souza at Psychotactics, for instance, you can learn how to draw cartoons. But first, what’s the foundation of drawing? The course begins with drawing circles.

Now you’ve reverse-engineered your process. You’ve created a lesson plan that’s logical and enticing. Each lesson has a clear learning objective, and your valuable lesson plan is nearly ready.

Step #4: Motivate students to implement your advice

Consuming information in digestible chunks is not the same as learning.

To give your students real value and create raving fans, encourage students to implement your advice. At the end of each lesson, create an assignment for them.

For example, my guide for writing About pages, co-written with Julia Rymut, is a five-day mini-course.

Each day features new information plus an assignment so you can implement what you’ve learned:

• Learn how to order the key components of an About page to create an engaging flow. Review how your favorite websites communicate the essential components of an About page (analysis of other people’s work helps reinforce the lesson).
• Learn how to generate ideas for your About page. Complete a 23-point questionnaire so writing about yourself becomes a breeze.
• Learn specific editing tips for About pages. Edit your page to make your content credible, persuasive, and enjoyable.

Remember, a valuable lesson plan doesn’t simply share information. It inspires students to implement your advice by suggesting activities and assignments.

Step #5: Avoid the biggest pitfall in lesson creation

You’re an expert. You’re brimming with enthusiasm for your topic. You want to share your knowledge and teach your skills. You want to inspire people.

Your red-cheeked enthusiasm is both a huge advantage and an enormous potential pitfall.

While your teaching materials will likely reflect your enthusiasm and get students excited about your course, your enthusiasm may also make you prone to overwhelming your students.

Because you want to teach them everything. Each method. Each trick. Each example. Each exception. And you risk leaving your students gasping for air.

Sharing everything you know is not necessary. Go back to the objective of your course, and ask yourself, “What’s the minimum students need to learn to fulfill that objective?”

Then evaluate your lesson plan:

• Can you eliminate any learning material that’s not absolutely necessary? (Instead of scrapping lessons, consider turning them into bonus material.)
• Does each lesson have one, straightforward learning objective, or have you muddled your program by sneaking multiple objectives into one lesson? Try cutting lessons into smaller chunks.
• For each exercise or assignment, have you covered the relevant knowledge and skills?
• Do the learning objectives follow each other in a logical order?
• What could prevent students from implementing your advice? And how can you help overcome those hurdles?
• Have you warned students about common mistakes?
• Do the learning objectives match your overall promise?

Too much information makes students feel overwhelmed and leads to inaction. Not enough information leaves students confused and defeated. Good teachers inspire their students by giving exactly the right amount of information.

When running a test drive or beta version of your course, keep a close eye on the questions people ask.

Is important information missing? Are specific assignments stumbling blocks? Do students need a pep talk halfway through your course because they’re losing confidence? Or do you need to slow down and recap the lessons so far?

As a good teacher, do more than share information. Encourage. Motivate. Inspire.

Set the foundation for a thriving online training business

Some say that online learning may be more effective than the traditional model of classroom learning.

People can study at their own pace. They don’t waste time traveling and can save energy by studying from home. They can connect with like-minded people across the world.

But online learning only works if we, as providers, deliver a valuable learning experience.

Creating a valuable lesson plan can be tricky. I’m sure you’ve taken courses that left you confused, cross-eyed, and without hair. Or perhaps you gave up long before that. Defeated, you moved on to the next shiny course. Without making progress.

Your students deserve better than that.

So don’t simply share your knowledge. Create a course that teaches a real skill. Make your course so inspirational that people are begging you to create another course next.

Your valuable lesson plan is the solid foundation of a thriving training business.

Can you hear that truck honking?

The driver leans out of the window, a smile on his face. He’s waving at you, ready to deliver a heap of dollar bills.

Free Webinar: How to Develop an Irresistible Online Course People Will Line Up to Buy (and Then Actually Use)

• Are you currently planning or developing an online course and looking for a few key pieces of practical advice (from a proven expert) that will put you in a position to have a successful launch?
• Do you already have an online course that you’re looking to improve before your next launch?
• Or are you simply curious what this online course craze is all about?

If you answered “Yes” to any of the three questions above, then join Rainmaker Digital founder and CEO Brian Clark on Wednesday, December 7, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time for a free webinar.

By the end of the hour, you’ll have a much clearer understanding of how to develop an online course that your target audience needs … and that they will be compelled to pay for.

Learn More and Register for Free

Editor’s note: The original version of this post was published on August 18, 2015.

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Should You Still Start a Podcast? (Ask Yourself These 3 Questions)

As Showrunners, we understand that the act of creation and publishing brings about detractors — sometimes more aptly referred to as haters.

To thrive in this space, we need to wear our first (and subsequent) negative reviews as badges of honor. This is part of the game and an integral part of being a Showrunner.

But what happens when the medium itself begins to make its own waves? It seems podcasting, as a medium, has reached a point in its life when it is beginning to take it on the chin.

From small jokes to snide remarks, we are seeing the first wave of this beginning.

On this week’s episode, Jerod and Jonny discuss one of the more recent and more popular articles aimed at today’s Showrunner.

Immediately following a whirlwind book promotion of 40+ podcast interviews, author Ryan Holiday took some downtime to deride the very medium he used to drive book sales.

Ryan’s article titled Please, Please, For The Love of God: Do Not Start a Podcast, is the topic of discussion in this week’s episode — and it’s a fun one.

Luckily for everyone involved, Jerod and Jonny go beyond Ryan’s article and discuss the three questions you need to answer to decide for yourself if you should start a podcast:

• Do you have a desire to connect with an audience about a topic that is important to you?
• Will the content you share educate, entertain, or inspire the people in your audience?
• Can you commit to creating content consistently and reliably so that your audience has a chance to grow?

Listen to this Episode Now

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The Season One Recap of StudioPress FM

On this week’s episode, Brian and Lauren discuss their favorite moments and guests that have appeared on the show during Season One of StudioPress FM.

In this 25-minute episode Brian Gardner and Lauren Mancke discuss:

• Their favorite episodes of Season One
• The most downloaded shows
• Most memorable guests and topics
• What they’re looking forward to in Season Two

Listen to this Episode Now

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The #1 Reason You Get Writer’s Block (and How to Fix It for Good)

4 Surprising Ways You’ll Profit from Building an Online Course

I had no idea what I was getting myself into back in the fall of 2009.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I was feeling antsy.

I had been running my design and marketing business for almost two decades. Over almost twenty years, I had helped every kind of client with every kind of project. Truth be told: I was getting a little bored.

And boredom, as far as I’m concerned, is Enemy #1.

Up to that point, my business was strictly offline. I had a web presence, but it was a brochure site. You know, a “here’s what I do and here’s how to contact me” website with no content, no audience-building component, no connection whatsoever with the people who landed on its pages. Old school.

The thrill was gone from my current career. Something had to change. So I started searching.

And exactly one Google search later, I landed here on the pages of Copyblogger.

It just so happened that I stumbled onto these pages in the weeks leading up to the launch of one of the early versions of Teaching Sells, the online course that taught online course building. It’s the product that helped establish the company I now work for.

I signed up for Teaching Sells as soon as the doors opened. And I dug right into the materials. All five months’ worth!

As I watched the videos and did the worksheets, I filled a folder full of notes. I worked overtime to consume every lesson. I asked and answered questions in the forum. I attended Q&A sessions. I was all in.

But it’s what happened after taking the course that changed my career and my life.

Here’s what happened after I took the Teaching Sells course

I built my online presence from scratch after taking the Teaching Sells course. Everything — from my brand name, to my website, to my blog content, to my opt-in offer, to my first course — was born from what I learned in the course materials.

Once I knew my ultimate goal was to offer online education, I was able to reverse engineer my online presence to attract an audience of readers who would become my students.

It worked like a charm. My only complaint? I wished there was a more compact way to learn what I learned. And now there is (more on that below).

It turns out that teaching still sells, now more than ever. The online education market is growing. New technologies like simulation-based teaching, cognitive learning, augmented reality, and bot-based tutorials are engaging people of all age groups and interests.

Back when I first learned about how to create online education, there was a stigma surrounding learning this way, as if it “wasn’t the real deal.” How could web-based learning possibly replace the back-and-forth interaction of a classroom?

Now we’ve realized that we’re just scratching the surface of how computing power can augment and improve our educational experiences. The sky’s the limit.

Are you in? Because in today’s article, I want to share four not-so-obvious advantages of creating online courses. These are benefits I’ve experienced personally.

And they offer compelling reasons you might want to explore creating an online course in the near future.

1. You’ll discover that adult learners become loyal customers

When you empower someone with information that allows them to do something they’ve never done, or work more efficiently, or enjoy life more … they’ll never forget you.

It’s the ultimate top-of-mind awareness for your business and your brand.

Believe it or not, I still meet people who thank me for courses they took from me four, five, and six years ago. That’s remarkable!

Education has that effect — it can transform people’s lives. And people whose lives you transform become loyal, devoted customers.

2. You’ll develop your position (and that will help later)

Creating a course is hard work. If you want to do it right, you spend time laying the groundwork for your course with some fundamentals first:

• You find a market of “hungry learners”
• You develop a unique approach for your course
• You define a learner profile so you fully understand who you’re serving
• You identify the benefits of knowledge — how your learner will grow from what you’ll teach them
• You spell out learning objectives for your course

All this before creating a single lesson!

But here’s the thing — the time you spend defining your market, your position, and the knowledge you’ll convey will benefit you in so many ways. In a very sneaky way, you’ll be:

• Pinpointing a target market for your content and confirming demand
• Uniquely positioning your brand
• Understanding what motivates your ideal customer
• Creating selling points for your course
• Writing marketing copy you can use on sales pages and in emails

Doing the work of building your course will put you well ahead in your marketing efforts.

And working through the fundamentals will help you write better content that draws new people to your website and your offerings.

3. You’ll learn All The Things

A full-blown online course is not a Minimum Viable Product. Not even close.

The biggest mistake I made was to tackle putting together a fully functional online course as my first product.

(It’s embarrassing even to type this.)

But looking back, I have no regrets. Putting together a full-fledged online course forced me to learn All The Things. Things like:

• How to write effective content that attracts the right audience
• How to accept payments for online products
• How to position, launch, and generate ongoing sales for a digital product
• How to put my paid content behind a secure paywall
• How to allow members to communicate with each other and with me
• How to create, present, and host online video content
• How to build a community around my teaching

When I look at that list, it’s pretty daunting. Thinking about doing all these things may push you well beyond your comfort zone.

Learning to create a full-featured online course is like attending a digital content bootcamp.

The good news? After creating a full-blown online course, creating other types of digital content will seem easy. You’ll have an impressive skill set that will serve you well as you create, set up, and sell other online products.

4. You’ll know your topic better than ever before

Want to really master a topic? Teach it.

There’s nothing like codifying your expertise and teaching it to others to cement certain concepts in your own mind.

You research information, synthesize what you’ve learned, and then express it in your own words. This process builds your understanding and deepens your grasp of your topic.

One word of caution: sometimes teaching a topic can lead to knowing so much about it you begin to lose touch with what beginners need to know.

This is the dreaded “curse of knowledge,” and it separates you from your newbie students. Stay in touch with your audience, understand their needs — no matter where they are in relation to your topic — and focus on how you can help them.

Doing this will help you create a better course and allow you to create better offers in the future, too.

A new (updated) course about building online courses

I’m happy to share that Teaching Sells, the course I took that set my career on a brand-new path, has evolved into something even better.

It’s leaner, faster to consume, and has the most up-to-date information about what works in online education right now.

And it’s taught by the originator of Teaching Sells, our CEO Brian Clark. Brian poured what was best about Teaching Sells into this new course and added a healthy dose of what he’s learned since his early days in the online education market.

The course, Build Your Online Education Business the Smarter Way, will soon be available as a standalone product.

To learn more about the online education market, I urge you to sign up and attend Brian’s upcoming free webinar that’s happening on Wednesday, December 7, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Click the button below for easy (and free!) registration.

Free Webinar:
How to Develop an Irresistible Online Course People Will Line Up to Buy (and Then Actually Use)

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How to Set Up Your Home Office So You Can Be a More Productive Freelance Copywriter

Making Your Content as Tasty as Pie

Hey there — welcome back to the Copyblogger Weekly!

It’s Thanksgiving week in the U.S., and we want to celebrate by stuffing ourselves until we’re unable to speak or move.

No, wait, we want to celebrate by helping you make your content delicious.

On Monday, Stefanie Flaxman showed us how to weave structure and intrigue together for irresistible results. On The Showrunner, Jerod Morris and Jonny Nastor explore how to cook up an appealing brand for your podcast.

And on Tuesday, Beth Hayden shared a crucial copywriting element that every persuasive page needs. Hint: it’s what’s in the pudding.

If you’re in the U.S., enjoy your holiday! And if you aren’t, you can catch your American friends on social media, where we’ll all be hiding out from our extended families and pretending we didn’t eat that third piece of pie.

Happy holiday to those who celebrate it, and I’ll catch you next week!

— Sonia Simone
Chief Content Officer, Rainmaker Digital

Catch up on this week’s content

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2 Key Factors that Distinguish Satisfying Content from Forgettable Ideas

by Stefanie Flaxman

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Prove It! 6 Persuasive Techniques for Making the Sale

by Beth Hayden

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How to Stay Creative in a Distracted World

by Brian Gardner & Lauren Mancke

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The Right Way to Approach Branding Your Podcast

by Jerod Morris & Jon Nastor

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How Becoming a Digital Entrepreneur Helped Jarmar Dupas Get His Life Right

by Brian Clark & Jerod Morris

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How #1 Hit Podcast ‘Welcome to Night Vale’ Co-Creator Jeffrey Cranor Writes: Part One

by Kelton Reid

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Gary Vaynerchuk on Playing the Long Game

by Brian Clark

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Behind the Scenes with Andy Traub and Pamela Wilson

Available now

Andy Traub has a versatile, flexible approach to online business that has taken him in some fascinating directions. As the owner of Take Permission and host of the Take Permission podcast, Andy combines a conversational tone, piercing questions, and friendly encouragement to build an audience that tunes in to his thoughts. Join us as we go Behind the Scenes in Andy’s online business.

Join Authority to attend this session

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Gary Vaynerchuk on Playing the Long Game

Back in 2006, Gary Vaynerchuk started a daily video show that turned wine criticism on its head. More importantly, it took his family wine business from $3 million-a-year to a $60 million-a-year ecommerce juggernaut.

From there, Gary did something that surprised a lot of people, including me. He started a digital marketing agency called VaynerMedia.

Wait … what? Why would someone who could move that level of product want to build a service business? Isn’t that going backwards?

Not so fast. As you’ll hear in this candid interview, Gary’s plan involves what has now become familiar to Unemployable listeners — doing this thing now in order to set the stage for bigger and better things down the road.

In other words, true entrepreneurs are always playing the long game. Listen in for amazing insights from one of the most outspoken advocates for the unemployable.

Listen to this Episode Now

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How #1 Hit Podcast ‘Welcome to Night Vale’ Co-Creator Jeffrey Cranor Writes: Part One

The co-creator and co-writer of the #1 international hit podcast Welcome to Night Vale and New York Times bestselling co-author of the novel of same name, Jeffrey Cranor, dropped by the show to talk about the importance of collaboration, deadlines, and bad writing.

In addition to producing and touring with the theater ensemble The New York Neo-Futurists, the playwright and author tours with live shows for the Night Vale Presents production banner, co-created with Joseph Fink.

Night Vale Presents now produces four podcasts that regularly sit at the top of the charts — including Within the Wires, also created by the author — and recently published two volumes of episode transcripts that include extras for fans of their original show.

Welcome to Night Vale has been described as “NPR meets The Twilight Zone,” a sci-fi broadcast about a small desert community where strange mythologies abound, and all conspiracy theory is potentially real.

If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews.

In Part One of this file Jeffrey Cranor and I discuss:

• Why writing collaboratively can help you become less “precious” about your work
• How a hit podcast producer and novelist divides his time
• An author’s comforts in coffee and sports talk radio
• Why the law of averages says you won’t always find the words
• The importance of building a platform and setting a deadline for publishing

Listen to this Episode Now

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Survey Says? 735 Copywriters Share How Much Money They Earn

… and the results may surprise you.

But before we get to the results, a little context is needed.

On October 30, 2014, we launched the Copy Hackers Copywriting Survey (using our fave survey product, Typeform) and collected responses until January 16, 2015.

No monetary (or equivalent) incentive was offered for people to complete the survey.

So why, when the survey closed in January 2015, has it taken us 22 months for us to share the data?

Let’s just say we had some data analysis issues.

We hired 2 people to help us pull the data together… and twice we ended up with a mess.

As a result, we put the survey on a shelf for a later date.

Until now…

Freelance Copywriter Month here on Copy Hackers has given us the motivation to clean up the survey analysis and get the results in front of you. We’ve had them analyzed, reviewed, turned inside out. Even though the results are late in coming, they are incredibly telling – and hopefully very useful to you, Dear Copywriters.

We had a 40% completion rate and the average time to complete the survey was 7 minutes 26 seconds.

People who responded to open-ended questions with nonsense were removed from the dataset. (Luckily we didn’t see too much of this behavior, probably due to the length of the survey.)

And one more thing to note…

The numbering system I’ve used in this post does NOT represent the order of questions in the survey. The numbers are here for you to more easily reference the charts, should you wish to comment on them at the end of the post. We hope you will! (And don’t forget to take the 2016 freelance copywriter survey.)

The Story about Copywriter Salaries

When it comes to what in-house and freelance copywriters make, what’s the story? Are you charging what others are? Should you switch from freelancing to in-house copywriting or vice versa? Here’s the summary of what we found…

Perhaps the most interesting takeaway is the difference in average annual income between freelance copywriters and in-house copywriters. The majority of freelancers and in-house copywriters make less than $50,000 a year on average, and a small percentage of them (10%) make more than $100,000. But while nearly 40% of in-house copywriters earn “middle ground” income of $50K to $99K per year, only half that number of freelancers make $50K to $99K per year. Essentially, you can be broke or rich as a freelancer – if you want to earn a middle-class living, in-house seems to be the better choice.

44% of freelancers have absolutely no interest in going in-house. (Tweet this)

The #1 reason freelance copywriters are freelance is “flexibility in my schedule.” (Tweet this)

The #1 reason in-house copywriters are in-house is “predictable pay.” (Tweet this)

Most copywriters are satisfied with their income. (Tweet this)

The vast majority of copywriters see a bright future for the practice of copywriting. (Tweet this)

Specifically Regarding In-House Copywriter Income…

The majority of in-house copywriters get 2 weeks’ vacation – and nearly 40% get 4 weeks or more. (Tweet this)

The majority of in-house copywriters earn less than $50,000 a year. (Tweet this)

A healthy number (38%) of in-house copywriters earn between $50,000 and $99,000 a year. (Tweet this)

Nearly 10% of in-house copywriters earn $100,000 or more a year. (Tweet this)

Specifically Regarding Freelance Copywriter Income…

If you charge between $50 and $99 per hour, you’re in good company – that’s the average. (Tweet this)

If you charge less than $1000 per project, you’re like most (61%) freelance copywriters. (Tweet this)

The majority of freelance copywriters earn less than $50,000 a year. (Tweet this)

Few freelance copywriters (21%) earn between $50,000 and $99,000. (Tweet this)

More than 10% of freelance copywriters earn $100,000 or more a year. (Tweet this)

Other Quick Facts

• Most copywriters focus on marketing copy or content (tweet this)
• The most common copy jobs are writing web copy, emails and blog posts (tweet this)
• The #1 way freelance copywriters find clients is from referrals (tweet this)
• Most freelance copywriters charge by the project, though about a third charge by the hour (tweet this)

Nearly 70% of respondents had fewer than 5 years’ experience at the time of the survey. Approx 42% of respondents are in-house copywriters, and 58% are freelance copywriters.

SECTION 1: Demographics

So, who took the survey? Overall, we saw more male copywriters submit the survey than female copywriters, with the vast majority of respondents in their late 20s and early 30s. More than half of the respondents were American. And most hold a bachelor’s degree, with 25% holding a graduate degree.

Q1: GENDER (n=735)

Q2: AGE (n=735; median=31-35)

Q3: EDUCATION (n=735)

We had a fairly well-educated bunch respond to the survey.

Q4: COUNTRY OF RESIDENCE (n=735)

These numbers are in line with the locations of people who regularly read Copy Hackers content.

• United States: 50.34%
• United Kingdom: 12.84%
• Canada: 9.12%
• India: 3.60%
• Australia: 3.49%
• Other (41 countries represented): 20.61%

SECTION 2: Copywriting experience

Q5: Which of the following are your areas of expertise? (n=735)

A decent balance here. Not surprisingly, marketing copy and content strategy lead the pack.

Q6: What types of copy do you regularly write? (n=735)

This is a more tactical view of our respondents’ experience.

Q7: How many years of copywriting experience do you have? (n=735; median=3-5 years)

Q8: Are you an in-house or freelance copywriter? (n=735)

SECTION 3: In-house copywriters

Only people who selected the middle 2 responses above (Q8) saw the following 5 questions.

Q9: Have you always worked as an in-house copywriter? (n=298)

Q10: What are your top personal motivations for being an in-house copywriter? (n=298)

Q11: What’s your current annual salary, not including bonus? (US dollar equivalent) (n=298; median=Less than $50,000)

Salaries for in-house copywriters improved year-over-year (i.e., there were fewer people in the lowest compensation tier this year, shown in Q11, over last year, shown in Q12).

Q12: What was your annual salary last year, not including bonus? (US dollar equivalent) (n=298; median=Less than $50,000)

Q13: How many weeks of vacation do you receive per year? (n=298; mean=3.39; median=3 weeks)

SECTION 4: Freelance copywriters

Only freelance copywriters (shown in Q8) saw the following 12 questions.

Q14: Have you always worked as a freelance copywriter? (n=437)

According to the following chart, if you’re currently freelancing, there’s a high likelihood that you didn’t start out that way.

Q15: What are your top personal motivations for freelancing? (n=437)

Interesting that 1 of the top responses from in-house copywriters about their motivations (Q10) was “Predictable work schedule”. Freelancers feel strongly about choosing what they work on, with whom, and when.

Q16: How do you typically find new clients? (n=437)

Q17: What’s your #1 source of new clients? (n=437)

Referrals FTW.

Q18: Do you typically charge clients an hourly rate or by project? (n=437)

We’d love to see this gap widen over time…

SECTION 4a: Freelancers who charge hourly

Q19: What’s your hourly rate? (US dollar equivalent) (n=138; median=$50-$99)

Hourly rates have increased nicely year-over-year based on the next 2 charts. Hallelujah.

Q20: What was your hourly rate this time last year? (US dollar equivalent) (n=138; median=$50-$99)

SECTION 4b: Freelancers who charge by the project

Q21: What is your average project size? (n=299; median $501-$1,000)

SECTION 4c: Total income for freelancers

Q22: What is your total estimated income from copywriting in 2014? (US dollar equivalent) (n=437; median=Less than $50,000)

The year-over-year earnings story is consistent… everyone is moving in the right direction!

Q23: What was your total income from copywriting in 2013? (US dollar equivalent) (n=437; median=Less than $50,000)

Q24: In the past year, how has the demand for your services changed? (n=437)

Q25: How likely are you to leave freelancing to work in house (in the next 12 months)? (n=437; mean=2.35)

The end points for the scale on this question were 0=”Not at all likely” and 10=”Extremely likely”.

While a good number of respondents are on the fence, the large majority will be freelancing for at least another year.

SECTION 5: Job satisfaction (in-house and freelance copywriters)

Q26: How satisfied are you with the type of work you do? (n=735; mean=6.74)

The end points for the scale on this question were 0=”Not at all satisfied” and 10=”Extremely satisfied”.

Lots of room for improvement here, with a “7” dominating the scale.

Q27: How important to you is having the opportunity to learn new things? (n=735; mean=8.33)

The end points for the scale on this question were 0=”Not at all important” and 10=”Extremely important”.

Q28: How important to you is having a low-stress environment? (n=735; mean=7.10)

The end points for the scale on this question were 0=”Not at all important” and 10=”Extremely important”.

Some respondents thrive on a little stress.

Q29: How satisfied are you with your current compensation? (n=735; mean=5.54)

The end points for the scale on this question were 0=”Not at all satisfied” and 10=”Extremely satisfied”.

There’s some work to be done here! (And hopefully Copy Hackers can help.)

Q30: How do you feel about the future of copywriting in general? (n=735; mean=7.71)

The end points for the scale on this question were 0=”Dark days ahead” and 10=”Future is very bright”.

We couldn’t agree more.

Any surprises for you?

The Copy Hackers team would love to to see those hourly rates, project fees, and annual incomes grow.

So to keep a finger on the pulse of freelance rates and incomes, we’re going to run a similar survey every 2 years.

And given that the data above are based on our 2014 survey, we need to start collecting data about 2016 rates and incomes right now!

Will you contribute to the Copy Hackers 2016 Freelance Copywriting Survey? We’ll leave the survey open until December 31st, 2016 and then start crunching numbers right away. (NOTE: The 2016 survey is tailored to freelance copywriters only.)

There won’t be a 22-month delay in sharing the results, either. Look for a follow-up post to this one in mid February 2017.

If you respond to the survey, we’ll share the results with you directly via email in late January.

We hope you’ll participate!

~Lance

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