Copywriter and cold emailing specialist, Jorden Roper, joins Kira and Rob in The Copywriter Club Podcast studio for the 39th episode. Jorden is a three time college dropout who lost her job (the same day her husband lost his job at the same company) and managed to find several freelance clients within a month. She shares how she did it, and how she used cold emailing to find clients plus:
• How you can do cold emailing that lands clients on day one
• The cold emailing formula she used to grow her business
• How she used Pinterest to brainstorm her brand
• How to be fearless as you “put yourself out there”
• How she uses Youtube to attract a different audience to her blog
• How much work she put into creating and launching her course
• The biggest mistake she sees new writers making today
This one is packed with useful information and ideas any writer, beginner or expert, can use to grow and improve their business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Sponsor: AirStory
Craig’s List
Problogger Job Board
Limeleads
Pinterest
Jorden’s video about haters on Youtube
Writing Revolt Blog
Cold Emailing Course
Mariah Coz’s Launch Your Signature Course
Maggie Patterson
Jorden’s FB Community
Jorden on Twitter
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
Intro: Content (for now)
Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: 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 Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 39 as we chat with copywriter Jorden Roper about getting fired from bad jobs, and finding copywriting to pay the bills, using YouTube for brand building and outreach, what she has done differently from other copywriters to get an edge, and how copywriters can find great clients with cold emailing.
Rob: Hey, Kira. Hey, Jorden.
Jorden: Hey, guys.
Kira: Hello. Welcome, Jorden.
Jorden: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Rob: Yeah. It’s about time. We’ve been trying to get you on the podcast for a little while. It’s time you got here.
Jorden: Yes, I’m so excited to be here. Thank you so much.
Rob: Jorden, I think maybe we should start with your story. I know you’ve shared this a lot with your list, but a lot of our listeners probably haven’t heard it. You went through a time in your life when you were going through different jobs and landed where you are. Tell us about that.
Jorden: Well, before I started my freelance writing business, pretty much right before, I had been working at this full-time job at a marketing agency. I was doing some writing there. It was very stressful. It was a super toxic work environment. I know a lot of people who are probably trying to break into freelance writing can relate to that, like just going to work every day, sitting in your car in the morning, and just wanting to scream or cry or whatever before you walk up to the office.
That’s kind of the situation that I was in. I ended up getting fired from that job. Just a few months before that actually, my husband started working at the same job. When his contract ended, they decided to just let me go, too.
Kira: What?
Jorden: Yeah, we’re both out of work on the same day.
Kira: Oh, no.
Jorden: We walk out of the office together like, “Oh my God. What are we going to do? This is insane.” It was very stressful. Actually, I had some other stuff going on at the time, too, just within … I think within the same week before this happened, I found out that I had an early stage skin cancer on my leg. It was just one of those when it rains, it pours type situations. It was extremely stressful, but ultimately I’m very thankful for it just because I had been wanting to start freelance writing for a while before that. Getting fired gave me that little push I needed to just say, “You know what, I’m just going to go all in and make this happen.”
Kira: Wow. You walk out the doors, you’re fired, and you’re like … How do you go from there to launching a business? Did it take a couple of months, or did you get a client immediately?
Jorden: I landed my first clients pretty quickly. I mean, I think, just for a couple of days, my husband and I were both just kind of in this shocked, like “Oh my God. What are we going to do?” state where we were just kind of thinking about our next steps. After that, I had been reading about freelancing for a while, and I had been already thinking like, “You know, I want to make an escape plan and like get out of this job like soon for sure,” so I knew a little bit about what I needed to do.
I started pretty much right away setting up a website for myself, creating a marketing strategy based on the niche that I chose. I think I got fired in mid April. Then at the beginning of May, that’s when I started really aggressively marketing myself as far as cold emailing, and all that stuff.
Rob: You talk about the marketing strategy that you set up. Tell us a little bit more about that. What did that look like? What were you thinking you were going to be doing?
Jorden: Well, I just knew that I wanted to focus heavily on branding myself, and also positioning. I knew just from reading tons and tons of blog posts online that I definitely wanted to pick a narrow niche when I started out, so I decided to market myself to IT service providers and software development companies and technology companies.
I set up basically my entire website based around that. I made my niche clear. I really positioned myself as a perfect fit for that kind of clientele specifically. All my writing samples were in those industries. Then, I started cold emailing those specific target clients.
Rob: This is before you had any clients at all. You had created some samples and chose this all before client number one?
Jorden: I had gotten a few little jobs here and there, while I was working, just dabbling in freelance writing. I got one job from Craigslist, and then I had gotten one job from the ProBlogger job board, but I think once I got fired, that was when I decided I need to start really taking this seriously like a business. Instead of just applying to a random gig here and there, I wanted to start really pitching myself and going after more high-quality, high-paying clients.
Kira: What did the cold emailing process look like? I mean, if you could share the details, too, just how did you pull together the list? How did you find them? What did the emails look like? All the details. We want all of it.
Jorden: Yeah, for sure. Mainly how I got email addresses was using a tool called LimeLeads. It’s basically a huge database of B2B leads that you can download based on industry. Since I had niche down, it was really easy for me to go into that database and pull a bunch of email addresses in the IT and technology industry specifically.
That’s what I did. I didn’t do that horrible thing where you just send out the same template to a thousand people. It wasn’t anything like that, but I sat down and went down the list and personalized every single email, took the time to look at their website, took the time to talk to them about how I could help their business, really use that cold email to position myself as the perfect fit for their business specifically.
That’s what I did. I set a goal to send 20 to 25 cold emails a day. That’s what I was doing for the most part. But on the very first day that I sent out cold emails, I sent 17. Two of those ended up turning into high-paying clients. After that, I was just like, “Well, I know I’m going to be cold emailing a lot now, because that’s what’s working.”
Kira: I want to know about what you actually said in your emails, because there must’ve been some structure in it, and it worked, especially for people who may want to do the same thing and land their first few clients.
Jorden: Starting with the subject line, I think a mistake that I made really, really early on, like before I started learning how to market myself, was using a self-focused subject line about how I needed work or whatever. But then I started learning more about it and learning to make it more client-focused, so asking them about their content strategy, or mentioning something specific about their business. Then in the email, I would make sure to personalize again. I was using the person’s name. I was making a genuine connection with them, so mentioning something specific I had seen that they’d done online, whether it had been a blog post or something that I thought was really cool that they had done with their business. That was always early in the email.
Another thing that I always put early on in the email was my niche. I didn’t reach out to them and say, “Hey, I’m a freelance writer.” It was like hey, “I am an IT and technology copywriter.” Right away, as soon as they opened my email, they’re like, “Okay. This person specializes in my industry.” I would link out to my site from there. Again, it was the positioning of this is an IT and technology copywriter. I had that in a huge headline on my homepage. I had all of my portfolio pieces tailored to that. I think overall with the email, it was just using that really targeted strategy, and really using positioning as far as my niche expertise is what helped me become successful with cold emailing.
Rob: On day one, you landed two clients. You said they turned into high-paying clients. I’m assuming the first jobs were relatively small. Talk about the first couple of months in doing this, and how your income grew, the kinds of projects you were taking on using this as your way to find clients.
Jorden: At first, I was just doing IT and technology copywriting. I was kind of just niching down by industry, as opposed to content type. I was doing case studies, white papers, website content, just more one-off projects like that. Eventually, I realized I wanted to change my niche because I wanted something a little more consistent. I also just realized that I really didn’t like doing a lot of the stuff that I was doing.
That’s when I decided to change to writing blog posts. It’s more consistent income. It was a better fit for my personal writing style. That is something that really helped my business and my income take off, I think, just transitioning my niche to something that I was more comfortable doing, something that I was better at, and something that was more consistent, because when you go after a blog post client, they’re typically going to want X amount of blog posts per month, so it’s like you have a little bit more of that sense of security than you do with just a one-off project. That definitely helped my income grow a lot.
Then by August of 2015, I had my first $5,000 month. That was super exciting for me, because that was twice what I had been making before.
Rob: That’s awesome. Can I ask about the specific rates and how they increased from where you started to where you are now? Did you start out super cheap and grow quickly, or did you start out valuing what you were offering at a higher level?
Jorden: I started out … I didn’t go too crazy with charging super high, but I also … The main thing I knew was that I didn’t want to end up in that situation where I’m doing content [inaudible 00:10:04] work, or doing $10 for 1,000 words or anything like that.
Where I started was roughly 10 cents per word for smaller projects and blog posts. It was still pretty low, but it was a rate that I was comfortable with being just totally new and feeling like I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing. Then, I moved up quickly from there. As I would finish up those previous clients at the lower rate, I would bring on new clients at a higher rate. Now where I’m at, I get paid up to and beyond $400 for a blog post. It’s definitely grown a lot since I first started out.
Kira: Jorden, how do you package your blog post content? Were you working with retainer clients at that time, or were you bundling the blog posts? I’m asking purely because I haven’t worked in that space.
Jorden: For me, mostly, I don’t have a lot of formal processes and stuff like. Really for me, what I do is I would just talk to the client, ask them about the entire scope of the project, learn about exactly what they needed help with, and then just come up with a custom quote based on that. If they wanted two blog posts a month, I would just invoice them for both of those blog posts. But recently I’ve gotten some more retainer works. That has definitely been new for me. It, again, is that good source of consistent income where you feel a little bit more secure about you’re going to have money coming in every month. Always a good thing.
Rob: Jorden, I want to shift gears just a little bit, although it’s obviously related. You appear to have been very consistent about building your brand and some of the things that you’ve done, even from, I think, the color of your hair, to the way that you dress when you’re doing YouTube videos, that kind fo stuff. Tell us a little bit about your thinking about that and why you did it.
Jorden: Well, for me, I think building my brand the way that I have has just had a lot to do with not wanting to feel like I was walking on eggshells, because that’s always how I felt when I was working at traditional jobs or nine to five jobs and not feel like I had to put up the super corporate-y front because that’s just not how I am as a person. I decided early on that I wasn’t going to try to go buy a suit, or try to do all of those super professional looking things. I was just going to put myself out there and see how it turned out.
It was kind of nerve-racking at first, because there’s always that concern where we’re doing something new, is this going to repel people, or is it actually maybe going to be a good thing? But it ended up working out. As far as branding in the sense of fonts and colors and graphics and all that stuff, I used Pinterest a lot for brainstorming. I created a Pinterest board for my branding stuff. I did that for both the copywriting side of my business, and the blog side of my business. Then I would just pin any pictures that I thought were inspiring to that board, and then I worked with a designer based on that. She really helped me fine-tune my brand and get it looking how I wanted it to look.
Kira: Jorden, some copywriters really struggle with branding. Clearly, you get it. You’ve done really well in that space. What advice would you give to copywriters who are aware that their brand is not where they want it to be, but they can’t necessarily hire a branding strategist to work with, they need to figure it out on their own. Where can they start?
Jorden: I think it really just starts with knowing and being comfortable with who you are as a person. As cheesy as that sounds, you really just have to put yourself out there and be fearless about putting yourself out there. Don’t go 50% on your personality and who you are as a person, go 100% on it. Then, you also have to think about who you’re trying to appeal to, who is your target client or your target audience. You have to think about how that fits into your overall branding strategy, too. Then, of course, I would suggest definitely using Pinterest, because it’s just a good way to get inspired as far as the visuals you want to use.
Rob: One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve seen a few of your videos, Jorden, is you’ve got this guitar sitting in the background. I’m wondering when we’re going to see you play it.
Jorden: Oh my God. I don’t know. Not anytime soon. I used to be in a couple of bands, but, man, since I started my business, it’s just been like my guitar is collecting dust in the corner. It’s so sad.
Rob: Yeah. It’s tragic. My real question, you do a ton of stuff on YouTube, everything from writing advice, to … I think you recently posted a video about dealing with haters.
Jorden: Yes.
Rob: Talk about your thinking on YouTube, and how you’ve used that to attract an audience, to attract clients. How have you been using that to grow your business?
Jorden: YouTube, for me, has been really about growing my blog and helping other writers who want to break into freelance writing, or who want to learn writing tips, and stuff like that. It was really just something I started on a whim. I know video is getting more and more popular. I’ve always liked YouTube, and creating content in general, so it was just kind of like, “Why not?” I just sat down and did it one day. Yeah. It has definitely helped me with my business as far as allowing me to get in front of a new audience, because I’ve noticed based on my email list and stuff that I’ve been tracking that a lot of the people who are finding me on YouTube aren’t people who have necessarily been familiar with me, or my Writing Revolt blog, or anything like that beforehand. It has really allowed me to get in front of that new audience and build my email list even more, because a lot of it is totally new people rather than people who are coming over from my blog, or the same audience is finding me on Google, and stuff like that.
Kira: Do you have any advice for us, specifically, because Rob and I want to get into video as well, to help us use video to actually capture leads and grow the business, rather than just … Yes, it’s fun, but it needs to have a purpose.
Jorden: Right. Definitely starting out with that strategy, and starting very niched. If you’re doing YouTube, optimizing for keywords, for sure, because even in the past just several months I’ve been doing YouTube, I’ve noticed a huge difference when I just tweaked the keyword optimization a little bit as far as how my videos are ranking, so definitely doing that. I feel like a lot of people are afraid to do video. I definitely had some apprehension about it when I started out, because of perfectionism, and stuff like that.
I would definitely say, too, to not be a perfectionist, and don’t worry about every single aspect of the video looking professional, because like we were talking about a minute ago, when I first started doing my YouTube videos, I was just sitting on the floor and had some guitars propped up in the background. That’s very recent, but one of those videos has actually become one of my most popular videos. Ultimately, it’s about just putting good content out there just like any other content creation method, growing a blog, or whatever. You want to just really know your audience, know their needs, understand how you can help them and give them the content that they’re looking for. It doesn’t have to be the most professional, or the fanciest thing. It’s all about really making a connection with them.
Kira: Just as a follow-up, when you do the video, are you scripting it out? You said you’re not really a perfectionist and you just keep it easy, but do you recommend scripting it out or you just treating it more like Facebook Live, or you just go and you do it, and it works out most of the time?
Jorden: For me, it’s like a mixture of both. Some of the YouTube videos I’ve made are actually repurposed from blog post content. In those cases, I’ll just pull the blog post up in front of me and I’ll just scroll down as I’m progressing with the video, and look down at it from time to time just to make sure I’m staying on track with the topic. But if I’m doing a totally new topic, I typically just write out some really messy notes on the main points I want to cover, and then I just go for it, because the good thing about video is you can just always chop stuff out and edit later, and cut out fluff or extra content or whatever, just like with writing.
Rob: Tell us more about that editing process. How long does it take if a video’s, say, 7 to 10 minutes long? How many takes do you do as you’re recording? How do you cut it altogether, not necessarily how, but what kind of time does that take as you go through that process to make sure that it is presentable?
Jorden: Usually, what I end up doing is just doing one really long take all the way through. I guess not really long. Usually, it ends up being about 20 minutes long per video, and the video ends up being 7 to 10 minutes.
I end up doing one really long take. I don’t pause at all. I just keep going. If I need to stop, then I just stop, and I just keep going a few seconds later because I know that I can edit that later. As far as the actual editing process, it’s really just a lot of chopping out silences and if I messed up. Like while I’m recording, if I mess up, I just stop where I was so I can see where that is in the recording and edit it later, and then I just keep going. As far as the time it takes, probably at this point, I can edit a video in one to two hours. At first, it was a lot more difficult, because I didn’t have my intro footage, and my outro footage, and all my music and stuff. That was all still up in the air, but now that I have a little bit more of that stuff set in stone, it’s a lot easier. It has saved me a lot of time.
Rob: I know you said don’t worry too much about the details, but I can imagine somebody might look at one of your videos and say, “Oh yeah, but you know, she’s attractive, and she’s young. Of course, she’s going to say that.” What would you say to people among us who are maybe less attractive or don’t present as well?
Jorden: Well, I would just say you can get better with anything you do with practice, and if you put effort into it. It’s so funny because I was watching a YouTube video that I made from like three or four years ago. I actually had a different YouTube channel. It was just absolutely horrible. There was no energy in it whatsoever. It was just basically a 10-minute ramble of me talking about something probably no one wanted to listen to. I was just like, “Wow. I have come like so far since then. Thank God, because that would be just a mess if I was doing those kind of videos right now.”
I mean, yeah. Just put yourself out there. Just don’t be afraid. Don’t make excuses. Don’t feel like you’re not good enough to do something like that, because, again, it’s really just about branding and putting your personality out there in a way that will allow you to build your audience, and delivering the kind of content that people are looking for.
Kira: I’m wondering what your business looks like today. I’m trying to connect the dots as we’re talking about your YouTube channel. What does your business look like structurally? How do you get paid these days? If you want to lead from the transition, how you transitioned from client work, blog posts, content, into where you are today.
Jorden: I launched my cold emailing course at the end of last year. That is still very new, but the launch went well. At that point, I felt comfortable starting to phase out some of my client work. I had another launch in March of that same course that went well. That also made me feel better about it. It was just more validation that, “Okay. Like I can really do this, and this is exactly what I want to do.”
This month, actually, April, is my first month, I think, since I started my business that I haven’t had any client work at all. I really planned this out and wanted this month to be deep content creation focusing on growing that side of my business, focusing on helping my course students and all that. But as far as how I get paid right now, I do have some affiliate income coming in from some of my blog posts, and then I have some Evergreen course sales that come in. When I have another launch, then I will get paid for that, of course.
Rob: Jorden, are you doing all of this alone? Is it just you, or do you have someone helping you in the background?
Jorden: It is just me. My husband is back there giving moral support, and stuff like that, but for the most part, yeah, it’s just me doing everything. I do all my video editing. I do all the video recording. I’m running my course, my course Facebook group, my regular Facebook group. All those things is me.
Kira: I want to dive deeper into your course. Courses are not easy, as you know, to create, or to launch, or to build a community and a platform where you can even think about doing that. How did you get the idea for it? What did you have to do to even prep, prelaunch for the launch, because it sounds like it was successful. If you can just give us an idea of what it really took to make it work.
Jorden: It was a lot. I’m not even going to lie, it was super, super stressful, because at the time, I was still handling a lot of client work, because I couldn’t … while I was creating the course and planning the launch, I couldn’t let go of some of my clients yet because I didn’t know for sure is this going to be profitable. This is the first time I’ve ever done this. What the heck am I even doing? It was definitely stressful. It was a lot of work. It involves writing a lot of launch emails, and just writing a lot of blog post content. Everything basically focused around your course topic.
I also took a course on how to create a course, basically, and how to market a course, so having that as a guideline really, really helped. I think that’s so, so important for anyone who wants to create a course, or wants to make a change in their business, making that investment in yourself so you can learn exactly what you need to do quickly.
Kira: What was that course that you took, because I’m assuming it worked well. That’s my first question, then I have a follow up question.
Jorden: I took the Launch Your Signature Course course from Mariah Coz. That’s the one that I took.
Kira: Okay. Cool. Before you launched the course, I’m really curious what you were doing to build your community, and your audience. Beyond the actual course creation, you had to have the people there, the people ready to buy. Had you been building your list for months, or did you just jump into it a couple months before you launched the course?
Jorden: Yeah. I had definitely been building my list for months. I started my blog, I think, near the end of 2015, but for a while it was just a couple of blog posts just sitting there, not getting promoted. But when I really started taking my blog seriously and promoting, it was February of 2016, I think. From that point on, I had been writing tons and tons of guest posts, like so many guest posts, and just really trying to get involved in the freelance writing community as far as on Reddit. Just anywhere I could get involved and build a presence in that community, that’s what I was doing.
I was definitely doing that up to the point of my launch, and suggest that for sure for anyone who wants to launch a product, because the last thing you want to do is launch a product to no existing audience.
Rob: Yeah. In fact, we chatted a couple of episodes ago with another writer, Maggie Patterson, who … Her advice to us was while you almost don’t want to do a course unless you are all in. It takes tons of work. You have to have a list to make it work. Otherwise, the results are going to be pretty small. It sounds like you’ve done a lot of things right, as you’ve gotten ready to launch yours.
Jorden: Yeah. That’s why I don’t have any client work as of right now, because it’s just a full-time commitment. It would be so insane to have a full load of freelance writing work and be doing a course at the same time, just because with the course, it’s like creating the course is one thing, but planning for the launch and doing all of the launch content creation, and all that stuff is like a whole other full-time job pretty much. It is very, very demanding for sure.
Rob: If somebody was thinking about doing a course, it’s not just as simple as creating a course and now you’ve got all of this income coming in. You’ve got to do a lot of work to support it.
Jorden: A lot of work, yeah. Definitely, you want to be building an audience that is specifically fit for that course months in advance. You want to have the email list that you want to launch, too. You want to have a really strategic approach with it. It does take a whole lot of time and effort, that’s for sure.
Rob: Now that you’re working with so many writers through your course and support that you’re providing, I want to ask one of the questions that we love to ask a lot of the people that we’ve talked to, and that is what are some of the biggest mistakes that you’re seeing the writers that you’re working with that they’re making every day in their business? What should they be doing differently?
Jorden: A lot of the writers I work with are new to the world of freelance writing, or they just started. One of the major mistakes I see people make is just devaluing themselves, or feeling like, “I don’t have tons and tons of experience, or I don’t have an English degree,” or whatever, like, “I don’t know if I can do this,” but I just think that it’s more about seeing your business as a business, as opposed to having an employee mindset. You want to have a business owner mindset.
I think that’s what often separates writers who are able to scale their businesses quickly as opposed to writers who are not able to scale their business quickly. It’s about seeing it like a business. Even if you don’t feel confident … I didn’t feel confident when I started out because I am a three-time college dropout who had just been fired. It wasn’t like the greatest time in my life to be starting a business necessarily, but I just think if you go into it, and you just force yourself to go through with it in a way, and even fake that confidence if you have to, some really awesome things can happen, if you go into it also with the mindset you’re going to work hard and have a clear marketing strategy, and all that stuff, too.
Kira: Recently … or maybe not so recently … you started your own Facebook group for copywriters. Is that right?
Jorden: Yes.
Kira: Do you have any advice? This could be for us, as well, just for copywriters that want to build a community, whether or not it’s on Facebook, maybe it’s just nurturing their list. How can you really build a thriving community of people that want to engage, they want to hear from you, they want to participate?
Jorden: I think a lot of it … I think in my case, it was just about having that community already there via my email list, and my free course, and even my paid course, just having that community and really being available and being willing to help people and making people feel supported, and like if they post a question, they’re not going to be judged for it, and no one’s going to be mean to them, and stuff like that.
For me, I just feel like my brand already had that sense of community and being supportive and helpful. Then once I created my Facebook group, it was kind of a natural thing that that happened.
As far as setting up the group and stuff like that, though, it was seriously not that planned out at all. I just knew that I wanted to have daily prompts in the group, and so I designed some graphics for it. Other than that, I didn’t have this huge strategy, or anything. I was just like, “Well, this sounds cool, so I’m going to do it.”
Rob: You’re in there pretty regularly engaging with your audience, chatting back and forth, so obviously it takes some of your time to support that group as well.
Jorden: Yeah, definitely. I think, though, it’s really important to do that, especially at first when you first start your group, you want to have that solid foundation to build off of, because I think if you’re running a group and you’re showing up every day, and you’re helping people, then it makes other people also want to show up with that same attitude. Like, “Hey, I’m going to jump in and help, or I want to show up and I want to participate.” I would definitely suggest that to anyone, especially if you just started your group, hop in there on a daily basis. Set aside 30 minutes, a couple times a day to get in there and talk to your community.
Rob: Obviously, not every writer wants to host a Facebook group, or even do a course. Some just want to get down to the business of writing. Do you have any advice for people who just want to do that and how they could do it better?
Jorden: The first thing I would say if you’re starting out and you’re brand-new is be crystal clear on what you’re doing, and who you are marketing to, as far as your freelance writing niche, and exactly who your target clients are, because the clearer you are on those things, the better your marketing is going to be, the better you can tailor your website, your cold emails, even your job board pitches, and your portfolio. Everything is just so much easier when you focus it all around that niche marketing strategy.
Kira: Jorden, I was just going to ask from your perspective, where are some opportunities that copywriters are missing out on? That could be experienced copywriters, new copywriters, where maybe we’re focused over here, and we’re just missing all of these great opportunities in the opposite direction.
Jorden: Yeah, definitely. I know so many talented copywriters, and I would actually just love to see more copywriters packaging their expertise in the form of an online course, or maybe not even a course, but a digital product because it is a really good way to help people who maybe can’t afford expensive marketing consulting, or copywriting services. Then of course on a business side of it, it’s really good to have that additional income stream.
You guys know, it can be pretty scary when you’re freelancing if you get sick or if you have something come up and you need to be out of the office for a week or a few days even, because when you’re trading dollars for hours, that can be pretty terrifying. If you don’t work, you’re not getting paid, but having those additional income streams and just diversifying as far as your business model can really give you that greater sense of financial security. You don’t feel like you have to always be writing nonstop.
Rob: What’s next for you, Jorden? Where does Writing Revolt go from here?
Jorden: For me, I am in the process of brainstorming a new course that I want to make. I’m planning to hopefully launch that in the fall of this year. Then I’m just going to keep making YouTube videos, going to keep creating blog posts, growing my community. Basically, all the things that I’m doing right now, hopefully just a whole lot more of it.
Kira: I know this question is cheesy, but I still like it. If you could give yourself advice when you were just fired from that job, and you were embarking on your copywriting career, what advice would you give to young Jorden?
Jorden: I actually have a cheesy answer for that, I guess. I guess I would just say-
Kira: Just cheese it up.
Jorden: I would say take a break sometimes. Actually make time to take care of yourself, because although my business grew quickly, what a lot of people don’t see is that I was isolated and dealing with being at my apartment by myself all day, and dealing with all those things that you go through when you’re sitting at a computer for 12, 14, however many hours per day. I would definitely go back and say you still have to work hard, but take some time out for yourself. Get out of the apartment sometimes. Go to the gym. Do something for yourself other than sitting in front of the computer and working.
Rob: This has been a fantastic interview, Jorden. So much good advice as I’m speaking here thinking I’ve been doing this for a number of years. Almost everything that you’ve talked about, it’s like, I can be using this in my business. We can be doing it, some of the things that we’re doing in the club. I really appreciate the advice that you have shared with us. It’s been fantastic.
Jorden: Awesome. Thank you so much. It has been so awesome being here. Awesome talking to you guys.
Rob: If somebody was looking to find you online, Jorden, where should they go to connect with you?
Jorden: Well, I hang out a lot on Twitter, so you can find me there @JordenRoper. You can find all of my blog content and a link to my YouTube channel at writingrevolt.com.
Kira: Thank you, Jorden. Thanks for joining us today.
Rob: Yeah, thanks.
Jorden: Thank you so much.
