It’s Monday — that means it’s time to open up the mailbox and answer YOUR questions!
So… How about that April Fool’s joke?
Turns out I fooled a few folks! 🙂
But it also brought a bunch of folks out of the woodwork, to tell me just how much they’ll miss these daily issues, should they ever go away.
Damian said, “Good one! Honestly though, I just wanted to tell you your daily emails are crazy valuable my friend. You talk about topics I don’t read anywhere else. I know in part you do it for positioning and to acquire clients, but you share information that I haven’t even read in paid info products. I’m really glad this isn’t the last issue. Keep up the good work.”
Gerome wrote, “Nice punchline! you got me there! Thanks for awesome tips Roy!”
MaryAnna told me, “It worked. I believed it was your last issue. And it forced me to read it to find out why you were stopping. I was so sad. Now I’m reminded how valuable these emails are to me. Good luck and thank you again for all the free content you share on such a regular basis.”
John just called me “Sneaky!!!” And added a devil emoji for full effect.
And Cyndee, who is always full of so much support, told me, “You STINKAH!!!! I WAS GEARING UP to write you a short note to support your new thrust, and give you NO grief for stopping your blog. Even though I was grief-stricken, your welfare mattered more. Well, it still does. But I AM glad your blog continues…AND you’re feeling better. Still, I sure wanna SMACK ya!”
So, in case you only read the first few sentences of Friday’s issue, turns out I’m NOT going anywhere.
And since it’s Monday, it’s time to open the ol’ mailbox!
Today’s question is about…
How to generate an extra $500 to $1,000 per month, in your spare time…
Remember, you can get YOUR questions on business, copywriting, marketing, selling, lead generation, life, and more answered by sending them to my at [email protected].
This week I continue to clear out the queue, which means:
- Any questions coming in now will get answered quicker… And…
- Since I AM clearing out the queue, I will need your questions! 🙂
Okay, let’s dive in…
—
Roy,
I sign up and don’t open many of these. I just recently signed up to get something you offered (and I don’t remember now what it was). I simply remember having a very positive feeling about you and your work.
I am a 6th grade teacher. I’m trying to figure out how to bring in $500 to $1000 more a month. I am a copywriter. I also have about 660 educators on my subscriber list.
I’ve figured out how to pair downloadable PDFs with my blog posts to capture leads. Stressrelief4teachers.net is my website for my product.
But I also have a client. He’s a comedian. I just wrote him a sales letter which is online. We are marketing him to the [REDACTED] meetings that take place all over.
He has a background in selling products to that industry.
We need to get that letter, VSL, snail mail in front of the people who can hire him to do corporate comedy shows. We are working with a budget of 0.
Thanks,
Art
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First, let me commend you!
There are a ton of things you’re doing right, and I want to point them out.
Then, I’ll address the specific question related to adding $500 to $1,000 per month to your income.
— One, you’re taking action. Often the biggest difference between winners and losers is that winners “Just Do It” and losers either don’t dream or they don’t take action to make their dreams real. You MUST take action, and you are.
— Two, you’ve built a website AND a mailing list — and that’s not too shabby at all! 660 educators on a mailing list, specifically interested in the subject of stress relief, is VERY intriguing. That alone could make you the extra cash you’re looking for.
— Three, you’re working with a client. Not just a client, a client who has a high-value service, targeted to a VERY SPECIFIC target market. That’s sales gold. More on that soon.
The way I see it, what you’ve done so far gives you AT LEAST three ways to add $1,000 per month or more to your monthly income…
— First, you could develop offers for the teacher stress relief site. There’s actually a couple avenues to pursue there, but you’re in a really good spot. More on these below.
— Second, you can help your one client maximize his revenue, and find a way to get paid for that.
— Third, you can go get more clients.
NONE of these exclude the others — except maybe when it comes to allocating your limited time. You could pursue one, two, or even three of them at once, if you can fit them into your schedule.
First, how to make $500 to $1,000 per month off your fledgling email list and website…
Here’s the really great thing. Small lists are often more engaged and more responsive than bigger lists. You have a really focused topic, to a really focused target market. All of this suggests that your value per subscriber could easily be in the $1-$2 range, per month. If not a TON more than that.
The key is to come up with RELEVANT offers on a regular basis, that they’d be responsive to.
My first recommendation for this is to buy the book Ask, by Ryan Levesque. It will outline a specific survey method you can use to figure out what your current list really wants and will be interested in buying. The method to follow, at first, is the “Deep Dive Survey.”
Once you know what they want, it’s time to build offers.
I’d do a mix. Some low-priced, easy “yes” offers such as books, webinars, etc., designed to get them a specific result, or walk them through a process they can do themselves. And some much higher-end, likely coaching, where you work with them directly.
For any and all of it, I’d work on how you can get the maximum income from each customer.
For example, you could do one webinar, or a monthly subscription. Both require a single purchasing decision — but monthly gives you more income ever month for every new customer you sign up.
When it comes to doing stress coaching for teachers, you know you’d serve them best if they worked with you on an ongoing basis. So I’d sell it in blocks. It cost X to get on the phone with you for an hour. It costs 6X to get on the phone with you an hour every week for 8 weeks. You get a lot more income from a single purchase decision. Also, don’t under-price yourself. I would set your base price at a minimum of $100 per hour, acknowledging that your work with a customer isn’t limited to just that hour on the phone.
The key is to find out what they want (using Ask) and give it to them (via a variety of different offers).
If you do build something scalable, such as a published product, I’d shoot for at least $1,500 in monthly income, and invest $500 back into advertising to get yourself in front of more teachers.
Second, make $500 to $1,000 per month helping your client land more speaking gigs…
I don’t know exactly how much your client is charging per gig, but most good fee-based speakers get AT LEAST $3,000 per gig. Some charge a little less if travel is covered.
And yet, your client — with his industry specialization — should actually charge more. Specialists ALWAYS deserve a higher fee than generalists. In every area. Speaking, especially so — he can speak to the audience in their unique language, about their unique needs, which makes the meeting planner look AWESOME! He deserves a premium for that.
Not only that, high fees beget respect. For the most part, if you price at the bottom of the fee range (in anything), you’ll get a ton less respect than if you charge more. So, make your client charge more. Past clients will sweat a little bit, but they’ll probably pay it. And if they don’t, go find someone else who will pay the higher fees.
That alone will take care of the $0 budget, because if he’s suddenly charging more per gig, he can afford to spend a bit more on marketing (which is a feedback loop that can lead to him charging even more, and spending even more).
But let’s say for now that you get him to charge $10,000. If you get him a contact that turns into a fee, you get 20% of that. Make that arrangement. That’s $2,000 for you for getting the gig, $8,000 for him for doing the speech.
What you do is you go out and find every conference or event planner who fits. This is manual labor, but when you don’t have a budget yet, that’s what you have to do.
Then, you actually reach out to them, and point them to the information on his speeches. Follow up to make sure they saw it.
Follow my advice on Takeaway Selling. Encourage them to apply and qualify to have him speak.
In order to get your $1,000 per month, you only have to help him book one speech every two months to hit your goal.
If you don’t listen to my advice and you think he can only charge $5,000, you have to book a speech a month.
Either way, these are doable numbers — even in a relatively small niche.
Also, maybe there are 2, 3, 4 other similar niches you could direct your client towards, that expand the client pool a bit and give you even more opportunity.
Third, make $1,000 per month, on the side, working with multiple clients…
One of the best ways to start as a freelance copywriter is doing it on the side. It’s what I did from 2006ish until 2010 — and it laid a great foundation for going full-time freelance in 2010.
Now, I don’t know all the clients you work with, or what kind of projects you do, but let me give you a different way to think about it.
Let’s imagine you dedicate an hour every weekday as “client time.” That’s 20 hours per month. If you want to make $1,000 per month in that time, you need to make $50 per hour.
You don’t need to go off an tell clients you want to charge them $50 per hour, but there’s a lot of copywriting work that’s worth at least that.
What can you complete in 10 hours that’s worth $500 to a client? My first thought is email marketing — there’s a ton of opportunity there that can earn you a lot more than $500 in 10 hours.
Sales letters take a lot longer, usually. But a C-level client who wants a copywriter will probably pay $2,000 for a sales letter and supporting copy. (And note my point above about higher fees — I believe this is “poverty pricing” but I’m illustrating it at the lowest possible level.) If you can complete a sales letter in 40 hours of work, at that fee you’ve earned $1,000 per month. Royalties will only increase the income.
Find out where the client value and your speed get you that $50 per hour mark or better. Again, bigger or ongoing projects are better. And do that!
The big secret?
Just do it. Early on, in any business, there are a ton of tests and changing directions.
Once you land on something that works, find out how to maximize it.
Get better at it, deliver more value, and raise your prices.
But mostly, get moving. Use these three paths as starting points, and see where they take you.
The breakthroughs will come when you do that.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
