7 different types of writing gigs for Freelance Copywriters
When most people think about freelance copywriting, they have a specific type of writing in mind, but the truth is, there are tons of variations to the copywriting world, just like their are various types of designers (print, web, logo, etc). Today I want to cover seven of the different types of freelance copywriting gigs out there so we can all get a better understanding of the different hats that a freelance copywriter might wear.
Since it’s come to my attention after interacting with a lot of you that a good amount of the readers of this blog are freelance copywriters, I thought I’d start writing some articles about freelance copywriting. I’ve done a bit of freelance copywriting over the past few years in a few different mediums, so below are some of those as well as a few I have yet to venture out into.
Blogging
This is one of the biggest forms of copywriting that I’ve personally had the pleasure of doing over the past few years. Besides running my own blogs, I’ve written for countless design & marketing blogs across the internet. As a blog writer, you’ve got to not only be a great writer, but you’ve got to write content that sticks and gets hits from social media websites and search engines.
There are a lot of blogs with great tips on blogging that you should check out, like Daily Blog Tips, Problogger, Blogging Tips & the Made By Guerrilla Blog. If you’d like a quick overview of articles I’ve personally written across the web, you can check out an up to date list here.
Sales Page Copywriting
Another form of freelance copywriting that will generally have you putting on your ghostwriter cap us sales page copywriting. Here, you’ll be writing a lot of long pages that require more than just paragraph style writing – bullet points, calls to action and other text mixed in will be required in order to build a great sales page.
A great place to check out for tips on creating great sales copy is Copyblogger – the 10 lessons from my first million dollar launch post in particular. Another way to learn how to write great sales page copy is to actually look at all of the spammy sales pages that we all know work well. Frank Kern is someone you should definitely check out if you’re looking for a person who does this with ease.
Ad Copy
The smallest amount of text usually takes the most amount of crafting. Writing ad copy can be extremely hard, but it pays off huge if the copy does it’s job. David Ogilvy is a guy I’d definitely get acquainted with if I was going into the ad copy business. I don’t personally have experience in writing ad copy but know a lot of people who do pretty well for themselves writing copy for Google ads and newspaper ads.
Information Products
We released the Guide to starting a profitable freelance design business, which is a perfect example of an information product. So is the free guide you get for signing up to our newsletter (hint – you can sign up at the bottom of this post). Writing information products work a lot like writing for blogs, except that they’re packed into a nice little downloadable document and made to look like a book.
Ebooks, Whitepapers, Guides – whatever you want to call them – are great ways to showcase your writing skills as well as make some money on the side if you put in some affiliate links in the book or charge for the download. This is definitely something I’m looking into more for the future here at Guerrilla Freelancing – venturing out into other areas besides a design business (maybe one on starting a profitable freelance copywriting business?)
Website Content
People want to run their own business and in order to do that, they know they have to setup a website. However, not everyone is able to write compelling copy that helps their website stand out and get people to buy their products or hire them. This is where you come in. A website copywriter can put a great spin on a website and cause a casual visitor to turn into a paying customer by leading them through page after page of awesome writing.
Everything from the welcome notes on a business website to the about page, service listings and contact form can be written by a website content copywriter like yourself. I’ve done this for myself and also a few others and it’s definitely a fun process and much different than writing blog content or information products.
Speech Writing
Here’s one I bet you never thought of – writing the copy for someone who’s going to give a speech. President Obama has speech writers and so does the guy giving a presentation at his annual company meeting (if he doesn’t, maybe he should).
When you’re writing speech copy, you’re able to put in emotion and flair like you normally wouldn’t be able to with regular content that’s just read in someones head while they scan the page/screen.
Press Releases & Media Kits
When you start writing press releases, you’ll notice that a lot of the time, you’re able to just put together a template of text and build a custom press release around it. However, if you’re looking for a few (109 to be exact) tips on making your company irresistible to the media, you might want to check out this article at Copyblogger.
Writers – is there anything I missed here?
Do you write copy for something other than what I’ve listed here? Leave a comment and let me know, I’d love to hear from you and I’d love to hear your thoughts on what forms of copywriting you already do that are listed here and which ones sound intriguing to you.
