[Gabe]

Hey Thomas! I’ve been wondering about running an ad to get freelance copywriting clients. In the past I’ve heard about how this worked great for other copywriters but I’d love to hear if it’s still doing well. I have heard of someone having success with IG ads recently, though. I don’t have a lot of $ to spend and I’ve never done FB ads. What would you suggest for someone in my situation? Is it realistic for a newbie to FB ads to win clients without spending a ton? Thanks!

[Gabe]

Thanks for sharing, Bryan. Curious… do you need these developers to continue doing the work with the service you offer on your site? If you were able to land several new customers for your service, would that help to cover payroll. If so, how many customers would you need? You may want to outline details like that so people can better help for your specific situation. It would be good to give us a list of what you’re working with. You’ve got services you offer and you’ve got skills to offer. It would be good to list out the details for both of those.

Have you tried looking for web developer work? I imagine that might be the fastest path to cash. I have experience with Fiverr and know there’s usually clients looking for help all the time – especially if you set up your profile right and run ads to your gigs (they take the cost of the ads out of your final paycheck). Of course, there may be better places to look for that sort of work. I’ve heard several stories of how people have landed jobs on LinkedIn recently. Tons of opportunity on there right now.

[Gabe]

I would start by searching on Fiverr for the specific skills you have to offer and see what other people are doing. How have they broken down the services into different gigs? Pay close attention to the gigs that have the most sales on them. Create a saved list on Fiverr so you can bookmark the gigs you want to model yourself after. You can create several different lists to keep track of them.

See how the best selling gigs in your category are structuring their packages. Fiverr takes 20% from the seller… so calculate what those people are making per gig and you can see what’s possible. Take note of how frequent their sales are, if they have sales in the queue, read their reviews, etc. After some research, you should have a pretty good idea of what’s selling and what you can offer.

Your first gig posting can be annoying, but you’ll learn by doing it. Videos and pictures help your gig rise in the rankings, so always try to include those. Try to fill out all your available gig slots, too. You get a certain number of gigs you can post when you start out – I can’t remember how many.

The module in the Execution Course on Offers will be helpful in figuring out how to offer your services best. The Copywriting Academy will be great for improving the sales copy of your gig. BUT… don’t wait too long to get your gigs up… you can always tweak them later. Imitate what the successful sellers are doing and adjust later.

[Gabe]

Still thinking about how things will go… I’ve got some affiliate offers I promote a little bit. That goes straight to me at this point :).

[Gabe]

My two accounts on TT are @gogivergabe (business focused account) and @thedeeperlife (preaching account) – the second one is where I’ve done more call to action. I have a free resource page in my bio link and I usually tell people “If you want to go deeper on that topic, I have a lot of great resources on my page.” So… if the video has intrigued them and made them want more… they can get more. My business account doesn’t have too many CTA’s yet, but it’s similar to that when I do. Like… “If you want more organic traffic tips, check out my profile.” – when they check out the profile it’s pretty clear what I mean for them to do. It’s the only thing to click on… unless they want to watch my other videos. I think a big part of it is to be helpful… answer their questions… if they like you, they’ll get curious and find your link. I’ve seen others do a CTA that told people to message them in the private messages or leave a comment. Those can be very effective, too. Then you have to write back to a bunch of people – but that can be very good. Especially when lots of comments are piling up on your video… TT likes that.

[Gabe]

I’m SO very sorry about that, Gary. I always count on my Google Calendar notifications and I never got one on my screen or phone today. No idea why… I’ve sent an email about rescheduling.

[Gabe]

Hi Gary, Once you get to 1,000 followers on TT (on a personal account) you’re able to have a link in your profile. I use a landing page from Convertkit and when people check my profile out they click to check out my page. I have some free resources available on there and I send people to check those out in some of my videos.

Btw, you’re allowed to have a link right away with a business TT account but pretty much anyone who’s building massive accounts on there uses the personal account. I think there are many reasons why… but, in general, TT seems to favor the personal accounts more than the biz accounts. I’d imagine it’s because they want the businesses to buy ads? There are also a few features that aren’t available to biz accounts. So… you’ve just got to push to get those first 1k followers and then you’re set.

[Gabe]

My content is for Christians. I’ve made a page with a few affiliate links that make sense for the audience and they know that it helps me keep doing what I’m doing when they buy through my link. I do have a “buy me a coffee” page – this is a site where you can create a profile and people can buy me a “coffee.” A few people have done that so far. Quite a few creators have sites like that. Sometimes they give some type of gift when people donate. Eventually, I’ll have something like that to offer.

I have plans to create some T-shirts to offer for sale. I’d also like to publish some books on Amazon – that would be the perfect thing to offer this audience. But… neither of those things are that lucrative. I do link to my other tiktok account that’s more focused on business stuff. That account isn’t hardly as big because I haven’t been doing it as long. But… there’s bound to be some people in the audience of my main account that are interested in online business. I plan to be promoting more affiliate offers on the biz account.

[Gabe]

I guess the biggest factor is that this account was started primarily because the content is a passion of mine. It’s a Christian preaching account – I would do this if I got paid for it or not :). I checked out TikTok one day and found there were all these people preaching on there and I thought, “I can do that.” I gave it a try and after about 2 weeks of posting 6x/week (and getting 200-300 views consistently) I had a video get 25k views in about 24 hours. That’s nothing compared to some people, but it was simply amazing to see my follower count go up SO fast. I think I gained 2k followers in one day. After that, I was hooked!

It’s incredibly motivating when you know that there’s a good chance that one of your videos will get lots of traffic if you just keep posting consistently. Even if you get a few thousand views… it’s still cool. I can shoot a video in my bedroom and post it pretty quickly and then check the stats in an hour and I will have spoken to hundreds of people – sometimes thousands. That alone is super fun and motivates me to keep posting every day. I feel like if I don’t post, the algorithm won’t be as nice to me. I don’t know for sure about that, but that’s my gut feeling.

I will say that for the first several months I took way too long to make my videos (1-2 hours sometimes). My schedule allowed for it at the time and I was enjoying it, too. Now I’m faster – it depends on the video I’m doing but I can come up with an idea, record and edit and post in 20-45 min. Sometimes I batch record content and then edit those at a different time. I keep a lot of notes in my phone so that I never run out of ideas.

When I’ve got a busy week – or I just don’t have it in me to go on camera – I do a quote video (with a short background clip I’ve filmed earlier and put text on the screen) or grab a clip from someone on YouTube and add text with the Captions app. I also repost videos (or edit different versions of them) I’ve done months before and they do great.

So that’s a little bit of my experience so far!