« Side Hustle School

#403 - Freelance Writer Starts School To Help Writers Start Side Hustles

2018-02-07
After answering the same questions over and over, this freelance writer opens an online school to help others break into the business.Side Hustle School features a new story EVERY DAY of someone who started a hustle without quitting their job. You’ll learn how they got the idea, how they overcame challenges along the way, and what the results are.  Share: #SideHustleSchoolShow notes: SideHustleSchool.comTwitter: @chrisguillebeauInstagram: @193countries

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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
This episode is brought to you by KPMG Risk services. Kpmg believes that when you ve earned the trust of all your stakeholders, that's when your business has a solid platform to grow. That's the trusted imperative, KPMG risk services develop and put in place dynamic with strategies designed to help your business, earn that all important trust, a red dot. Katy mg dot. U S, Slash trust to learn more Hey there. What's up, welcome back friends, listeners and community, I am your host critical about foresight, side, hustle school today featured story comes from someone who's both side of school listener and one of our writers who works with Whitney in me on compiling the daily stories. It's all about how he takes his skill in freelance writing
something that a lot of people would like to do for money and then find a way to create a specific resource for those people, and that word, specific or specificity is key. As you'll hear. As part of this discovery process was focusing on something he called his x factor. He says the x factor is the topic. You spend the most time reading about the topic that your friends come to you for advice for or the topic where you have an above average set of skulls. Everyone has something they can teach to someone else, and there is a market for almost everything that's what he says, and there is a market for almost everything, or at least there is a market for a lot of things. As you may know, if you'd been listening to the show for a while, so I'll tell you about this, freelance writing side hustle how he gets the idea, how he develops it and how he turned into money right after this quick. Thank you today, sponsor support. Recital school comes from three m from helping I've vaccine and therapy development with advanced application technologies to develop
an event that helps boost vaccine effectiveness. The research scientists at three m are delivering innovative healthcare solutions to help. today and prepare Tibet or tackle what's next learning three m dot, slash improving lives Three m science applied to life reliance writer James Johnson. It was time to make a change in his business. Although he loves the freelance world and the flexible life it affords him. He felt the need to do some work that was more people focused. You knew that writing articles employed post was helping people in one way, but he wanted to do something. more hands on for the first six months of twenty seventeen James spent his
toying with different ideas of people focused businesses that he could try. You listen to pack cast, including this one and devour bucks to help him try to find his answer. But after months of false starts and bad ideas, he felt like you just couldn't come up with anything, Then, one day, a facebook friend got in contact to ask for advice about how to start his own freelance writing business. He been following James in the background for years and wanted to learn from him always happy to help a friend James, jumped on a Skype, call and walked him through how you can get started when he ended. The call at James couldn't help but feel like you've done this before you check his email and Facebook messages and saw these help, people at the same problem it many times since he first started. Even been paid to write a few blog post about it. That's when the obvious idea dropped in his lap. It people are asking for this information. He thought perhaps he could charge for it. aims set about creating a website where he could begin to share his advice. He called it the freelance writer school.
That name came about as a lucky chance after the first fourteen names, he try partaken. As the saying goes. The fifteenth time was the charm He purchase a domain name, a basic themed, stylize the site in a subscription to an email service, bringing his total start up costs to just under two dollars. For creating a content for the new site. James went out to research what people in his niche we're talking about. He looked a blog posts in Facebook groups and made a Google spreadsheets record specific words and phrases they used even useless to create a homepage about page and a welcome email series using terminology that would make sense to them. This research also allow James to create what he calls an avatar, but if you read-
I do so, but you might know it as an ideal customer heroic short biography of this imaginary persons, fears, challenges and aspirations whenever he writes any blog posts or sales page. He writes for this person who shares all these important traits. In particular, he wrote a series of social media Post focused on telling stories with actionable tips to share in Facebook groups within the first few months. He was able to use that strategy to add to it and eighty people to his new email, lest you notice that most people responded best to his content about getting started and taking your first steps as a freelance writer, so he decided he would create his first. You products focused on that topic. One product will be free and the other would be for sale
The first product is a free email course that helps people are in the main principles of starting a freelance writing business in just seven days. Each day they receive a new email outlining the next principle actionable step to take to achieve it. The second product is a paid course called the sixty minutes. Writer this course shows people how to start a freelance riding business in sixty minutes a day over the course of thirty days. He prices course at seventy five dollars because he wanted to be sure the people who bought it were serious about making an investment in themselves. The first reading Course was available, James made a bit less than two thousand dollars and it continues to act urgently. Six inner dollars a month, you're sales of this product, to make sure he didn't need to keep re launching the course. He added a sales portion to the end of the free email program which positions his new course as a premium follow up to what I have just learnt. This allows him to automate his sales process and generate income without having to be there each point of sale. If you're looking to start a similar business yourself, James recommends that you spend some time looking for your x factor,.
He says this is the topic you spend the most time reading about that, your friends come to you for advice for or where you have an above average set of skills, whether you're into baseball cards or appointed. a cup of tea or many other things that you ve heard about unsuccessful school, or perhaps him. There we haven't even covered, yet there might be somebody their who wants to learn from you and they be willing to pay for it. The long term goal for James is for freelance writer school to make up eighty percent of his income, He hoped to create an online community where writers can come together and learn from the school's resources share ideas. and help each other brother businesses this Another great example of going from starter idea next level idea. The starter idea was to actually do freelance writing, get paid for various columns and blog posts in articles the next level idea was to create this resource for all the people who are already asking him? How do you do this? How can I get into it? How can I get my first assignment or my first commission,
and I wanted to comment on the name of this resource- the school itself, as well as the name for his paid product for the name of the school itself- freelance writers school, like we said that- was his 15th choice. He went through fourteen other ideas, but they were all taken. Other people had that remains. I think freelance writer school is still pretty good because you get what it is right away. You understand. Okay, this is eight school, or at least the training programme of some kind or people who want to be freelance writers. It's not the sexiest thing in the world that doesn't have to be, but I do think of the pretty sexy name or title is the name of his course.
the sixty minute writer now that I think, is fantastic, because that has a benefit built right in your necessarily know, all that it's about just by hearing a few words, but it sets up really well for the patch, which has learned to become a freelance writer in sixty minutes a day over the course of thirty days. It also generates curiosity and interest. So if you don't understand what it means to be a sixty minute writer for a lot of people, at least it makes them think. What's that about tell me more, which is always really good. Every month unsatisfied school, I do an extended episode which focuses on a topic that listeners are asking about over and over, and I noticed in twenty seventeen one of the most popular extended episode was called the ninety minute website and I was never so when we talk people through how to create your first website in ninety minutes or less. If you'd like to hear that episode or any of the extended cuts just go to satisfy school dot com, slash extended just like the regular episodes, those are all archived they're, all free. You can listen to them whenever you want and clearly people responded to that concept, so I think the sixty minute writers car, like that, is also a mega popular book by me.
Robins called the five second rule. I wrote a book a few years ago called the hundred our start up in funny enough. Since then I ve been a bunch of others who have used the same kind of model. There was like the ninety dollars start up. The fifty dollar start up the zero dollars start up. I know I'm a little biased, but I'm not sure those are as good as the original just saying. The point of these phrases are titles or names is that they are catchy and not just at their catchy, but they give you this concept right away. They capture attention, they draw you in there. You want to learn more, so whenever possible, as you're thinking about what you develop. What is your x factor? How are you gonna turn that into some kind of asset, something that works for you,
Maybe also be thinking about ok, what am I gonna call this? What is catchy what is compelling? How can I do still this thing that I want to teach into one short phrase: communicating a clear message is almost fifty percent of the battle, so I think James is generally well with that how we haven't stop running for us, but I also think it's great unease helping other people out in building this resource for himself, if you'd like to get his free course, if you're interested learning about freelance writing or if you just curious from aside us perspective, to see how he goes from gently, providing this free info to saying: oh hey, if you like this here, there's more is something you can pay for will include a linked to that on our shuts page, where you can check it out for yourself that page is gonna, be side s school dot, com, slash force here are three: that's for episode. Four hundred and three, thank you for listening to day. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Ask yourself today: what is my ex factor? What is the thing that I can show
the people. What is that thing that I keep bringing about? Is there something like this could be my side? Hustle and if so, how can I crystallized that are still it into one short phrase so that the right people are immediately trying to it? That's my challenge for you today. Let me know how it goes on critical about recital score.
Transcript generated on 2021-10-12.