Mind | P.S.P. FRENCH

Copywriting Year One

In my first year freelancing, I read 15 books, bought 3 courses, signed 14 clients and made $107k…. here are my 11 rules.

There’s no need to “be ready.” Stop spinning your wheels, release the brakes, ignore fear and learn your lessons as you go.

Avoid project work. You can eliminate the early anxiety around the “feast and famine” of freelancing by focusing on retainer-based offers. Get some work, gain some confidence, stack some cash.

The most important skill isn’t getting clients, it’s keeping them.

The “best niche” exists at the intersection of work you enjoy doing and who has money. The short answer to “who has money?” is rich guys and B2B.

There are two dimensions to the game: your ability to position yourself and your copywriting skill level. Progress stalls if you secretly favor working on one over the other.

Don’t get memed into thinking hand-copying sales letters and ads isn’t the greatest thing you can do to improve your skill level.

Clients aren’t looking for years of experience or fancy credentials. They’re just looking for a high-quality sample of something similar to what they need.

If you can summon “flow” every day, you are never going to struggle.

As Twitter’s greatest teacher @abrasivisms hammered home to me, direct response is more about making offers than writing copy.

There is a not-insignificant percentage of your overall annual effort that should be spent meditating on how to best procure and promote results-based testimonials for your work.

The barrier to entry is so low and the demand so high that it’s easy just to drift around and make a good living. You have to desire to grow and expand your powers, woo bigger clients, kill others, work on bolder campaigns, risk failure to meet with glory.

P.S.P. French

The One Mega-Valuable Thing

There aren’t that many real grown-ups.

There are people building rockets, editing DNA sequences with Raspberry Pi enabled iPads, commercialising supersonic flight, building holographic brain-machine interfaces and decentralizing large parts of civilization.

But that’s a very small slice of business.

Mostly, the business world isn’t run by geniuses.

Mostly, it isn’t even run by adults…

… mostly, it’s a chaotic cohort of well-intentioned but ill-informed idiots, sociopathic sycophants, CERTIFIED LOONS, risky-frisky adrenaline junkies, bums, winos and crack addicts with exceptional work ethics.

Even Steve Jobs, who it is generally but sometimes reluctantly agreed was a genius, admitted this. “Everything around you that you call ‘life’” he said, “was made up by people who were no smarter than you. Once you learn that, you will never be the same again.”

What does this have to do with you and freelance copywriting?

Well, those people taking the plunge and running businesses who are no smarter than you can’t and won’t survive long without decent copywriting and advertising.

And mostly, their stuff needs some work.

Good copy is the SPLENDID SOUL of any successful business.

You only have to read a couple of the right books and practise just enough for your interest in persuasion to develop into an ability.

And that ability, once packaged into an offer that solves an immediate and painful problem with little or no risk, will have you up and running as a freelance copywriter.

Dive in, ignore fear and learn your lessons as you go.

P.S.P. French

The Road to Freelance Copywriting Freedom

To get you started on your journey to freelance copywriting freedom, the only question that matters is:

Which small group of people with deep pockets urgently needs me to write some wickedly effective copy for them?

To answer this, we use “inside information”…

1) Small group of people

This has less to do with the literal number of people you can help and more – much more – to do with whether or not they are easily and precisely targetable. You need to know where they hang out online.

2) Deep pockets

Are they already spending money on marketing? This should be the easiest part. You should instinctively be able to tell from their social media, website and general online “vibe” if they are equipped to wire you at least $1,000 without stammering or “running it past” someone else. If you have any doubts about this whatsoever, revisit 1).

3. Urgently needs me

This is where we thread the needle through the precise group of people who have deep pockets and loop it around the common problem that transcends industries.

An example that “transcends industries”:

I have written copy for startups in the healthcare, travel, online learning, and crypto industries.

The problem all startups have is they’re in a hurry not to die. The feature they all share is a pot of cash they are prepared to spend quickly on someone who can guarantee to communicate quickly, clearly and with effortless artistic grace what makes them so great.

This is how you get paid.

P.S.P French

The Chicken and the Egg

There’s a big, grumpy and grotesquely flatulent sacred cow walking around the freelance copywriting space unchecked.

It’s time it was laid to rest.

You really don’t need testimonials to get clients.

Sure, it helps. But everyone has to start somewhere, and it seems that along the way, lots of people have convinced themselves of this apparent Catch 22:

“You need testimonials to get clients but you can’t get testimonials if you don’t have any clients.”

I think a lot of people who claim they want to be copywriters just stop here and let out a sad little sigh.

Buck up, and swallow these solutions instead.

1 – Make the Skeleton Dance

2 – Write Your Own Testimonials (aka samples)

#1 Use your lack of testimonials as a selling point… or “make the skeleton dance”, as email marketing legend Ben Settle says. You could write something along the lines of “I’m young and lacking experience but I’m bursting with energy and am determined to become a copywriter. I feel like I’m going to explode, and I really wouldn’t want you to be responsible for that. Also, I’ll never be this cheap again.”

#2 Obviously you MUST NOT FAKE testimonials. But you can write “samples”. Find someone you want to write for, then re-write their copy and add these to your portfolio. You need to be clear that they’re just samples, but now you have something for the client to judge your ability on. Beats turning up to the party without a bottle.

Don’t let a lack of testimonials stop you from cranking out THE MOOOLAH…

P.S.P. French

Dear Frustrated Friend

There are some problems you know about and some you don’t.

This is true for everyone.

And because it’s true for EVERYONE…

This is one of the cornerstones of good copywriting.

Because you can’t show people a solution to a problem they don’t know they have.

So when building a copywriting promotion, you need to understand your market’s LEVEL OF AWARENESS.

It looks a bit like this:

Level 1 – no idea
Level 2 – aware of problem, not aware of solutions
Level 3 – aware of solutions, not aware of your solution
Level 4 – aware of your specific solution
Level 5 – considering buying your specific solution

When I was writing Sleep Like a Lion, I wanted to understand how to message people at their level of awareness.

So I conducted a quick poll on Twitter…

And it went like this:

There are 3 main sleep problems

Which one do you struggle with?

I wake up feeling groggy
I have trouble falling asleep
I can’t stay asleep

And the answer was VERY useful.

Because 70% of people answered that they wake up feeling groggy.

Which told me EXACTLY what I needed to say, and the specific problem I needed to provide a specific solution to if I wanted to make my book HELPFUL to the most amount of people.

So that’s what I did.

The book provides solutions to all three problems.

But if you’re someone who wakes up feeling groggy rather than refreshed, then this is your lucky day.

Here’s the link you need:

https://gumroad.com/l/nkiWp

P.S.P. French