HOW SAM MADE OVER $16K IN ONE MONTH FROM FREELANCE COPYWRITING (ONLY 8 MONTHS AFTER STARTING)

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Want to know how my student, Sam – in just 8 months – went from a miserable 9-5 with $136 in his bank account to making over $16,000 a month? Keep reading…

Hey Posse! What’s up, it’s Alex!

If you’re new to the crew… welcome!

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Now I am so excited for you to read this interview because it is PROOF that despite the challenges, doubts and fears that inevitably creep up when you make the decision to put yourself out there and try something new…

If you’re determined and surround yourself with the right people, success, freedom, and financial independence are absolutely achievable. 

We’ll be starting off this 5-part series with Sam’s story. In it, you’ll hear how he was able to quit his miserable job in 2020…

Go from living in a shared dorm-style apartment with 5 complete strangers to getting his own flat in London…

Having the freedom to jet off to the Canary Islands on a whim when the UK went into lockdown…

And how he did it all in just 8 months, thanks to his freelance copywriting business.

Oh, and don’t worry… he also tells you exactly how he managed to scout new clients and earn big bucks… 16 thousand of them to be exact.

SO if you’ve ever wondered…

Can I really make good money from copywriting?

How long does it take? When can I quit my 9-5? How do I get clients? How do I manage clients? How many clients do I need?

What EXACTLY does it take for a brand-spanking-new, fresh-out-of-box copywriter to really succeed in this field??

You’ll want to take some notes.

Listen – I get asked these questions all of the time. And hey, I get it. Starting anything new is terrifying… let alone starting a brand new career.

I remember feeling the same doubt, insecurity, and imposter syndrome when I quit my 9-5.

But hey, that was 10 years ago!

So while I can offer you tips and advice based on my own experience, I realize I might not have the real-time and relevant answers you’re looking for right now…

Which is exactly why I decided to interview 5 of my Copy Posse Launch Pad OGs – graduates from the very first season of my flagship copywriting program…

That way you could get real advice straight from copywriters who started their businesses from SCRATCH in 2020.

Up until now, this has been kept under lock and key, only available to my paying students and community members…

But the Posse found this interview SO helpful and SO inspiring that I decided to release this private conversation for you.

Today you’ll be hearing Sam’s amazing journey into the world of freelance copywriting.

He is spilling ALL of the beans on what the past year has been like for him – from before he joined the Copy Posse… to what his life looks like TODAY…

And his pricing tips are seriously GAME-CHANGING. Here’s the interview…

Alex: So Sam, rewind, tell us what was going on for you about a year ago, before 2020.

Sam: Sure, so about a year ago, I was probably in the worst situation I’ve pretty much ever been in my life. 

So in London you have these things called HMO’s. So there’s like a three-bedroom apartment, and they divide it into three, and each room is a separate bedroom for people. 

So, my girlfriend and I were living in one of those rooms with a shared bathroom and a shared kitchen, and it was kind of worse than living in a university dorm. This is me just getting real. I was living with 6 other guys and I didn’t know these people at all. They’re just living in the same house. 

Alex: Often, when you think of a flatmate, you think friends, but in London, it literally was because housing is so expensive, they take a regular three-bedroom flat, and then they break it into three separate leases, and you end up literally sharing a space with complete strangers.

Sam: Exactly. So, that’s literally what it was. To make matters worse, we had a mouse that was running around inside the house. So, imagine this right… I’m awake a little bit past midnight sometimes, just hanging out with my girlfriend, and let’s say one of us needs the toilet. We had a cockroach infestation in the toilet. So this is my situation. I had to take a toilet roll, a broom, just in case I see the mouse, which I saw seven out of 10 times. 

I’d walk inside the bathroom, I’d have a hygiene spray because these guys were very unhygienic. I don’t need to go into detail, but I had to take a hygiene spray and my own toilet paper. I would look on the walls, firstly, for the mouse, then I’d look on the walls and I’d see cockroaches there. It was just the worst situation probably in my life. 

On top of that, I worked a job that I hated. I earned peanuts ￡1,700, which in dollars translates to less than $2,500. 

And considering rent prices in London, I was paying about ￡1,000 just for living in that room. You can imagine ￡1,000 for living in a room in London! That’s how much it costs. And yeah, that was where I was at. I was pretty much broken, but I’m always somebody who has a bit of a fire inside them, and I knew I deserved better. I just knew that this was a period of time that I had to go through. I would never ever change it because that’s what lit the fire under my bum, for lack of better words. 

And it was at this time where my girlfriend was watching, “Madmen.” I don’t know if any of you guys have heard of it. It’s a series called, “Madmen” where they’re all advertisers and copywriters and stuff like that. So she said to me, “Sam, I think you’d be pretty good at this.” And I looked at it, I’m like, “Oh, like what? What is this?” 

And she’s just kind of explained what they do. Then the God of the algorithm, whatever you want to call brought me to Alex’s YouTube video. After I typed in “What is copywriting?” Alex came up. Funny enough, she’d just started her YouTube channel. And I want to pause for a second to say every single person that’s here, it’s like, you’re literally here for a reason, and I honestly, honestly believe that. You’re not just here because you ran into it. You’re here for a reason. Whether it’s your end destination to be a copywriter, or it’s a stepping stone in your journey, it’s probably one of the most important things that you’ll learn, a skill like this. But yeah, that was my situation when I first started. 

Alex: Yeah, chills. My whole body is in chills. And I mean, man, when you say you have a fire, that is so true. It’s kind of crazy looking back. I had no idea the situation you were in when you started Launch Pad Season One. You were on all the calls, and it’s not like we got super deep into like how shitty everything was, but it was after the program ended that we started chatting more, and you told me your story, and I was like, “Wait, what?” So… how much money did you have in your bank account before and then after?

Sam: When I was looking at Alex’s sales page, I literally had ￡2,000 in my bank account. That’s how much my net worth was, ￡2,000. But then I did a little calculation, right? I said, “I’m saving about ￡300 per month… every month with this current job, and there seems to be very little prospect of growth.” So I’m here and I’m doing a little calculation like, “I wonder how long it would take me to get ￡50,000 for a down payment on a house?” And I think the calculation came up to like think like 10 or 12 years. 

So I thought to myself “Man, I have ￡2,000 in my bank, and at this rate, it’s not going to be much more anytime soon.” So, I was watching a Dan Lok video and he talks about getting a high-income skill, and Alex’s high-income skill just happened to come right in front of me at the time, and after reading her sales page, to be honest, that’s what sold me. It was just a no-brainer. I’d read her sales page, and I just thought to myself, “Damn, I need to write like that,” ‘Cause she sold me right on reading, and I don’t read sales pages, but hers was one of the first sales pages that I read end to end. I bought her course at work. 

So, I was literally on my desk, I pulled out my card, I went, “What the hell are you doing, Sam?” Paid the money, looked at my bank account, a ￡100 left. I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got to make this work, or I am going to be in this room for a very, very long time.”

Alex: That’s amazing, and oh my gosh. Thank you! The fact that you spent literally all your money on me… and put your trust in me. It’s like hard to even fathom, to be honest, and I’m so grateful that you did, because, I mean you guys know, everyone in the Launch Pad knows, I almost get too invested, to the point where I can’t sleep at night sometimes because I’m thinking so much about you guys, and your success, and making sure that none of you walk away from the program ever being like, “What a waste,” or, “That didn’t help me in some way.” So, hoo, that’s crazy. So, you had a ￡100 in your bank account, and then you were the first person to get a client, and it was week five of the frickin’ program. We hadn’t even gotten to the sales page module yet.

Sam: Yeah, so just to expand on that a little bit, I think this is a very blunt way to put it. I literally worked my ass off. Like, I got home from work at 6:30 every day. I’d take a 10-minute breather, maybe cook something to eat if I was hungry, and I just turned my computer on, and I would do the Copy Posse Launch Pad, I would attend the live classes, and then after that would do the homework and assignments.

Alex always talks about taking action, and for me it was like, I kind of had to take action, otherwise, you know, I’ve got a ￡100 to my name. Like, that’s it.

I literally had to ask my mom for ￡50. I’ll never forget that.

I called my mom, I said, “Mom, I don’t have money for groceries.” She wired me 50 pounds, and that was my life. 

I had no social life. I put on a lot of weight at that time, but I just knew I had to sacrifice everything to make this work. And funny enough, my first ever copy job was from Fiverr and that copy job paid me about ￡100 for 1,000 variants of changed emails. And a lot of people, they fear… They’re like, “Oh my God, like, what do I charge?” “What do I do?” “What do I, you know, how do I do this?” And I was just like, man, I’m just going to go for it. I’m going to try it. If I don’t like it, I know I need to increase my price. 

So I tried it, and I quit after like, I think three days, because my mom was having an eye operation, and I was sat there in the hospital room, with my laptop open, writing. And I’m like, “Man, am I doing this for a ￡100?” Like this is stupid. And then I sent the guy a message. I’m like, “Hey man, this just isn’t working.” 

Fast forward a little bit more. There was another guy that messaged me on Fiverr. I was doing a lot of research on how to sell as well. My job was in sales, so I had a little bit of a background in it, but I ended up getting a guy who needed a website copy. I think most people on Fiverr have a very low-ball kind of price point. But I charged a ￡1000, the first ￡1000 that I ever charged somebody on my own, and that was what completely changed my mind. 

I asked him good questions. I said, “How much do you make if one person clicks that call-to-action button on your website?” And because he’s a coder, he charged somewhere between ￡8,000 and ￡42,000 pounds. And at this point, I was still scared to charge anything over a ￡1000, but I just wanted to hit that four-figure mark, so I was like, hey, I’ll charge ￡1000.

And the way I justified it is if one person clicks that call-to-action button and they purchase your coding services, you’ve just 8X’d my ROI, or 42X’d it, depending on which side of the spectrum you make a sale at. So that way I’m like, hey that’s actually worth it. And that kind of changed my mind forever.

When he wired me a ￡1000, I used Alex’s bonus homepage framework to work his whole home page. I still use it literally all the time.

I was writing copy today for an email, and I was using Alex’s framework from the Copy Posse because I didn’t know what to write. You’re always going to get across moments like that, but Alex’s course, funny enough, is something I still go back and refer to time and time again.

Alex: I love that. I love that. And I remember when you posted in the group it was like week five and you’re like, “Guys, I got a client,” and everyone was like “What? Like how?” I think I already asked you about this, Sam, but if not, I’m forcing you into it now.

Sam: Sure, sure.

Alex: You’re cool to do a bonus masterclass for all Season 2 Launch Padders on social selling, and how you were able to get all of those clients on Fiverr? Because you are just brilliant at it, and you have so much to share that I’m like, screw it, let’s do a bonus together. We’ll do a masterclass for everyone who joins season 2 so you can share all of your amazing wisdom…

Sam: Yeah, that’s very humbling, and I’m honored to help you in any way I can. You literally changed my life, Alex, And ‘ll say that in front of everybody. I’m here in Tenerife, I quit my job this month. I’m free. I’m having a different level of problems. Like, oh my god, how do I create a company out of this? I’ve just spoken to an accountant. You’re always going to have stress in your life, it’s just different levels of stress as you keep growing, and now my stress is like, how do I not go to jail?

Alex: (Laughing) Right? How do I make sure I pay my taxes? High-quality problems, right? Like, if you think about it, your first problem was like, “I have a ￡100in my bank,” and now you’re like, “Hey Alex, I’m wondering if I could hire you for coaching on how to incorporate and up-level because my goal is to make at least ￡20,000 a month.” And I’m like, that is what you call a high-quality problem, my friend. 

So, you finished the program then you ended up reaching out to someone who is now one of your retainer clients who has around a million followers on YouTube. You reached out to him, he had no idea who you were, you mentioned that you took my program or something, and then how did that whole thing work out?

Sam: Sure, so just to give a little bit of a brief, I reached out to a copywriter who was making 10K per month at the time, because I wanted to revamp my sales process. Like how do I sell to people? So, he kind of taught me and, and a lot of these methods I’ll also be sharing my experience with that in the bonus. But I did a cold email to a whole list of people. I’ll go more into detail on the bonus, but yeah, so the prospect actually was Stephen James, I don’t know if any of you guys have heard of Project Life Mastery. He’s got like 1 million+ YouTube subscribers. He sells courses on a bunch of different things. So, I currently work for him. The way I did was I emailed him. He, funny enough, was actually sort of looking for a copywriter at that time, not really looking, but he was very open to it.

Alex: Just a sidebar, every entrepreneur is always looking for a copywriter. They just don’t want to filter through the junk applications they get. But if someone quality approaches them, everyone’s always looking for a good copywriter. Sorry to interrupt you, but I wanted to share that.

Sam: No, absolutely. So then he asked me for some samples and stuff like that, so I sent over some of the stuff that I wrote from the Copy Posse Launch Pad, and then he decided to jump on a call. So we got on a call. To be honest, I didn’t really use any sales techniques at all. I just went on, and I just had a genuine conversation with him. I told him I was new, I told him that, hey, but there was always one thing. Every time I would say I’m new, I would follow it up with, “But I’m confident that I can do it.” So, I would always show that I can get it done. I didn’t just say, “Hey, I’m new, hey I’m new, I’m not sure.” It was like, “Hey look, I’m new. I’m being honest. I don’t have that much experience, however, Alex has spoken good words of me, I’m confident in my abilities, And I’m definitely willing to give this my best crack, and I think I’ll do great.” 

So, that confidence kind of made him give me a shot.

When it came down to pricing, well, I had no idea again, cause I only had one benchmark, which is my previous client.

He wanted six emails initially written. So, the way I framed it was I’m like, “Hey look my aim is to work with you long-term. I don’t want to work with you on a short-term basis. I’ll let you decide on the price on this first project, and just consider it done because I want to work with you.” 

And I was just honest, and he came back and he said, “Hey, I’ll give you a thousand dollars for six emails.” And I was like, “Okay, that sounds pretty good.” And yeah, that just became my rate. I learned my rate from a client, and he liked it so much that he hired me again. 

After three projects, I spoke to him about a retainer, and now I’m on retainer writing somewhere halfway across the world for all of these clients. I say this just to inspire you guys, but currently, I’m earning anywhere between 8K to 12K, that’s pounds, per month. So that’s like $16,000 USD?

I never knew I could make money like that.

My whole thing was like, how do I make six figures? How do I make six figures? How do I go to the bathroom in peace? Like, you know what I mean? Like that was my problem at some point. It is, it’s just crazy.

Alex: I get so emotional thinking about it because…. like if I wrote this in a headline “From ￡100 to ￡12,000, I mean, no one would believe it! They would be like, “That’s all hype bull.” So, thank you for sharing your story. You have so much incredible wisdom to share with the group. I’m really excited to go deeper with you in that bonus for Launch Padders. Way to go, man. You’ve nailed it, and you deserve every single ounce of success that you’ve gotten from this.

Sam: Naw, thank you so much, Alex. Honestly, my thank you to you is indefinite. Every day I live for what you’ve allowed me to do. So, as I always tell you, I’m always on Team Copy Posse, Team Alex Cattoni, and wherever I’m required to vouch for you I will, not because it’s you're my teach, but because this thing really changed my life. It really did – in a way I can’t even explain or express. So yeah, thank you.

You can watch the full interview on YouTube below and don't forget to leave me a comment below if you want to see more exclusive student interviews like this one.  

The Copy Posse Season 2 is NOW OPEN.

Alex Cattoni is the Founder of the Copy Posse Agency and Academy. Since 2011, she has launched several successful brands and has proudly partnered with many of the hottest transformational brands and businesses on the planet, writing high-converting sales copy, scaling multi-million dollar brands, and crafting iconic promotional campaigns.

Today, she’s on a mission to mobilize the raddest, baddest crew of authentic copywriters with a passion for creating community, credibility and conversions with nothing but powerful and precise wording.

Through her weekly YouTube videos, Alex helps copywriters, aspiring copywriters and entrepreneurs learn, write and ignite their businesses with words that work.