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thunder_god

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Day 20

Daily Goals:
1. Send out 20-30 prospecting emails to local marketing companies (completed)
2. Apply for writing gigs from job boards
3. Redesign freelance writing business website


I finally managed to get my application in for that content mill writing job. I also redesigned my fiverr seo content writing gig. Hopefully I can get some buyers on it. I plan on breaking the news to my folks later this week about me getting kicked outta grad school. I'm also going to move back in with them next week because I can't afford my rent :(. Hopefully my freelance writing business starts taking off and I can start making some money because this is really depressing right now.
 
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Deusexmachinex

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Wow dude so much " :( " on your posts !

Stop with the negativity. Negativity is going to put your to the ground you have to stop with that.
You have to push through dude thats what separate the winners and the quiters. Push through or pivot, but never quit. Never let your energy and motivation go down. Keep the momentum.

Excuse me if I didn't have the time to read all your post but could you make a recap of:
1) What is your longterm goal ( You are working on a website where you write article: are you blogging ? )
2) You are applying to some marketing companies: what is it about please ?

Life is not supposed to be easy ! You have my support 100%. When you tell your "folks" that you've been kicked outta highschool try to explain them that you are hustling on the side, you must not appear like a desperate, lazy loser, but more like an excentric go-getting outsider. See its all about how you bend the truth.

pS: :D :D :D :D :D
 

thunder_god

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Wow dude so much " :( " on your posts !

Stop with the negativity. Negativity is going to put your to the ground you have to stop with that.
You have to push through dude thats what separate the winners and the quiters. Push through or pivot, but never quit. Never let your energy and motivation go down. Keep the momentum.

Excuse me if I didn't have the time to read all your post but could you make a recap of:
1) What is your longterm goal ( You are working on a website where you write article: are you blogging ? )
2) You are applying to some marketing companies: what is it about please ?

Life is not supposed to be easy ! You have my support 100%. When you tell your "folks" that you've been kicked outta highschool try to explain them that you are hustling on the side, you must not appear like a desperate, lazy loser, but more like an excentric go-getting outsider. See its all about how you bend the truth.

pS: :D :D :D :D :D


Short Term Goals: Timeline 1 month
1. Get a part-time job that gives me between 16-24 hours of work so that I can afford to pay rent and
living expenses (Gave up on this)
2. Get my first freelance job from Upworks no matter how small the amount (completed)
3. Create my basic freelance content writing website so that I can start marketing my services (completed, but will need to redesign to make it look more professional)
4. Learn about how to copywrite and become better at it so that I can start getting copywriting jobs (read a few articles here and there, been too busy trying to secure work to generate an income ATM)

Semi-Long Term Goals: 6 months to 2 years
1. Build up a steady clientele on upworks to provide either a full-time salary or close to it (3-5k/month)
2. Get the hell out of Toronto and move to another country that has a much lower cost of living and is
warmer too
3. Work on products that will generate passive income for me in the future
4. Get at least 100 visitors and readers on my blogs monthly (Had 82 readers last month, expected to reach 100 by this month)
5. Pay off all of my student loans (50K) and be debt free forever

Long Term Goals: 2+ year

1. Become a millionaire and obtain financial independence and freedom
2. Achieve location independence
3. Have multiple streams of passive income allowing me to essentially retire at a younger age (hopefully before I'm 40)
4. Have at least 100000 readers a month on my blogs
5. Travel around the world and not be restricted by finances ever again!

I have a personal blog on wordpress.com that I created a month back that is steadily building up a readership and is starting to have people follow it. I have purchased a domain and webhost for it and am still working on transitioning it over to wordpress.org. I'm not expecting to see any income from this blog until about 2 years down the line. I also created a freelance content writing business website to market my services. I have sent out about 60 emails to local internet marketing companies offering my services so far. I have also applied to about 7 content writing jobs that I found from job portals as well this week. So in total I sent out 67 emails this past week to look for work.
 
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thunder_god

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Aug 20, 2015
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Day 21

Daily Goals:
1. Send out 20-30 prospecting emails to local marketing companies (completed)
2. Apply for writing gigs from job boards
3. Redesign freelance writing business website

I sent out 50 cold emails out today to prospective local internet marketing companies for a grant total of 100 emails so far sent out. I had two companies reply back today inquiring about pricing and writing samples. Hopefully both of them come on board. One of them told me their minimum blog post length is 2000 words. I never written any 2000 blog post before so that made me kind of anxious and nervous. For the past few days I was more and more demotivated sending out these cold prospecting emails because I hadn't gotten a single reply back, but now that I've started to get some replies back, I'm kind of scared shitless that I don't know what the hell I'm doing and I'm not confident in my ability to deliver a quality product for my clients. Funny how that works. Anyways we'll see what happens tomorrow if they reply back. I'm going to try and send out another 50 emails tomorrow as well.
 
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thunder_god

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Day 22

Daily Goals:
1. Send out 20-30 prospecting emails to local marketing companies (completed)
2. Apply for writing gigs from job boards
3. Redesign freelance writing business website

I sent out another 50 emails today. I haven't heard anything back from those two internet marketing agencies after I mentioned my prices. My prices are considered average at $25 per an article and I even offered a volume discount at $20 per an article for 20+ orders in a month. I'm not sure what companies are expecting but I certainly ain't going to be writing 2000+ word blogs for a measly $5. I can't believe this, I've sent out over 150 emails now and have yet to even get a single client :(. I'm going to try and send out another 50 more emails and then I'm going to try doing a different search putting in something like seo content writing or something instead of toronto internet marketing companies. The author of the guide that I followed mentioned he got 6 clients after sending out 150 emails yet I haven't gotten a single one. Another user commented on his article that he got a client after only 65 emails. What the hell is this?

I also haven't even gotten a single order on my new fiverr gig on SEO writing or rather any of my previous gigs neither. What's a guy suppose to do? This is so frigging frustrating.
 
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Deusexmachinex

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Sep 1, 2015
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Short Term Goals: Timeline 1 month
1. Get a part-time job that gives me between 16-24 hours of work so that I can afford to pay rent and
living expenses (Gave up on this)
2. Get my first freelance job from Upworks no matter how small the amount (completed)
- Good job for that !

3. Create my basic freelance content writing website so that I can start marketing my services (completed, but will need to redesign to make it look more professional)
- Well done !

4. Learn about how to copywrite and become better at it so that I can start getting copywriting jobs (read a few articles here and there, been too busy trying to secure work to generate an income ATM)


Semi-Long Term Goals: 6 months to 2 years
1. Build up a steady clientele on upworks to provide either a full-time salary or close to it (3-5k/month)
2. Get the hell out of Toronto and move to another country that has a much lower cost of living and is
warmer too
3. Work on products that will generate passive income for me in the future
- If you don't have any specific idea, you should work on it. Try to not stay in the vague.
4. Get at least 100 visitors and readers on my blogs monthly (Had 82 readers last month, expected to reach 100 by this month)
- Well done, keep working on this !

5. Pay off all of my student loans (50K) and be debt free forever


Long Term Goals: 2+ year

1. Become a millionaire and obtain financial independence and freedom
2. Achieve location independence
3. Have multiple streams of passive income allowing me to essentially retire at a younger age (hopefully before I'm 40)
4. Have at least 100000 readers a month on my blogs
5. Travel around the world and not be restricted by finances ever again!

I have a personal blog on wordpress.com that I created a month back that is steadily building up a readership and is starting to have people follow it.
- Excellent
I have purchased a domain and webhost for it and am still working on transitioning it over to wordpress.org.
I'm not expecting to see any income from this blog until about 2 years down the line. I also created a freelance content writing business website to market my services.
I have sent out about 60 emails to local internet marketing companies offering my services so far. I have also applied to about 7 content writing jobs that I found from job portals as well this week. So in total I sent out 67 emails this past week to look for work.
- Its nice to be " realistic " with the 2 years thing, but remember that the most important is to take massive action. Try to not think like " oh its fine, It wont get me any money before 2 years anyway so... ". Be more like " I'm gonna do everything to make this profitable as soon as possible !"


If I understood correctly you are working mainly on 1) your freelancing client list 2) your blog, right ?
If yes I wish you good luck with this. My advice would be to be commited. Focus on what's working and track your progression / results in a journal.

Good luck in your venture bro !
 
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thunder_god

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If I understood correctly you are working mainly on 1) your freelancing client list 2) your blog, right ?
If yes I wish you good luck with this. My advice would be to be commited. Focus on what's working and track your progression / results in a journal.

Good luck in your venture bro !

My main focus right now is to get clients for my freelance writing business so that I can generate some income. The blog is a side passion project that I hope can generate me some money later down the line.
 
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thunder_god

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I ran out of marketing agencies to email. I'm on page 30+ of google and there's nothing left. I've sent out over 170 emails and have yet to get a single client. F*ck!!!

This is so F*cking frustrating but I refuse to F*cking give up.
 

Lex DeVille

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I ran out of marketing agencies to email. I'm on page 30+ of google and there's nothing left. I've sent out over 170 emails and have yet to get a single client. F*ck!!!

This is so F*cking frustrating but I refuse to F*cking give up.

How many of those emails were custom tailored for the agency's specific needs?

Who else could you write for that isn't a marketing agency?

Who else needs writing services and might pay more?

What other businesses in your local area can you solve problems for?

What are you good at? What are you passionate about? What other services could you offer? What other problems could you solve?

You're not getting responses, but you are getting results.

What will you change that will change your results?
 

thunder_god

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How many of those emails were custom tailored for the agency's specific needs?

Who else could you write for that isn't a marketing agency?

Who else needs writing services and might pay more?

What other businesses in your local area can you solve problems for?

What are you good at? What are you passionate about? What other services could you offer? What other problems could you solve?

You're not getting responses, but you are getting results.

What will you change that will change your results?

I followed these two guides here

http://www.seanogle.com/guest-posts/seo-writing-for-beginners
http://www.seanogle.com/guest-posts/freelance-writing-website

I pretty much followed it to the tee except with a few minor modifications. It wasn't tailored to each agency because the authors told me to keep it short and simple, straight to the point.

My next target is to email seo content writing agencies.

Thing is, I don't have any skills and I think I've lost my passion for a lot things right now.

If targeting these local SEO content writing agencies won't work with this approach, I'm going to try and tailor each individual email specific to that agency in another province.
 
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Stubbers

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Good to see your progressing - I would cut out writing for internet companies or freelance sites and hit up local companies. It is easy to rank them higher simply by writing more content than their competitors. Most sites put up a few pages > About Us > Services > Contact > by contacting them I would offer 10 articles in their niche for $200 with a guarantee that this will spike traffic to their website it will work - throw in some social media and they will get calls.

With my local businesses (services for homeowners) some of which are seasonal, when one goes quiet and I want to get the phone ringing again I write some content and post it.Sometimes I'll write on the crapper ..

You cannot write for $5 anyone paying you that is taking the piss - you need to get your head in their business and understand it this takes time and $5 is too low, especially living in Toronto.

What other skills do you have? I'm in Burlington if you want to work/experience a few different fields I'm more than happy to help you out, spend a day or 2 showing you some services that are in demand in Toronto ( I turn down calls every day). Its not fastlane but Its way faster than slow

Chin up mate!
 

Imgal

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3- Labels - "My Depression".

I live by the motto, 'don't ask if it's right or wrong, ask if it's useful'. I used to think "depression" or "sadness" is a fixed trait. After practicing the meditation in #2, I now view it as a temporary state of being, despite what most of society says.

I know I'm going a bit off topic on this but I just read the post again and something struck me about how you wrote it... and how people talk about depression. If you talk to a lot of people suffering from depression then they will say "my depression" makes them feel this way or that way... whereas we all tend to say "This cold is dragging me down" or "I've got the flu". We don't develop ownership of it in the same way... and the thing is when you own something you become very protective of it. I'm not by any means saying people with depression aren't suffering, but just made me think about the power of language (or should I rephrase that. @AndrewNC made me think about it!)
 

Lex DeVille

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I followed these two guides here

http://www.seanogle.com/guest-posts/seo-writing-for-beginners
http://www.seanogle.com/guest-posts/freelance-writing-website

I pretty much followed it to the tee except with a few minor modifications. It wasn't tailored to each agency because the authors told me to keep it short and simple, straight to the point.

My next target is to email seo content writing agencies.

Thing is, I don't have any skills and I think I've lost my passion for a lot things right now.

If targeting these local SEO content writing agencies won't work with this approach, I'm going to try and tailor each individual email specific to that agency in another province.

What's the #1 thing you'd consider a "win" or "success" right now?

What's the #1 thing holding you back from achieving that?
 
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thunder_god

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What's the #1 thing you'd consider a "win" or "success" right now?

What's the #1 thing holding you back from achieving that?

The #1 thing I consider a success is me taking action and doing something.
The #1 thing holding me back is being unable to obtain any clients which is hurting my confidence.
 

Stubbers

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The #1 thing I consider a success is me taking action and doing something.
The #1 thing holding me back is being unable to obtain any clients which is hurting my confidence.
Not getting clients is because there is too much competition on the likes of fiverr ... knock up local businesses that do not know that you can hire a good writer and charge them $50 for 500 words even more... it will work.
 

EPerceptions

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Freelance writing is not easy. Copywriting is even tougher. You have to write to get noticed, write fast to keep up with demand, and write well to get paid well.

Some markets think writing is nothing special because "everybody starts learning it in kindergarten". Standing out from the crowd is the first step to getting traction. Sending a bland email that says "here I am, look at me" will get you tossed in the trash as fast as they can click -- assuming it's not automated. Say something that appeals to them. Try to address their needs and problems. Convince them you'll make their world better.

Look closely at so called 'internet marketing' companies and 'seo writing' jobs. Most are crap that pay less than content mills.

Look for full service advertising agencies, direct response marketing companies, trade publications, newsletter publishers, magazine publishers, content marketing companies, professional bloggers/blog networks. And as someone else mentioned earlier: be the mom and pop content agency. Offer your services to non marketing local companies.

You also need to get over your fear of speed and length if you want to get anywhere. Speed is crucial these days and a 2000 word article is normal for some industries or publications. When I wrote direct response copy, some of my sales letters topped 10,000 words. This is why I suggested you write 2000 words a day. Samples if need be until you get paid gigs. It gets you used to doing it, builds your confidence and skills, and shows potential clients that you have stamina in addition to talent.
 
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thunder_god

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Freelance writing is not easy. Copywriting is even tougher. You have to write to get noticed, write fast to keep up with demand, and write well to get paid well.

Some markets think writing is nothing special because "everybody starts learning it in kindergarten". Standing out from the crowd is the first step to getting traction. Sending a bland email that says "here I am, look at me" will get you tossed in the trash as fast as they can click -- assuming it's not automated. Say something that appeals to them. Try to address their needs and problems. Convince them you'll make their world better.

Look closely at so called 'internet marketing' companies and 'seo writing' jobs. Most are crap that pay less than content mills.

Look for full service advertising agencies, direct response marketing companies, trade publications, newsletter publishers, magazine publishers, content marketing companies, professional bloggers/blog networks. And as someone else mentioned earlier: be the mom and pop content agency. Offer your services to non marketing local companies.

You also need to get over your fear of speed and length if you want to get anywhere. Speed is crucial these days and a 2000 word article is normal for some industries or publications. When I wrote direct response copy, some of my sales letters topped 10,000 words. This is why I suggested you write 2000 words a day. Samples if need be until you get paid gigs. It gets you used to doing it, builds your confidence and skills, and shows potential clients that you have stamina in addition to talent.

Can you explain what's the difference between SEO content writing versus copywriting? I had recently put up an ad for SEO content writing and had a client ask me to write an ad for a photography business on kijiji (Canada's version of Craigslist) to get attention and calls. To my understanding, SEO content writing is just you writing about content with a few keywords inserted in without trying to sell or get the customer to take any action. I thought copywriting is when you try to advertise or sell something to potential customers. Am I correct?
 

thunder_god

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Update:

I'm really sorry for not updating this sooner. I've had a lot of issues with my folks since breaking the news to them and having to resort to moving back home with my parents since I couldn't afford my rent any more. Of course as expected, they have been on my a$$ everyday about being unemployed and getting kicked out of grad school. Within 2 days of moving back home my mother was already criticising me, and in 2 weeks my father followed suit but he really knows how to push my buttons. He told me that he ran into an old friend of his and his friend was telling him how his son just landed a job and is graduating soon and then asked him about me. His son and I went to the same grad school but different grad programs. My father said he felt embarrassed and ashamed of me and didn't know what to tell his friend. Of course when he got home, he unleashed his fury on me telling me how I was a loser and how pathetic I was for not being able to graduate from grad school and how ashamed he was to have me as a son. It was really tough to swallow and bite down and not say anything when he had no idea about how tough it is out there nowadays nor how hard I fought to stay in the program despite all that bullshit I went through. So now I have been reduced to pretty much being their slave in the house doing like 80-90% of the chores despite there being 5 of us in the house and my two younger sisters doing 10% or less of the work. While I am grateful that they took me back in and I have a roof over my head, its been quite the humbling experience for me.

I guess during this time, I lost focus because of my mental mood in my dealings with my family. I wasted about a month trying to work on my niche site looking for ways to monetize it, learning about MailCheat(Chimp), how to design logos in illustrator, creating several social media accounts, even writing a short mini email to try and get email subscribers on my niche blog but the traffic wasn't coming in. I think I messed up with my niche because I didn't do any keyword research and there doesn't seem to be enough of a market for it. So in other words, it was a failure, but not a complete failure because I did learn some valuable things such as how to design logos in illustrator although at a very basic level at the moment, how to use MailCheat(Chimp), etc.

I also spent a lot of time on smart passive income's website reading alot of his older blog posts about how to monetize websites or how to make a passive income writing articles on places like ehow. I found another site called infobarrel where you can make a passive income from writing articles and wrote about 8 articles so far. Unfortunately it seems since google made those changes, most of that stuff no longer works. I've been writing about 1500-2500 words on a almost daily basis as suggested by EPerceptions and I think I no longer have a problem writing at least 1500 words daily. Thanks for the suggestion EPerceptions!

About a week back, I decided I needed to start focusing back on seo writing and polishing up my previous freelance writing website and market differently as suggested by a few forum members here to start making some money. So I write several more sample articles for my website, redesigned my website, although still not as professional looking as I would have liked. I've looked up about 10 local companies so far and have them in a spreadsheet and as I'm writing this I'm about 75% done my first cold email which I've learned needs to be more personable. Hopefully this time around, I'll have some success because the last time I tried this, it was a complete failure. My strategy as suggested by a forum member is to market my writing services in a package of 10 or so and charge them a few hundred dollars for the package.

I also realized that I need a change of scenery. This city which I now reside in (Toronto) is slowly sucking my soul away from me and my parents are driving me absolutely insane. In order to help me become a new person I need to get away from my old environment, away from all the negatively and all the people holding me back. So therefore, I need to move somewhere else. I figure South East Asian like in Thailand or Vietnam for the winters, and Central/Eastern Europe for spring/summer/fall would be ideal for me due to the cheap cost of living. This would also help with my dating situation as well because Toronto is notorious for being one of the worse places for dating in the world. In order to accomplish this feat, I estimate that I would need to be making $1500-2000 a month minimum online. Assuming I can get this freelance writing business to take off, I think I will be able to accomplish this goal.

I'm going to completely scrap some of my original goals and modify it to these.

Short Term: 1 month

1. Acquire first client from SEO content writing
2. Make first $100 from SEO writing
3. Acquire second client
4. Make first $500 from SEO writing


Semi-Short Term: 2-3 months

1. Have 3-4 ongoing clients
2. Make first $1000 from SEO writing
3. Generate $1500 minimum in recurring monthly income to allow me to live in another country
4. Save up $3000-4000
5. Move out of my parents house and get the hell out of Toronto
6. Look at creating products that generate passive income. I'm thinking about using the money I make from SEO writing to hire 1-2 freelance writers to help me write some ebooks that I will self-publish on amazon or something. I'll need to do a bit more research on this though.
7. Start studying copywriting


Medium Term: 6 months

1. Generate $2000-2500 in recurring monthly income from SEO writing
2. Have 4-8 ebooks on amazon hopefully
3. Start transitioning from SEO writing to Copywriting


Long Term: 1-2 years

1. Generate $4000-5000 in recurring monthly income from copywriting
2. Have 12-20 ebooks on amazon generating $2000-2500 a month in passive income

Daily Goals:

1. Finish writing 10 personalized emails to cold email local companies
2. Look up another 10-20 local companies and add to my excel sheet
3. Write 1 1000 word article for infobarrel

If any of you guys have any suggestions how to make $1500 online on a regular monthly basis I'm all ears.




 

Christiano

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Skipping the family stuff for two reasons:

1) No excuses
2) Nothing to learn here relevant to the solution

I would actually consider offering ghostwriting services right out of the gate. There's a big need for content as everyone is looking to write blogs and stand out which they use and post all over their social as well as for SEO. Better for repeat business since it's important they maintain a consistent branding voice (one of your talking points when pitching them by the way).

Proper branding can be key. Heck, you could call yourself: The Ghost Riter

www.theghostriter.com (domain available)

Go to namechk.com and all social is available with the exception of Twitter and Tumblr

Writing effective copy is another matter altogether. It comes up in my consultancy practice from time to time and if you don't know how to sell to people, then you are not going to write copy that matters. No offense, but if you think "cold emailing" which is terrible....is going to work, then you don't know how to sell.

Please get on the phone as soon as possible.

Hope this helps
 
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tafy

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Nearly every business is worried they are not writing good blog posts, content, newsletter content etc

I wouldnt put the word SEO anywhere if I were you, just pop into all the local businesses nearby in person and ask if they need help in writing their content. Offer to do the first one for free and give them your price per word so they know where they stand. 10c a word is pretty reasonable. Also tell them that you will try to push any newsworthy things into the local newspaper for a PR boost.

All this get you:
1. Gets you out of the house
2. Land some jobs and the family is off your back
3. then you can call yourself a Copy Editor or something so your parents know how to explain you to their friends.
 

thunder_god

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I fired off my first round of 25 cold emails yesterday and got 3 replies back today and I'm hoping to shoot for another 300-450 more emails. Definitely a lot better response rate then my last attempt at it after I made adjustments and personalized each email. They are all asking for pricing though. I didn't make it past this part last time. I'm thinking about charging $40 per a 500 word article or $35 per an article if they purchase 10 in bulk. Works out to $.7-8 a word. I hope this pricing is reasonable, because last time I was offering like $25-30 to internet marketing companies and never heard a beep back.

Also I'm not even sure if I need to create some sort of contract or not. I assume I can invoice them through paypal? Also if they want to talk on the phone, I'm not even sure how I would go about it since I have zero sales experience and are terrified of the phone.
 

tafy

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Best thing to do is to give a guarantee, if they dont like it they dont have to pay and you keep the article for your portfolio. Takes a lot of stress away about picking the right person.
 
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thunder_god

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Best thing to do is to give a guarantee, if they dont like it they dont have to pay and you keep the article for your portfolio. Takes a lot of stress away about picking the right person.

One of the companies I emailed, told me they were paying another freelancer writer $50 to write some 800 word article and asked me if I could write something similar. I told them yes. They emailed me today asking if they could call me on Monday.

I know I should be thrilled and ecstatic but I'm feeling extremely anxious and kind of scared to be honest. This could potentially be my first client since I revamped my freelance writing business. I'm worried I'm not sure what to say or do on the phone, and even more worried that I might not be able to deliver something outstanding. I never ever done sales over the phone in my life before. Do you think I should negotiate the price to what I initially was intending to sell my services at $35-40 per an article up to 500 words or should I price match the other writer at $50 for 800-1000 words?
 
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tafy

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First client, your nervous, just do the work and get them onboard. If your really good you can raise your rates later.
 

thunder_god

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OMG I just landed my first freelance writing job! I just got off the phone with the client and he's sending over the details later tonight or tomorrow. The first job is sort of like a trial and he said if he likes my writing he's going to order a package of ten. I'm going to make sure I do a hell of a good job for him so that I get repeat business. I offered to match the same rate as his other writer. He said he expects between 500-700 words for $50 which is a reasonable price.


Thanks everyone for the advice here. I couldn't have done it without your help! I'm now one step closer to accomplishing my goal of moving out of toxic parent's house and gaining some form of independence.
 
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thunder_god

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About that previous prospective client, he was suppose to send over the work order that night or the next day. I haven't heard back from him since our phone conversation. It kind of was messing up with my head and causing me a lot of self doubts. I just shot him a follow up email, hopefully he is committed to hiring me for the writing services.

Tomorrow I'm going to follow up with all of the previous emails I sent out to all of the other companies.
 

thunder_god

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I think its a bust with that one prospective client who said he was on-board with it. I'm going to have to look for another 50 companies and also follow up with all of the previous companies I contacted. I'm going to have to go at with 110% commitment and hard!

Also today I had a guy who I knew from my dance classes I took last year try to sell me some pyramid scheme scam. It was from some company called Enagic selling some sort of water filtering system called Kangen water or something. I felt insulted that he would even attempt to scam me $5000 to join some "partnership" program. He kept on reiterating that he was only looking for 5 people to join him and how his best friend who is the #1 seller in Indonesia was mentoring him. He told me, his best friend didn't need to be mentoring anyone because he was making so much money and could retire. I then asked him if that was true, then why is he still apart of the company and still selling this garbage. He then tells me his friend wants to have a challenge, so I told him if that was true why doesn't he venture off and start his own company doing something else. He didn't really have an answer to that and made up some gibberish. I called him out on it and told him it sounded like a pyramid scheme.
 

thunder_god

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Holy crap that prospective client gave me massive self doubt on whether or not I was in and over my head. They just responded back to my follow up and sent over the details so it looks like I got the work order. Now I just need to deliver and hopefully I will have repeat business and a huge boost to my confidence level.
 
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D

Deleted35442

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Okay. Wow. I read fast and ended up reading through the whole thread to where you are now. You have a circle of friends that have deteriorated around you and a family that has become toxic and unsupportive to you. I too have student loan debt just above the 50k mark in principle.

Indeed, you need to get a game plan together here and picking up one $50 job at a time is a start but is by no means sustainable. If you're hustling to be in the slow-lane trying to build a brand as a professional copywriter with your results still being poverty, why not suffer working toward a Fastlane endeavor instead? I am all for traveling and cultural immersion. I was offered a coveted position in China making a modest $30K a year. I decided to stay in NYC, where I do have friends and a support network and where my business will have a presence.
On the topic, read this: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241761
I say do this, AFTER you pay your loans off, and AFTER you have money to spend.

MY ADVICE:

1. Firstly, yes, I hear the same thing about Toronto. Move. Not internationally. Still, stay local. Still be location-indepedent. What if I told you I can survive on less than $4000 per year and live in NYC? This is exactly what I do. My rent is $90 monthly for a parking spot in Queens. I live in a van but spend the bulk of my time in Manhattan. This is a lifestyle known as "Van dwelling" for some, here's a guy in Vancouver that does the same: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/01/27/mobile-living-vancouver-van-dwellers-housing_n_2560651.html For as little as $500, you could have a van just like him, be independent, and live where you want.
2. I was also big into bodybuilding. I still lift, but not the extent where I'm eating my weight in grams of protein daily, supplementing and eating well. Keep active and healthy the best you can, but might need to delay some of this for the time being. Cut back.
3. I literally just started using this and rec it for everyone that wants a disposable # they can text and receive calls on for free. Look up the app Sideline on the app market. On that note, look into using Republic Wireless if you aren't already. Hands down best/cheapest network.
4. For cold emails, install Sidekick http://www.getsidekick.com/ (no relation to Sideline), indicates immediately who opens an email, how many times it was open, down to the location it was opened in. Real fun to use too.
5. Never use Freelancer.com, they suck. Learn more and diversify your offerings. Offer more on fiverr.com even. The more you learn, the more informed you'll be in finding a problem to solve that will become your Fastlane business. You can even write a sob story on http://www.gofundme.com. I see the craziest shit get funded there.
6. Maybe work locally for a bit to start to get your funds back up to par to float. Right up around the $5k mark should do it. And to echo what the other person said about...Downloading PDFs. Great book. Learn to sell. http://www.torrentjoker.net/tutoria...way-in-business-and-in-life-pdf-mp3-epub.html

Follow the above and you should be unstoppable. Will keep tabs on your developments here. All the best.
 

thunder_god

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Just a few minutes ago, I had one of my ex-friends from my old social circle text me, asking me what's up and how have I been lol. Considering that they all abandoned me when I was hitting rock bottom and just pretty much left me there to rot for several months, I now don't really feel the need to even communicate with them. I'll probably just reply back out of politeness but won' be sharing any of my personal details with them ever again.
 

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