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I’ve been a full-time entrepreneur for 18 months now and have been trying several businesses in the last year and a half.
Initially, I went all-in with my PropTech startup, but I quickly realized that the development would take much longer than expected. However, I liked the entrepreneurial lifestyle and didn’t want to go back to employment only after a few months of enjoying “the freedom.” So I was looking for a skill that would bring in money quickly.
At first, I failed (miserably)
I used to blog about cycling and psychology when I was a teenager and, back then, I would get lots of compliments about my writing style. In addition to that, I started a blog about entrepreneurship when I founded my startup. Thus, I thought copywriting would be my best attempt to make “a quick buck,” as I had no idea how to monetize my background of working in the finance department of a startup.
I had no idea what I was doing.
I contacted magazines with listed job openings and pitched them to work for them as a freelancer. I didn’t get a single response. So later, I reached out to businesses hiring copywriters and managed to get an interview through a LinkedIn connection. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get this job either with no experience whatsoever and because they were looking specifically for an in-house copywriter.
Fast forward three months, and I still hadn’t earned a single dollar from copywriting.
So I quit the idea of becoming a copywriter and decided to tap into WordPress development. After all, my previous blogs were all made with WordPress, and I was pretty familiar with the environment. To my surprise, the sister of my co-founder needed a website for her business, and he referred me. I landed the job a delivered a reasonably good site.
How I got a regular income as a freelancer (no copywriting)
After six months, I had a solid portfolio of websites, and my monthly income was around $1,000. But to cover all my expenses, I still needed another $1,000. So I decided to create an Upwork profile and offer my WordPress services. I positioned myself as an expert in using Elementor (the most popular page-builder) and landed my first job within days. Another one followed, and soon I had the extra $1,000 a month and a bit of a change in my mindset.
For the first time in my freelance career, I had the feeling that I knew what I was doing. I got faster with every website, built some great relationships, and launched a one-person agency to get some local clients as well. It was all working out great, and in March this year, I had a monthly profit of $10,000. You may think I figured it all out and would scale my agency from now (and I sure as hell thought, too).
Niching down killed my agency
I followed all the advice you get from the so-called gurus to scale even faster. One thing that they’ll all tell you is niching down. Offering just one service for a particular target group.
So that’s what I did. I saw a massive opportunity with lawyers & tax consultants. They are high-ticket clients, the whole sector is very conservative, and most of them have awful websites or none at all (at least that’s the case in my home country, Austria).
I had an incredible gut feeling. “This is how I’m gonna be a millionaire soon,” I thought to myself.
