3 Ways to Become a More Efficient Writer

How can we, as freelance copywriters, become more efficient so that we have more free time?

As a professional copywriter, it’s essential to have established processes that create more efficiency in your writing process and allow you more flexibility and ultimately, free time.  

As you begin to grow and scale your business, it can be overwhelming to write more, on-board new people, or serve more clients if you don’t have the right things in place for efficiency and effectiveness.

As someone who really enjoys owning my own business because of the way I get to create my own schedule and find the workflows that are right for me, I also understand how hard this is to do. I choose to prioritize efficiency, though, because to me it is important that I have free time to “Dad rock” out on my guitar (and scare my kids while doing it).

To do this, I’ve found that there are three essential ingredients to creating a more efficient process: pre-write, use templates, and establish a consistent writing routine.

When you create tools that help you succeed, you’re able to meet the needs of your business and your clients so that you can grow, scale, and still have time for yourself.

As you apply what you learn in this blog, you’ll ultimately be able to save tons of brain power and time.

Here are three ways you can create more efficiency in your writing business:

1. Pre-Write!

If you’ve been copywriting for a while, you probably already have some sort of pre-writing process. Maybe it’s research, outlining, note taking, or brainstorming. 

Pre-writing is not a new concept. However, I’m going to argue that the most important aspect of writing a lot quickly is the time, attention, and effort put into pre-writing. if you don’t pre-write well, you will not write a lot quickly.

The good news is that more pre-writing means less writer's block.

Good copy begins with good information. Pre-writing helps you to gather all the information you need in order to write well and write fast.

Without the pre-writing phase, you’re likely to get stuck in your writing process.

When you don’t do pre-writing, you are setting yourself up for inefficiency because you’re essentially forcing yourself to multitask. You’re asking your brain to switch from logical thinking (research, reading, organizing information) to creative thinking (writing) without giving either side of your brain enough space to really get in the groove.

When you pre-write, you’re able to organize, gather, and outline the information, giving your brain power and purpose. When you’ve thoroughly researched your topic and have read articles from industry experts before you begin writing, you’re able to use the wealth of knowledge you’ve accumulated to focus on your creative genius: turning thoughts into words. 

Good pre-writing makes it so you can focus solely on creative content when it comes time to actually write and work in a way that helps you write at scale. It keeps you from redundancy and saves you from context shifting and all the other things that impede flow.

The more you pre-write, the faster you write. It’s that simple.

2. Create Templates!

As you become more experienced as a writer, you will accumulate a lot of templates. 

If you are going to write a lot quickly and grow your business without losing your time, templates are necessary.

If there is any chance that I will have to write a type of collateral more than once, I create a template. This means that I have a lot of templates. 

I know as creatives and artists in business, templates sound boring, generic, and lacking in luster. However, if you want to have more free time to be a creator or an artist, templates are a great way to get you there.

I have a template for social media posts, content calendars, content strategies, messaging guides, email funnels, web copy, wireframes, articles and blogs. Almost everything I write for clients starts as a template. 

Templates will change the way you write because it will speed up the process and help you scale your business. By using templates you are able to:

• Scale your content

• Maintain consistency

• Embed narrative arc into the structure. This is really helpful for articles, email funnels, and web copy.

• Ensure balance. This is especially true for social media and content calendars. 

• Diminish redundancy

• Manage time

To build a good template, it needs to be structured in a way that can be easily and thoughtlessly transferred to the final piece of collateral. If it doesn’t, then you are just wasting time. 

Create your template by keeping the final deliverable in mind and work backwards. If it’s an email template, you’ll know you need a subject line, body copy, a CTA, and maybe a PS at the end. 

Once you have the structure of your template, you can then put some purpose into it. What is the reason for this type of writing template? 

Whatever the purpose, you should make that clear in the template. Don’t just create a template for emails, create different templates for sales emails, or nurturing emails, or thank you emails, or newsletter emails. The purpose often has an effect on the structure, so be willing to create multiple types of templates for different purposes. 

3. Establish a Consistent Writing Process

As a writer, particularly in the creative space, I just love the free-flowing process of putting words on an empty page. It’s an excavation, a practice of digging and discovering that doesn’t want to be pre-defined and determined by an outside schedule or agenda.

There is a place for what I just described, though. And the truth is, almost all of my best writing has come as a surprise by just sitting down at my computer and hunting for the elusive words as they draw me into their secrets. 

When you are writing as a copywriter, though, you have deadlines and you cannot leave your product up to that kind of inspiration-only process. In many ways, growing a business as a freelance writer is using a different muscle. It requires a different approach and mindset, and it’s important to make that distinction early on.

The art of writing and the business of writing, although they overlap, are two very different things. Doing each of them makes the other better, but if you keep trying to flex your artistic muscles to grow your business, you’re going to struggle to scale.

If you want to scale, you have to establish a consistent writing routine that works for you.

Showing up every single day to write is what makes you a writer. Finding the ways to make showing up a little easier, is what allows you to be a sustainable writer. You can’t leave it to your “in-the-mood” moment to determine how, when, and where you’ll write.

Establish your workflow and stick to it. This is what creates momentum and scalability.

Write more, faster!

As a writer and business owner, I understand what it’s like to want to grow and scale your business so that you can have more free time to do the things you love.

There is so much power in refining your craft and creative processes. Through creating more efficient processes and putting better systems in place, you’re able to spend less time on your business and more time on developing new creative talents, like playing the guitar.

It is my goal to teach other copywriters how to write a lot quickly and grow their volume without giving up more time.

At StoryWright, we try to stay as efficient as possible so that we can tell more stories for more clients and these are just some of the ways we make writing more efficient.

If you want to implement these three writing tips, but don’t know where to start, schedule a consultation with me today.

3 Ways to Scale Your Copywriting Business

Are you a freelance copywriter that’s ready to grow and scale your business?

If so, you’re in the right place.

Many copywriters want to grow their business, but get stuck in the scaling process or become overwhelmed with the writing load. 

Through my experience, I’ve found that there are three main ways to scale your copywriting business:

1. Charge More

2. Write More

3. Hire People

I went from writing as a side hustle to writing an average of 10,000 words per week for brands and industries all over the world. 

At first, the workload was exciting. I was doing it. With my mind, a laptop, and a knack for the power of syntax and vocabulary, I was making an actual living! 

It didn’t take long, though, for me to feel burnt out. I was making a living as Portland-based freelance copywriter, but I lost all my free time. Every copy brief I received and proposal I accepted felt like it would be less time with my family or less time working on my creative writing.

It also didn’t take long for the exciting growth to hit a limit and I became stuck. I had to scale.

Fortunately, there is a way to scale your business by writing more without sacrificing your time, freedom, and balance. 

You can grow your volume without giving up more time than you want to in our business.

Here are 3 ways you can scale your business as a copywriter

1. Charge more for your copywriting services

I know charging more for your services can be a scary task, especially for the artists in business. 

I get it. Asking for money is something many of us already feel uncomfortable doing, so asking for more can feel intimidating. But the truth is, if we don’t push the edge of comfort, we will never grow as a writer or as a business.

A first note, if you are charging by the hour… go ahead and stop doing that. This holds you back from scaling because the amount you make is directly tied to the hours you work. And if you get more efficient at writing (which adds value to you and the client) then you actually will get paid less. 

If you’re having a hard time figuring out what to charge for a product, there are a couple things you can do:

1. Find an industry average for time to word count (I generally find a 500 word blog post takes an average copywriter 1 to 2 hours to write.) Set your project rate loosely on that and then try and do it in half the time. 

2. Assess the value of your writing to the company’s ability to grow. If the clear messaging and conversion friendly copy you are producing is enabling a company to make significantly more money, then charge them for the value you are providing. 

Your ability to scale by volume through charging more is completely contingent upon charging by the project. So don’t fall into the hour trap and charge what your writing is valued at. 

2. Write for more clients

Another option for scaling your business is to get more clients. If you’re going to get more clients, that means more writing. If you’re going to take on more writing, you need to have efficient systems in place.

From pre-writing to templates, outlines, and research, each of these processes, when mastered, will help you write better and more efficiently.

The better your systems, the more you can write and therefore the more clients you can take on. 

If you want to scale your writing business, you will probably need to include some element of prewriting in your process. This process is up to you and you can do what works best for you. Maybe it’s doing a lot of research before you begin writing, doing a detailed outline, or even taking a moment to clear your head before you start typing. Whatever works best for you, is what you need to stick to. Having a routine you can rely on before you begin writing is essential to long term success as a writer.

Pre-writing is just one piece of the system that can support you to write for more clients. 

Templates are a great way to get a head start on your writing. If there is any chance I will have to write a type of collateral more than once, I create a template. This means that I have a lot of templates. I have a template for social media posts, content calendars, content strategies, messaging guides, email funnels, web copy, wireframes, articles and blogs. Almost everything I write for clients starts as a template. 

I talk more about prewriting, templates, and more efficient systems in this blog here.

3. Hire a team or outsource projects

When scaling your business as a writer, there are a few common ways you can do it. You can grow through hiring a team, outsourcing projects, or even going after bigger clients.

Choosing to build an in-house team versus outsourcing to an external contractor or content agency is something to be considered. There are many downsides and upsides to each approach.

When you build a team, your day to day activities change quite a bit. You move away from writing and more into managing, coordinating, editing, and streamlining. You become the orchestrator instead of the creator. For some, this shift is welcomed as the answer to writing less. For others, the thought of being responsible for a team is the opposite of why they chose a writing career. 

Alternatively, you can remain the writer and scale by going after bigger clients with higher paying retainers or focusing on marketing your highest value offerings over your smaller paying services.

And if those two approaches aren’t for you, the blend of the two approaches lies in outsourcing projects or tasks to contractors. Things like invoicing, emailing, setting up systems, or even blog research can be outsourced to the right person. There are always people who love doing what you hate, so outsourcing a few of these things can help to free up your time to keep you both writing and growing.

Whatever approach, make sure it’s right for you. Because at the end of the day, writing burnout is real and you don’t want to get too overwhelmed to the point that you can’t keep going.

Scale, grow, and keep moving forward

At the end of the day, it’s important to move forward in the direction that works for you. If that means doing whatever you can to have more free time to become a rockstar (like me), then maybe hiring a team or outsourcing projects is the best option. 

If you love being a freelance copywriter and are committed to the lifestyle, then maybe you need to look at where you can raise your prices or go after bigger clients.

However you decide to scale, know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not always easy being your own boss, but it’s usually pretty worth it.

I’d love to talk with you about the hard work you do and how I can help write you a story that gets results. If you’d like to talk, schedule a free consultation with me here.

5 Ways Good Writing Can Grow Your Business

I get it. You are a new brand or business and you have a new website. You paid an arm and a leg for an amazing video about your company. Your Instagram looks beautiful and your business is something everybody needs.

But…it’s not working. All of that money. All of those perfectly staged product pics. The clean website. The promo video that could be submitted to film festivals. It’s not working.

I have a suggestion.

Words. Better words.

When it comes down to it, people do things because words tell them to do so. The wrong words telling the wrong story will only hurt your business.

It doesn’t matter how good everything looks if the words don’t move customers to engage with your products. (This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a clean website, great video, and killer social media, by the way).

Words tell stories and stories grow companies. And words are easy to change.

So here are 5 free ways good writing can help grow your business.

1.      Use active language

Readers are lazy. They don’t want to read what you are writing and will find any excuse they can to not read your words.

Unless you take them somewhere. When you use active language, your customer stops reading and starts moving. They will forget the words on the page and instead imagine what it will feel like when they finally get to where you are taking them.

Here’s an example:

Consider a Donation – Passive language

Donate – Active language

And here’s another example:

If you think you might be interested in our services, feel free to reach out some time to chat. – passive language (and clunky)

Schedule a consultation now – Active language

Not only does active language involve action words (buy now, schedule a consultation, take a tour), but it is direct. Active language decreases the friction between your customer and the desired outcome.

This means your customers are more likely to do what you want them to do.

2.    Remove Adverbs

Adverbs are the appendix of the English language. At best, they are useless. At worst, they can kill you (or at least your sentence).

If you are using active and direct language, you should never need to use adverbs to get your point across. Adverbs modify verbs, but if you are using the right verbs, your verb doesn’t need to be modified.

Here’s an example:

This widget will wildly change the way you effervescently engage with your Instagram audience [while quietly sitting at your exorbitantly expensive desk in your mildly inappropriate jammie bottoms.] - Bad writing

This widget will change the way you engage with your Instagram audience. -Good writing

If words tell stories and stories grow companies, you need to care about which words you use. And in the writing world, adverbs are almost always “bad” words.

The difference between a potential customer and an actual customer often comes down to whether or not a customer finishes the sentence. Every adverb you use makes a customer less likely to read it.

(Readers are lazy. Remember?)

3.    Avoid insider language

Nothing kills a good product faster than insider language. Insider language is what it sounds like—words and phrases only someone on the inside of your industry will understand.

Most likely, if someone is coming to you for a product or a service, it’s because they are not in your industry! So, don’t talk shop!

When to use insider language: When you are at the Vacuum Maker Conference giving a lecture on micro-fusion and the effectiveness of trans-molecular negative fission for hard floor surfaces (Yes, I made that up.)

When to not use insider language: When you are trying to sell the vacuum cleaner that uses micro-fusion and trans-molecular negative fission to a dad who just needs a vacuum cleaner that won’t break every time it goes over a Lego.

When describing your business, think of it from the perspective of your customer, not your co-worker. What is the simplest way to describe what you do to someone who knows nothing about your business?

If you’re selling vacuums, tell people it will suck up everything, including Legos, and watch your sales go through the roof.

4.    Be scannable

Words are a visual art.

Since readers are lazy, (except you, of course) the way your words appear on your collateral makes a difference.

A scannable website, pdf, pamphlet, or proposal reassures your customer they won’t have to work hard to understand what you are communicating.

Making lists, using headers to summarize points, pulling phrases out and putting them in separate spaces, help customers pay attention.

The more customers pay attention, the more they will interact with your company.

5.    Write Short Sentences

Yes. I know. Some of the best writers in the world use long, flowing sentences. But you are not trying to be the best writer in the world.

You are trying to grow your company. You are trying to sell that thing you worked for months to make. You are trying to offer a service you trained for years to provide.

You are not writing Russian literature. You are not mommy blogging. You are growing a company, so get to the point as quickly as possible.

Every time you write something, try to decrease your word count by 20-30% in the second draft.

6.    Give them a little more than what you said you would

Do you see what I did there?

Your business should always give customers more than they expect. Be generous with your time, your talent, and your resources.

Don’t be cheap. You need to make money. But you don’t want to just sell something, you want committed customers, and that takes time, relationship, and generosity.

At StoryWright, we believe that words tell stories and stories grow companies. If you want to implement these five writing tips, but don’t know where to start, schedule a consultation today.

We can help you find the right words to tell the right story to grow your company.

Schedule a Consultation today at to see what the right words telling the right story can do for you.

3 ways to Build a Sustainable Business as an Artist

You just want to create. You want to write. You want to paint. You want to play music, make films, design graphics. You are an artist and there is something in you that drives you to your craft.

You also want to eat. And drink. And occasionally do both.

One of the biggest challenges for artists, regardless of the medium, is figuring out how to create with integrity and still make a living. For many, the choice is either poverty, or squeezing in the art while working somewhere else to pay the bills.

Although the idea of a starving artist carries with it some kind of nostalgic appeal and the war stories of writers waking up at the crack of dawn to write before they go to work seems like a badge of honor, neither are very sustainable.

I don’t believe artists should have to make the choice between poverty and exhaustion. At least not forever.

The switch happens when artists stop seeing themselves as just artists and start seeing what they do through the lens of an entrepreneur and small business owner.

And if that makes you want to stop reading this because it sounds like something only sell outs would do, just remember, there is a way for you to make art and eat. Hear me out, and apply where you can.

1. The business is the artist, not the art.

I can’t stress this enough. It doesn’t matter if you are working in the writing space, the fine art space, the music space, the digital space, or the film/photography space. People will try to separate you from what you create.

And if you let people do that, your art will never be worth what it could and your momentum will never be what it should. Your business is you, the artist, the creator. You are your most valuable asset. Everything you create should build that reality.

This does not mean you have to sell out, be a poser, and share every aspect of who you are. It does, however, mean that you are going to have to present yourself and your art in such a way that brings people into your story.

You don’t want people to like a painting, you want them to love the painter. You don’t want people to by a book, you want them to follow an author. You don’t want someone to stream a song, you want them to fanboy and fangirl out to the band. You get the point.

You may sell pieces of art, or publish and sell books, or make films, or any of those things. But you are not in the art selling, book publishing, film making business. You are in the “you” business and everything you do needs to serve that end.

2. Learn the power of passive income.

Passive income is exactly what it sounds like. It is money you make without actively doing something at the time of making it. It is the book sold on Amazon, the music streamed and licensed, the digital downloads of prints and art sold on a website.

You do the work once and make money over and over again. 

Of course, this isn’t as easy as I’m making it sound. Especially in a digital age where the mass distribution of art has diminished the price to percentages of pennies in some cases. There is no doubt some of the traditional ways of passive income for artists have diminished, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.

Part of creating a sustainable revenue stream as an artist is understanding how different types of income work together to build sustainability. Part of sustainability for any business is predictability, and passive income is what develops predictability for artists.

To do this, we need to think outside of the box. Fortunately, thinking outside of the box is our sweet spot. I would love to hear your ideas and what you’re doing to create passive income.

3. Have a strategic funnel.

To establish a strategic funnel it’s important to identify your most valuable offering. For a painter, it may be an original painting. For a musician, it may be a concert. For a writer, it may be a novel, or a speaking tour.

Regardless of what it is, you have to identify it to know what you are funneling people towards. Once you’ve established your highest valued offering, then just work backwards through the following steps.

• Free Content – To establish a funnel, you have to start with giving away free, helpful content. For artists, writers, and other creatives, this can be a number of different things and should be constantly rotating. Free downloads, helpful tutorials, a well-planned social media account, reading guides, film reviews, photography tips are all free content that can build the top of the funnel.

• Entry-level offering ­– After you establish a growing network and platform (because you are your business), offer what you do at an entry level price. For photographers and artists, this can be a digital download of prints (which is also passive income). For writers, this can be a short story, or even possibly your first novel.

Many creatives resist developing an entry level offering because they feel it will undervalue their work.  The challenge, though, unless an artist already has an established platform, they can’t sell their work for what it’s worth because no one trusts them. Entry level offerings build trust and trust is necessary for selling high value work.

• Exclusive Access – For those who make it past the entry level offering stage, it’s time to nurture the relationship by giving exclusive access to things that are not available to the general public. This might be leading a book club of a book you wrote, doing a live meet up, sending out draft sketches, or bloopers. Give those who have trusted you this far a peek inside the process in a personal way.

• Most Valuable Offering – Now that you have established trust and created an engaged inner community (the funnel), it’s time to introduce the most valuable offering. This is the thing that can actually pay the bills if it scales. Art is valuable, but if no one knows you, and no one trusts you, it will be hard to sell it for what it’s worth.

Of course, creating an efficient funnel can take time and work. Focus the majority of your business growth attention in expanding the top of the funnel, and make the rest of it work as efficiently as possible.

If, after reading this, you want to know more about how this can specifically apply to your craft, reach out and schedule a free consultation.

You don’t have to be a starving artist forever. You can make great art and pay the bills. I believe in you, and I’m here to help you.