Jacob McMillen

How To Earn
$400 Per Article
Writing Online

The complete guide to building a lucrative

freelance writing career
Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Your Career Blueprint

3. Topics That Sell (Or Don't)

4. How To Pitch Like A Pro

5. How To Get Published

6. Make Editors Love You

7. Earn $$$ Writing For Free

8. How To Negotiate

9. Turn Articles Into Assets

10. Build An Author Website

11. How To Find Higher Pay

12. How To Build A Business

13. Get Mentored

Introduction

Here’s the punchline. You can make $400 per article as an online writer.

Actually, you can make a good deal more than that. I just earned over
$1,000 each for two articles last week, and gigs like that are becoming
more and more commonplace.

The money is there, and despite millions of writers saturating the market,
the demand for quality, above-and-beyond writing is there.

In fact, it’s stronger than ever. Despite the hundreds of thousands of eager,
stay-at-home writers clamoring to produce content for mere pennies, you
can earn an average of $400 per article writing online.

But how?

I could fluff this out and give you 50,000 words, but I hate it when people do
that. Maybe it’s a personal thing, but I don’t even read nonfiction books
anymore. What’s the point of reading 80,000 words wrapped around a 400
word point?

In this ebook, I’m going to get straight to the point. I'm going to cover
exactly what it takes to deliver high-quality writing and become a highly
paid freelance writer.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Here’s what we’ll cover.

Topics that sell and topics that don’t

How to pitch like a pro
How to write articles that get published
How to make editors love you
How to earn money by writing for free
 How to close contracts & negotiate pay
How to turn every post into an asset
How to build an author website
How to find, attract, and close higher paying gigs
How to run your freelance operation like an actual business

By the end of this ebook, you’ll know exactly what it takes run a $2,000 per
week freelance writing business.

But before we get started, let me give you a lighting quick picture of who I
am and why I had the audacity to write a guide for freelance writers. Like
any customer, you don’t care about me, but you do probably care about
how I’m qualified to help you reach YOUR goals.

Here’s the highlights leading up to my full-time freelance career, listed in

concise bullet points:

Earns $16,000 in 10 weeks via door-to-door sales to pay for accounting

degree
Gets accounting degree and decides to go into online marketing (lol)
Works on a freelance/contract basis for two SEO agencies over two
years
Performs a mixture of copywriting, blogging, guest blogging, and
citations

Over my two years working with SEO agencies, I discovered that

copywriting is a beautiful mix of sales and writing. While I hated door-to-
door sales and had never enjoyed my literature classes, I did love the sales
process and I had always been a naturally talented writer. It was a perfect
fit for me, and combined with guest blogging, became the core offer
through which I dove into full-time freelancing.

Here’s the highlights since that point:

Closed a $14,000 one-off project within first two months of full-time

freelancing
Earns an average of $400 per article
Earned as high as $4,000 in one 40-hour work week.
Turned one guest blogging client into a $4000 per month retainer
Hasn’t prospected in 2 years - 100% of business from inbound leads &
 referrals

I’m far from being the highest earning freelance writer around. If I was
willing to work 60 hour weeks, I could probably compete for that spot, but
frankly, that’s not my goal.

My goal has always been to maximize my revenue while minimizing my

hours AND to enjoy my career. That’s exactly what I’m doing, and it’s what I
want this guide to help you accomplish.

My focus in this guide is going to be on building a business around writing

content rather than copywriting. Copywriting is a very specific talent, and
while I would encourage you to pursue it (and it synergizes very well with
content writing), it is also a very narrow career choice.

The only highlight above that can be contributed to copywriting is the $14k
project. Everything else is purely from content writing. When you focus on a
profitable niche, as we will talk about in the first chapter, you will find
numerous ways to earn money while writing in that niche. Blog content will
probably be the #1 way, but you will find other avenues as well, possibly
including niche-focused copywriting.

But that’s enough of an intro.

Let’s get started!

Your Career Blueprint
The 3-Year Career Plan This Guide Is Built Around

You typically need to understand the big picture before you can grasp the
details

Here's the 3-year blueprint we will be building your freelance writing career
around. Everything we cover in this guide will have this plan in mind.

Year 1: Get Paid & Get Published

The first year of our blueprint is all about hustle. It's about getting work
published in as many places as possible and on as many noteworthy
publications as possible.

Step 1: Buy a domain & throw up a simple website to collect article

backlinks.

If you want Year #1 to really pay off for you in Years #2 & #3, you need to
buy a domain and throw up a basic website that you can link back to in the
articles you publish.

This sounds intimidating to a lot of folks, but it's actually ludicrously simple,
and I'll show you exactly how to do it later in this guide. Do NOT skip this
step!

Step 2: Find as many paid gigs as possibles

Forget content mills. You're looking for quality gigs that will advance your
career, and there are TONS of great places to look. Here are my top picks.

1. Problogger.net has THE best writer's job board, hands down.

2. FWJ's daily curated list of job postings is another one of my favorites.
3. Use SearchTempest to search through nationwide Craigslist listings.
4. Use Google search to find “Write For Us" and “Paid Writer" sites.

Step 3: Pitch unpaid guest posts to popular websites whenever possible.

This is where the hustle really comes into play. It's a lot easier to motivate
yourself to get paid than it is to write blog posts for free. If you want to be
an overpaid writer, however, and want to have 100% of your leads arriving
passively by Year #3, you'll need to be getting published on top websites in
your niche. Here's why:

1. Published articles on noteworthy websites give your pitches instant

credibility.
2. Great articles on great websites attract top paying employers.
3. Getting published on top websites helps you connect and network with
editors.
4. Sites often offer paid gigs to guest posters whose articles perform well.
5. Backlinks from top websites help you build organic search traffic to your
site.

In order to get published on top sits, you need to understand what editors
are looking for and deliver it to them. I cover what this type of content looks
like and provide some strategies to dramatically increase your success rate
in my freelance writer's handbook, but at the end of the day, it's still a
numbers game. The more often you pitch, the more often you get published,
which is why Year #1 is all about hustle.

Year 2: Identify Your Niche & Network

In year two, it's time to begin narrowing your focus and thinking about
yourself as a business owner and brand rather than simply a writer.

Which topics seem to be paying well and are in-demand, and which topics
are you enjoying writing about the most? The goal is to find a nice mix that
lets you write about a topic that interests you while also earning the income
you want. What's the point of working for yourself if you hate your job?

You will never be “overpaid" as a general, all-purpose writer. Top-level pay

comes from unique expertise and experience. If you want to be paid top-
dollar, you have to build your brand around a top-dollar niche.

Step 4. Select a niche or niches and follow the steps from Year #1.

1. Continue searching for paid gigs but focus on your selected niches.
2. Continue targeting top publications but focus on your selected niches.
3. Begin using niche-related anchor text in your backlinks - ex. “fitness
writer"

Step 5. Optimize your website and online profiles for selected niches.

1. Whenever people find your name online, it should be associated with

your niche.
2. Optimize your website to attract and convert employers in your niche.
3. Optimize your social media profiles and Web 2.0 properties to reflect
your focus.
4. Join niche-specific groups and follow niche-related thought-leaders.

Step 6. Leverage your past work to expand your niche reach.

1. Ask editors to recommend you to other editors.

2. Highlight your published work in all pitches and web properties.
3. Contact people you worked with once about doing additional work.

Step 7. Network like crazy.

1. Connect with other writers in your niche and exchange contacts.

2. Look for opportunities to get your foot in the door with influencers.
3. Begin conversations with as many people as possible in your niche.

Year 3: Increase Your Rates

By this point, if you have followed the steps in Years #1 and #2, you will
actually have a lot more writing opportunities available to you than you can
handle. You will be spending very little time (if any) looking for gigs as you
will have numerous clients contacting you directly via your website thanks
to all those backlinks.

In terms of payment, you will probably have already shed the lower-paying
gigs you started with in the first year for the higher paying opportunities
you came across later, but if not, this is the time to pick & choose what you
want and leave the rest behind.

The keys to earning a higher rate are experience and demand. If you have
tons of writing opportunities (which was the purpose of all that publishing
and networking), it makes it very easy to say “No" to lower paying
opportunities. I never write an article for less than $200, because I can get
paid that amount, at minimum, literally anytime I want to add an article to
my schedule.

Step 8. For long-term, lower-paying gigs you want to keep, raise your rates.

Sometimes, you build really solid relationships with clients and even when
they become one of your lower-paying gigs, you don't want to stop working
with them. In these cases, inform the client that demand for your writing
has increased, and while you'd love to continue working with them, you will
be raising your minimum rate to X amount on X date. This works best if you
make January 1st the date, as business owners expect to make changes at
the new year.

Step 8: Cut down on unpaid guest posts but make them bigger, better, and
more targeted.

1. Identify a handful of sites you think are most likely to boost your profile.
2. Spend the time needed to create really epic articles for these sites.
3. Try to leverage a mutual connection or referral to get your foot in the
door.
4. You can also just cold-pitch like you would normally.

Step 9: Transition from a simple writer to a strategic player in your niche.

1. Connect people within your niche who would benefit from knowing each
other.
2. Help businesses get featured on sites in your niche (many will pay you).
3. Look for entrepreneurial opportunities and strategic partnerships in your
niche.
4. Begin taking a leadership and mentoring role in niche groups &
communities.
Topics That Sell (Or Don't)
Learn how to identify and pursue a profitable niche

You’ll notice that the title of this ebook is not “How to Make $400 Per Article
Writing About Your Hobbies Online”. There are topics that sell and topics that
don’t.

When I first started writing online, I had two interests that I enjoyed writing
about: religion and sports.

Now, at first glance, these two topics seem like they could be fairly lucrative.
There is a huge market for religious topics, merchandise, apparel, etc. online.
And there is a HUGE market for sports anywhere you look... but particularly
online.

Here’s the problem. The basic Economics 101 formula for price looks like this:

As you can see, Price (P) is a function of both demand and supply. As demand
goes down, price goes down. As supply goes up, price also goes down.

There is a large demand for sports and religious topics. There is an even larger
supply of writers wanting to write about those topics. Virtually every guy I know
would be a sports writer in a heartbeat if it paid well. They spend enough time
thinking about it. Why not write about it to?

And that’s why if you’re making $15 per article as a sports writer, you are doing
fairly well. Most sports websites don’t even pay their writers. The same goes for
religious websites.

There is money to be made in these areas as a site owner, but not as a

freelance writer.

Once I figured this out, it was time to find the topics and niches that would pay
writers good money for content. After finding several topics that paid well, I
begin to identify a 2-part formula for high-paying gigs. Topics that pay well
include both of the following:

1. They deal with achieving a high-value goal

2. They require expertise that is not commonplace

Let’s look a bit closer at both of these.

1. High-Value Goals
If you want to make good money for an article, it needs to help someone
achieve a high-value goal. What is a high value goal?

Making more money

Building businesses that make money
Getting into careers that make money
Decreasing debt or expenses
Getting fit or healthy
Achieving relationship success
Identifying personal strengths and passions
Learning high-value skills
Etc.

People want to succeed. They want to achieve their goals. And if you can help
them, they will pay you. Or in the case of a freelance writer, if they are paying
the site owner for it, the site owner can pay you.

There are tons of topics in the above categories. But here’s the main point you
need to remember.
The more money your article helps people make, the more money you can get
paid for it.

The primary industry I tapped into was marketing. Marketing helps people make
more money. Articles about marketing help a wide variety of online businesses
attract potential customers. And that’s why the absolute least I’ll consider
writing a marketing article for is $200.

But that’s not the only high-paying gig in town. These other high-dollar
industries will pay out big bucks for content as well.

Personal finance
Investing
Gambling
Law
Medicine
Dentistry
Web design
Web development
Etc.

Like I said, people who are making money can afford to pay money. But as I
mentioned earlier, there is a second factor involved.

2. Unique Expertise
Some high-value topics are easier to understand or more generally interesting
than others. This means that more people want to write about it, and as our
supply/demand curve illustrates, more supply equals lower pay.

For example, fitness is a MASSIVE money-maker online, but there are a lot more
people who fancy themselves fitness experts than say, experts on law or
medicine. Finding someone to write effectively on fitness is fairly easy, which is
why earning meaningful money as a freelance fitness writer isn’t commonplace.

This brings us to a second, uncomfortable truth.

If you want to make serious money as a freelance writer, you need unique
expertise.

Did you know you can easily make $300 per video making Photoshop tutorials?
Why? Because a lot of people want to learn Photoshop and not a lot of people
are making high-quality tutorial videos.

Did you know you can make $1,000+ putting together in-depth 5,000 word
guides for businesses looking to attract email subscribers? These guides could
deal with anything from pet care to electronics.

If you have uncommon expertise related to something people value, you can
make good money as a freelance writer.

The Importance Of Going Niche

Let me just clarify that you are not limited to a single niche or even to a handful
of niches.

You CAN do work outside the niche you pick at any time.

The key here, as we will discuss later in-depth, is that when you do work in your
primary niche, you aren’t just “doing work”. You are building yourself into an
expert, and experts have far more career options than content writers.

By the end of this guide, you will understand how to run a successful freelance
writing business.

And if you want to stop there, you absolutely can. Live a great life, make a nice
income, and work low hours!

BUT if you want to go further, the more of an expert you become in your niche,
the more options will become available to you in that niche. These options could
look like book deals, lead-editor positions, site ownership, ecommerce,
marketing, etc. If writing isn’t your ultimate endgame, it can still help you get to
whatever you endgame is.

Or, if you are more like me and just want to change things up from time to time,
this is your ticket to variety in your career.

But for now, let’s talk about your writing business!

How To Pitch Like A Pro
Everything you need to land gigs again and again

Pitching as a writer kind of sucks. Editors are notoriously terrible at responding

to inquiries. I’m convinced most barely read a fraction of the pitches submitted
their way. Even as a “pro” pitcher, you can still expect to not hear back from
many of your proposals.

When you are first starting out, however, hearing back from even 1 in 10 might
be a good week for you. You might get lucky and pitch editors who will at least
return a “no thanks” or you might get REALLY LUCKY and receive a “we’d be
more interested in ________ topic”, but in all likelihood, you’ll have a lot of emails
sitting in your Sent folder with no replies.

Here’s the truth about pitching as a new writer.

It sucks.

It sucks bad.

But the good news is there is a solution. It’s called brute force... otherwise
known as hustle.

If you want to land gigs, you have to pitch like crazy. I remember one week early
in my career, I was so fed up with not hearing back from people that I decided
to write a full, custom article for every website I wanted to pitch.

In one week, I wrote 20 different articles and sent them out to 20 different sites.
And you know what, by the end of the week I had 3 articles published, one of
which paid me an unexpected $120 upon acceptance.

When you are first starting out, it takes some big time hustle, but the good news
is that it only gets better from there. Every post you are able to get published
snowballs your ability to get published on another site.

At this point, I can easily get published on virtually any website in my niche.
Why? Because I have well over 100 articles published on related topics. Editors
don’t ever have to guess about what they will get from me.

And that’s really the trick to the first year of your freelance writing career.
Eliminate risk for your potential employers and/or targeted editors.

And I’ve created a series of templates called “The No-Risk Pitch Method” to help
you do just that.

But I’m getting ahead of myself slightly. Let’s look at the elements of a great
pitch.

Key Elements Of A Great Pitch

We’ll start with pitching an editor. Here’s what your pitch should look like

1. It is obviously written specifically for the target website

2. It provides social proof
3. It is SHORT and to the point
4. It provides a specific pitch that appeals to the target audience

Easy enough, right?

At the end of this section, I’ll give you a high-performing pitch template you can
use out of the box to pitch editors, but before we get there, let’s talk a bit more
about the WHY behind the above concepts.

1. Written SPECIFICALLY for the target website

If you’ve never had a semi-popular blog before, you can’t fully appreciate how
much junk and spam mail gets sent your way.

Seriously... it’s crazy.

And apart from the generic spam, there are also a significant number of form
pitches that have been obviously mass-spammed to your inbox along with a
thousand other inboxes in your niche.

Sending a compelling pitch is all about understanding what the recipient is

having to deal with, and that means you need to make it incredibly obvious that
your email is NOT a generic, mass-pitch email.

How do we do this?
 Mention the recipient by name, if possible
Definitely mention the website name
Open with a comment about the site’s content that couldn’t apply to many
other sites
Pitch headlines that are an amazing fit for the site’s target audience

It’s not hard to differentiate yourself from spam, but you do need to be
intentional and write like a human.

2. Provide social proof

Social proof in this context is anything that leverages trust or influence from an
outside source. The easiest way to provide social proof as a writer is to list
fantastic articles of yours that have been published on popular websites in the
same niche.

But that’s not by any means the only way to provide social proof. Here a few
other options:

Mention someone the editor knows (writer, another editor, site owner)
Mention an article for a smaller, relevant publication that go a lot of shares
Mention something relevant to the niche that helps you connect with the
editor

There’s a lot of ways to skin this cat, so don’t limit yourself. That said, my first
recommendation (and the one you’ll find in the template) is to link to articles
that have been published on popular blogs within the same niche.

3. Short and to the point

If you ever want to feel really popular, go spend $50 to post a job on
Problogger.net. Now sit back, relax, and watch your inbox BLOW UP.

It’s bad. Real bad.

And that is AMAZING for you!

Why?

Because you get to be the short, professional bright spot in the sea of poor
grammar, broken English, life stories, and all manner of nonsense these editors
have to spend hours sorting through.

In other words, it’s really easy to look good if you keep it short and simple and
get straight to the point.

4. Specific pitch with audience appeal

In some ways, those first 3 points were more about the email in which you send
the pitch rather than the pitch itself. Strictly speaking, your “pitch” is the part of
the email where you describe the article you wish to write for the targeted
publication.

In other words, the real pitch is the part where you say, “I’d like to write
___________ article for your site. This is what it will include and this is why your
audience will love it.”

The key here is to actually understand the website’s target audience.

Listen.

Editors NEED content.

They need a lot of content.

They need a massive amount of tailored, high-value content to feed their hungry
audience.

If you can send them even just the headline of an article that would do really
well with their audience, they will be really, really happy and you will find
yourself with at least a guest post opportunity.

The challenge here is that you probably aren’t a legitimate expert in your field.
As a freelance writer, you are often writing about topics that are a bit outside
your personal experience, which means you are limited to what you can
research - aka the stuff other people have already written about.

In order to get a pitch accepted, you can’t simply send in stuff that has been
written about over and over (okay, sometimes you can). You want to provide
something unique, but how do you do that without unique expertise?

Put a spin on it!

One of the best skills you can develop as a freelance writer is the ability to look
at 10 published articles on the same topic and identify a way to spin a unique
narrative using the information provided.

My first big gig that opened up doors for me to write in the marketing space
occurred thanks to this talent and the pitch strategy I’ve just shared with.

I’ve included a full case study in the following section.

The 6-Email Exchange That Landed My First 4-

Figure Writing Gig
This case study starts with a listing on Problogger.net’s job board. As I
mentioned earlier in this guide, this was one of my top 3 spots for landing gigs in
my first few years as a freelancer.

I don’t remember what the listing said, but it was looking for writers on the
subjects of conversion rate optimization, a topic I didn’t know a ton about but
had just started to get into.

So… I sent them my pitch.

Here it is – my pitch and the recipient’s initial response the following day –
screenshot straight from my Gmail in all it’s glory.

I’ve included the text below:

Subject Line: I’m Your Conversion Optimization Guy

Hey [Name],
You’re probably wading through boatloads of writer applications, so I’ll make
this brief.

I do content marketing for a living with an emphasis on copywriting. I’ve written

blogs for a number of sites and can provide a variety of samples, but this
particular sample is most relevant, so I’ll leave it there and let you contact me if
interested.

Optimizing Conversions: It’s All About the “Why”

http://www.sitepoint.com/optimizing-conversions/

I also did a video cast on the topic for Learnable.com

https://learnable.com/hub/play/40

Thanks for your time and consideration,

Jacob McMillen

And here is his response:

Hi Jacob,

I like your writing style. We do want articles to be very in depth with case
studies, examples, etc. Can you send me any samples of articles you’ve written
like that?

Thanks

Whoops!
He wanted case studies. He wanted examples. He wanted a sample of an article
I’d already done with all of these things.

And I didn’t have one. I had actually never written an article like this before.

I had read them. I had wanted to write them. I had just recently tried to write
one and had it rejected. But I hadn’t written anything exactly like this before,
which meant I had nothing to show him.

So what did I do? I followed up with what I call The No-Risk Pitch Method

I started by embracing the fact that he had no reason to trust my expertise.

Why should he? I had none. I had never written the type of article he was
looking for. So why should he risk anything to give me a shot. He shouldn’t trust
me!

Accordingly, I pitched him a scenario where there was absolutely zero risk for
him.

Here’s the full text:

Hey [Name],

I have not had the opportunity to write articles like that before, as the research
required makes it unprofitable for me to do so with my current gigs. That being
said. A lot of the content I read is in that style, and producing the required
content on conversion optimization would not at all be difficult.

I would be more than happy to write a risk-free test article for you. If I can’t
deliver, you wouldn’t have to pay me a cent, and if you like it and want to bring
me on, I’d just bill it at the standard rate we agree upon.

Thanks!

Jacob

And his response:

That’s fair. Send me a few topics you want to write on and I’ll approve one and
go from there.

Thanks

Just like that, I had an opening – a chance to deliver something valuable and
put myself into a higher pay bracket as a writer. Of course, I still had to deliver,
but the whole point of an effective pitch is to put you in a position where you
can be tested based on the actual quality of your work.

Why does this strategy work so well?

Because it is a win-win scenario for the employer. If you can’t deliver, the only
cost to the employer is the 5 minutes it took to read through your work. If you
can deliver, it’s a big win for the employer who has been having a hell of a time
finding quality writers.

No risk. Nothing to lose.

Now, let me just say that not everyone will respond positively to this idea.

Why? Because (A) the world is full of idiots, and (B) it’s not hard to find
experienced writers in certain niches. But if you are pitching a non-idiot in a
niche that is hard to fill, congratulations my friend, you just got a shot at the
heavyweight title.

Keep this in mind:

1. Notice that I didn’t offer a discounted sample rate.

Discounted sample rates (when you offer the first article at a discounted rate as
a trial piece) are the stupidest thing of all time. They don’t eliminate risk for the
employer, and they encourage predatory employers to scam for discounted
articles. If you are pitching an employer that wants quality and is willing to pay
for it, they will happily pay the full rate for a completed, high-quality piece of
writing, particularly when they are free to reject the piece if they don’t like.

If they want to publish it on their site, they should pay full price for it. If they
don’t, they shouldn’t pay anything at all. Period.

2. This email would have been better if I had proposed a few headlines at the
end.

This is something I’ve learned over the last two years and have included in the
pitch template you are about to see. Notice how the employer responds by
requesting a few topics I’d like to write on.

What I SHOULD have done is include those topics preemptively in the above
email. This couples the risk-free element with proof that I understand the
employer’s target audience and have a plan to create quality content they will
enjoy.

The Actual Pitch Part of this Case Study

So far so good, but now I had to actually deliver a compelling topic. How could I
pull that off with no unique expertise in conversion rate optimization? How are
you supposed to write something original when you are limited to researching
what others have already written?

Like I said earlier... put a spin on it!

Look at what everyone else is saying and identify a legitimate way to say
something else.

Here’s how I did just that.

Here’s the full text:

Perfect.

There’s a lot of content on hard and fast rules for optimization, so what about
something on the importance of intuition and testing – a look at 10+ examples
where A/B test results broke the rules and what we can learn from it.

On a more traditional note, I could write something like “The Top # Rules of
Website Conversion Every Business Owner Should Know”

I could also do an in-depth write up on my video cast topic – common mistakes

web designers make that sabotage conversions.

My rate is 10-15 cents per word, so we’d be looking at around $200+ for a 2,000
word article. Let me know if that’s in the same ballpark as what you’re looking
for.

Thanks [Name],

Jacob

And his response:

Lets do the article about the importance of intuition and testing. Make it around
1500 words and the price is fine. We can also let you use your name as the
author if you want to reduce the price.

Thanks

After looking through article after article and case study after case study, I
realized that a lot of case studies weren’t displaying results that agreed with
CRO best practices.

Now, this didn’t mean the best practices were wrong or that I should now write
an article about how everyone needs to start using sliders on their homepage.

What it DID mean is that I had the makings for an intriguing article. Are you
sabotaging your conversion rate by following everyone’s best CRO advice? Heck,
I’d read that.

In the end, I was paid $200 for this article and hired to be a recurring staff writer
for the company Crazy Egg. I wrote 28 articles for them before they began
receiving so many guest submission they didn’t need to pay writers any more,
resulting in a total gig value of $5,600.

And perhaps more importantly, this gig opened up numerous doors for me in the
marketing space. In addition to Crazy Egg, I have now written numerous
marketing blogs and been paid considerable sums to do so.

But that’s enough explanation. It’s time for the templates themselves.

The Ultimate Pitch Template

Hello [Target’s name if you have one],

I absolutely love [website name ]! I’ve been reading your posts for awhile and
[apply
specific blog content to your own activities]. I’d love to write something for you,
and

I’ve put together a few possible topics below that I think would be really
compelling to

the [website name ] audience.

1. [Epic Headline #1]

2. [Epic Headline #2]
3. [Epic Headline #3]

If you’d like to check out my previously published posts, I’ve listed several
relevant

examples of my work below:

1. [Link to a relevant post on the biggest site you’ve been on ]

2. [Link to a relevant post with the highest visible share count ]

If one of those headlines stands out to you, I’d be happy to send a full outline so
you can verify I have the supporting information to deliver a well-rounded
article.

Thanks for your time and consideration,

[Your Signoff]

The No-Risk Pitch Method Followup

Hello [Name ],

I have not yet had the opportunity to write content with those exact
specifications. That

said, I am very familiar with the style you are looking for, and it would not at all
be

difficult to produce something like this for you.

I would be more than happy to write a risk-free test article for you. If decide not
to use it,

you wouldn't have to pay me a cent, and if you like it, we can just bill it at our
agreed

upon rate. That way there is zero risk for you.

How does that sound?

Thanks for your time and consideration!

[Your Signoff]
How To Get Published
How to write articles that are guaranteed wins

So you’ve sent your pitch, it got accepted, and now it’s time to actually
write an article - an article that will be accepted, published, and shared
around like Caprese salad at Dunder Mifflin.

Well I’ve got great news for you, my friend, and that news is that you live in
the era of the internet.

Writing for the web is ridiculously easy. It’s honestly stupid how easy it is. It
actually makes me feel bad. Writers from even just two decades ago had it
hard compared to us.

Writing for the web in the modern era is literally a fill-in-the-blank formula,
and the ONLY reason people still suck at it is because they either refuse to
follow the formula or they are ignorant of its existence.

But I’m going to give you that formula right now.

Ready?

----------

Compelling Headline That Makes A Promise

150 words that hook the reader in.

1st Descriptive Yet Intriguing Subheading

300 words supporting the subheading and connecting it to the overall point

2nd Descriptive Yet Intriguing Subheading

300 words supporting the subheading and connecting it to the overall point
3rd Descriptive Yet Intriguing Subheading
300 words supporting the subheading and connecting it to the overall point

Conclusion
150 words summary and CTA

----------

That’s it. If you want a longer article, simply add in more subheading
sections.

Writing great content for the web is as simple as filling in the template
above. Sentences should be brief and to the point. There is no need for
fancy wording or advanced vocabulary - in fact, both of those will usually
make your web article worse.

The only part that requires any amount of skill is at the very top of the
template.

1. You need to pick a topic that fits the audience

2. You need to find an angle that makes it can’t-miss material
3. You need to write a really compelling headline
4. You need to write a catchy intro that hooks the reader

That right there is the only “hard” part of online writing, and it’s a big part
of why I have had tremendous success as a writer.

You see, just like the above items are the most important for drawing in a
blog reader, they are equally important at drawing in an editor, owner, or
other decision maker.

Remember our pitch template from the previous section?

You may not be able to fully appreciate this just yet, but if you write 3
incredible headlines in your pitch, you pretty much already have the gig.
Editors desperately need great topics to send their audiences, and they
usually recognize an amazing headline when they see one.

Since the headline incorporates the topic and unique angle you are taking,
once you’ve had a pitch accepted, the only challenging thing left to do is
 write a catchy intro. From there, it’s all simple research - data from case
studies, insights from other articles, opinions from experts, and other types
of supporting evidence.

Sure, it can be time consuming, but it doesn’t require anything special from
you. It’s plug and play. It’s a formula.

11 Additional Guidelines For Online Writing

So yes, there are definitely some additional guidelines to keep in mind, but
again, these don’t require anything from you other than following the
directions

1. Write like you are talking to a single person. Create a customer profile in
your mind, personify that profile into a single person, and then write to
that person.
2. In keeping with the above concept, it is perfectly acceptable to use “I”,
“you”, and “we”.
3. Be concise. Don’t belabor your points with constant repetition and fluff.
You can get away with a little padding, but the more fluff you add, the
worse your writing will be.
4. For important submissions, finish the article at least a day before it’s
due, wait 24 hours, and then read it out loud. You will catch most
grammar errors this way.
5. Start with the outline - headings and subheadings - and then fill in the
content for maximum efficiency.
6. Keep sentences and paragraphs short and to the point.
7. Try and use an “active voice” whenever possible. For example, “The man
wrote an article,” instead of “The article was written by the man.”
8. Use bullet points and numeric series as much as possible throughout
your writing.
9. Use compound sentences sparingly. It will usually read better as two
separate sentences.
10. Try to write with some personality. It’s not necessary, but it sure as hell
helps.
11. Back up your writing with data, studies, and other forms of proof
whenever possible. The highest paid articles will be full of links to
supporting data.
That’s really all you need to know. The actual writing part of online writing
is pretty easy. The business part is far more complicated, which is probably
why you’re reading this right now.
Make Editors Love You
The stupid easy method for becoming an editor's go-to writer

This is going to be the shortest chapter in this guide, because frankly, it’s
the easiest.

Simply follow these 5 steps and every editor you work with will love you.

Why does that matter?

Because happy editors equal more work, higher pay, glowing

recommendations, out-of-nowhere referrals, and a much more enjoyable
working relationship.

To give you some context for what’s possible, a prospective client of mine
recently attended a major conference in my niche. After the conference he
told me that he brought up my name on several occasions and got glowing
reviews from the people he was talking to.

To be honest, I don’t have the faintest clue why my name would come up in
a context like this, but when you have a bunch of editors running around
who really love your work... that’s the type of stuff that happens.

Here’s how to make editors love you:

1. Beat Deadlines
Honestly, if you just MEET your deadlines, you will be ahead of most
freelancers. It’s embarrassing how bad we are at this, and I’m not entirely
exempt.

But if you BEAT your deadlines - if you actually submit your finished work
BEFORE its due - you will put yourself in the top 1% of freelancers.
How easy is that?

2. Submit Error-Free Work

Take the phrase “error free” with a grain of salt.

I’m not saying you need to be literally perfect, and I’m definitely not saying
you should proofreading 5 times before you turn something in.

But at least proofread once, or even better, proofread once after you’re
done writing, wait 24 hours, and then proofread a second time. You will
catch a lot more mistakes the second time around, because your mind
won’t be on the same track as when you wrote the article.

Articles ridden with grammatical errors are a nightmare for editors.

Don’t be that writer.

Submit clean work. If possible, submit error-free work.

3. Back Up Your Writing With “Proof”

Supporting data can take an article from mediocre to excellent.

This type of “proof” will be mandatory for most higher paying gigs, but you
can separate yourself from the pack by including it in gigs where supporting
data isn’t required.

I use quotations because “proof” in the context of the articles you will write
doesn’t have nearly the same journalistic requirements as academic papers
or legitimate journalism. “Proof” in your world probably just constitutes a
link to an article or case study saying the same thing.

Try to use authority sources when possible, but anything that says “this isn’t
just my opinion” will do.
4. Pitch Fantastic Headlines/Outlines
Allow me to describe a typical morning in the life of an editor.

----------

8:00 AM

“Hmm I need a really compelling topic for next week’s content schedule. I
need to think of something we haven’t already covered.”

9:00 AM

“Ugh I’ve been covering this topic for 2 years. I can’t think of anything.”

10:00 AM

“%&$# not another ‘10 Boring Points About Something We’ve Covered 500
Times’ submission!”

11:00 AM

“I am SO BORED of this niche!”

12:00 PM

“Holy shit. Lunch. Finally.”

----------

That’s what an editor’s morning is like. Well... that’s how I imagine it at

least.

Editors need a constant influx of unique, compelling articles. The need new
spins on the same old content they’ve been covering for years.

If you can give that to them by consistently pitching interesting

topics/headlines, they will love you forever.

5. Write Popular Articles

If you were an employee, the best way to get in your boss’ good graces
would be to complete work that makes them look really, really good.

As a freelancer, the best way to get on your editor’s good side is to write
articles that make them look really, really good.

How do you do that?

By writing really popular articles - articles that get lots of shares and
comments and attract people to the website.

At the end of the day, the best way to become an editor’s favorite writer is
to write articles that perform well. That may sound easier said than done,
but it really just comes down to taking a hard look at the target audience,
identifying a topic that will benefit them, and delivering a compelling article.
Earn $$$ Writing For Free
How to make money by writing unpaid guest blogs

It’s time to have some fun.

This chapter is interesting. On the one hand, if you can actually pull off what
I’m about to show you, then you will never have to write unpaid guest posts
for free.

What does that even mean? Don’t worry, I’m about to tell you.

On the other hand, the types of businesses that will pay in the way I’m
about to show you don’t exactly grow on trees. The market is there, but you
are going to have to find it on your own, because frankly, I don’t know of
any particular strategy for finding these types of gigs.

In other words, this chapter is a high stakes gamble. Either you will make
more money from the next few paragraphs than anything else in this book
OR you will make no money and probably waste a lot of time in the process.

Excited!?

Lol let me explain.

Paid Backlinks: Never Write For Free Again

Nothing is free. That is a fundamental truth of the business world.

Every day, thousands of unpaid guest posts are submitted to high profile
sites. Are these articles submitted for charity’s sake?

Of course not.
An unpaid guest post is accepted with the understanding that “payment”
will be in the form of author exposure and backlinks to the author’s site. In
other words, the guest author is “paying” by putting in the work to create
an article, and the website is “paying” by sharing its audience with the
author.

Now, if a business owner wanted to publish a guest post on an authority

site in his niche, he could do one of two things:

1. Have someone on staff write an article and get it published on the site
2. Hire a writer to ghostwrite an article for him, which he then submits
under his name

There are a lot of problems and complications with both of these strategies.
First of all, everyone on staff might be complete shit at writing. And second,
hiring a ghostwriter is a complete hassle.

Furthermore, both of these strategies leave owners with the frustrating task
of actually getting the article place on the site - a process with which they
are entirely unfamiliar.

Are you starting to see the opportunity?

Instead of going with option #1 or option #2, many owners are willing to
just outsource the entire process to a writer with the goal being to land
high-quality, relevant backlinks to their blog.

In other words, they will pay you $$$ to publish a post with a link back to
their website.

This may sound familiar to you. About 10 years ago, this was super
common, but it was done in an extremely spammy way.

There were entire websites made of shit content composed of low-quality

backlinks to various affiliate offers and what not. This basic practice was
used and abused, and Google finally said enough with the Panda and
Penguin updates, forever closing the doors on spammy backlink sites.

What I’m teaching you in this chapter is NOTHING like what I just described.

Here’s the RIGHT way to do it - here’s how I do it.

Spam-Free Backlinking
There are two types of guest posts that I do.

1. Guest posts on marketing blogs

2. Guest posts on writing/freelancing blogs

The guest post on writing/freelancing blogs are to attract people like you
into my world. I will absolutely do those for free.

The unpaid guest posts on marketing blogs are virtually always going to
include a paid link, and I charge around $400 for that service.

That’s right.

I make $400 for unpaid guest posts.

And guess what... nobody has a problem with it, because I’m doing it in a
spam-free way.

Let me explain.

When writing a marketing post, it is absolutely essential to include links to

supporting content, usually in the form of case studies or other blog posts
on marketing. This means that any high quality marketing post is going to
always include multiple backlinks to relevant sites.

Normally, I have to research these case studies and blog posts, but if I am
being paid to link to another marketing site, I will simply pull from their
existing blog posts and case studies.

In other words, the final result of a guest post where I am being paid will
look EXACTLY like the final result of a guest post for which I’m not being
paid. The only difference is that the posts I’m linking out to are
premeditated as opposed to the first sites to pop up in Google during
research.

It’s that simple, and if you can get into a niche where supporting
information is frequently linked to, you can do this exact same strategy.
All you need are site owners or marketing agencies willing to pay for links.

Now, you COULD include paid backlinks in articles you are already getting
paid to write for a site, and while that would obviously stack your income
per article, I don’t recommend it for a number of reasons:

1. Some people would consider this unethical.

2. I recommend building your career in a specific niche, and all it takes is
one influential person to blacklist you in that entire niche.

In other words, all it would take is one person seeing what you are doing
and taking offense for your entire career to get burned in a day.

That’s not worth a few extra dollars. Plus, if you personally feel that it is
unethical, it’s also not worth compromising your integrity for a few extra
dollars.

With unpaid guest posts, you are completely in the clear.

In terms of actually finding businesses hiring guest posters, to be honest,

the only method I know of is cold outreach, either from you or to you. All the
gigs I’ve landed along these lines have been people contacting me and
asking to get mentioned on sites I’d previously written for or sites I’d been
looking at for possible guest posts.

A good target for your own cold outreach might be funded startups as they
are always looking for fast, extensive exposure, but that’s the best lead I
can give you. The rest is going to be up to you.
How To Negotiate
Everything you need to close deals and get paid

At this point in our guide, you have all the tools you need to write posts, but
we still need to cover how to actually get paid.

Negotiation and sales are a MASSIVE part of running a freelance writing

business. You need to just go ahead and embrace that fact.

YOU ARE A SALESPERSON NOW (and there’s no way to get out of it)!

Sales is actually a strong point of mine, so I’m just going to run down my
process, provide some commentary, and let you go from there.

Keep in mind that there are two different ways to approach sales.

1. Trickery & Manipulation

2. Honesty & Value

You can make a lot of money through trickery, but you can’t build a career
that way.

If you decide to lie, trick, and manipulate your way into landing gigs, you
might close some sales, but your career will be in the exact same spot 3
years from now. Meanwhile, all the people who decided to be honest and
provide real value will be 3 years ahead in their careers and income levels.

I am only interested in the honesty and value route, so that’s what I’m
going to teach you today.

1. When To Reveal Pricing

If you look through my website, you’ll notice that I don’t mention pricing up
front.

Why?

There are a number of reasons:

1. Writing projects are incredibly diverse, and I would prefer to offer people
a project-specific quote rather than offering a bunch of different rates
for a bunch of different requests.
2. Price is just a number. Value is ultimately what’s important. By waiting to
reveal my pricing within an email exchange, it allows me to give value up
front and also pitch the benefits of my service in conjunction with the
pricing.
3. My pricing rises as my demand increases, and I don’t ever want to be
locked into a lower rate simply because I forgot to update my website.

Many successful writers do publish their rates (here’s an example), and you
might prefer to take that route. It is absolutely a viable option, but I
personally prefer to discuss pricing via email, and I have been very
successful with this strategy.

If you are cold-pitching someone, I wouldn’t even mention pricing until after
you have discussed the actual work you will be performing.

2. Establishing Expertise
When I’m discussing a project with a potential client, I am very upfront
about my expertise and the value I provide. In fact, I actually recommend
against people hiring me on a regular basis.

For starters, an honest approach is integrous and it leads to me working

with integrous clients (who tend to pay well for quality work). But also, it
communicates to people that I’m not a jack-of-all-trades. I’m an expert in
copywriting and content strategy and nothing else, and I price myself
accordingly.

While this might mean I’m missing out on lower level deals from time to
time, it also makes me attractive to clients looking to pay good money for a
talented copywriter. And the more demand I build for my services, the
easier it is to say “No” to small or low-pay stuff.

If you are just starting out, I encourage you to take on as many projects as
you can, even if they are small or slightly underpaid. It’s good to expose
yourself to different types of writing and different types of projects.

BUT once you have begun developing your niche and building your
expertise, you have to be willing to say no to lowballers.

3. Offer Value First & Then Offer More Value

As I mentioned earlier, waiting to reveal my pricing via email allows me to
offer value up front.

What the hell does that mean?

When someone emails me saying they are interested in hiring me for a

given page, website or project, the FIRST thing I do is give them as much
free advice possible. If they are wanting copywriting for a landing page, I
will tell them what is wrong with the current page and how to fix it. If they
just make a general inquiry about my services, I will thank them for
contacting me and ask them for specifics so that I can provide a defined
quote

And I don’t skimp on the value I provide.

I will literally provide a detailed outline of how they should change their
copy and organize their sales pitch.

Couldn’t they just take that info and run?

Sure.

But here’s the deal. When it comes to writing, knowing what to write, and
actually being able to write it are two entirely different things.

The hard work is still ahead of them, and if they were ever interested in
investing in a top-quality copywriter, they aren’t going to turn DIY simply
because I gave them some valuable advice for free.
What I’ve just done is prove to them that I actually know what I’m talking
about. I’ve also given them something for free, which makes them
psychologically inclined to hire me if my rates are reasonably close to their
budget.

What I’ll do is send them this incredible proposal full of free advice they can
run with on their own, and then I’ll say, “And if you’d like me to simply write
out the copy for you myself, I’d be happy to do that as well. I charge _____
per page and can give you a discount if you are interested in ordering
multiple pages. If you decide to hire me, here’s what you can expect...”

So let’s summarize:

1. Offer value for free

2. Propose your services as the premium version
3. Tell them exactly what they can expect if they hire you
4. Profit

#3 is really important, so I’m going to cover it in a bit more detail after this
next point.

4. Price High & Make A Meaningful Counter

In my experience, most people who can afford my services simply accept my
prices. I don’t get a ton of negotiation these days, but it does happen and I
used to have it happen a lot more frequently.

It’s worth noting that I am very comfortable with my pricing these days. I
have priced my services based on a mix of real value, marketing demand,
and my personal, arbitrary feelings concerning the value of my time.

What does that mean?

It means that I am perfectly happy making less many than I could have
made on a project and I am perfectly happy turning down a project that
wouldn’t pay me enough.

I am at peace with my value and my pricing. I experience zero stress on

whether my pricing is going to affect whether or not I land a gig.
That’s your future reality, but it may not be your present reality. If you are
like me a few years ago, you are stressing out over what to charge. You
don’t want to scare people away by asking for too much but you also don’t
want to miss out on money you could have made if you had asked for more.

Here’s how I made it through that stage.

Start by establishing an “accepted pay range”. This range goes from the
minimum amount you would need to take the job all the way up to the
maximum you feel could be reasonably paid for the desired job.

While it’s important to feel out clients and adjust your negotiations
accordingly, as a general rule, I would recommend making your opening bid
at the top of your accepted pay range. This gives you a chance to maximize
your revenue on the project while also giving you ample room to make a
lower counter-offer that still pays wells.

Some people will tell you to open with an unreasonably high bid, but I think
that’s a bad idea.

For starters, pitching unreasonably high makes it impossible to over-deliver

on value, which is a key part of building your career.

Additionally, pitching unreasonably high will scare off legitimate clients.

Clients expect that there will be some negotiation to any hiring process, but
this isn’t a third world tourist market. People don’t expect to negotiate an
80% discount.

Most potential clients of yours aren’t professional negotiators, and they

aren’t looking to lowball you as much as they are looking to get a good
value for their hard-earned money.

If your opening bid is countered or rejected, re-iterate why you charge what
you do – aka sell them on your value – and then counter with a lower bid
that is just low enough to be a meaningful price decrease.

For example, if you opened bidding with $15,000, and they tell you their
budget is $10,000, countering with $14,500 isn’t really a counter at all. By
dropping your 2nd bid to $12,500, you can make the client feel like you are
making a genuine attempt to provide them with an exceptional value. This
will typically activate the psychological principle of reciprocity, and you will
find your counter offer accepted more often than not.

5. Develop A System & Include It In Your

Proposal
I can’t stress this enough.

A CONSISTENT SYSTEM MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER.

Don’t just wing it. Know exactly what you plan on doing. Not only will
communicating your system to a prospective client put them at ease and
reflect a higher level of professionalism, it will also make life way easier for
you.

Here’s my system once the contract is closed. This is literally copy/pasted

from a client email exchange that closed at $5,500.

And if you'd like to proceed, this is what you can expect:

1. I'll immediately send over a questionnaire that will help me get a handle
on your value proposition and target customer.
2. I'll also send over an invoice for half of the total contract.
3. Once I’ve received first-half payment plus answers to your questionnaire,
I will complete the first draft of your copy with a two week maximum
turnaround time.
4. I will continue to revise the copy until you are 100% happy with it.
5. Payment for the second half of the contract will be invoiced one week
following delivery of the first draft, regardless of where we are in the
revision process (again, revisions will continue until you are happy with
the finished product).
We're most afraid of what we don’t know or understand. Business owners
get burned by online marketers all the time, and communicating a
straightforward system like the one above helps alleviate that fear by
eliminating the unknowns.

But let’s break it down piece by piece.

What’s this questionnaire? If you are only writing blog content, you can get
by without a questionnaire, but it is still better to have one for first-time
gigs. Not only will it make you look more professional, but it will also give
you a better understanding of the business’ target audience, which is
absolutely essential for writing content that performs well.

Here’s an abbreviated questionnaire that can be sent to any client:

1. What do you want people to do when they visit this page (or read this
article)? What is the #1 thing?

2. Who is your target audience? Be as specific as possible.

3. What is your primary value proposition?

4. What are the top 3 problems your business solves? What are the top 3
benefits your customers receive?

5. What are the primary emotional benefits that tend to resonate with
clients? What are the primary analytical points, case studies, or projected
figures that have prompted a “wow” response?

6. What aspect of your pitch has been, in your opinion, the most effective in
selling clients on your product or service?

7. Do you have direct or indirect competitors that you wish to outperform or

emulate? If so, what do you feel they do well? (please include brand names
or direct links to their websites)
8. How are you better than your competitors? What alternatives are
customers considering and why are you the best option?

9. How do people find this page (or article)? Name any traffic source that
make up 20% or more of the incoming traffic?

10. What sort of tone and brand image are you aiming for?

11. What are your most impressive case studies?

12. Is there anything else I should know or that you feel is important for me
to consider in writing this page (or article)?

Next, I send an invoice. I NEVER begin work without money down unless I
am pitching an established site using the no-risk method. If that isn’t the
exact scenario, I require money up front.

I prefer to collect the entire project payment up front, and at this point in
my career, that is rarely an issue for anything up to $2,000. For larger
projects or clients who don’t feel comfortable with full payment up front, I
will offer half payment up front and half on completion.

If you are really skeptical about a client, do half up front and then half upon
completion of half the work. That way, you are never at risk of losing
anything and the client has no legitimate objections if you deliver the first
half of the work in top form.

Let me just stop here really quick and point something out.

If you’ve been having trouble with clients skipping out on pay, this is a
GUARANTEED way to ensure you never get cheated out of pay.

1. Require first half payment up front

2. Deliver half the work
3. Require second half payment
4. Deliver second half of work
Since at no point are you beginning work that hasn’t already been paid for,
you can’t get cheated.

Okay, back to the system.

I like to have a standard turnaround of two weeks, regardless of how small

the project is, and I always clarify that the turnaround time begins the day I
receive payment AND any project information requested.

One of the things that can trip you up as a freelancer is delivering on a

project when the client is being very slow about sending you necessary
materials or information. This is why I like to think through everything I’m
going to need to complete the project, and if it isn’t covered in the
questionnaire, I will request it along with the questionnaire as a prerequisite
for beginning the job.

This way, I am never prevented from delivering on the promised due date
because of a slow-responding client. The power is completely in my hands.

Finally, let’s talk about revisions.

I tend to adjust my revision guarantee based on my feel for the client, but
overall, I am pretty loose with it, because I do not typically run into
unreasonable clients at the price-points I target.

If I feel very good about a client, as in the case above, I will offer an infinite
revision guarantee and not worry about clarifying. If I’m less enthusiastic, I
will put a timeframe cap of one-month or clarify that I will only do revisions
that don’t substantially divert from the original requests.

I would highly recommend that you include wording like this. It’s good to tell
people what to expect in terms of revisions, and even something as simple
as “3 revisions” might be fine.

So that’s my system. I follow it religiously, and 95% of my contracts are

incredibly straightforward. You will find that a lot of people actually want
smooth transactions, and when you make expectations crystal clear on
both sides, they will do exactly what they promise to do.
Turn Articles Into Assets
How to make your articles work keep working for you

Now that we’ve covered most of the writing process itself, it’s time to turn
our attention to career building.

More specifically, we need to create a framework for ensuring that every

post we write benefits our career in the long term.

This isn’t hard, but you absolutely must follow every step.

1. Setup an author website

2. Create a piece of content that is super attractive to your target clients
3. Link to your primary service page and your download in every author bio
4. Take note of the content you are linking to in your niche articles and
create a piece of similar content on your blog once per month
5. Link to these blog posts whenever appropriate in your paid articles

That’s the entire framework. It’s not hard, but you have to be intentional,
and you have to be willing to do step #1 even though you are thinking “I
don’t really need a website.”

1. Setup An Author Website

You need a website. No, I’m going to stop you right there. Yes, you DO need
a website.

If Chapter 7 is the only part of this entire guide you follow to the letter, you
will still receive a significant boost to your career.

GET AN AUTHOR WEBSITE ONLINE NOW!

If you have more time than money, I’m going to show you how to setup a
site very easily in the next Chapter 8. I figured out how to build my own site
and you can too. It’s not hard, but there is definitely a learning curve.

For those of you with zero time to build your site, I have made a very
affordable option available for you to get a fully loaded author website at
around 1/3rd the market rate.

Listen.

I don’t really want you to purchase this. I hardly make any money from it,
and I will probably spend way too much time on it. My goal for this guide is
not to upsell you on web design.

If you have the time to build your own website, and you aren’t
technologically challenged, BUILD YOUR OWN DAMN WEBSITE.

But I know some of you simply won’t have the time, so you are going to go
out and setup up a tumblr like a schmuck or hire some sleazy company to
build you a broken site. You are going to lose time and money and have a
nightmare experience, and I’m not cool with that. You don’t deserve that.

The #1 complaint I hear from clients is that their shit web design company
pulled shenanigans.

That’s why I’ve brought on some low-cost, proven developers to help me

make this offer available to you. PLEASE DO NOT BUY A WEBSITE... but if
you must - if you simply do not have the time to build one yourself - do
yourself a favor and buy it here.

2. Create A Piece of Content Your Target

Audience Will Want
What type of people hire you? What type of people do you want to hire
you?

Is it business owners? Marketing managers? Blog editors?

Even if they aren’t ready to hire your services immediately, you want to
catch their attention when they come across your work and give yourself a
chance to connect with them down the road.

Email marketing is how you do this. It works like this.

1. They see a piece of content that appeals to them.

2. They give you their email address in order to download it.
3. You email them periodically, highlighting your work and providing value
to them.
4. You are the first one who comes to mind when they are in the market for
your services.

The first step is to create a piece of content that appeals to them. This is
called a “lead magnet”.

Since my clients are made up primarily of marketing managers and

business owners who directly manage their own marketing, I created a lead
magnet that would appeal to that group.

I created this from a post I had already written, so it wasn’t much extra
work. The key is that it appeals to my target audience, provides free value
for them, AND highlights my own expertise.

This is what you need - a piece of content that your target customer will
want to download.
Another good example is from a friend of mine name Aaron Orendorff, who
has this dropdown (created using SumoMe) display as soon as people land
on his website.

This download is relevant to the services he provides (copywriting and

content) and it’s relevant to his target audience (people considering hiring a
copywriter), so it’s perfect.

3. Include Two Intentional Links In Your

Author Bio
Here’s the part where we link all our hard word to our website and make it
continue to work for us.

Some editors will be very stingy with letting you include links in the article
itself. Others will let you include whatever you want. Regardless, your
author bio is specifically designated to let you advertise yourself, so take
advantage of that.

My bio strategy has evolved over the years. Here’s what I find most
effective today.
My first link is to my primary service page that I want to rank -
http://jacobmcmillen.com/professional-copywriter/

My second link is to a lead magnet. In addition to the “marketing on a

budget” lead magnet, I have a number of them available for different
audiences.

Here’s an example of what one of my author bios looks like:

Jacob McMillen is a website copywriter and content strategist. He writes

marketing and career advice that doesn't suck on his blog Digital Careerist.
Download his free guide: 20 Field-Tested Techniques For Tripling Your Email
List In Under A Year.

If you’ve identified your niche, try to use text that fits your niche to link to
your service page. Notice how I’m linking from “website copywriter”. I’ve
used this “anchor” text on multiple articles, and now, if you type “website
copywriter” into Google...

As you can see, I’m the 4th organic search result. That means that when
anyone in the United States searches for “website copywriter”, I’m the 4th
name they see.

And literally the only thing I did to get there is link to my copywriting page
from the phrase “website copywriter” in various articles that I published. My
rankings have steadily increased over time, and I’ve only just reached top 5
results in the last few months.

It takes time to rank for search results. That’s why it is so important to get
your website set up now, so you can begin collecting links to your site.

4. Create Blog Content You Can Link To

If you ever try the paid backlink technique I taught you in Chapter 5, you’ll
realize very quickly that getting links included within an article is not easy.

Some editors are really loose with this and will allow anything that links to
relevant, valuable content. Others will completely wipe your links. But more
often than not, the main rule is that your content needs to link to other
content - it can’t link to service or landing pages.

While including great links in our Author Bio will definitely work for you,
links in the article itself tend to be more valuable for two reasons.

1. People tend to click links in the article a lot more frequently than author
bio links.
2. Google recognizes author bios and gives bio links less “juice” than article
links.

All that to say, if you can also get some links to your site within your
articles, you will get more value from each post.

But how do you link to your site if you can’t link to service pages?

Link to blog posts!

As you write more and more content in a given niche, you will begin to pick
up on certain types of posts or resources that you often link to in your niche
articles. What I recommend doing is identifying something along these lines
that you could replicate and then creating a similar resource on your blog.

If you do this even just once per month, you will build an ever-growing
library of niche resources that you can link to in your posts. These resources
will simultaneously boost your status with Google, and if you promote them,
they can even bring in viewers and new backlinks to your website.

For example, this article, targeted at freelancers, has been linked to over
100 times. It’s not even that efficient of a resource, but it still has acquired
100 more links for me than a normal blog post.

Review
This process isn’t that complicated. It just takes time.

1. Setup an author website

2. Create a piece of content that is super attractive to your target clients
3. Link to your primary service page and your download in every author bio
4. Take note of the content you are linking to in your niche articles and
create a piece of similar content on your blog once per month
5. Link to these blog posts whenever appropriate in your paid articles
Build An Author Website
The step-by-step guide to setting up your author website

I can’t say this enough. You need a website to build a career in online
writing.

You need it.

You know those links you get in your author bio like we discussed in the
previous section? You know those links to your own blog posts you include
in your articles?

Businesses pay hundreds of dollars for links like that, and you get them
free. When people pay you to write credited articles, they are actually
paying you to advertise your own business! And as you accrue links to your
site overtime, you domain authority will increase and you will rank better for
various search terms.

And it means absolutely nothing UNLESS you have a website.

Don’t waste all those links! One way or another you need an author website
as of yesterday. If you have some spare time (and if you don’t, MAKE
SOME), here’s how to setup your author website.

Step 1: Buy Your Domain

The first thing you need is a domain. This is your online “mailing address”.
Mine is jacobmcmillen.com.

Here’s your domain name formula: First Name + Last Name + .com

It’s that simple. If your heart skipped twice when you saw the phrase “buy
your domain”, then don’t second guess this. Just go grab a domain based
on your name.

If you are a bit more savvy, than maybe think through a few different
options... and then buy a domain based on your name.

If your exact-match name isn’t available, then you’ll have to pick another
option:

Add your middle name or initial in between your first and last name:
jacobdmcmillen.com
Use your last name plus “writer”: mcmillenwriter.com
Use your last name plus some other word: mcmillencopywriting.com
Pick a business name and use that: copybros.com

The only real way you can screw this up is to pick something obviously
unprofessional or spend way too much time deciding on your domain name.

For the “.com” portion - called the “top level domain” - I recommend just
going with “.com”. If your exact-match name isn’t available as a “.com” and
it is available as a “.net” or a country-specific option like “.uk”, “.au”, “.ca”,
“.in”, etc., then perhaps consider that option, but my recommendation is to
stick with a “.com”.

You will almost definitely get a free domain when you purchase hosting, so
hold off on buying your chosen domain until you pick a hosting option in the
next section.

Step 2: Pick Your Build & Buy Hosting

I’m going to provide two core options for hosting & then building your site.

1. Wordpress
2. Squarespace

Wordpress is what I use. It provides tremendous flexibility and while there is

an initial learning curve, it’s not bad, and Wordpress design is a 100%
worthwhile skill to acquire. You are going to pay less for hosting with this
option, and if you ever want to increase the functionality by adding various
features, you will be SO HAPPY you picked Wordpress.
This is NOT wordpress.com which is essentially a better tumblr. I’m talking
about Wordpress.org which is softare you install via your host (every host
nowadays provides 1-click Wordpress instillation).

Next is Squarespace, the shitty option. Squarespace is ONLY for you if you
have zero time to build a site, zero interest in expanding your site down the
road, zero design ability, and zero problem with slightly overpaying for
hosting.

Squarespace will let a complete noob get a clean looking website up quicker
than Wordpress and will then smugly charge that noob extra money every
month for the rest of forever as a thank you to itself.

If you want to go the Squarespace route, click here. If you want to be a

better human being, keep reading.

There are a lot of hosting options out there. Here are the 3 that I
recommend:

1. If you a passable, dirt cheap option, use Bluehost.

2. If you want solid performance and support at affordable pricing, use
GoDaddy.
3. If you want higher end performance for a slight premium, use
Siteground.

All 3 of these hosting options will give you a free domain as part of your
purchase. Pick the one you want, select your domain and make your
purchase. Next, simply log into your hosting account and select “Install
Wordpress” or something along those lines.

It’s very easy, and there are tons of online guides if you get tripped up. You
can also just call support and have them walk you through it.

Step 3: Pick & Install Your Wordpress Theme

Once Wordpress is installed, you can either use the default Wordpress
theme or pick a different one to install.

Here’s what I recommend.

Go to Studiopress.com. Pick a theme. Pay for it. Or buy all their themes here
(what I did).

Next, simply follow StudioPress’ incredibly in-depth directions for uploading,

setting up, and customizing your selected theme.

It might take some time to work your way through this the first time, but it’s
worth it.

Step 4. Install Email Capture

You’ll want to begin building an email list of target prospects. To do this,
setup a free account with Mailchimp. You can always upgrade later or
move to a better ESP, but for now, just grab the free account.

You can then install Mailchimp’s Wordpress plugin and add signup forms to
your site.

Finally, head on over to SumoMe.com and install this free app to add a ton
of features to your site, including:

Share bar for easy social sharing

Basic popups to grab email subscribers
Heatmaps to track visitor behavior
Attention bar to direct visitors to high-priority pages
A bunch of other features I don’t use but you might

And just like that, you have an author website! See, that wasn’t so bad.
How To Find Higher Pay
The 3 types of lucrative writing gigs and how to land them

Wow.

We’ve covered a lot so far.

I think it’s fair to say that you now have everything you need to build an
intermediate-level writing career. But let’s be honest... that’s not what
you’re here for. $400 per article isn’t exactly “intermediate”.

So let’s take things to the next level.

Let’s talk about landing some high rollers. Let’s talk about how I’ve landed
my biggest career wins and how those wins apply to your business.

There are a few different types of high-paying gigs that we’ll be covering:

1. One-off projects
2. Recurring article assignments
3. Retainer services

Keep in mind that different niches will facilitate different types of work. One
niche might be primed for big one-off projects while another might be the
perfect niche for securing a retainer.

I’ve made as high as $14,000 from a one-off project, but that type of gig
might not be available in your niche. And frankly, they don’t need to. I
would rather land a $3,000 per month gig for 6 months than a $14,000 one-
off contract. And I would rather land 2 gigs at $2,000 per month for 6
months than either the $14k or $3k per month gigs.

There is no one-size-fits-all in freelancing. Even if I were to mentor you

personally, your results, experiences, and opportunities would look
drastically different than mine. That’s just the nature of the game.
Freelancing is a mixture of intention and luck. You can’t control the luck, but
you can position yourself correctly. My goal in this chapter is to give you an
inside look into my biggest wins so that you can better position yourself for
opportunity.

1. How To Land High-Paying One-Off Projects

Remember how we talked in Chapter #1 about the connection between the
money someone can make from your writing and the money they are
willing to pay you? When we start talking about higher paying gigs, that
becomes a big factor.

Landing high-paying gigs is all about positioning. It’s about putting yourself
in the right place and working your butt off to deliver every time an
opportunity comes your way.

I’ve made as much as $14,000 from a single project, but it was a

copywriting project. Frankly, you probably won’t ever land a 5 figure one-off
gig for anything other than copywriting. But it doesn’t really matter,
because one-off projects are just one way to get paid.

When looking for high pay, you need to keep two things in mind:

1. Networking is your best friend

2. Referrals, referrals, referrals, referrals, referrals, referrals, referrals

To break the mystique, let me tell you exactly how I landed that $14k gig.

As I showed you in the opening blueprint, the first year of freelancing is all
about brute force. It’s about keeping up a continuous stream of prospecting
in multiple directions.

One day, while I was browsing Facebook, I saw an ad for a marketing

agency. I clicked through to check out the site, scrolled around and took
note of the sweet site design, and then went to look at their marketing
team.

I noticed that they didn’t have any copywriters on their team, and I thought
that was odd for a marketing agency, so I decided to shoot them an email,
let them know I loved the site’s design, and ask if they were looking to hire
a copywriter.

The owner of the agency then emailed me back saying that they weren’t
looking to hire a staff copywriter but he actually had some friends who were
looking to hire a freelance copywriter for some projects.

I sent him a few writing samples and then he introduced me to two

separate individuals looking for a copywriter.

Like I teach you in the chapter on negotiation, I provided value up front and
positioned myself as an expert rather than the lowest bidder. In both cases,
I was competing against several other copywriters, BUT I had a massive
advantage in that I had been referred to them by someone they knew and
respected. Other than reviewing my samples, the guy who referred me
didn’t know me from Adam, but that didn’t matter. I was a still a referred
service provider.

I closed the first guy on $14k within two weeks.

The second guy wasn’t quite ready to hire, but we stayed connected (like I
taught you to do via email marketing), and a few months later, he hired me
for a $2,000 project.

In both cases, I bid high, they countered low, and I then dropped my price
enough to make meaningful and stood my ground... exactly like I taught
you.

Here’s what I want you to take away from this:

1. Networking is your best friend

2. Referrals are the best pay to land higher paying gigs
3. Major projects can come out of nowhere

I didn’t click on that Facebook ad expecting to make $16k. I DID click on

that add looking for opportunities and thinking like a prospector. There are
many, more direct prospecting activities I’ve engaged in that didn’t result in
so much as a penny.

But when you are continuously networking, providing value, and looking for
opportunity, you WILL find it.
So if you aren’t a copywriter, where can you find high paying one-off gigs?

I’m glad you asked. There are a few places.

Writing long, in-depth blog posts in your niche

Writing lead magnets for businesses in your niche that need them
Interviewing customers and writing case studies
Ghostwriting books in your niche

To be honest, there’s not a TON of options for one-off writing projects. But
they do exist. You can easily make over $1,000 from each of these writing
types.

How do you land these types of gigs?

For blog posts, send a pitch exactly like we’ve already discussed.
For lead magnets, look for blog or websites that have a boring
“subscribe here to get our best work” and pitch them on a lead magnet
that will motivated their readers to subscribe.
For customer case studies, look for business that are already doing it but
clearly don’t have a great writer handling the writeups.
For ghostwriting books, you are probably going to need to apply to job
listings OR find a non-writer who is churning out books and pitch yourself
in to the action.

You will work really hard to land some of these, and others will just fall in
your lap. Welcome to the numbers game.

2. How To Land High-Paying, Recurring

Article Assignments
In all likelihood, this is going to make up the bulk of your income as a writer.

Pay-per-article is THE most common gig you can land as a freelance writer.
Furthermore, if you follow everything I’ve taught you in this guide, you will
end up with a lot of guest spots for temporary hires turning into these
recurring assignments.

The key here is finding the high-paying ones, and there are a number of
ways you can do that:

Pitch these 38 websites that pay over $100 per article

Pitch these 37 blogs that pay up to $300 per article
Keep your eye on job boards like Problogger, FWJ, and Craigslist.
Identify highly paid writers (like me) and pitch the sites they write for

This is going to be your “bread and butter”, and the more established a site
is, the more dependable your recurring income will be from it, provided you
can deliver the goods.

This might not seem like “high pay” at first glance, but let me paint a
scenario for you.

4 websites paying you for 4 articles per month @ $200 per article.

That doesn’t seem impossible does it?

Now let’s say you do one extra guest post each week and include a paid
backlink for $400.

That’s $4,800 per month to write ONE article per day, Monday through
Friday. Now let’s assume you are the world’s slowest writer and it takes you
4 hours to write one post.

You are still earning $57,600 per year to work just 20 hours a week. If you
can cut your writing time down to a more reasonable 2 hours per post, you
are now making $57,600 working just 10 hours per week.

Not bad, right!?

And you can always add more gigs. Every additional gig you land makes the
next one easier to acquire. The more samples you have - the more bylines
you have - the easier it becomes to land new ones. The only limit is your
time.

3. How To Land Retainer Service Gigs

The final option we’ll look at for high-paying gigs is retainer services.
What this means is that you are receiving a guaranteed amount of money
every single month, similar to a salary. This retainer could be paid in
exchange for a set number of hours worked, a set number of articles
delivered, or some other performance metric.

Retainers aren’t exactly common in the freelancing world, at least in my

experience, but if you can land them, they are the best way to stabilize your
income.

I currently have two of these gigs in place. One is a $2,500 monthly retainer
for a set number of articles and backlinks delivered. Another is a $4,000
monthly retainer for a set number of hours per week, with a few minimum
performance requirements in place.

These retainers share two things in common:

1. They were essentially “promotions” from previous ongoing work.

2. They involved a fuller set of services than just article writing.

Basically, these retainers involve the business owners handing me the keys
to run their content marketing on some level. For me to grab a retainer, I’m
bringing more to the table than just article writing.

I’m bringing content strategy, content promotion, link building, and niche
connections to the table.

In other words, I’m bringing the skills you develop after 3-5 years in a niche.

Now, I’m not saying you can’t set a retainer up in your first year. In fact, my
first ever retainer was also my first ever ongoing writing gig - 20 articles per
week @ 500 words for $12 per article. These articles were on topics like
carpet cleaning and auto repair, and I wrote them week in and week out for
over six months straight :O

Just keep in mind that more lucrative retainers are rarely going to be
something you start with or cold-pitch. It’s usually going to be a situation
where you are doing some good work for someone and they decide they
want to take it to the next level.
How To Build A Business
How to transition out of the freelancer mentality

Let me explain the typical mentality of a freelancer.

“Okay, I don’t have any work this week, so I need to start prospecting. I
have to land two more gigs so I can my bills.”

“Ugh, I never heard back from that person. I haven’t heard back from the
last three editors I’ve pitched. I should probably just take some more
articles from that guy who pays $15 per 500 words.”

“$5 for an article??? Why does NOBODY pay for good writing anymore!?”

“Oh yay! I landed 15 articles. Hmmm. 15 x 20 equals... yeah I think that

should be enough to cover rent.”

Does that sound familiar? I’ve certainly been there. That could describe me
at one point in the past, and let me just tell you...

This mentality is COMPLETE SHIT.

You will never become a high rolling freelancer with this attitude or
mentality. It’s not going to happen. This isn’t the mentality of a business
owner. It’s the mentality of a scavenger.

If you want to make good money writing, you have to begin thinking like a
business owner.

Here’s where it starts.

1. Plan Out Your Income

I’ve spent the last 15,000 words teaching you everything you need to make
$2,000 per week writing, but without an income plan, you might as well
have read nothing.

If I say that my goal is to earn $2,000 per week, that’s just an arbitrary
number. It’s meaningless. What makes it meaningful is having an exact
plan for acquiring it. And creating that plan is both stupidly simple and
completely essential.

Here’s what an income plan for a $2,000 week looks like:

“I’m going to make $2,000 this week,” is a worthless statement.

“I need to get hired for 10 articles at $200 per article” is a lot more
concrete.

“I am going to submit to these 15 websites that pay $200 per article and
land 10 gigs is even more concrete.”

Now, are you going to actually get hired by 10 different companies in the
same week? Probably not. If it were that simple, my career blueprint for you
would be one month long... not 3 years.

But think about it this way. A business that will pay you $200 for an article
or guest post backlink at least twice per month is your golden goose. These
types of businesses aren’t just lying around everywhere, but they absolutely
are out there.

If you pick up just one of these clients each month and hold onto them, you
will have a six figure writing business within a year and a half.
And your income isn’t limited to these types of gigs. You will have one-off
projects come your way and all sorts of other opportunities as you network,
guest post, find new clients, and bolster your web presence.

But here’s the point: if you want to make serious money as a writer, you
have to plan out EXACTLY how you are going to secure that income.

And because I love you, I’ve made a simple spreadsheet to help you track
and plan your income. CLICK HERE to view it and then select “File” > “Make
a copy” to download it to your own Google Drive.

2. Dealing With Clients

Another important element that every legitimate business owner takes
seriously is customer interaction.

How good are you at working with clients?

This may seem obvious, but the mentality is what’s important. Are you a
scared freelancer grasping for crumbs and eyeing your clients like they are
ready to rip you off?

Or are you a business owner focused on providing value to customers and

ensuring that they have an optimal experience?

As we talked about in the chapter on negotiation, there are ways to protect

yourself. You can create a system that will keep you from getting screwed
over. But you will never build a business if you are continuously going into
meetings with the expectation that someone is trying to take advantage of
you.

Shit is going to happen.

You might miss out on a payment every once in awhile. If you’re thinking
like a freelancer, that’s a huge barrier that you have to climb over, whining
all along the way.

If you’re a business owner, that’s just a cost of doing business.

Having a win-win mentality can also help when contracts start to go south.
For example, remember that $14k contract? A month into the project, the
employer sprung a new set of pages on me, and when I responded that
these pages weren’t part of the contract, he demanded a refund of the $7k
he had already paid me.

I was pretty upset about this, but I decided not to have a victim mentality
and instead, assume good faith in the employer and try to reach a mutually
beneficial solution. My email response began like this:

Hey [Name],

So I had a fight-back email prepared for you, when it occurred to me that

your goal in all this, despite how it would seem to me, is not to screw me
over. Your goal is to get copy done for your website.

On my end, my goal is not to leave you scrambling to find a new copywriter.

I like this project and have, for the most part, enjoyed working on it.

And guess what?

His response was positive and we were able to work it out.

It can be very easy to slip into a me-first mentality as a freelancer, and

while you should definitely be protecting yourself, successful business
owners think with a customer-first mentality instead.

3. Expansion & Growth

A successful business owner thinks at scale. How can I grow and expand?

In order to follow your income plan and meet your income goals, you will
need to be constantly prospecting. Even as you are delivering on the jobs
you’ve closed, you will need to be prospecting for more jobs or investing in
other lead generating activites.

And then when you hit one milestone, it’s time to set a new one. That’s how
growth happens.

That said, there is a hard cap on what you can accomplish as a freelancer,
and it’s set by your time. You can only exchange a limited number of hours
for pay each day, so your career has a hard cap.

If you want to ever expand past that cap, you’ll need to think beyond
exchanging hours of writing for pay.

This can look like any number of things:

Building your website into a profitable blog

Turning your freelancing into an agency and hiring employees
Productizing your knowledge and selling it as digital products
Expanding into content marketing and offering a fuller marketing
package
Creating an ecommerce store in your niche
Etc.

This is the internet. There are a lot of options at your fingertips. Don’t
pigeonhole yourself.

At the same, don’t dilute your focus and try to do too many things at once.
Focus on one goal at a time. If you haven’t hit your $2,000 per week or
whatever you immediate income goal is, focus on that and ONLY that until
you hit it. THEN pick your next goal.

Career growth is as simple as picking a good ladder of goals and focusing

on one at a time.
 Get Mentored
Thanks for taking the time to read this guide!

I hope you found it incredibly helpful, and I welcome

any and all feedback. If you have any questions,
comments, feedback, or requests for additional
content, please shoot me an email at
jm@jacobmcmillen.com.

My current 3-year goal is to help 100 freelance

writers achieve an income of $2,000 per week. It will
look wildly different for every writer, but I absolutely
believe that it’s possible, and this guide is Step #4
on my defined plan for making that a reality.

Nothing beats direct, 1-to-1 mentoring, so the next

step in my plan is to take 10 of you and personally
mentor you for a period of 3 months. Applications
for these 10 spots are open now (and will be
through Friday, August 26th).

Click Here To
Apply