Wealthy Web Writer. How to Find the Niche that's Right for You

Transcription

1 1 Wealthy Web Writer How to Find the Niche that's Right for You Speakers: Nick Usborne, Rebecca Matter Recorded: August 23, 2010 Rebecca Matter: Hi, everyone and welcome to the Wealthy Web Writer Teleconference Series. This is Rebecca Matter. Today, I m joined by our by the famous or infamous Nick Usborne. Welcome Nick. Nick Usborne: Hi. Rebecca Matter: Hi. And today he s going to help direct you on finding the niche that s right for you. This is a topic that we get a lot of questions about. And I think because it s one of the initial things that you have to decide when starting out, it can be a roadblock for many people. And so today Nick is actually going to show you how to find your best niche and kind of address

2 2 some of the issues head on that you're most likely going to face or that you might not even realize that you need to face and kind of get through in order to make the right decision. So, Nick with that I'd like to just go ahead and hand it over to you. Nick Usborne: All right, thank you very much. Yeah, this is a topic near and dear to my heart and it s something I talk about; I write a lot about it. I work with coaching clients a lot about this. And like you say, Rebecca, it can be roadblock. And it s tricky because on the one hand, you know, I said to people Look, you need to spend the time here. It s like any business, again, if you look at this as a business rather than just a kind of freelance past time, you know, any business start off, you do, you invest, you invest time before you launch your business. Like is the demand there? Is the product or service we re offering, you know, is there a demand for that? Are we able to reach the right people? Are we in a space where there isn t too much competition? I mean, these are all questions that any business start up has to ask themselves. And it s no different when you're a freelancer. I mean, you are starting a small business, it is a business and you have to go through the same process. So, it s kind of tricky because I think a lot of freelancers are anxious to jump in, you know, they want to get started this week, so they skip this part. And that s a problem because you can find

3 3 yourself going round and round in circles if you haven t defined the niche which your business is operating. And you can actually find yourself going round and round in circles for ten, twenty years and you might wake up right at the end and think Oh my goodness! If I had only defined a niche at the beginning, I could have made three, four, five, ten times as much as I have over the last ten years. I mean, that happened to me about ten years ago when I was working very broadly across lots of clients and I suddenly woke up and thought Oh my goodness! I've left so much money on the table because I haven t defined myself as any small business should. So, with that little lecture spiel, let me move on to the next slide and really, this speaks to what I've just been talking about. You know, in the real life of a freelancer, magic doesn t happen. It would be nice if we could magically, as soon as we ve got to a comfortable stage in our craft as a copywriter to be able to just leap straight into business success from day one, that would be nice. But the reality is, is all of us, myself included, it takes hard work. You know, you have to work at it if you want to be successful. And one of the most important things, probably the most important thing, if you want to be successful and if you want your hard work to really count is to define that niche in advance. And I'm gonna go through a number of slides. First of all, why you should do it and then the second group of slides on how you should do it. And if I'm not

4 4 upbeat enough, I'm sure someone will jump in and beat me. Rebecca Matter: Is that me? Nick Usborne: So that would be you. Rebecca Matter: Okay. Nick Usborne: So, why become an authority in a particular niche? Well, I think I've answered the question within the question, and it s the whole issue of being an authority, of being the go-to person as a copywriter or writer for a particular topic. You want to be the person who, you know, as soon as someone within a particular business niche thinks, We need a copywriter and we need to outsource it, your ideal position is to be the first and the only name that jumps to mind. It s like Hey, I know there s specialist in this area and that person is X Y Z, let s contact them. So, let me put this more into the context of why. So, confining your work within a specific niche sets you up as a specialist or an authority. And that is important because you have a huge amount of competition. Now, sometimes when we think in terms of competing copywriters and competing freelancers, we think of other people who have taken professional grade training programs or courses like the AWAI courses. Not so, unfortunately. There are lots of people out there who have purchased for maybe a $9.99 or $19.99, the Killer Secrets of Copywriting Success from Click Bank and it s 63 pages and they read it yesterday and today they re going to become a freelance copywriter. There are a 100 times as

5 5 many people like that, or maybe a 1000 times as many more people like that, then the people who ve actually gone through the hard work of taking a professional grade program, some professional grade training. This other group, the $9.95 group, who read the book yesterday, is your problem if you don t address it because they will instantly create a website saying Hi, my name is Jack and I'm a freelance copywriter. Hire me. And they will go to Guru.com or go to Freelancer.com, there s dozens of sites there where freelancers list their services and they bid on work. And very often they re bidding on work like Yes, I'll write that webpage for $7. Yes, I will write that article for $5. All right. This is the primary reason why you have to create a niche. As soon as you try and set up shop and say Hi, I'm a copywriter. Whatever you want to throw at me, I can do it. I do brochures. I do sales letters. I do billboards. I do auto responders. I do sales pages. I do resumes. Whatever you want, I'll do it. You can t. You just cannot make a good living that way anymore because you're up against these hundreds of thousands of people who are listed on sites like Guru.com and they will always, always underbid you. So, there is massive downward pressure on pricing. So, as a specialist, I mean, you want to make more money, and any way you can make more money is by setting yourself up as a specialist. And it s the same with any solo-professional. You know, cardiologists make more than family doctors. In any

6 6 area of profession, there are generalists who make the base income and there are specialists who make two, three, five, ten times as much. And it s the exact same perception in the world of freelancing. You know, I know one guy who set in his business years ago. He wanted to do online copywriting but he just chose e-newsletters. That s all he does. If somebody says Hey, can you write this sales page for $10,000? he says, No, I don t do sales pages. And it takes some courage to say no, particularly when it s a nice job offer, really nice client or if it s really nice fee. But this guy, and there are dozens out there, other people who have chosen a niche and said This is the area in which I will be an authority. And he just does e-newsletters and he s worked for a lot of clients and his client list got stronger and stronger. And after that, he started creating some products for other people who wanted to become experts in his field and so he s generated additional streams of income for his business. And if somebody in a trade magazine or a radio show wants a speaker on this topic he s the guy they call because he s a specialist, because he s gone to the trouble, he s put in the hard work to establish himself to be in that niche. And the only way you can do that is by saying This is what I do. And no, I don t do anything else. And I've done the same myself, like for the last twelve, thirteen years, I've only written online. And dozens of times people said Well, could

7 7 you write that? Could you write a brochure? I just say No, no. It s not what I do. Being a specialist makes it easier to market your services. And this is so important because, you know, success as a freelancer has everything to do with how you market yourself. I mean, I know some really, really good copywriters who are excellent at their craft and they make a pittance because they just don t have the skills, they don t know how to market themselves and they don t outsource it. So their marketing is done extremely poorly with the result is almost no one has heard of them, no one has a high opinion of them, no one talks about them, no one recommends them. They re very, very good at the craft of copywriting but they haven t paid attention to marketing. You know, the flip side of that is I know some very indifferent copywriters who make a fortune and they make a fortune even though they re not very good at copywriting, they re extremely good at marketing themselves. And again, it s the same with any business, any business at all. And it s just the same for a freelancer, if you want success and you want a nice, big fat income, you have to pay attention to the marketing. And marketing begins with for any product across the board, you know this as well as I do, the USP or the Unique Value Proposition or whatever you're going to call it. You have to have one. And you cannot define a Unique Value Proposition by saying Hi, my name is Jack and I'll write anything. That s not a USP. You have to say Hey,

8 8 I'm a specialist. I do this. This is my niche. This is my specialty. I'm an authority in this area. You won t find other people who know more. And I'll give you an example, a kind of an extreme example of a coaching client of mine from way back. And, you know, we took a long time finding a niche for him or rather I took a long time helping him find a niche for himself because it s not my job to choose his niche for him. But eventually, I think it was like something on the fifth call, we got on a call and he was very exited because he said Hey, I've decided what I'm going to do. I'm going to write any kind of promotional material for software companies that sell applications to small banks and insurance companies. Well, that s pretty tightly defined niche. And I'm going to go into more of this how later on but I asked him some tough questions like, how many are there? How many of these companies are there? How do you reach them? Do they pay good money? Are they going to be easy to work with? All kinds of questions that just clarify that he had made a smart choice. But one of the things that is so important about a clearly defined niche, and was perfect for him, is that as soon as he s defined as the copywriter who specializes in promoting software to small banks and insurance companies, marketing becomes a breeze. He knows exactly what to say, how to frame it, who to speak to. The problem most of us face when we re marketing as freelancers is the fact that we work alone. If we put in, say, eight hours a day, we have to put in those eight hours. No one

9 9 else is putting them in for us which means that not all of our time is spent copywriting. A lot of that time is spent is un-billable hours, they re unbillable hours on administration, on looking for new clients, on dealing with past lines, chasing invoices, et cetera, et cetera. Well, if you're not good at marketing and you haven t defined your niche, you're going to spend a huge amount of time trying to figure out who to promote to and how to do it and through which channels to do it. If you have a niche, marketing becomes much more efficient because you know exactly who you're talking to. You probably know exactly how to reach them. And I'm going to talk more about this later on. But always, in terms of when you're thinking about a niche and if you ask yourself the question why should I or how should I do it, the question will always come back to marketing, like how efficiently, how quickly, how effectively can you market yourself. Because if you don t market yourself, it doesn t matter how good you are at your craft, you won t make a decent income. So, I got a little bit ahead of myself here but being a specialist helps maximize the income you make from every hour. Like I was saying, we have a limited amount of time we can spend working each day and it s just us, we don t have employees and we want to maximize the billable hours. Well, this isn t so much about marketing but imagine, like this week, I'm working for client to sells diagnostic machinery to hospitals and I'm not familiar with that field. Well, I've got a learning curve to go

10 10 up. I probably ought to spend quite a number of unbillable hours learning the language, learning the product, just learning the whole industry and business. And then next week I'm going to write a page for a company that sells sneakers online. Well, I don t know that business so I'm got to invest more time in learning, just getting up to learning curve so that I know enough to do a good job. Now, think about that. Think about if you have over the course of a month you have eight different clients and eight different industries and you have to invest in that learning curve so that you know enough about their products and services and industry and marketing plan. You know enough to be able to do a good job. Let me see, eight jobs, five hours each, forty hours, you spent an entire week on un-billable hours just learning. If you're a specialist, every job you have increases your learning within that industry so that when you get a new client you don t have to spend time on that learning curve. You don t have to waste un-billable hours on learning about some new business or industry or product or service; you know it. And as each month goes by the dept of your knowledge in that area grows and grows. And pretty quickly you're going to know more about that industry than your clients, than your individual clients because you have the benefit and depth of experience from working with ten different clients in that industry. And it gets so all of a sudden you're massively increasing your value to future clients

11 11 because, you know, like I say, after you've done the first ten jobs, you know more than they do. And every job you do builds on that expertise and every job you do builds on your value. And every time you build on your value, you give yourself an opportunity to increase your fees and your income. And this is an area that not many copywriters think about because not many copywriters are very systematic and methodically in how they work. And I challenge all of you for this week or for next week, Monday to Friday, write down how many billable hours, how many un-billable hours and you ll probably find the result is scary, like Oh, I'm doing well. I'm working forty hours a week and I bill, you know, $60 an hour. Well, you bill $60 an hour for the billable hours. You know, you do the math and you may find that in actual fact you've been billing out at $30 or at $10 because you're spending too much time on un-billable stuff. And this is absolutely key. It is the key reason to become a specialist and not a generalist because it massively increases the amount of time that you can bill for and less time just on research and learning. Okay. So, how to choose it? How do you choose a niche? And again, this can be a real struggle. You know, I've gone through this process with a lot of coaching clients and for some it s a pleasure. For others, it s scary, like, I don t know enough about anything right now or I don t have enough background at anything or I can think of three things and I just don t know how to choose which one.

12 12 So, let s have a look at the different ways of doing this. And the whole point here of how to do it is to get away from the crowd. And I just want to make an additional point here: is that means getting away from the hot niches that everyone is talking about. It s a bit like, you know, you probably heard it or read about when you get a hot stock market tip, it s too late. By the time it heats the general media, it s too late. Other people who are closer to that business have already invested. The price has gone up. Well, it s the same with any business and it s the same, certainly, with freelancing. You know, so when you look at what used to be niches like health, finance, self-improvement, they re not niches anymore; they re far too broad. And stuff changes over time. Like back in 1998, I leapt into a niche called online copywriting. Now, today if somebody said I'm going to have online copywriting as my niche, I'd say it s too broad. It wasn t too broad back then because there were almost no copywriters who were in that space and almost no one was thinking about it or writing about it. So, it was very early on and it was a legitimate niche. And I noticed the difference over that ten, twelve years, how my niche was becoming broader and broader and I was getting a huge amount of competition in there because everyone was jumping in. It s the same with health, finance, selfimprovement and other kind of wildly popular hot niches is they re no longer hot and they re no longer niches. You need to find something narrower.

13 13 Now, my friend who writes for those software companies, for those small banks and insurance companies, you know, that s pretty narrow. You don t have to get that narrow although it certainly gives him some huge advantages. But you do have to go narrower than these broad industry descriptions. So, how do you define a niche? Before we get in to actually choosing a niche, how are you going to define it? Well, you can do it by industry. You can become a specialist in consumer electronics, construction, aviation, software, I mean, there are hundreds of industry description in terms of This is where I'm going to plant my flag. This is the industry that I'm going to become a specialist in. And very often when you're going to do that, you'll probably think back over some of your work experience, your interests. And sometimes when people don t have any kind of business or industry background in their lives, I say, Well, you know, if you're looking at a newspaper or an online newspaper and you kind of look at the business section, what industry stories catch your attention or what do you tend to gravitate towards? Is it consumer electronics? Is it software? Is it, you know, what is it? So, that s one way of looking at that. You can also become a specialist by medium or writing expertise. Like, you know, I write white papers or I write web pages or direct mail brochures, SEO or whatever. So it s a particular skill set or a particular medium or part of a medium that you're specializing in. That can work, too.

14 14 Like I say, the idea of being an online copywriter, which was my specialty, my niche about twelve years ago is probably too broad now. And, of course, you can overlap this as well. You can overlay it saying, I write white papers for the aviation industry. Or, I do direct mail for consumer electronics. So, you can sub-niche by overlaying the industry and expertise areas. Another way that I didn t put down here, I meant to put it down but didn t, is you can actually niche by geography. I was talking to someone the other day who is a, basically, he writes for small to medium sized businesses in South Florida. Now, he s not niching by industry and he does several types of different writing. And only thing in common is that it s all in South Florida. And so what that means to him is he drives to meetings, to small local conferences and trade shows. He presents himself as the guy who gets business in South Florida and that s totally legitimate. That s another way to establish yourself in a niche. And for him, that works. Some people it s not their cup of tea; they don t want to run out and shake hands with small business people in their area. But that s certainly a way you can do it. And another thing you can do with that is actually expand it. So a couple of years ago, I was working with a lady who was working from home and family had grown up and left and she wanted to get into online copywriting but didn t feel confident enough to, you know, from her town which is somewhere in Northern California, she didn t want to

15 15 suddenly say to people in New York City Hey, I'm an expert. She felt much more comfortable in her local community. So she, again, she went to those meetings and I said to her, this is part of a coaching engagement, again, I said Well, what are your interests? because she doesn t really have business background. I said Well, what are your interests personally in life? And she said Well, I'm really into my house and my garden and stuff. And I said Well, start there. Work locally and find companies that are involved with home improvement, landscaping gardens, anything to do with that. And that s what she did. And I think her first client, and she did it just by walking into places, was a company selling, you know, wooden flooring. And she did some website work for that company. Well, so she got that client and that led to another client to another client and that led to a local radio interview about how small companies in the area are not paying attention to SEO on their websites. And that led to a phone call from a major city, a company in some major city outside of her state. And so she started where she was comfortable, which was in her local community, and as she built up her portfolio, it gave her the kind of reach and awareness and the confidence to go for bigger clients outside of that area. So, you can do it that way. Now the South Florida guy has been doing it for like the last twenty years. His thing is not to start local and to end up national or international. His thing is to just stay in his local area. Okay,

16 16 so when I was saying national and international, that reminds me of another one I forgot to put on this page which is a real this is a real nicheniche. I know a guy who, well, I don t know him but we ve corresponded and he s based somewhere in the Southern US, but he s actually from, I believe, Brazil. And his niche, you know, if you're totally, utterly bilingual and bicultural, he takes, you know, American companies that want to market into South America, he rewrites their promotional materials in Spanish. And Spanish speaking countries in South America, if they want to market their products and service into the US, he does the reverse which is interesting because, you know, with ads and promotional materials, the straight literal translation often won t do it. There are cultural nuances and differences as well. So, that s his thing. He doesn t actually write copy or promotional materials, he translates it from one culture to another, from one language to another. So, the thing all of these people have in common is that they ve found a specialty where they don t have to worry about the crowd. None of these people I've been talking about have to worry about all those people on Guru.com who spent $9.95 on that killer copywriting weekend course. They don t have to worry about competition. Nor do they have to worry about Oh, my goodness! Who should I speak to this morning to try and get a client? They know where their niche is. They know how to reach people within that niche.

17 17 Another thing Rebecca Matter: Nick, I Nick Usborne: Yeah. Rebecca Matter: I have a question from somebody listening right now. She s asking, Should you focus on a single offering such as print copywriting or can you offer a combination as long as it s logical, such as web copy and SEO? Nicks Usborne: Yeah. I would try and keep it within one family, as it were, like print and web, you know, it doesn t feel right. You know, you're not a specialist in print or a specialist in web because although they have elements, in common there are some real differences there. But if you're talking about, you know, I write web pages and I'm an SEO expert then that s a combination that works. So, yeah, I mean, I think in terms of industry, you want to pick one. You don t want to say Hey, I'm a specialist in consumer electronics and the construction industry. Rebecca Matter: Yeah. Nick Usborne: That s odd. So, so long as the combination, I think, is the two elements are pretty close and it makes sense to the reader, I think you're okay. Rebecca Matter: Excellent. Nick Usborne: Yeah. Now, here s another thing that people then generally think about is that not all industries and companies and size of companies and types of companies will pay you the same amount

18 18 of money. You know, if you go to a local spa or a fitness center and they say Oh yeah, we need a brochure written. That d be great. And you start negotiating the price. They then say Oh well, you know, we don t have a lot of money for marketing but what if we gave you a six-month membership free. You start getting into nonsense like that. That s an extreme example but, you know, with some companies that are not sophisticated in their marketing themselves and are not used to using outside suppliers then sometimes you have to really fight for a reasonable fee. On the other hand, if you work for a company or within an industry where companies are well aware of the value of good strong copywriting, web writing or whatever it is and they are used to using good, you know, outsourcing to good copywriters then they will pay you a good fee. And the kind of benchmark I look at there is when I write for a company, how close is what I'm writing to the point of sale. So, let me give you an example. If I write a brochure for a local car dealership, the person at the dealership is not going to think Oh wow! Nick s brochure is going to increase our income by 50%. It s like something they feel they have to do, they need to have a brochure and maybe they can get it into some envelope somewhere but the way they perceive it is that this is a costs and expenses coming off the bottom-line. And as soon as it s perceived as an expense, unnecessary but evil expense then they will try and hold the price as low as possible.

19 19 But, you know, if I'm writing direct mail for VISA or if I'm writing sales pages for a company selling cameras online or vacations online or whatever it is, and where the client understands and sees the direct and almost immediate correlation between what I write and the income they receive that month, that becomes a totally different story. Like years ago, I did some work on a sales page for Encyclopedia Britannica. I was part of a group. I did the writing, someone else worked on the design, and we increase the conversion rate and that was a sales page, you know, buy now. It was about buying instead of Encyclopedia Britannica DVD s and there was a buy now button at the bottom, we increased the conversion rate on that page by over 400%. Now, when a client sees that and they look at their income, they know they can see the value of hiring you. And they will pay you ten or twenty or a hundred times as much for the same amount of time spent as that local car dealership with a brochure. So, I m always, you know, if I were thinking about a niche for myself or when I talk to other people about niche, you know, go where the money is that which means look for companies that are used to outsourcing, that are fairly sophisticated in their marketing efforts and try and get as close to the point of sale as possible. Now, you can t always get, you know, not everyone can become a specialist in, you know, writing a landing a page or a sales page but you can do the same. Hey, you can do the same with

20 20 promotional s. You know, there are links on there that can be directly measured and correlated. Wow! That new series, that increased our conversations by 13%. We got an extra $75,000 in our bottom-line this month. Make sure you use that person again, that freelancer again. They make us money. Same with direct mail. It s where clients, and I guess, in a way what I'm saying, is try to get a client where when they outsource the freelancers where they re able to track and measure the impact of what you write. So, with the brochure for the dealership, they can t track or measure the impact that has. It may or may not help them and they ll never know. If it s a direct mail or of if it s a webpage or if it s an e-newsletter or promotion, they can track it, they can measure it. And as soon as you increase their sales for them you, you re golden. So that is, in terms of maximizing my income as a freelancer, that s certainly one of things that I'll be doing is I want to go to companies that are used to paying a good fee for good copywriting. Look for work that repeats. Now, in the olden days if I go back twenty years when I was writing in direct mail as a freelancer, I used to generally have three or four clients and on average, I guess, they d stick with me for two or three years. And then one would, for whatever reason, wander away or I'd wander away from them and I'd have a little time, breathing space to find another client to kind of build up my staple, as it were. I think those

21 21 times, probably even in the world of direct mail, have changed somewhat. My experience online is that I used to get far more clients coming to me for a one-off or, you know, maybe a longer engagement like Oh, Nick, we ve got sixteen pages we'd like you to look at and it turns into a two month engagement. But when it s done, it s done. And again, we re going back to the efficient use of one s time. If I if I need four jobs a month to make the living I want and I have to find four new clients each month, I'm going to have to invest a significant amount of my time, my forty hours a week or whatever that number is, in finding new business and that s un-billable time. So that s inefficient and that s going to reduce my income potentially if I have to spend too much time looking for new work. So, again, I would say try and look for, and it s not always possible, but at least as a part of your portfolio of clients, try to find at least one client who has the kind of work that repeats so that, like I say, better to get a monthly gig from one client than twelve separate gigs from twelve different clients. Far more efficient, far more profitable. And when I look back, I think and I'm going back six or seven years now, my most profitable online copywriting client ever was, it was a consumer electronics company. And I used to write two newsletters for them every week; two a week, eight a month, every month. And that gig lasted for about two years. It is by far the most profitable

22 22 use of my time as a freelancer I've ever spent because the work was always there. Now, finally, the company was bought out, the management changed, the marketing people changed and they just wanted to do things the different way. So, I left that. But if you can think of something that repeats, and that was an e-newsletter, but say, for instance, repeats if a company is going to consistently put out promotional s. Something like, although it doesn t automatically repeats, something like landing pages can turn into a gig that does repeat. And that if you do the first one well and let s say it s part of a pay-per-click campaign or part of an campaign where they re driving people to a particular landing page, if it goes well the first time, you can get back to them and say Hey, that was good. When are we doing the next one? And even if they haven t thought of doing the next, one as you mention it, they will because they felt Wow! We pulled in the next for 40,000 from that landing page. Yeah, we should be doing this weekly. So, if a gig does naturally repeat, like a quarterly direct mail or a monthly or a weekly e- newsletter, then you can you can create those repetitions by saying Hey, we should do this weekly. Let s say you do some SEO work for a few pages on a website. You can say then to the client You know what, every time you put up a new page just give me a call or send me an and I'll take a look at it. Well, you know the client is going to end up adding lots of new pages on a

23 23 regular basis so you've created an engagement for yourself that repeats. Now, like one day you'll get a client say Hey, we ll give you $5,000 to rewrite our homepage, and you say Yes. And you know it s not going to repeat, you know they re not going to change their homepage once a month but it s a nice gig so you take it. But I think also, if I'm stepping back and say I want to create the perfect niche for myself, this is one of the lenses I would look through, I'd look at it and say You know what, I really want to look for something where there is at least potential for a repeat work so that I don t spent too much of my time each week and each month looking for new clients and new engagements and new projects. Know where to find your prospects. Again, this goes back to the business of how we re going to use our time this week. If I had a broad category niche, you know, that is not quite a niche, like alternative health, and I wake up on Monday morning and think to myself Okay. Who am I going to pitch this week? You know, it s like you end up like a deer in the headlights. It s like Well, where on earth do I start? This is such a vast industry, alternative health, shall I talk to people who run the spas or yoga studios or maybe it s going to be about aroma therapy or maybe I should go after companies that produce healthy food. Or maybe it s something to do with exercise. I mean you just don t even know where to start. So you're wasting

24 24 time just thinking about where to start, let alone trying to target companies and talk to them. So now, let s get back to my friend writing for software companies that serve the needs of small banks and insurance companies. As part of that phone call I had with him a few years back I said Well, can you reach these people? And he said Yes, I can. And I said Well, how many companies are there in this field? And then he said Well, in the continental USA there are 300. And I said Well, how are you going to reach them? And he said It s okay. I've already printed out the list. And he had found somewhere, either an association or a conference organizer or a publication, somebody had already taken the trouble to compile the list of those companies. And he found it online, printed it out, he had the company name, contact name, address, and phone number. So, in terms of knowing where to find his prospects, I mean, again, just think of the efficient use of his time. He doesn t have to get up on Monday morning and think Oh my goodness! Who should I try and pitch this week? He s got the list, he can just start at the top and work his way down. Extremely efficient use of his time. So, ask yourself the question, if you're thinking about a particular niche and one thing, let me jump in and say, is that if you're in a position right now of having to think about a niche or you want to change your niche, I would start off with three or four different ideas. Think about your life experience, your work experience, your

25 25 interests and say You know what, maybe there are different areas that I could turn into a niche for my freelance business. And then look at each of those areas through the lenses that I'm describing here and say, Does it meet these criteria? Can I reach them? Is the money there? Is it efficient for me to market to them? Like go through the process, and you're going to find that out of those three, they ll be one that stands out, that meets these criteria better than the other two and that s probably the one to go to. But it can take time. I mean, I know this for a fact. I know working with other freelancers sometimes somebody will snap their finger and they ll get it, it ll jump into their mind, the perfect niche and, you know, it s the work of an hour. But I've also known other people who spend weeks struggling over this until they finally find the right one. But whether it takes an hour or a month, you should do this because, like I say if not, you know, you're going to be in Guru.com land and you'll work eighty hours a week for $12 an hour. Well, you know, that s a misery when there s an alternative like this which is to find the niche that is far more profitable in way you can become an expert, an authority, a specialist. And immediately when you get into that framework of being a specialist, I mean your fees could, you know, you're perceived value is higher which means your fee is immediately higher. So you get out of that whole generic copywriter fee thing and you no longer have to worry about that kind of competition.

26 26 Make sure you enjoy your niche. Now, this doesn t sound very businesslike but I think it s very important. Sometimes you can put together your three or four ideas and one is an absolutely stand out; it s going to make you a fortune, it s an untapped niche, there s huge opportunity but there don t seem to be very many copywriters in that space and they pay good money and then you think about it and then you think You know what, this is a drag because of all those three or four this is the one I would enjoy least. Well, I'd encourage you to keep looking because if you're not going to enjoy it, every day is going to be like trying to run through treacle. You know, if you get up in the morning and think Oh my goodness, I know it s profitable but I hate this. Then it gets really hard to grow your business because you're not enjoying it. You know, you think of some of the entrepreneurs out there, the big ones, whether it s Steve Jobs at Apple or the Virgin Atlantic guy or whatever, you think they don t enjoy their jobs? Of course they do. They re crazy, they re just totally, you know, it s like breathing to them. They can t imagine doing anything else when they get up in the morning. Well, you know, and then you ask Steve Jobs like Hey, we want to give you a job as a hospital administrator. He can probably do a really good job but, it ll drive him nuts and make him miserable in the first ten minutes. It s the same for us. If you try and get into a niche because you think, Oh man!

27 27 There s ton of money here. If you don t enjoy it, you're going to be miserable and if you're miserable, you're going to be caught up and overtaken, in terms of income, by other people in other niches that may not be have quite the same profit potential but because those people love that work they re going to put so much energy and passion and time into it. And they re going to leapfrog you and besides which they re thoroughly enjoying their day and you're going through a life of misery. So, I think ultimately it s very important that you pick a niche where you're going to enjoy the work. Because it means you just bring so much of yourself into it. You ll do better work. I know for myself, like living back in the city as a freelancer, the best writing I've done has been writing for companies or products or services that I really enjoy and believe in. Now, for the other stuff, the other clients I've done professional work, you know, I always want to do professional work but I know that my best work has been done for industries and companies where I've just enjoyed it. I've just stepped forward to writing it. Rebecca Matter: That s such a great point, Nick, because it s not even just about your day to day, how much you enjoy your work but the quality of your work does change. I mean, I can definitely hear when I read copy written by a copywriter who is exited about what they re writing about. It definitely comes through. Nick Usborne: Oh, yeah. And like I say you can be, you know, you can be as professional as you

28 28 like. You can apply all your skills and really put the time in but I don t think that, ultimately, there s any hiding the fact that if you don t enjoy it and you don t get it and it s not your thing that you just can t write as well. You know, like I say, when you read side by side you just notice sort of little extras and extra life that makes for something. Rebecca Matter: Yeah. Nick Usborne: Where someone genuinely is connected with that topic. Rebecca Matter: I know you have quite a few more points to get there and we are already at almost fifty minutes, right about forty-five minutes right now. Nick Usborne: Okay. Rebecca Matter: Just kick it up a notch. Nick Usborne: Kick it up a notch. All right. I don t even have Rebecca Matter: This is all great concept. I just want to make sure that we get to everything because this whole presentation is really valuable. Nick Usborne: All right. So now we re going to leverage the marketing advantages of having a niche. I probably jumped ahead and covered some of these, so these will probably go a little bit fast. Get your marketing message right and tight. In other words, write a message to which your prospect respond with Yes, that s precisely what I'm looking

29 29 for right now or Yes, that s exactly what I really need right now. Again, if you're a generalist it s almost impossible, let s say as an example, to write the headline in the first screen of your homepage. If you're a generalist, it s almost impossible to write a headline that is going to really grab the attention of anyone because you're having to try to appeal to everyone. And as we all know in the marketing business when you try to appeal to everyone you ultimately appeal to nobody because you're having to be so broad and general in your promise. So, this is the other advantage of intense marketing when you have tight niche is that you can make your marketing message absolutely specific. All right? Like the guys doing the software for the small banks. You can write a headline so that any software company he may have missed of his list that sells software to small banks and insurance companies, when they arrive at his site, within the first two seconds they re going to look at his site and say Yes, this is precisely the guy we need right now. And that s what you want. And here s a weird little exercise for you. Imagine splitting your homepage, and I'm talking about a homepage, maybe you're going to write a sales letter or even have a brochure for yourself if you're working locally, but let s look at a homepage. So, here s an exercise for you. Imagine the first screen of your homepage with a front cover of a book. All you have the space for is a name or a

30 30 title and a subtitle. And the second screen of your homepage is the back cover of the book where you do a bit of a pitch, say what it s all about and how great it all is. Creating, writing a book title is hugely specialist business. And again, people buy books because of the cover. It s not just the pictures on the cover, it s the words on the cover. So many people buy books because of the title. And again, it s all about marketing, it s not about what s between the cover. You know, try that. Think about the guy with the, with the software in insurance company, how easy and how specific and how right and how tight his sales message can be. And it can be just like a title of a book. It s going to take him what, four or five words in the headline and then maybe ten, fifteen words in the subheading and then his major work on his website is done because his prospects will look at that first screen of the homepage and say Yes, this is precisely the person we re looking for. That s what you want. If you start getting into Oh, let me give you a list of all my services and here are sixteen bullet points. You've lost them already. You can t take sixteen bullet points to make your point. You have to make the point as if it were the front cover of a book so that people will say Yeah, I want to buy that. Market your business daily or you can do it every other day, if you want. The point I'm trying to make is a lot of people set up their freelance business, they get there, they choose their niche,

31 31 however broad or narrow that it is, they create their website, however good or poor that is, maybe they send out a press release, maybe they mentioned it on Facebook and Twitter and then they stop; which is kind of weird because if you re speaking to a client, one of the things you will say to them is Hey, as you know with marketing, it s an ongoing business, you can t do it once and then stop. You have to marketing goes on and on and on. You know, ask Procter and Gamble, I mean, they ve been doing it over a 100 years like every day it s part of the job, is to market. But strangely, we get this little myopia as freelancers and we think that rule doesn t apply to us. Well, it does. It does apply to us even when you're busy, even when you're doing well. And I'm not saying you have to put out a big a pitch everyday but you should make a note on your calendar, on your schedule, which is something every freelancer should have, to say Everyday I'm going to do something to promote my business. Maybe it ll be a phone call or maybe it ll be an or maybe it ll be a Tweet, maybe it ll be a Facebook or a LinkedIn entry, maybe I'll submit an article to an article magazine, maybe I'll approach the publisher of a trade magazine which is central to my niche and suggest that I submit an article to that magazine. Whatever it is, do one thing a day. The people who do that, it makes such a difference. It s like its one small thing but when you add them up. Again, I know I'm running out of time, let me give you a quick, quick example. Again, well go back

32 32 to the book world. Like the Chicken Soup for the Soul sold hundreds of millions of copies around the world now. Well, the two guys, Jack Canfield and I forget the other guy who wrote that book, they wrote it; they had a lot of trouble finding a publisher. And you always, when you look at that first thing Oh, wouldn't it be nice to be in New York Times best seller list. Well, those two guys, they finished book, they finally found a publisher, and not the publisher but the two authors, made a pack with each other is that Everyday both of us will do something to promote this book. Like I say, whether it s a phone call or an or whatever it is, they promised each other that every day of the week they would do one thing to promote that book. Well, with both of them doing one thing every day each, how long do you think it took before that book hit and New York Times best seller list, Chicken Soup for the Soul? Two years. Two years it took them. We look back and say Oh, instant success, lucky guys. I wish I could do that. No, no, it s work. It s daily, daily, daily work. And that s why I was saying early on that this isn t about magic, this is about work and smart work, using your time wisely. So market your business every day one way or another. I do. I do. I always have done. You know, maybe not on the weekends. I spend five days a week, if I'm not on vacation, if I'm at my desk, five days a week for the last twenty, thirty years I have done something every day to get the word out there and usually more than once a day. It s been a lot easier

33 33 with the web than it was back in the old days of telephone and print. Get it out across multiple channels: articles, e-newsletters, , social media, phone calls, press releases, whatever just get the word out. Test, adjust and repeat. Whatever you do, it s never going to be a hundred percent right, so you want to try stuff and track it and measure it and say Wow! You know, I never did a press release before. But looking back over that one I did in March, I've had five clients from that one press release. I will do more of what works, I'm going to put out another one. If you find that you spend five hours on Twitter each week and you look back over the last few months and say You know what, I don t think anything has ever come from that. Well, don t spend so much time on Twitter. You know, look at what you're doing. This isn t a game. This isn t amateur stuff. This is your business. So every hour, every minute you spend each day is work, it s business time. Imagine that your own boss is looking over your shoulder. Will your boss think that you're spending your time wisely today? If not, change it or justify it, argue the case but be aware, be professional about it. And a final tip, never stop asking the question why. You know, why would someone want to read my site homepage? Why would I give them my address if I'm going to try and generate leads from my website? Why would they hire me? Like, really, be brutal with yourself. You know, not some

34 34 kind of soft and sloppy Oh well, because I'm really good. Like give me a specific reason. Depending on the niche or the market you re going after, why would they hire you and not someone else? Why would they hire you and not someone from Guru.com? Why would they hire you and not someone else with your level of experience offering work at a similar price? Why you? why would they hire you? Why would they pay you a premium fee? If you want to charge more than the average and if you want to build that over the months and over the years, if you want to keep increasing your value and getting better and better clients who are prepared to pay you more and more, why? Why would they do that? And you really have to answer those questions. You have to have solid answers to those questions. And, I guess, a lot of what I'm saying is approach this with a mind set of a small business. I mean, a small business you can t get away with what most freelancers try to get away with unsuccessfully. You know, you have to treat this as a business and you have to be smart and businesslike in your choice of niche because if you don t, if you just go in there hoping for the best, thinking magic will happen, you know, maybe one time in 10,000 magic will happen, but for everyone else it won t and you'll be disappointed and you'll think Hey, want went wrong? Why didn t this work? I don t think that was very upbeat but what I'm saying is that if you do take this approach, if you do then, I mean, you really can.