4 Ways You Can Turn Your Skills For Profit As A Copywriter
Copywriting can be a very varied and flexible job, but it can be difficult to make a sustainable living and you’re often using your writing skills to enhance other businesses.
Even highly successful copywriters should be looking at ways in which they can increase their income and develop their experience.
Below we look at four great ways to turn your skills into profit as a copywriter. Whether you’re looking to make a bit of extra cash or you just want to develop your skillset, there are lots of side business ideas or freelance opportunities that will utilise your copywriting skills — read on for inspiration.
Start your own blog
As a copywriter, you probably spend all day writing about other people’s businesses and products, but it could be worthwhile using those skills for your own blog. You’re an excellent writer and you probably already know a lot about SEO (search engine optimisation), so you’re in the perfect position to set up a blog.
It’s pretty simple to get started — you just need to pick an area or industry that interests you can you feel comfortable writing about. It could be something completely separate from copywriting, or you could add a blog to your existing copywriting business website. The important thing is to pick a niche that you can provide in-depth, valuable knowledge about — something that people are going to want to read and know more about.
By writing for your own blog you’ll have complete control over the style, tone of voice, and the content you put out. It might take some time to get it off the ground, and you’ll have to work at promoting and sharing your content on social media channels that you think your target readers will be using.
For example, copywriting advice, or business insights are going to be more suited to LinkedIn or Twitter — whereas fashion, lifestyle, music or travel might be better shared on Instagram or Facebook.
When you start to get people visiting your blog, reading articles, following you and sharing them, you’ll be able to start monetising it. You can include affiliate links, where you get a commission if people buy something after visiting your site, you can write sponsored posts that you get paid for, or you can include advertisements.
It is important to remember to keep in mind your audience and their interest when you start to monetise your blog — if it becomes a platform for purely sales and promotion, it’s not going to be as valuable and you’ll lose readers.
Specialise your writing skills
There are a lot of copywriters out there, which means competition is usually pretty stiff for freelance work and in-house roles. But you could focus your writing on a specific area and specialise your writing skills to make yourself stand out to particular businesses.
Technical writers, for example, have to deal with complicated language and concepts, writing often lengthy reports or guidance on research, progress, design, or consultancy. These roles are often required by large companies, researchers or academic institutions, and even one project can provide work for several months or years. A technical writer requires more specialised skills including how to understand and relay technical information, how to structure and style reports, and handling complex data.
You could also focus on specialising the topics that you write on. Find profitable areas and pursue roles in specific industries such as marketing or software. The more specialised you become the more you’ll become an expert in that area, and your copywriting skills will be sought after.
Set up your own ecommerce business
It might seem a bit out of your comfort zone, but setting up an online store is actually fairly straightforward.
One of the keys to running a successful ecommerce business is ensuring it has well-written, search-optimised content across the site. As a copywriter you’ll know how to write a convincing home page, great product descriptions, and engaging blog content — so why not do all that for your own business?
If you’ve got some other creative skills you could start selling handmade products, or alternatively you could buy products in bulk and sell them on. Another option is to set up a dropshipping business, where you work with a manufacturer or supplier and arrange for them to ship orders directly to your customers, once someone places an order on your website. This is a good option if you don’t have the room to store any inventory, and you want to have minimal involvement with the fulfilment and shipping side of the business.
There are also lots of other online home business ideas that you can use your copywriting skills to turn into a successful venture. Once you’ve figured out how your business is going to operate, you need to set up a website, write some great copy for it and start marketing your business.
Other work opportunities
There are lots of jobs that overlap with copywriting that you might not have considered, but they could make for a fun (and profitable) side hustle opportunity or even a change in career direction.
If you’re a quick typer then you’re going to have no problem transcribing other people’s work.
Academics, attorneys and entrepreneurs are just a few examples of people that will need interviews, presentations, or research interviews transcribed from audio into writing. This kind of work can easily be fitted in around your existing schedule — you just need the audio files and to dedicate some of your spare time to type them up.
As a writer you probably have an excellent grasp of spelling and grammar, so you‘ll be able to find plenty of opportunities for proofreading and editing other people’s work. You could also find work researching topics and presenting your findings, ghostwriting, or video scripting.
Copywriting is a competitive industry, so setting yourself up with a way to increase your earning potential or a side hustle for extra income is important to ensure you always have a reliable income.