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.