TCC Podcast #319: Building a Sustainable Content Writing Business with Sue Bowness

Sue Bowness is our guest on the 319th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Sue is a content writer and professor who helps her clients and students tell better stories through content. In this episode, she shares her insights on the content writing industry and how it’s changed over her two-decade long freelance career. Tune in to find out: The real difference between being a business owner vs being an employee. The mindset reframe you need to take on when you decide to start your own business. Copywriting vs content writing… Are they the same? What is the true value of content writing and how do you position it to clients? How much can you actually charge for ONE blog post? Are you stuck on finding a niche? Try this. How can you make a boring topic tolerable to read? What does it take to run a profitable business for two decades? How to navigate trends and changes to your industry. How to be more productive as a full-time business owner? Creating multiple income streams to fulfill different passions. How joining the Think Tank helped her business and the power of being surrounded by high-level ambition. Are you writing your business emails the wrong way? Do you need a college degree to be a content writer? The skills that crossover with degrees and other business experience. Check out the episode below or read the transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Sue's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM James Turner's episode (79) Episode 227 Episode 244   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  We talk a lot about copy on this podcast. I mean, it's in the name, The Copywriter Club Podcast. So over the past few years, we've spent hours talking about persuasion, and sales, and calls to action, and dozens of other copywriting strategies and tactics. We don't often talk about content, although the last couple of episodes we have talked about content, but it is a really big part of the work that many copywriters do. So today's guest on the podcast is content writer and strategist Sue Bowness. We asked Sue why more copywriters should take on content projects. We also talked with her about the things that she's done that had the biggest impact on her business, how disciplined she is with her schedule, and a lot more. So stick around to hear what she had to share with us. Before we do all of that though, this episode is sponsored by the Copywriter Underground. We recently rebuilt the entire back end of the underground to make it easier to find the training and resources that members of the underground have access to. Everything from creating the perfect proposal, which is one of the trainings in the Underground, to running a successful sales call, which is another training that's in there, to more than 40 in-depth newsletters on topics like persuasion, overcoming objections, managing your time, getting more done. I'm barely scratching the surface here. There are monthly coaching calls, weekly copy critiques, and a fantastic group of supportive copywriters in our exclusive Facebook group. Check it all out at thecopywriterunderground.com. And one more thing before we get to our interview with Sue. I feel like I'm going on and on here, but I need to introduce my guest host for the day, James Turner. James is a conversion copywriter, marketing collaborator who's worked in SaaS, tech, and education and e-commerce and about, I don't know, 50 other niches. I'm going to ask him about that in just a second. Once more, James is a friend going back six or seven years. At parties, I've called him my wingman as he introduces me around. He's a bit of an extrovert, which is an exception around copywriters. Welcome back to the show, James. James Turner:  Hi Rob. Thanks. It's great to be back. Rob Marsh:  And you don't have a niche, right, or do you have a niche? I mean, you've worked in lots of niches. James Turner:  No, I remain nicheless. Rob Marsh:  Okay, you're one of the few. We may have to sell you a program on choosing a niche or something someday. We'll see. James Turner:  I'd buy that. Rob Marsh:  Okay, so let's get to our interview with Sue and hear what she has to say about being a content writer. Sue Bowness:  I've actually wanted to be a writer since grade three, so that was exciting. I actually have my grade seven autobiography on my bookshelf over there and it says, "Wants to be a writer." So I guess as I grew up it was like how do I actually make that happen, right? Because the writer that I wanted to be were the writers that I read as a child, right? Because I was always a big reader, and so I wanted to be like Gordon Korman, or Shel Silverstein, or Lois Lowry. And then I was like, but I need to make a living at this, and so how do I do that? And I became a big magazine reader when I was in high school, and so always liked those elements of writing. So I was like, how do I make this work? So I applied for an internship after I finished my bachelor's degree in history in English, pretty typical story, where I could do the most reading in. I got my dream job through my dream internship at a general interest magazine here in Canada. So the magazine, I was lucky enough for it to turn from a weekly, sorry, from monthly into a weekly. So we all got hired and then two years later, unfortunately, the magazine got folded and we all lost our jobs. So sad day, but at that point, I was starting to think, who are these freelancers coming in and out of our office who seem to write all the great stories and have this kind of lifestyle where they're able to do a lot of writing? And what I wanted to do was a lot of writing. I didn't want to go into another job where I would be still working my way up doing the kind of work that you do in entry local positions. I just wanted to be writing right away. So I thought this freelance thing might be for me, and so I started writing in technology, mostly for magazines and newspapers. Started in tech because it was 2002 and that was sort of a boom time for that niche and there were lots of publications to write for. I'm naturally the person who likes to write, who likes to explore technology in terms of how it meets the consumer. I'm definitely not a programming person, but I understood enough about it to make a go of that one, and be naturally interested. Then over the years, I've added other niches and specialties. I moved into writing about entrepreneurship and careers. I've written about business, just things that are adjacent to technology or new places to explore. Then when I went and got my Ph.D. in English, which I did following a successful master's where I discovered that it was fun to research and explore about our early Canadian magazine history is what I wrote my master's thesis on. I decided to, maybe now that I'm familiar with educational institutions to pitch them, and so that became my focus after that. So now I work a lot for higher ed. I do writing like blog content and still a lot of articles, journalism-type stuff only for alumni magazines and research magazines, that kind of thing, and use my interest in that kind of content to create content for readers outside of the university where I'm taking maybe an interesting science topic and translating it for the general reader. I feel passionate about that because I think there's a lot of interesting research out there that the public doesn't really know a lot about, and so it's fun to get that information out there, get some recognition for the people who are doing this great research. I'm always after I do my stories, I'm thinking like, "I'm glad somebody's looking into that." And it's such a great field I think for communicating that information. I feel like what I brought with me though is always the storytelling and the journalism. That's been at the heart of my writing. Even though I'm doing more content, less journalism now, it's really thinking about how to tell those stories, and how to inform people out there. Then freelancing has stuck for me. This is actually my 20-year anniversary of being in business since 2002. So it's just, really for me, worked as a lifestyle and I really like the freedom of it. I like to travel, so that's allowed me to do that in the summertime, take time off when my editors are off and that kind of thing. I like the freedom of working from home. I'm disciplined to create my own schedule. So it's all been a lot of fun. A few years ago I was thinking, this might be my only job, and so how do I keep making it work? And that's one of the reasons I joined the Think Tank, is how do I keep going with this, learn new tips and that kind of thing because I'd never been part of a formal group, even though I'd had freelancer friends and that kind of thing. I thought it would be fun to move that in a new direction. Rob Marsh:  So yeah, we've covered a lot of ground there. So I want to go back to where you started writing for these publications as you were starting your freelancing. First of all, how did you find your clients? And then a second question to that, is there a difference between finding clients that are publications versus finding clients who need content for blogs, case studies, that kind of thing? Do you pitch them differently? So anyway, two questions in one there. Sue Bowness:  Yeah, I guess the similarity in terms of pitching corporate clients, I call them corporate, even though I'm writing mostly for institutions and places that have publications, is that a magazine has a fairly strict format, right? You pitch a feature. If you're pitching a feature for The New Yorker, it's going to be a certain word length,