Freelance copywriter Josh Garofalo joins Rob and Kira for the 26th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about the importance of choosing a niche (and to go deep into it), what resources he uses to stay sharp, how to get noticed at conferences and working with other copywriters on big projects. He also shares the story of how he got into copywriting and his process for working with customers (this episode is worth listening to just for the way Josh talks about process). Check it out...

Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Inbound

The Pit

Joanna Wiebe

Copyhackers

MicroConf

Josh’s Site

HubSpot

Joel Klettke

Gary V

Momoko Price

ConversionXL

Tested Advertising Methods

Scientific Advertising

Influence

You Should Test That

Gene Schwartz

David Ogilvy

Kira’s website

Rob’s website

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

Intro: Content (for now)

Outro: Gravity

Full Transcript:

Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.

Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 26 as we chat with conversion copywriter, Josh Garofalo about finding a niche and breaking into the SaaS market, the mistakes he’s made as he’s built his business, how he networks with potential clients at conferences and what it’s like to partner with other writers on big projects.

Kira: Hey, Josh. Hey, Rob.

Rob: Hey, Josh.

Josh: Hey, thanks for having me. I was actually shocked that you do that intro every single time because it sounds the same every time you do that every single of the episode. That’s pretty incredible.

Rob: I think if you go back and listen, you’ll hear us actually flub a couple of the words here and there.

Kira: Yeah.

Josh: Okay.

Rob: It’s not always perfect.

Kira: That’s funny. As we were reading that, I feel like we got to switch it up, Rob. I feel like we have to just change the copy …

Rob: Should we do something different?

Kira: … or read it differently. I don’t know. This is the first time I’m feeling that push to just like surprise people a bit.

Rob: Maybe we need to hire a writer, see what they can come up with.

Josh: Yeah, I think it’s a good idea.

Kira: Yeah. Josh, what are you doing for the next hour?

Josh: Talking to you.

Kira: I think a really good place to start is you kind of did our job for us and you posted in the Facebook group and asked the group what they want to know and what questions they’d like to ask you, so thank you for kind of giving us a head start but what I was really interested in is the way that you positioned the post in that group. You said that you’re still newish but somehow, you’ve managed to have as much success, perhaps more than some oldish copywriters despite doing a lot of things wrong (or differently). Let’s start … I mean there’s a lot packed into that. I want to hear about, let’s just start with what you’ve done wrong and differently.

Josh: Yeah. I think if you were to sort of take a look at my website especially when I first started, and it probably lasted for the first six months, it was a $100 template from Genesis that looked absolutely horrible. I had, I think, two blog posts on there. I think I’m only up to like three or four blog posts now. I think most people would say that’s not the way to start a business and yet, through that terrible website and two blog posts, I landed two clients and had them on retainer for a year plus. One ended maybe six months ago and the other one, I’m still working with today. Thousands of dollars generated from two blog posts in a Genesis website.

I don’t think that really tells the whole story because I think what I was doing differently is I was hanging out in co...