How to Make Money as a Copywriter

For the 58th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira Hug and Rob Marsh sit down to talk with financial copywriter, Jake Hoffberg about all kinds of things related to writing copy in the financial niche, including: •  his first exposure to direct response and how he got into internet marketing •  how he was rejected by every division of Agora but one before he landed his first project •  the terrible cold email pitch template he used (we share it, don’t use it) •  his contrarian “I want to make money” path to copywriting •  the kinds of projects he willingly took on just to get started •  how he leveraged his new relationships into more jobs and more clients •  the real value that copywriters provide their clients (it’s not writing copy) •  the process for pitching new ideas and getting the next project, and •  how to double your income in 6 months Plus we also asked for his thoughts about getting royalties, which clients will pay them, and how to structure royalties the right way and he shared the advice he give other writers about how to get into financial copywriting... hint: don’t think you should start at the top. All that and more is in this money-packed episode (not literally). To hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Eban Pagan Jeff Walker Agora Financial Motley Fool Dent Research Sale of a Lifetime Freelance Financial Copywriter Group JakeHoffberg.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal and idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 58, as we chat with financial copywriter Jake Hoffberg about his path to becoming a copywriter and choosing the financial niche, writing long-form sales pages and VSLs, what a new writer should do today to break into financial copywriting, and advertising to the affluent. -- Rob: Welcome, Jake! Jake: Thank you for having me! Kira: Yeah, it’s great to have you here. Rob: We’re excited to learn a little bit more about you and your niche and how it all came about, which is probably a good place to start. Let’s talk about your story and how you became a copywriter. Jake: Sure. So, I guess the story probably actually starts in 2008... 2009... and I had a copy of Eban Pagan’s Get Altitude Training—I forget how I got it, but I did—and that was really my first exposure to direct response. This whole world of people that were making money on the internet and running these virtual businesses and putting boards together and getting paid and I just—I thought that was fascinating. I was in direct sales at the time and I was knocking on doors and doing it the hard way and man, it was just so awesome sounding. So I probably spent the next five, six, seven years on and off trying to get into internet marketing and figure out how to run an info-product business and kinda went down that rabbit hole for a long time and tried a lot of things that did not work over the years. This is all while I was doing sales, and switched sales jobs a couple times, and think it was two years ago—something like that—it was July of 2015—I was running a consulting business and I had that moment that everyone has at some point in their life where they’re just like, F it! I’m done with this! I’m tired of this crap! And I had a not so friendly conversation with my boss, who was my only client at the time and I was making good money and I basically fired myself after that conversation. I had some cash saved away and I was like, all right! I’ll figure something out and I don’t want to go back and do sales; I don’t want to get a 9-5 job or do any of that stuff so I just need to figure this stuff out. I knew firsthand how hard it was just to run a business and how hard it was to try and build websites and all this other stuff, and so somewhere along the way it just clicked where, okay... I can sell, and it’s made me basically employable for every company ever because I can do that, so if I can just figure out just the sales part on the internet, and I can just learn that, I can just get paid to do that, and I don’t have to mess around with all this website building or any of this nonsense. I can just start there. That was how I figured out that copywriting was a real thing. That there are people that make lots of money and all they do is write copy and they don’t do anything else. I thought, that sounds really good! Let’s try that! You know, I bought all the courses and read all the books and did all the things and after a couple of months of doing that... I was like all right. I just want to make money! So where is that? And it was financial. That’s where everyone said it was—in the financial niche. And so I was like, all right! I’m just gonna do that. It was SUPER duper hard getting started—I knew nothing about finance. I could work an excel spreadsheet kind of okay and that was about as good as my finance skills were. But I was determined to make this happen! There wasn’t really another option for me at this point. So, I got a bunch of books on investing and started reading the financial news and was going through whatever swipe files of things and I kept seeing these sales letters from Agora and all these other big financial publishers and so at one point I was like, I wonder if they’re hiring copywriters? They probably are. I kept hearing about how much money these people were making and so I basically just cold called Agora—like all the franchises inside of Agora, there’s probably about twenty of them, Motley Fool, all the big names, with no experience, no portfolio, I had never written copy. I think I had had like, one other fifty dollar job I got off of a job board, it was something like that, right? And I went from that to somehow managing to convince Agora to hire me, freelance, and remote, which is apparently not a thing that happens ever... Rob: So wait so wait. You had not written any other copy and you got hired by Agora just from a cold pitch. Jake: Yeah. Rob: Wow, crazy. Jake: So, that’s what happened. Essentially what wound up happening was I asked if they needed speck work and basically everyone said no and one person was like, yeah! We could use some stuff so they said, can you write advertorials? And I was like, yeah! I totally can! No... never written one. So I said, can you send me an example? So they sent me one; I wrote I think four things and they liked some of them and they were like yeah, we see some potential, and I basically just bugged them and sent them new ideas and like, copyedited pages and found spelling errors and I just was like a dog with a bone. I just wouldn’t let it go. And I think I just wore them down. Kira: They’re like, this guy Jake! Gosh! Just say yes! Jake: After two months of basically just like working for free and sending them all kinds of stuff, they were like alright, I’ll pay you for real. And then I got a contract and that was literally how I started freelancing. I just didn’t give up and I was super persistent and that was how I got hired. Kira: Okay. Rob: Wow. Kira: There’s a lot here; I know we both want to unpack everything you just said. So, for specifics, when did you start pitching Agora? You said two years ago? Or is this already a year ago? Jake: So, it would’ve been like, December 2015—that was when I was like, alright, I’m gonna do financial. And then I started to cold email and cold call—just doing whatever I could do to talk to someone and then in January was when it kinda took about 30 days for them to go from, yeah we could use some stuff! Because you know how that is, right? They’re super busy and it’s not personal, they just don’t get back to you because they have other stuff to do. Rob: Right, I mean, you’re not even on their radar; I mean, you’re barely there, right? Jake: Right. So January or February was just comprised of me trying to hustle and stuff and then March was when I started to actually get checks in the mail from Agora. Kira: Okay, so once you realized, “I want to go into financial”, and you find Agora and you know you want to work with Agora, what did it look like when you jumped into this pitching process? To even get the right list of names? What did you have to do behind the scenes to make this happen? There are so many questions! What did you say in that pitch email? I have like five other questions, so that’s it for now. Jake: it’s gonna be really dumb and really simple, what I’m going to say, which is why most people just won’t do it... so, what I do because that’s how I did well in sales. I typed in Agora or whatever, and if you work hard enough you kinda know who’s got a publishing company- you just kinda search for them. And I looked up like, publisher, marketing director, anything that looks like that. I also reached out to people that were copywriters at those franchises as well, just to try and you know, work it that way. I think this was the email: Hi, (name)— I’m a direct response copywriter. Do you hire freelancers? Jake And that was the email. Rob: Wow. Kira: Brilliant! Rob: It hardly even feels like a pitch! Jake: Some people responded and I got the, “We don’t really but if you’re super good” kind of thing. “We only hire in-house”—which is really code word for,