Welcome to the premiere of the Better Biz Academy podcast with Laura Pennington! Laura is a wildly successful freelance writer who creates content for a variety of clients, including entrepreneurs, small business owners, life coaches and law firms. She is also the owner of Six Figure Writing Secrets, a platform through which she teaches new and emerging freelancers how to build and grow their businesses.

In 2012, Laura left a teaching career to pursue freelance writing full-time. In just 18 months, she established a six-figure freelance writing business. She is passionate about teaching others how to skip the trial-and-error stage and fast track their careers in freelance writing. On this episode, Laura covers the benefits of pursuing a freelance writing career and outlines the three things you must have to get started.

 

Key Takeaways

Don’t fall for the myth that it’s too much work to get started

• There are no startup costs
• You only need a computer, your brain, and an internet connection

 

While 80% of new businesses fail within the first year, freelance writing is low risk but has a high potential reward

 

Another benefit of pursuing freelance writing is that it fits in well with other responsibilities

• When you work is up to you

 

Laura’s 3 Non-Negotiables for Landing Clients:

• Quality writing samples
• Clients will overlook lack of referrals and testimonials if you have killer writing samples
• Determine the niche/industry you want to pursue and research what others are doing in that field
• Consume as many free resources as you can
• Pitch
• Don’t focus entirely on yourself
• Discuss what you can do to help the client reach their goals
• Don’t overwhelm the potential client with too much information
• Willingness to put yourself out there
• You will hear no and/or get no response a lot
• Don’t take rejection personally

 

Laura’s advice for presenting yourself as a competent professional:

• Don’t present work with grammar or spelling errors; clients will write you off entirely

 

Resources

Laura’s SEO Writing Course 

Laura’s Full List of Courses 

 

Connect with Laura Pennington

Blog 

Twitter 

Website