Reckon being a freelance copywriter is all about sitting in front of daytime TV in your PJs with a laptop and a round of buttery toast? Well, you’re right about the buttery toast. But you can scrap everything else. That is if you want to be a successful freelance copywriter.
Becoming a freelance copywriter is dead easy
Good news. Becoming a freelance copywriter is dead easy. You can do it right now. You ready? Here are the basic steps.
1) Call yourself a freelance copywriter.
2) Congratulations. You’re now a freelance copywriter.
Of course, a website can help. But you can get that free on sites like Wix.
Truth is, to be successful as a freelance copywriter, you’re going to need to bring in some work. Even better, lots of repeat business.
Firstly, let’s look at why you’d want to be a freelance copywriter
1) Check that first syllable. Free. Who wouldn’t want to be free? Free from the daily commute, the office politics, the flame-throwing boss, the passive-aggressive comments about nicking stuff from the communal fridge, and the god-awful Christmas party?
2) You can replace all that with a pretty relaxed commute. Your only holdup is going to be if your child has left some plastic toy on the stairs.
3) You can choose your working hours. Hey, play golf during the week when the links are quiet. So long as you hit your deadlines, who’s complaining? Work at night if that’s what pickles your penguin.
4) You can be around your kids. If you haven’t got any, get some. They’re fun. Pick them up from school. Help with their homework. Work when they’ve gone to bed.
5) You can get a dog and not feel guilty about leaving them on their own.
6) You don’t need qualifications. Just a laptop, a printer and a good level of English.
7) Work in-house as a copywriter and you’ll be stuck within one sector, writing about semiconductors or virtual private networks until your ears bleed. As a freelance copywriter, the variety will wow you. You could be writing about holiday homes in the morning and male escorts in the afternoon.
8) Work where you like. Yes, you can work in front of the TV, but I don’t recommend it. Much better are a converted bedroom, a bespoke office (here’s mine pictured below; yes, I play tennis), or a coffee shop. I don’t recommend the beach. Sand and intricate electronic equipment make poor bedfellows.
9) Income: you can far outstrip any money you could make on PAYE.
Why you wouldn’t want to be a freelance copywriter
Okay, okay. I’m a convert to freelancing. But in the interests of balance, here’s why you might not want to become a freelance copywriter.
1) Income can go up and down like OTIS the elevator. The key is to set aside enough money to live on for at least two months. Excuse my laughter (as if I’ve ever done this).
2) You can get lonely. Personally, I’m more than happy with my own company. But if you’re a sociable type, you might want to look at networking or meeting up with peers at events like #copywritersunite
3) Criticism can be harder to take. Any harsh words about your work can seem more personal, since there’s only you responsible for it. Do everything you can for your clients. Build in all the amends they want to their copy. If even that’s not enough, then just accept the client is a fool. It happens.
4) You have to be your own marketing department, proofreader, IT department, procurement manager, admin manager and even office cleaner. Learn to multitask. If you can’t, outsource. For the small amount of help you need, it’ll be surprisingly cheap.
5) You don’t get paid leave. This is a double-whammy. You’ll not only have to pay for that two-week jaunt to the Algarve but you won’t be able to earn money while you’re there. Unless you’re a masochist.
6) You’re responsible for your own self-assessment tax and VAT. Yep, you’ll need to set aside around 22% of your income to pay your tax twice a year (31 January and 31 July). Personally, I appoint an accountant and forget about it. But you will need to keep a record of all your business-related outgoings.
If you’re mega-successful, you’ll also need to pay VAT (quarterly). As I write, the VAT threshold for 2019/20 is £85,000. Note that you’ll need to exceed this just once in any rolling 12-month period to be eligible.
7) Some clients don’t pay. No, they don’t. Get yourself a debt-collection agency. Then write in a 50% non-refundable up-front fee into your Ts and Cs.
What kind of work do freelance copywriters do?
Once upon a time, being a freelance copywriter meant you were an ad man (or woman). The type made famous in Mad Men.
Then the internet happened and suddenly everyone was a copywriter. The world needed people to make that writing palatable and persuasive.
So today, as a freelance copywriter, you might find yourself working on:
1) Digital work. Websites, landing pages, SEO, email shots.
2) Print material. Yes, some businesses still need brochures and do mailshots. You still get multi-coloured junk through your letterbox every day, right?
3) Blog posts. Businesses need blog posts to convince Google their site is still open for business, to show their authority on their subject matter and to act as a repository for lovely keywords that’ll help bring them business.
4) Print ads, billboards etc. This is the world of the ad agency. It’s probably the most lucrative end of the market when writing for household-name brands.
5) Emails. These days, there’s something called the Most Wanted Action. This is the action you want your visitors to take from your home page. Often, that’s to sign up to a regular email.
The idea is that by landing regularly in people’s inboxes and displaying your wit and wisdom, you’ll be their first port of call when they want your service. You can write these for your clients.
6) PR and white papers. It must be ten years since I wrote a press release. However, yes, you might be called upon to write press releases, case studies and white papers.
7) Features. If you’ve come from a journalistic background, that’ll stand you in good stead if a client wants you to write feature articles for trade journals or the national press. Don’t expect these to be as lucrative as regular copywriting assignments. There’s a reason why journalists become copywriters.
8) Academic and technical copywriting. This places less emphasis on creativity and more on fact-finding and precision. If you have a technical or scientific mind, this kind of work could suit you better. You’ll need to be able to express complex ideas in simple ways.
How do you find work as a freelance copywriter with no experience?
You’ve set yourself up as a freelance copywriter. But you have no portfolio. How do you get work to put in your portfolio if no one will hire you?
The goal here is to put up some kind of work on your website portfolio that shows your skill and creativity.
1) Offer to do work for businesses owned by friends and family.
2) Write speculative work based on briefs you’ve made up yourself.
3) Find adverts or long copy (websites) that you think could be improved upon. Rewrite them. You can even display these as ‘before and afters’ on your site in case studies.
4) Approach local marketing agencies and offer to work for free.
Keep reading to find my other recommendations on how to attract work, both in 2003 and 2020.
But who am I to lecture you about freelance copywriting?
Who indeed. I’ve been a freelance copywriter since 2003, when I got made redundant from a medical-editing firm in Cheshire. My baby son was six weeks old and I came home with a redundancy cheque that covered his nappies for about four weeks.
I needed nappies of my own.
Turns out I needn’t have worried. I made around £30k in my first year as a freelance copywriter. (A pay rise.) Within three or four years, I was living very comfortably indeed.
But I didn’t achieve that by sitting around watching Homes Under the Hammer. Hell no. A Place in the Sun is way better.
I jest. But the truth is, the way I built my business in the mid-noughties is not how the newbie freelance copywriter should probably go about it these days.
How I made it as a freelance copywriter in 2003
I came home clutching my redundancy cheque in October 2003. Here’s what I did:
1) I got a website. Get a website!
2) I made the most of existing contacts. Where have you worked? Who do you know in marketing agencies? Who else got laid off? What are they doing now? How could you help each other?
3) I teamed up with a reliable graphic designer and doubled my selling power.
4) I joined a national business-networking group. Don’t do this. The breakfasts are awful, the early starts painful and the small talk agonising. In a year, I made about £500, which just about covered my joining fee.
5) When I left my previous job, I was rooting through the cardboard box of, ahem, personal possessions I’d brought home with me and noticed I’d accidentally placed a copy of the Creative Handbook 2002 in there.
What a timely stroke of luck. This gem contained the email address of just about every marketing and advertising agency in the country. I emailed every single one. I got loads of work. You can still do this, despite GDPR. Here’s how you can do it legally.
6) By March 2004, I’d discovered Google Adwords (now Google Ads). This was the turning point. Suddenly, I was right at the top of page one for ‘copywriter’.
7) I found a niche. More and more people were coming to me looking for copywriting in the style of Innocent Drinks. I was happy to provide it. I became the king of quirky copywriting.
8) Yes, I ‘niched’, but that didn’t stop me from being a generalist. The key is to be seen to be niche to the right people.
Don’t cold-call
I can’t stress this enough. If you’re looking for work as a freelance copywriter, please don’t cold-call. I did this every day for a week. I was unfailingly polite but got met with volleys of abuse and landed around £50 of work.
Truth is, today, the business world doesn’t operate like this any more. We live in an age of inbound marketing. If someone wants your service, they’ll come looking for it.
Most people don’t even know what copywriting is, so don’t ram it down their throats on the billion-to-one off-chance that they’re looking for a freelance copywriter at that precise moment in time.
How I would make it as a freelance copywriter in 2020
Here’s how I’d plan on making it as a newbie freelance copywriter in 2020.
Lordy, things have changed.
The fact is, selling is almost dead. Advertising in its established form has gone. Long copy is now king. In today’s wokey world, it’s all about trust and relationships.
Want my advice? Get into CRM. You’ll have a job for life.
1) Assuming you have a website, get yourself on page one of Google. Obviously, that’s going to be possible for only ten businesses. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get there for niche or geographical terms.
Consider writing landing pages that act as mini home pages for ‘legal copywriter’, ‘copywriter Glasgow’, ‘native English copywriter Germany’ and variants along those lines. Have fun.
2) Don’t waste money on Google Ads. Pay-per-click has had its day. Today, people don’t trust paid ads. You can tell Google’s desperate to keep its cash cow afloat: it’s started mixing in the paid ads with the organic ones. Sadly, buyers are savvy enough to know the difference.
3) If you can’t get on page one of Google for ‘copywriter’, pester the ones who are already there. Contact them and offer them a percentage fee for referred work.
4) Blog, blog, blog. This is 2020 and we’re all bloggers. Build up an opt-in email list and send your blogs at least weekly to your subscribers. When they want a freelance copywriter, you’ll be their first port of call. Make it easy to unsubscribe.
5) When you write a website blog, promote it on social media. Get that lovely link juice.
6) Use social media. Post regularly on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Get a big following. Show people you know what you’re talking about.
7) Offer to guest-post blogs on other sites. Backlinks are still important, provided they come from a reliable and trustworthy source. Your top targets should be sites with high Domain Authority such as Mashable, Hubspot and GetResponse.
8) Join online directories. For example, the one provided by the Professional Copywriters’ Network.
What skills and qualities does a freelance copywriter need?
1) Writing. There’s no route around this one, I’m afraid. You’re going to need flawless grammar and punctuation plus a decent dose of creativity.
2) Business. As we’ve discussed above, you’ll want to drum up and keep business. To do that, you’ll need to be your own marketing department. You’ll also have to watch your finances, including putting away money to pay your tax and VAT bills.
3) Time-management. You’ve got deadlines to hit and the client is your new boss.
4) Confidence. This is the school of hard knocks. Like it or not, you’ll have dissatisfied clients, non-payers and spells where you wonder if you’ll ever work again.
5) Editing and proofreading. You’ll need to be able to appraise your own work. If that seems too tough, get an informal arrangement going with other freelance copywriters.
6) Basic tech. If you can use Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, that should be enough. You’ll need to set up your equipment and email, too. If you can edit basic CMS site-hosting packages such as WordPress, so much the better. Don’t worry. It’s easy.
How much should I charge as a freelance copywriter?
How much you charge as a freelance copywriter will depend on your experience and the type of work you’ll be doing.
First up, let’s just say you shouldn’t be charging by the word. One of the many skills of the copywriter is saying stuff succinctly and you’ve no incentive to do that if you’re being paid to cram your copy with unnecessary words.
Far better to decide on a day rate and factor that in to how long a project will take. Then give your clients a fixed-fee quote. That way, they’ll know exactly how much they’ll be expected to pay when things are done and dusted.
The Professional Copywriters’ Network has advice on day rates. Their latest research suggests that the average day rate for UK freelance copywriters is around £350.
That said, rates for top agency copywriters in London can soar as high as £1000 a day or more. As a general rule, the more creative the work, the more you can expect to be paid.
When deciding on an hourly or day rate, there are a few factors you’ll want to bear in mind.
- How many people are approving the work (‘copy by committee’ can mean lots of rounds of amends)
- How soon the client wants it. If it’s tomorrow, double your rates
- How technically difficult the subject matter is
- How much research you’ll have to do
- Whether you’ll be expected to attend meetings.
Are there any books or courses that can help me become a freelance copywriter?
Really, you don’t need to do any courses to become a freelance copywriter. But you do need to know what you’re doing. After all, you’ll be asking for money for providing a service.
If you’re an absolute newbie, here’s what I recommend.
1) When I got my first job as an in-house copywriter, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. But I learned on the hoof.
Even though the internet was in its infancy, there were enough portfolios online from successful freelance copywriters for me to study them daily. I worked out what made a headline work, how to transition into body copy, copy structures, calls to action. The works.
2) Today, you’ve no excuse for not checking out your peers’ work. Google ‘freelance copywriter’ and you’ll get about a gazillion results. Sadly, most of them are pants. But check out the freelance copywriters on page one or two of Google and you won’t go too far wrong.
3) If you insist on studying, the Institute of Copywriting does offer a diploma, which some have found useful. Note, however, that this isn’t an accredited industry body.
4) Books. Ah, books. Yes, there are plenty great books that’ll not only give you guidance on writing copy but also stimulate some great ideas when you’re lost for inspiration and need to dip into them. Here are a few.
- The Copy Book by D&AD. Packed full of samples from some of the world’s leading copywriters.
- Lürzer’s Archive. Not a book as such, but a periodical bursting with the latest and greatest creative work of the day. You can buy back copies on eBay and Amazon.
- The Copywriter’s Handbook by Robert Bly. Heavily biased towards direct-response copy, but certainly a bible of that genre.
- Read Me by Roger Horberry and Gyles Lingwood. A whole raft of great copywriters pass on their trade secrets.
- How to Write Sales Letters that Sell by Drayton Bird. How to get folk to whip out their credit cards.
- Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy. Learn how to craft B2B ads, write headlines and body copy, and write for travel, tourism and non-profits. Want to run an agency and land new clients? That’s here, too.
In summary
While it’s not all PJs in front of the telly, working on the beach or sitting on the deck of your own yacht, freelance copywriting in 2020 can still be a fulfilling lifestyle. If you have the talent and aptitude, freelancing remains a relatively low-stress way to make a decent living while resolutely beating your own path.
