How Sam Made $16K In ONE Month From Freelance Copywriting (8 Months After Starting)

Want to know how my student Sam, in just 8 months went from a miserable 9 to 5 job with $136 in his bank account to making over $16,000 a month? Keep watching. Can I really make good money from copywriting? How long does it take? When can I quit my 9 to 5 job? How do I get clients? How do I manage clients? How many clients do I need to suc? And what exactly does it take for a brand spanking new, fresh out of the box copywriter to be successful in this field? Listen, I get questions like this all the time. And I get it. Starting anything new is terrifying, let alone starting a brand new career. And I remember feeling that same doubt, insecurity and yes, imposter syndrome when I quit my nine to five. But guys, that was 10 years ago. So while I can offer you tips and advice based on my own experience, I realized that I might not have the real time and relevant answers that you're looking for right in now. Which is exactly why I decided to interview five of my copy posse LaunchPad OGS graduates from my 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. Now, up until now, this recording 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 recording just for you. So today you'll be hearing Sam's amazing journey into the world of freelance copywriting. He is spilling all 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.

So you better be ready to take some notes.

Hey posse, what's up? It's Alex. Give me a thumbs up below if you want to see more exclusive student interviews like this one. And if you're new to the crew, welcome. I put out a new copywriting and marketing video every single week. So if you want to learn more about the trends, tactics and tools that are working today, go ahead and subscribe. Subscribe below. And don't forget to hit that bell to be notified when my next video goes live. Now I am so excited for this interview because it is proof that despite the challenges, doubts and fears that inevitably creep up anytime you're putting yourself out there and trying something new, if you are determined and surround yourself with the right people, success, freedom and financial independence are absolutely achievable. We'll Be starting off this five part video series with Sam's story. So in this interview you'll hear about how he was able to quit his miserable job in 2020, go from living in a shared dorm style apartment with five complete strangers to getting his own flat in central 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 eight months, thanks to his freelance copywriting business. Oh, and don't worry, he's also going to share exactly how he managed to scout new clients and earn big bucks. 16,000 of them to be exact. So here's the interview.

So Sam, rewind, tell everyone what was going on for you about a year ago before.

Sure. So about a year ago I was probably in the worst situation I've pretty much ever been in my life. Again, referring back to the post that I made, I was living. So in London you have these things called HMOs. 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 a bit worse than living in a university dorm because, and this is me just getting deep and kind of real. I was thinking, do I say this information? But some of the guys that I was living with were actually, they would sell and obviously I don't know these people at all. They're just living in the same house. I don't know what my landlord did.

You think like flatmate, you think, oh, you're friends. But in London it literally was because housing is so expensive, they take like regular three bedroom flat and then they break it into three separate leases and you end up literally sharing a space with complete strangers.

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 girlfriends. And let's say one of us needs the toilet. We had a cockroach infestation in the toilet. So this was my situation. I had to take a toilet roll a broom just in case I see the mouse, which I saw it seven out of ten 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, my own toilet paper and yeah, I just. It was. I would look on the walls, firstly for the mouse, then I'd look on the walls, and I'd see cockroaches there. And it was just the worst situation probably in my life. On top of that, I worked a job that I hated. I earned peanuts, which is 1.7k pounds, 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 a thousand pounds for living in a room in London. That's how much it costs. And, yeah, that was where I was at. And I was. I was pretty much broken. But, like, I'm always somebody who has a bit of a fire inside them. And I knew I deserved better, and 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 is watching Mad Men. I don't know if any of you guys have heard of it. It's a series called Mad Men, where they're all advertisers and copywriters and stuff like that. So she said to me, sam, like, I think you'd be pretty good at this. And I looked at it. I'm like, oh, like, what? Like, what is this? And she's just kind of explaining what they do. Then, like, Miti said, the God of algorithm, whatever you want to call it, made Alex's YouTube video. After I typed in what is copywriting? Alex came up, funny enough. She just started a YouTube channel. And I want to pause for a second and just say, every single person that's here in this group, 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. Like, 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. 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. That was probably the worst.

Yeah, yeah. Chills. Everyone's like, oh, my gosh. Chills.

Ugh.

Me too, you guys. My whole body is in chills. And I mean, man, when you say you have a fire, like, that is so true. And I mean, what's kind of crazy, too, is, like, looking back, I had no idea the situation you were in when you started Launchpad Season 1, you know, you were on, you were on all the calls and you know, we didn't, it's not like we got like super deep into like how shitty everything was, but it was after, after the program ended that we started chatting more and you told me your story and I was like, wait, what? Yeah, because I think the story that you've shared before is, so how much money did you have in your bank account before?

And then, sure.

So when I was contemplating Alex's or 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 10, 12 years. So I thought to myself, I'm like, man, like, 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 a sales page, to be honest, that's what sold me. It was just a no brainer. I read her sales page and I was just thought to myself, like, damn, I need to write like that. She sold me right on reading. And I don't read sales pages. Hers was one of the first sales pages that I read end to end. And right at the end, I was literally, I bought her course at work. So I was literally on my desk, I pulled out my card, I'm like, what the hell are you doing, Sam? Paid the money, looked at my bank account, £100 left. I'm like, okay, I got to make this work or I'm going to be in this room for a very, very long time.

And yeah, that was amazing. And oh my gosh, like, thank you for like, I like the amount of like the fact that you spent like literally all your money on and putting your trust in me. Like, 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, like, I almost get too Invested, like to the point where like, 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. And so, like, that's crazy. Like, so you had £100 in your bank account and then you were the first person to get a client and it was week five of the freaking program. We hadn't even gotten to the sales page module yet.

Yeah, so just expand on that a little bit. I think there's no, it's a very blunt way to put it. I literally worked my ass off. Like I got home from work at 6:30. That was literally the time I'd get home 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. I would attend the live classes and then after that I would just go out of my way and I would apply. Like, Alex always talks about taking action and for me it was like I kind of had to take action. Otherwise, you know, like, I've got a hundred pounds, like that's it. Like I literally, I had to ask my mom for 50 pounds. I'll never forget. Like I asked, I called my mom, I said, mom, I don't have money for groceries. I had, I literally called her, she sent me, she wired me £50. And that was my life. I had no social life. You know, I put on a lot of weight at that time, but I just knew like, I had to sacrifice everything just to kind of make this work. And. Yeah, and funny enough, my first ever. Well, my first ever job was from Fiverr, my first ever copy job. 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, how do I, 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 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 still sat there in the hospital with my laptop open writing. I'm like, man, am I doing this for £100? Like, this is stupid. And then I sent the guy a message, I'm okay. Man, this just isn't working. Fast forward a little bit more. There was another guy that messaged me on Fiverr and 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. And initially, I think most people on Fiverr have a very low ball kind of price point. But the way I fixed the way I charged a thousand, that was the first £1,000 that I ever charged somebody on my own. And that was what completely changed my mind. I think the thing that I did was I asked him good questions. I said, how much, 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 £80,042,000. And at this point I was still scared to charge anything over 1000, but I just wanted to hit that four figure mark. So I was like, hey, I'll charge a thousand. And the way I justify it is if one person clicks that call to action button and they purchase your coding services, you've just 8x my ROI or 42x dip, depending on which side of the spectrum you make a sale at. So that, that way I'm like, hey, like that's actually worth it. And that kind of changed my mind forever. When he wired me a thousand pounds, I used Alex's bonus framework to write his whole sales page. I still use like literally I was writing copy today for an email and I was using Alex's framework from the copy posse because I was just like, I don't really know what to write here. 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.

I love that. And I remember when you, when you. So yeah, 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? And so this is like a little. I think I already asked you about this, Sam, but if not, I'm forcing you into it now. You're cool to do a bonus masterclass for all season two grab or all season two launch patterns on social selling and how you were able to, to get all of those clients on Fiverr 100% 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 and we'll just do a masterclass, and everyone who joins season two will figure out when, when to do it. But you can share all of your amazing.

You know that that's, that's very humbling, and I'm honored to help you in any way I can. You literally changed my life, Alex. And, you know, I'll say that in front of everybody. Like, like just following your stuff. Like, you know, I'm here in Tenerife. I quit my job this month. I've. I'm free. Like, I'm having different level of problems. Like, oh, my God, like, how do I create a company out of this? I've just spoken to an accountant. Like, you know, you're always gonna 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?

How do I make sure I pay my taxes? I get high quality problems. Right? Like, if you think about it, your first problem, I have £100 in 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 £20,000amonth. And I'm like, that is what you call a high quality problem, my friend. And so real quick, because I know we're going over, but honestly, I don't think anyone's mad about this. I think it's so valuable that just the wisdom you're sharing, it's like, so you finished the program, then you ended up. And again, you don't have to go into too much detail on this, but you ended up reaching out to someone, someone who is now one of your retainer clients who has like a million followers on YouTube. And you reached out to him. He had no idea who you were. You said, you mentioned that you took my program or something and then how did that whole thing work out?

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 a lot of these methods. I'll also be sharing in the bonus of kind of what was spoken to me, etc. 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 Stefan James. I don't know if any of you guys have heard of Project Life Mastery. He's got like 1 million plus YouTube subscribers. He sells courses on a bunch of different things. So I currently work for him at the moment. And yeah, so the way I came across it was I emailed him. He funny enough was actually semi looking for a copywriter at that time. Not really looking, but he was very open to it.

Everyone just a sidebar. Every entrepreneur is always looking for a copywriter. So you 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 show this.

No, absolutely. So then I basically 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 launchpad 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, but. 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, you know, like, Alex has spoken good words of me. I'm confident in my abilities and I'm definitely willing to give this my best grac and I think I'll do great. So that confidence kind of made him give me a shot when it came down to pricing. It was the first ever. Well, I had no idea again, because I only had one benchmark, which was my previous client, and he wanted six emails initially written. So the way I framed it was him 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 honest. And he came back and he said, hey, I'll give you $1,000 for six emails. And I was like, okay, that sounds pretty good. And yeah, that just became my rate. And it was like I learned my rate from a client and he liked it so much that he basically 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. And I say this just to kind of inspire you guys, but currently I'm earning anywhere between 8 to 12K. That's pounds per month. So that's, I think 10 to 12, 13, 14,000 US dollars. I never knew I could make money like that at all because 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, like that. That was my problems at some point.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, Sam.

Like, it's just crazy.

I get so emotional thinking about it because it's like if I wrote this in a headline from one thousand or sorry, from a hundred pounds to twelve thousand pounds, I mean, how, like, no one would believe it. They would be like, that's all hype, bull, right? 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 patterns and like, way to go, man. You deserve every single ounce of success that you, that you've gotten from it.

No, thank you so much, Alex. And honestly, like, honestly that, like, my thank you to you is like, indefinite because it's just, you know, every day, like, I live what you've allowed me to do. So I always tell you, I'm always on team, you know, team Copy Posse, Team Alex Katonian, wherever. I'm required to vouch for you. I will not. Because it's one of those things that, like, oh, it's my teachers. Because now, like, this thing really, like, changed my life and it really did, like, in a way I can't even explain or express. So, yeah, thank you. And thank you guys as well, man.

All right, guys, if you enjoyed that video, make sure to check out the next one. One from me right here.

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