Copywriting is one of the most flexible careers (You’ve probably heard us say that so many times you’re like, “Nicki and Kate, we know!.”)
Just because its flexible does not mean there aren’t certain rules, or laws if you will, that you need to follow.
Now, if you break the laws will you get a ticket? Nah. But you may see less work coming in or less repeat work.
On this episode of the Build Your Copywriting Business podcast, Nicki and Kate are digging into eight must-upload laws—starting with law #1: ABP.
Listen in to learn the eight laws and how you can make upholding them part of your routine.
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Looking for closed captioning or a transcript? Watch the episode on YouTube!
A Sneak Peek at the Episode
[02:54] The first unbreakable law is ABP: always be pitching—even when you don’t feel like it. Even when you’re like, “Well, I have a full roster of clients, why would I still pitch?” Because eventually some of those clients are going to move on from the project or work. ABP includes re-pitching, too. So, don’t forget that!
[04:55] Number two, you must hit your deadlines. Yes, life can happen. And is it the end of the world if you do that once or twice for something that truly was out of your control and you couldn’t plan for? No, but you should have a network of other copywriters so that if (when!) something happens, you can reach out to one of your contacts and say, “Hey, can I give this to you?:
[07:22] Sometimes you wake up and you’re suddenly quite ill and you couldn’t have planned for that. Or you just have no creativity. You get up and you stare at your screen and you go, “Oh, I’ve got nothing.” If you’ve built time in, you can rest or do the fun thing and get your work done.
[08:22] You can’t skip deadlines with a new client because a new client does not know you, does not know that this isn’t your standard operating procedure. To say, “Yeah, I can get it to you by X date.” And then as X date comes up and you say, “Ooh, I can’t!”—that kind of copywriter, freelancer service provider does not get repeat work.
[09:00] Do not set deadlines without looking at the project. You’re working with an ongoing client and they send you something, look at it before the project is due. Look as soon as possible. Just spend 15 minutes looking at whatever the project is so that you can shoot back questions and put the ball back in their court and get those answers. And then you can set an actually effective deadline.
[10:01] You don’t want to get a reputation for being someone who doesn’t meet their deadlines or someone who doesn’t communicate with clients or someone who goes missing after the project gets kicked off. Any of these things.
[11:12] If you don’t send that invoice, you don’t get paid. Keep your direct deposit—if you have that with clients—up to date. If you ever have to move banks, close out your bank, you have a complete list of what you have to run down and switch to your new bank before you close out your old account.
[13:13] Ask for testimonials and referrals. Make it a part of your closing and wrapping up the project. At the end of every project, you should be reaching out to ask for testimonial.
[13:25] You should be reaching out and asking if there’s anybody else they know who needs a copywriter, asking for referrals. And at the end of every project, you should be sending through your invoice so you get paid. We didn’t get into this to do it for free.
[14:12] The government also has to get paid. The government needs to get paid, so you need to set aside money for taxes.
[15:01] Every invoice that comes in, every payment that comes in, put a certain percentage in a separate account and you just don’t touch it until it’s time to pay some taxes.
[16:25] Keep your portfolio up to date. Once we have work coming in, it’s very easy to neglect our portfolios and say, “I don’t need it.” You want to do it as you go along. It’s so much easier one by one versus, “Now I have to carve out time to really do a complete overhaul.”
[19:20] Job bidding sites like Upwork, Fiverr, they’re posting so many jobs and all you have to do is just apply for these jobs. And part of the problem is that everybody is doing it, but often the people that you are competing with are willing to take much, much lower rates.
[20:25] That’s not the place that you want to be. You don’t want to be competing for work. You want to be the one person pitching for any number of opportunities. You don’t need to compete.
[22:28] Pitching is writing an email and sending an email. There’s nothing about that that is hard. Even if you were thinking, “Oh, I’m kind of nervous about it,” Objectively, it is not hard. You might find it a little challenging at first because you might overthink it.
[24:45] You need to tell people you’re a copywriter. And you need to tell people why you’re the best copywriter for the job with your USP. What makes you unique? What about you is gonna be different than working with a different copywriter if a client chose to move forward with you? It can be uncomfortable to tell people you’re a copywriter.
[26:39] Treat your projects like you would client work. When you are putting together your website, when you’re updating your LinkedIn profile, when you are posting on LinkedIn, creating your portfolio (and frankly, each page of your portfolio)—each one of these is its own project. And so you would never jump into a project starting to write the copy without first doing your creative brief.
Must-Hear Takeaways
As with every episode, we highly encourage you to listen to the entire conversation! But here are a few of the highlights:
“When you stop pitching, You won’t feel it right away, but two, three months from that moment that you decide, I don’t need to do this anymore, you will feel it friends, you will feel it because the work will slowly trickle down and dry up.” – Kate
“Pitching leads to work, not pitching leads to not having work.” Nicki
“Give yourself at least a few days so that if things come up, you can move things around. The beauty of the career being so flexible is that you can build in that flexibility, but you need to do that for yourself. And you don’t set yourself up for success if you say, I’m gonna deliver it in the next 24 hours.”
“Do what you need to do to get the work done and be creative and don’t constrain yourself to nine to five if you don’t have to.” – Kate
“Your reputation is crucial. People don’t wanna work with someone who is difficult to work with. And of course you wanna set your boundaries and to say, I’m not answering email after five or whatever it is.” – Kate
“If you’re further along in your career, you might think, well I’ll hire a VA for that. And that could be a great thing. If you hate sending your invoices, then maybe it’s a task you do or you get a software like Dato that makes it maybe a little more streamlined for you to just shoot off that invoice.” – Kate
“At the end of every project grab screenshots of the work that you completed. So even if you don’t wanna use it, like having the backlog of all of that work is so important. “
“Put it in your Dropbox, Google Drive, whatever cloud solution that you use so that you have it there. Very occasionally I have clients, oh, but have you done this? And I can dig through my work, it’s all labeled by the medium, the client, et cetera.” – Kate
“You get better. And you learn to do things that are uncomfortable, but there’s nothing about it that’s hard. If something is only hard because you are labeling as hard and I am 100% positive that you are mislabeling it.” – Nicki
“The law is that you have to market yourself and you have to do it with the same strategic mindset and the same carefulness that you would put together a copy for a client.” – Nicki
Mentioned in the Episode
Related Links
- Common Copywriting Mistakes You Cannot Make
- Creative Brief: The First Step to Any Successful Copywriting Project
- How Can You Know if a Copywriting Deadline is Doable?
- The Right Way to Invoice Your Copywriting Clients
- Paying Freelance Writer Taxes in 2024
- 4 Things Most Copywriters Get Wrong on Their Portfolio Websites
- Ep. 7: Freelance Job Sites Are Bad News
- Creative Ways to Market Yourself as a Copywriter
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About the Build Your Business Podcast
Ready to turn your love of writing into a successful copywriting career?
Join professional copywriters Nicki Krawczyk and Kate Sitarz to get the tips, tools, and training to help you become a copywriter and build a thriving business of your own. Nicki and Kate have 20+ and 10+ years of experience, respectively, writing copy for multi-billion-dollar companies, solopreneurs, and every size business in between.
Whether you want to land an on-staff job, freelance full-time and work from wherever you want, or make extra money with a side hustle, the best place to start learning is right here.
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Last Updated on December 10, 2024
