TCC Podcast #248: Developing High Standards with Dayana Mayfield

Dayana Mayfield joins The Copywriter Club podcast for the 248th episode. Dayana is a SaaS copywriter who focuses on SEO and conversions. After deciding to pursue writing as a career to inspire her daughter to follow her passions, she found copywriting. If you want to learn how to grow your business through networking and online platforms, this episode is for you. Here’s what we talk about: How copywriting and editing are completely different skill sets. Becoming the sole provider in a foreign country. What it takes to learn SEO copywriting and what the difference is. The pros of Upwork and going from $16 hr to $175 hr in 2 years. What you should do when you don’t have a copywriting portfolio. The better way to cold pitch and land new clients. How Dayana was able to save for 4 months of maternity leave in 1 year. Why you shouldn’t lower your standards when you need money fast. The future of copywriting. Is it still worth it? The benefits of verifying who you could potentially be working with. Misconceptions of the SaaS industry and why it could be the right niche for you. The proper way to vet your prospects. Why SEO is important and could keep your lead list hot and ready. Navigating manic bipolar disorder and having a successful business. How PR and SEO go hand in hand and why you need both in your business. Being multi-passionate and starting a second business. The difference between a vertical and horizontal niche. How you can find leads via podcasts and backlinks. What actually happens when you begin to niche down and position yourself as the expert. Whether you’re reading the transcript or listening in, you won’t want to miss this episode. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank Tiffany’s website Dayana’s website Full Transcript: Rob: There's more than one approach to choosing a niche, and the most common of course is choosing an industry to specialize in, but there are other approaches too like choosing a particular deliverable or a kind of project that you work on. That's generally called horizontal niching. We've even seen copywriters niche by the customer that they work with. Our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Dayana Mayfield, and she told us about how she's adding a second horizontal niche to her business. We're going to let her tell you all about it in just a minute, but first I want to introduce my guest host for this episode. That's Tiffany Ingle. Hey, Tiffany. Tiffany: Hi, Rob. Rob: How's it going? Tiffany: It's going pretty well. Thank you for having me here. I'm really happy to sit down and have this conversation with you today. Rob: Yeah, this is awesome. So Tiffany is a conversion copywriter. She's worked in the nonprofit sector I think for like seven years before starting her own business. She writes conversion copy and she has a newsletter called Authenticity is Addictive. If you want to be on that or receive that, go to Tiffany's website and sign up. Before we talk with Dayana, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank. That's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to do more in their business and their work. Maybe you have dreamed about creating a product or a podcast, or maybe you've thought about maybe starting an agency or a product company. Maybe you want to become the best-known copywriter in your niche, the person that high paying clients are always looking out for. That's the kind of thing that we help copywriters do in the Think Tank. Tiffany is actually a member of the Think Tank, a new member. To learn more, visit copywriterthinktank.com, and maybe you can join this extraordinary group of business owners too. So let's jump into our interview with Dayana and find out more about her business and the clients that she works with. Kira: All right, so let's kick off with your story. How did you end up as a SaaS copywriter, conversion copywriter, PR expert, all the things? Dayana: Yeah. So about six years ago, I was a stay-at-home mom and I had had my first daughter. And now this is a controversial opinion, but I didn't want to just teach a daughter. This is what we do. We hope we marry a nice engineer that could pay all the bills. My sister-in-law gets pissed at me for saying that, but I was like, I didn't want to teach her. Like what is that teaching her? Right? It's like how is she going to have a good life if she doesn't find a good guy? So I was like, "Okay, I really got to figure this money thing out." And when I had graduated college in 2009, it was the recession. I come from a blue collar family. My dad's a motorcycle salesman. I had no understanding of like talent. Like that businesses hire talent and that talent could be creative and you could make money for being creative. So there was just no kind of understanding of the fact that you could actually make money as a writer. I think a lot of writers have that where you think it's like the starving artist thing. So I was like 26. I was trying to figure out how am I going to make money? And I want to make money as a writer. And I want to show my daughter that you can make money doing what you love and what you're good at. And so I started with editing because I was like afraid of like selling copywriting services. I kind of figured out what copywriting was because I was like, "Somebody is writing the back of this shampoo bottle. Who the heck is writing the back of this shampoo bottle? It's the coolest job ever." But I was like afraid even though I understood what copywriting was. I was like, "I'll just do editing." So I got a copy editing certification from UC San Diego and then quickly realized that I was terrible at editing. You have to be like very nitpicky. It's a completely different personality. There's a difference between knowing where a comma goes and getting something ready for actual print publication. And I got my first B of my life because I had got straight A's all through college. I got my first B in this copy editing certification. I was like, "This is not the thing." So then I was like, "All right, I'm going to do like blog writing." So I started pitching. Blog writing is a great start for a lot of copywriters. I started pitching local agencies to write blogs for their clients and then it kind of just went from there. You know how it goes. It's like you got to just start pulling in clients. So I did a lot of different things, email marketing, got into writing websites. And I was incentivized to grow my business super quickly because as a family, we decided to have my husband go back to school and get his PhD in architecture and engineering. And he has now founded a sustainable construction and engineering startup that takes kind of Roman architecture principles and is modernizing them to make structures last longer because Roman structures can last 2,000 years. Ours can't. So his startup was all about making them earthquake-safe and modern so that we have less construction waste. So solving the world's construction waste and longevity problem. So I had to go from being a stay-at-home mom to being a sole provider in just a few months. So I was hustling. Yeah. And then I picked tech as my niche kind of slowly but surely. Living in Northern California, I know... Name any big tech company, I know somebody from college who works there. And so my relationships just kind of started going in that direction of like SaaS and software. So that was very fortunate that I picked a profitable niche within just a few months of starting. Rob: I want to know more about the copy editing certificate. So I am terrible at editing myself, but what does it take to get a certificate in copy editing? What do you have to know? Or like what do you have to be able to do? Dayana: Yeah. So every UC, the UC system is like the University of California. So it's like there's Berkeley and Irvine and all the... There's like I think 11 or 12 UCs. And so they all have those like continuation, like adult kind of continuation programs. So it's not like you're like in the bachelor's program. It's like their extension. So that was the one that I did. It was like UC San Diego extension. And it was $1,600 and it was a whole year. So I was doing this for a whole year during kids' nap time. And so yeah, you had to take all four classes. It was like four classes spread over a year. And then I think as long as you got, I don't know if it was a C or a B, but as long as you got a certain grade in each class, then you got the certificate. And so it's their UCSD extension certificate. And so that definitely gave me the confidence. I still think that certificates are great. Like when I started doing SEO blogs, I got the... A lot of people know this one. It's like seocopywriting.com. Heather, she has a SEO copy certificate. I think it's a smart way to start because it gives you the confidence. And if you don't have like a portfolio or testimonials, it does give you something if you're cold pitching clients or getting started on a gig site like Upwork, which I did. A lot of people hate Upwork, but I did do pretty well on Upwork for like two years and I got my hourly rate up to like $175 before I left. I would not use it now, but it is a nice start. Like I said, I went from stay-at-home mom to sole provider in four months. So for me, Upwork was an important part of that jump. Kira: Can you talk a little bit more about Upwork? And I know you're off of it now. It's not part of your business now, but for copywriters who are on Upwork and want to grow fast and they may hear you say four months, how you grew so fast. How do I do it on Upwork?