TCC Podcast #54: Building Quiz Funnels with Chanti Zak

Copywriter Chanti Zak (aka Chantelle Zakariasen aka the Queen of Quiz Funnels) joins us for the 54th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Chanti started her career as a food blogger, racking up more than 50,000 regular visitors and a big email list before transitioning to copywriting for coaches and other wellness-based businesses. During our interview, she tells us about: •  how she went from moderately successful food blogger to in-demand copywriter •  the biggest differences between blogging and copywriting •  quiz funnels—what they are and what they do •  how a quiz can segment an audience—and they don’t even realize it’s happening •  how she’s packaged her services to be appealing to different kinds of clients •  how she pitches and cold emails clients successfully •  what she does to make her emails stand out and get a response •  how she batches her pitches to use her time more effectively •  website shame and what she did to overcome it, and •  the three things she invested in to upgrade her web presence We also asked her what she would do differently if she had to start over and where she thinks copywriting is headed (hint: interactivity seems to be a big thing these days). Plus we wanted to hear more about her stay in India before she started writing and how that experience has impacted the way she approaches her business today. To hear what she told us, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: The Copywriter Accelerator Chanti’s food blog Cosmopolitan Buzzfeed Pinterest Ryan LeVesque ChantelleZakariasen.com Wordpress ChantiZak.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Accelerator a three-month program with six core business components designed to help new copywriters lay their foundation for a successful business. Rob: Participants receive in-depth training, coaching, and feedback from us, which means you get access to us in a private community. Registration is now open and the early bird rate ends on October 27th. Learn more at TheCopywriterAccelerator.com. Kira: 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 an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 54 as we talk with copywriter and quiz funnel expert, Chanti Zak, about creating quizzes that hook potential customers, and to make them want to share going from in-house writer to freelance and finding clients fast, pitching podcasts, and how studying yoga in India has made her a better copywriter. Kira: Chanti, welcome. Chanti: Thank you for having me. I feel so honored. Rob: It’s awesome to have you here. Kira: Yes-yes, so I think a great place to start is with your story. How did you end up becoming a copywriter? Chanti: Well, I started a food blog randomly enough. I had this paleo food blog when my son was a newborn baby, and I really quickly grew it to like 50,000 unique visitors per month, and I was getting featured on like Cosmopolitan and BuzzFeed and all of these really big publications, so from there this whole online world opened up to me and I started getting writing work as a direct result of my food blog, so what I did is I used it as a portfolio of sorts, and that’s sort of how I started freelance writing and copywriting. Rob: I’m really curious you started a blog and grew to like 50,000 people. Kira: That’s a big deal. Rob: Yeah, that’s a dream that a lot of bloggers have been working for years to do. How did you do that? What did you do to grow? Chanti: Well, I think it’s easier with food than it is with a lot of more niche topics because everybody’s got to eat and food it’s like this innate human desire we all want delicious things, so I basically just picked up a camera and started photographing recipes that I would make, and I’ve always been really into nutrition and natural health and I studied that for a long time, so I would sort of weave that in and write on those topics, and then basically it took off. I think one of the main reasons was because of Pinterest. Everything on Pinterest was just going viral like this one muffin recipe to me is really simple and this basic recipe had like 100,000 shares. Rob: Wow. Chanti: Yeah. Kira: Okay, I want that recipe because simple is ideal for me right now. Chanti: Yes. Kira: Are you still blogging on that blog? What happened to it? Chanti: No, I basically like just let it go and surrendered because I didn’t have time for it eventually, and I wasn’t really making money off of the blog directly, like I think to make money off a blog 50,000 visitors sounds like a lot of traffic, but you need more like 500,000 and upwards of that, so I just sort of said, “I’ll work on this later,” and started focusing on growing my copywriting career instead. Kira: So what did those early days look like for you where you were just starting to get the gigs, and realize that this is what you want to do? Chanti: I was so happy just to write that I took jobs for next to nothing, which is probably a common theme with a lot of writers, and I got to stay at home with my son, so I didn’t really care and I knew that there was potential to grow, so at first I was writing these heavy research laden 2,000 word articles, and getting paid 50 bucks. It was pretty bad. Rob: Ouch. Chanti: Then eventually I started moving towards copywriting because I saw that had a lot more potential to actually become a business. Rob: Tell us the next step. How did you get yourself to the point where you felt like you’d call yourself a copywriter as opposed to a blogger? Chanti: Well, from the beginning I’ve relied really heavily on having a mentor and having teachers to help me continually grow and learn and level up, so I worked with a lot of different people in that way, and I really pushed myself to practice and basically learned a lot on the job, but I didn’t make the full switch to conversion copywriting until I’d worked full-time for one company as their main copywriter, and it was at that point that I saw how powerful a well-written funnel is and that my words could generate upwards of 50 grand a month like that’s when it really clicked. Kira: Yeah, and I want to hear more about the in-house gig as far as what attracted you to it because I believe it was full-time and any lessons you learned while you were working there that you don’t mind sharing? Chanti: It was full-time and full-on like I was writing the whole course content, sales funnels, promotional campaigns, blog articles like I was in charge of the copywriting and the content marketing, so the workload was really heavy, but to answer your first question I was drawn to it because I was at this point in my copywriting career where like I had really poor boundaries with clients and I wasn’t charging enough, so I was constantly just sort of flailing and stuck in feast or famine mode so this opportunity presented itself and it was a nice cushy salary that I just couldn’t pass up at the time. Rob: Before we get into what you’re doing now I want to talk a little bit about the difference between writing for blogs and the copywriting you were doing in-house what do you see are the main differences between the way you wrote as a blogger and the way you write today as a copywriter? Chanti: I guess as a blogger it’s more from a perspective of value always comes first, and it’s more so about building those preliminary relationships that happen way before the sale ever happens, so when I was blogging a lot sales weren’t really on my mind, whereas, when I’m writing conversion copy my main goal is how can I write this so that I can inspire people to take action, and ultimately invest in whatever it is that I’m writing for. Rob: So maybe if you had been doing more of the conversion thinking with the food blog you could have gotten more of them to buy. I’m kind of joking around a little bit, but… Chanti: Well, it’s true. At the time like I didn’t really understand the power of email marketing. I had grown this email list of thousands of people and I had no idea like what to even do with it, so it wasn’t until later that it kind of clicked, and I was like, okay, I learnt that lesson the hard way, but I’m going to do it again some day. Kira: Right, so some day is now, right? You were in-house, now you are no longer in-house, so what did that transition look like where all of a sudden like you’re back in the freelance world, and you need to get clients fast what did that look like for you and how did you get those clients and stay afloat? Chanti: It was really intense. I knew that I wanted to leave the company. I was feeling really burnt out. At that point like I knew that I could make more money on my own, so I basically had this like exit plan, and my exit plan got totally messed up because I ended up getting laid off like way before I was planning on leaving, so I was totally terrified. I was the sole provider for my little family, and suddenly I had to start from scratch, so the first thing I did was get support and I joined The Accelerator with you guys, which really was the main reason that I didn’t totally drown like you guys helped me so much, and I just hustled hard for three months. I focused in on the areas that I knew I could get results and stand out in the marketplace, so quizzes for me was the one thing that I’d done a lot of in my in-house job, and I knew that I could get results for people with quizzes, so I rebranded my entire website and my messaging.