One of the toughest challenges as a writer and entrepreneur is figuring out how to build for the future when you also need to keep money coming in steadily.
If you’ve got a day job in place, it may actually make things easier: you’ve got your day job income, and you’ve got your entrepreneurial side projects. If they don’t pay off straight away, it might be frustrating, but it’s not financially crippling.
But if you’re a full-time entrepreneur or freelancer, it can be a lot harder. You need to bring in enough money every month to pay the bills … no matter what. Maybe you’d never even contemplate turning down a paying client (even if they’re a poor fit, and even if you’ve already got enough work for the month). Quite possibly, you have a family to support; your income is what keeps food on the table.
Understandably, your priority is likely to be what’s happening right now: taking client calls, or writing freelance pieces, or pitching for new gigs.
You might dream of having other sources of income, like a book or online course, to take some of the pressure off. With a product out there, even if you don’t have many billable hours in a particular month, you’ll still have some money coming in. (You might even get to take a vacation.)
Finding the time to actually write that book or produce that ecourse, though, could feel almost impossible.
Well, it’s definitely not easy. But here’s a step by step plan that should help.
I’m no mind reader, but I bet I know why you’re here.
You’ve recently hired or are thinking about hiring a copywriter for your business, but things just don’t seem to be panning out the way you thought they would. The writer seems frustrated or annoyed by your questions, the feedback you’re receiving is overwhelming, and/or nothing seems to be working on your schedule. Plus, you’re watching dollars fly out of your bank account without really seeing the results you’re looking for.
Or maybe you’ve heard horror and/or success stories from fellow entrepreneurs who have hired copywriters, and you wanna know how to learn from their mistakes/follow their lead.
Even if you’ve got a stellar working relationship with your business’ content or copywriter, there are always ways to make it better or ready yourself for hiring a writer in the future.
A good place to start is by listening to seasoned copywriters.
As I sit down to write this article, four days past its due date, at one in the afternoon, after scolding myself for wanting to take a nap literally three hours after waking up, I ask myself why any reader would want to listen to me talk about a healthy work schedule.
Hear me out! My struggle makes the need for this article all the more apparent… because I’m one paragraph in and about to take a lunch break…
Writing is, generally speaking, a solitary activity. Sure, working at a busy coffee shop or out of a co-working space gives you access to people, but if writing = work, then when you’re working, you’re very much in your own head.
It’s important for writers to find other people to interact with, of course. We all need friends and social contacts.
But if you write professionally, you must find the right people to engage with from a professional perspective. You might belong to a writing group that shares critiques of each other’s work, or one that is more about accountability and getting stuff done.
You might belong to a professional association that gives you a business network and maybe a place to look for gigs. Or a Facebook group that functions in the virtual networking space.
One opportunity you might be overlooking, though, is writing conferences.
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