Episode 9
===
[00:00:00] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Welcome back to the Women in Writing podcast. My name is Christina Jahnke. I'm your host. I'm also a six figure freelance writer, and I am a freelance writing coach, especially for women. My goal and my vision is to share what I was able to create over years and years. with as many women as possible and as many people as possible because you know I focus on women because that's my tribe but it's not only exclusively women like if there's men coming into my world for some reason like I can help them as well obviously but I think It's just so important that in this competitive day and age, especially in freelance writing and a lot of scammy stuff that's out there, a lot of people [00:01:00] that want you to write stuff for free and also like in times of AI to really find our center to really find the writing jobs that make you money and that create that freedom and that abundance that you crave because you know it's not only about writing but it's also about helping others and it's obviously also about making money and I always say that and I talk to about that very openly because I feel like Yes, in the past, or like even now, like sometimes it's like us women, especially we feel bad if we say we want to make money, but obviously we have to make money.
And a lot of times in the past, it was like that as well. If someone gave me a writing job, and they said You don't really have the experience yet or this and that, blah, blah, blah. Just do it for free. It's just a little bit of writing, it's hours and hours of your time and it's your dedication.
It's your talent and obviously you should get paid for it and [00:02:00] you should get paid for it well. So it's worth it for you and it's obviously also worth it for your client because then you can really provide value and that's really important. So anyway, that was a long intro. That is a solo episode. I have a lot of amazing guests lined up the next couple of weeks.
So you can be super excited. A lot of inspiring women that are like on different stages in their writing career. And. Today I really show, want to showcase you how amazing it can be to create your clear vision in terms of your writing career. And I'm always saying that, a lot of people think, when I say I'm a freelance writer, a lot of people say, Oh, you're a copywriter.
Are you a copywriter? Are you just helping copywriters? And I say copywriting is just one discipline, really, I did a lot of copywriting in the past, I made good money copywriting in the past. But it's not really what [00:03:00] I began to focus on a couple of years ago. And especially when I moved into my six figure business, I did not solely focus on copywriting.
And this is what I wanted to highlight there. What I Is it for you? Where is your sweet spot? Like basically the sweet spot between what is What are people what do people need in the market and what can you offer and what can you give and then? This is where the magic is and then creating this clear vision around it But I wanted to start in all honesty and like a couple of words of wisdom It's difficult to create a clear vision If you're just starting out, it's really difficult to create this.
Yes, I want to be a copywriter. I want to be known for this and that. But if you haven't done it before, if you haven't, if you didn't get paid copywriting [00:04:00] already, and it's really difficult to create this vision. And I always thought it would be the same for me, like people always telling you you have to create a clear vision, you have to be clear about your goals etc.
But sometimes, like what I found, and what I also found is true for my clients, it's just holding you back, because, writing is so diverse, writing is so beautiful. And a lot of people that I work with, and it was honestly also true for me, like we are happy, and we can write a lot of things, we can.
write so many in so many different disciplines because we just love writing and we can be creative and it's also like easy for us to be flexible and wrap our head around different topics and that also makes it like more. More exciting as well. If you're only like an expert copywriter writing for, let's say, beauty products or whatever it might be, [00:05:00] nutrition, whatever, you can be an expert in that industry.
And in this specific discipline, yes, that's totally correct. But do you want that? Is that Thanks. your end goal, or what do you want? Like you really have to question yourself. And I'm going to ask you a couple of questions here in this podcast, give you a couple of prompts. And if you have the time, and if you want to do that, just sit down with yourself and write out a few things.
What is important for you? The first thing that you have to write out is what is more important to you and no shame. No, like feeling bad or anything. Is it more important for you to create abundance, create financial abundance, create an income stream or multiple income streams, writing? Or is it more important for you to become known as an expert and have your name out there like in [00:06:00] bold letters, like everyone knows you as X, Y, Z.
I'm always saying this example, like the copywriter for beauty products, like what is more important to you? And that would be like the first prompt. If you sit down and you look at your life right now, it might be that you are a mom, your parent, whatever it might be. Or it might be you're like in a totally different phase.
When I started freelance writing back in 2008, I was just over 20, I just had to calculate how old I was. I was just over 20 years old. And I created a very good. Like at the beginning not so good, but I created like income streams writing But for me, the main goal was money to make money and not to be known for everything For anything because I didn't have the time, so it's important for you To know what you want.
And I'm talking about these two main [00:07:00] kind of like different directions here for a minute. So if you simply, and I say simply because it's pretty simple. There's a couple of steps. Obviously, there's a strategy that I will share with you as much as I can in this podcast. And if you if your strategy and your main goal is to create money, you can 100 percent absolutely do that.
Starting basically today. To create money writing and if this is your main goal and if you are craving that flexibility to work from wherever like I had this like travel lifestyle for years and I really enjoyed it because I was craving you know for my hospitality job where I obviously had to be there in person day in and day out to work on my job the main you know advantage was to when I went home that I didn't have to think about work so much anymore you know.
But I created this lifestyle where I could just, all I needed was my laptop and Wi Fi and then I could work from [00:08:00] wherever it didn't matter, even though sometimes if I didn't have Wi Fi, but I had everything prepared so I can just sit down a couple of hours and write and everything was like in like a Google doc or like a Word doc, I could just work, and if this is what you crave, then write this down.
Be clear about that. And don't feel bad that you just want to create money. Because that's, just what it is. I totally get it. And money is important. And making money writing is actually also like a noble thing, because you help other people out. If you have the talent, writing, and a lot of writers, they say the same, they think Oh, writing is easy.
Everyone can do that. But there's tons of people that cannot write, and obviously, for a lot of people, it gets easier with chat, GPT, or whatever. But as we all know, quality content, It comes from a human and it has strategy behind it and it's unique and it like speaks to a specific audience, et cetera, et cetera.
So if that's true [00:09:00] for you, if you want to make writing money writing, then Do that, write that down. The second one is if you want to become an expert, you might be further in your career already. You might like, have like different writing jobs, discipline already. Becoming an expert comes with a little bit more responsibility almost.
If you want to become an expert, you definitely, I would definitely suggest that you have a social media platform where you share your expertise. You might also want to have a website, you might want to use LinkedIn, because if you want to become an expert, you have to connect, you have to network with people, you have to collaborate with people, that means you have to put a lot of time in your marketing as well.
And if you're a writer, sometimes we are more, and it's definitely true for me as well, we are a little bit more introvert, instead of like extrovert. And obviously marketing and being on [00:10:00] social media, I really had to get used to it. It was not for me until I moved into coaching where I had to become known as an expert in what I'm doing because before when I was just a writer, I didn't use social media at all.
So I just picked up my laptop, wrote, made money writing. I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew exactly how much I could generate without. Having to post without having to connect network, whatever it is, if you want to become an expert, that's amazing. And that's also an amazing goal. And obviously, you can make a lot of money then too, because you will know, people will book you them because they see you as the expert in your area of expertise.
But I would really recommend that for you, if you Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! If you made money writing already and if you made good money writing already, just an example, one of my amazing clients, she took a copywriting course in the past and she [00:11:00] paid really good money for the copywriting course and she got like her certificate and she spent like hours and hours to do the exams, learn everything.
And by the end of the course, She said, copywriting is not really what I want to do. So she spent all this time and energy and all this money for something that she doesn't want to do. So here's a tip for you. If you don't know what kind of like writing discipline you want to go in, because obviously the opportunities are endless.
It's not only copywriting. There's so much more. There is so much more out there, so for example, like I'm talking to one lady, she makes really good money writing. Wedding speeches or vows, there's one lady that makes super good money writing like greeting cards, poems there's so many disciplines for me, what I focused on then, after figuring it out for a couple of years was research related writing.[00:12:00]
That means I would write research related articles. I love doing the research. I love putting things together to answer specific research question. Like I really love that. And then I became an expert in that, even though I didn't say, Hey, I'm an expert. Like I didn't have the social media platform or whatever was helping other people, but it just came naturally to me, and here's the second prompt. What are your interests, right? everything down. What are you interested in? Like in general, what are things that you like to do? Do you like to do research? What are like writing related tasks in the past, even though you were not paid for it yet, that you enjoyed? Maybe you loved writing As a student, maybe you love doing research.
Maybe you're like a natural, curious person, and you're also like someone like me that just doesn't believe everything that, is out there on the internet online, but you want to do your own research a little bit. [00:13:00] Then maybe research related writing would be good for you because you can satisfy your curious, curiosity and your hunger, like researching, but also writing it out, like really having the facts, bringing the facts on the table and not just saying, Oh, I read this quote in the Hello magazine or like whatever it might be for you.
But that must be true just because it's in there, or just because someone said it maybe it might be blogging for you. Maybe it might be like a combination of different things. Like I have a lot of writers in my program as well that are also like awesome creators. Like one of my girls, Courtney, she is amazing also like in creating reels, videos, like she's like this creative being that can write but also create.
And she wants to like, satisfy like visual aspects as well, then maybe not only writing is for you, but maybe you could also look into designing websites creating branding for other brands etc. That would be [00:14:00] for you as well, like just come up with ideas and the ideas are endless.
They are really endless. And then you might want to start at you. I'm gonna start getting paid for different writing jobs. And this is really where the magic happens because sometimes the things we are interested in, once we start writing about them, they might not be so interesting anymore. There is definitely a difference between me, like for example, I love everything that is food related, like especially like healthy food.
Like I'm not sure if you're familiar with Deliciously Ella, she's here in the UK, but I'm following her since. Like pretty much since She started out and now she's a, I don't know, a million pound brand or whatever, but she like creates like this amazing recipes and a beautiful blog like she has a beautiful app She has products or whatever but like writing about it or writing recipes or like writing recommendations It [00:15:00] wouldn't really be for me, like I like my research related writing better.
So what is it that you might like and what maybe falls more under, that's your passion, like your private passion and where do you want to make money with, okay? And then a good way to start, and I cannot stress it enough, it's not easy to get into some of like onto some of these websites, is becoming a bigger fish in a smaller pond.
What do I mean by that? If you're looking on Upwork or Fiverr, like this is like the number one when you type in like freelance jobs or freelance writing jobs, like Upwork, Fiverr, or like other platforms like freelance or whatever it might be, are coming up and you can obviously apply for a million jobs there but you are just a tiny little fish in a big ocean and especially when you're just starting out and you don't have any expertise and you don't want to underprice [00:16:00] yourself because you know that's the thing that burns you out super quick if you might get like a writing job but you just get this job because you're like the lowest bid on like you know on all these bids then it's not a long term thing you I'm not able to do that for very long because it's just difficult and as it is especially if you're like an English speaker and if you're in an English speaking country that it's so competitive like then there's people from other countries that you know I always say if there's a writing job for a 20 bucks and for them it might be like a lot of money and it feeds the whole family for two weeks, and other countries that's great.
It's amazing that this opportunity is out there online, but if you're like in the United States or in the UK or in whatever country where like 20 US dollars would be like almost, like not a lot of money. Then it just doesn't work out for you. So you have to become like a bigger fish in a small ocean.
For example, apply [00:17:00] for sites like text broker.com or. Textbroker. co. uk if you're in the UK and start writing there. That means you have to do a test. You have to write and don't think that test is super easy. You have to look into it. You have to prepare a little bit, but the pass. your test and get onto this website.
They are just, for writing related projects, and it's way easier to get writing jobs there. I used to work for tax broker like back in the day when I started out and like a similar website that's called content. de in Germany because, I'm from Germany and I wrote for them, but I also had to do a test and sometimes they rank you like you're anything between a two or three.
To five star writer and if you're five star writer, you could obviously paid more and I'm not saying that you make a lot of money on these sites, but it's a good way to start out. It's a good way to test out [00:18:00] writing articles, writing website content. Writing, SEO related stuff, meaning like search engine optimization, like it's like optimized text with like specific keywords.
If you're interested in that, and if you have like interested in learning that, like there's obviously a lot of information online and you can just start writing, making money. But the main goal for you is in these like first initial weeks, yes, you create a little bit of an income is to see what you really like.
And then the next step would be really applying for a job that's more specific, because by that time, you might know when you wrote like 10, 15 projects, obviously, you made money. But also, you know what you like and what you don't like. And then you can apply for different jobs on different, platforms, remote work, like there's all that.
That's the next difference. You can write freelance [00:19:00] for agencies and have different projects and get paid by project or you can apply for like longer term jobs. That means you like write directly for a company, you get x amount of hours a week. like up to full time and you can write remote for them, and that's also like a great way to make money and you might even, replace your full time income with one job, like pretty simple, but just to know, then it's also obviously more commitment, but it's a flexible job.
All right. So there's like different aspects of that. And Last but not least, I wanted to talk to you about basically the three phases that writers go through when they start out as freelance writers. And the first phase, as you might think, is the hardest. The first phase is really like the discovery phase and start getting paid for your freelance writing.
[00:20:00] It's the hardest phase. Why is that? Because, a lot of people are trying to do the same. But again, you just have to start somewhere. You have to apply, you have to be on your tippy toes. And I'm not saying that you have to, write the perfect like cover letter for every single job or whatever.
But you have to take action, you have to be patient, you have to apply, you have to do the tests, like I said, on TaxBroker, or there's a couple of other websites like N Dash, for example, as well. And you have to start somewhere, you have to start somewhere. And I'm teaching people to make.
Up to five figures a month writing, which I was able to do like after I figured it out, but you might not get there like in your first couple of months, just because it's a lot of figuring out at the beginning. So the first phase is really getting signed and getting like a stable income in.
That's the first phase and obviously it might be difficult if you still [00:21:00] have a full time job or you have like other commitments as well and you might think Oh, I'm doing these things like I'm applying. It's really exhausting. Yes, it happens to a lot of my clients like they apply for numerous jobs, but they might not be hired.
Right away, because, they have to be on their tippy toes, they have to do the things to get started. And I had to do the same. I always say to my writers I was on these platforms forever until I really figured it out. Like until I said, okay, research related writing, writing research related articles, also supporting students, like meaning coaching students in academic writing after I completed my master's degree, as something I'm passionate about.
And then I got signed with not only one, but three agencies in one week. But it took me months. to get there. So it was like a couple of months where I couldn't really focus on my writing because I had to focus on applying. And that sucked. And if I would have given up, I would not [00:22:00] be here right now talking to you because then I would not be able to figure it out, so the first phase, discovery, And application is difficult, but it's definitely doable. The second phase is then getting into the mindset of writing for high paying clients. And this is also like where a lot of people freak out. I have that, I see that with my writers in my program a lot. Like they finally are signed.
They finally have like high paying writing jobs, but especially at the beginning, it can be really difficult because, like I said, I'm from hospitality. It's not like a job where you serve people or whatever it might be that you do. And then you go home and then you It's fine, like you don't have to think about it.
If you work from home and your laptop is always there and you're like always in your like work environment, it's difficult to set clear boundaries. And then if you, especially if you write on a project, like you might wake up in the middle of the night and think, [00:23:00] Oh, I should add this, or I should add that.
Because your mind is like always working, always creative. So you have to get into that habit. Of like really shutting off and it took me years. It took me years because I was just so excited that I was finally able to create like the financial freedom that I wanted to have writing, but it was difficult to set the boundaries because I was also too invested.
Like I was too, I wanted to please my clients too much. Which obviously is a good thing, but you have to set clear boundaries and agency writing for an agency is a good way because they protect you like the client has to pay in advance the client, has to be nice to you because otherwise you can always say no if there's a client that are not nice, it really happens more in the low paying niche than in the high paying niche, meaning they pay obviously way higher wages for you as a [00:24:00] writer.
yeAh. It just happens less. This is the second phase. And once you're like once it flows, once you're like, yes, feeling good, where you're writing jobs are coming from, that the money is coming in, you can handle it mentally. Then the third phase starts, and this is scaling, creating a higher and higher income because at this point, you know what you're doing, and you can absolutely scale.
How do you scale as a freelance writer? There's always a difference between getting paid, per hour. versus getting paid per project when you get paid per project, it's easier to scale because you can create a good job faster. It is a little bit harder at the beginning. But once you know what you're doing, obviously, you can use AI not to generate text, obviously, but to generate ideas to map out what you want to do, you can scale [00:25:00] by doing.
the things faster, creating a good quality, like you can create a good quality pretty easy. And you can increase your money that's coming in, obviously, because you can take on more projects. And you know what you're doing, because at the beginning, you don't want to have like more than one or two or three projects at a time, especially the high paying ones, not the low paying ones, but the high paying ones.
And yeah, that's how you create like different, income streams. And that's how you scale. Just a word. of wisdom, a project will take up some mental space. So if you write a 200 project for a website, maybe it takes up The same mental space as if you write like a 2, 000 project. I promise you, obviously like the 2, 000 project might take you a little bit longer to write etc.
It might be a little bit of a different discipline, but it will not take more of your mental space than a smaller project. Of course, the [00:26:00] smaller project might be like done like sooner. But it will not take up more of your mental space. That's what I found. And that's why you don't want to waste a lot of time with low paying projects.
That's why you want to waste more or spend your time on high paying projects. Because that's where the magic happens, and another tip for scaling is to that you have a mix of passive income writing and active writing income. Active writing income is when you take a project and you get paid for it.
So basically every word you write, it's paid at the end of the day or other scenario every hour you work. Because for example, if you are editing a book or whatever, then please make sure you get paid by the hour because you don't know. How long it will take you to edit the whole book. If you write and you can trust your skills, and you know exactly, or like you know approximately how long it will take you, then it's a different story [00:27:00] than get paid by project.
It might be the better deal for you, depending on the client as well. But if you have a book editing job and they tell you, Hey, I pay you 500, then it might be a bad deal for you because maybe it will take you way longer, you don't know what kind of like state that book is in. Maybe you need to basically rewrite like the whole thing, then it's a bad deal.
to just get paid 500, then it's better for you to get paid per hour. And it's like a nice side job. You can say, okay, I can work 10 hours a week on it. And I have a couple of other projects at the site and make sure that they pay you at the end of the week or end of every two weeks. So you make sure that you have money coming in.
In the meantime, And yeah, passive income writing last but not least, if you can get to a point where you create passive writing income, this is obviously stacking more money every single [00:28:00] month, passive writing income, you can create by creating your own content, I'm saying you can be known as an expert, for example, like you want to be a copywriter and you want to write like a short ebook or like a podcast.
A book about copywriting, how you did it, what your experiences are, and then you self publish. And then obviously, there's tons of like different little aspects that you have to be aware of. But with my digital publishers, and my experts in book marketing, it's not so difficult to really create a book that is going to be a bestseller, And it sounds weird, but it is not so easy because like experts, they know Amazon, they know Audible, whatever it might be.
And people are usually not afraid of spending 8 bucks, 12 bucks, 15 bucks on a book, so it's a different story. But it can be. Like also [00:29:00] something else, maybe you're passionate about recipes, maybe you're passionate about like writing short stories or whatever. Usually nonfiction books sell better because with fiction, it's always a little bit more difficult.
Like you don't know if the audience, if there's an audience or not, but basically if you have an expert, they test if there's an audience first. So you don't want to like just write something and then hope that there's an audience. And then hope that there's someone that will buy your book, but you want to make sure that what you write, there's people that are interested and that if there's like books already in that, area and you might think, Oh my God, there's five books already in there, like bestsellers, like there's no space for me, but actually there is space for you because a lot of people will pick you.
depending on, what they're looking for, what your title is, if you're specific, what is your cover design, et cetera, et cetera, and this is like where the magic happens because if you did that once you [00:30:00] can do it again and again, and you can stack passive income and maybe you get to this point where you can just live off your passive income.
That's great. Like the sky is the limit and I know it's. difficult to think about sometimes especially when you're starting out, but you can make money writing everything. And It doesn't have to be a specific discipline. So I gave you a couple of prompts here in this podcast I gave you a little bit of food for thought and I hope that was helpful.
My goal with this episode was really like motivating you starting into this new year because obviously a lot of people have that dream of becoming writers Getting paid well for their writing. And if you're one of them, you can absolutely and a hundred percent do that. If you are unsure, write me an email, please.
We can also schedule a short call because everyone is so different. I love to talk to people. Let me know what it is I can support you with. And I hope that you [00:31:00] enjoyed this episode and I hope that you rate it and share it. Bye.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
