Classroom to Copy #4: Discovering Your Copywriting Niche Part 2: Lessons from Teachers Turned Copywriters
8:40AM Apr 20, 2023
Speakers:
Tania Yeo
Keywords:
copywriting
realise
niche
finding
talk
installations
copy
art
teachers
week
great
copywriter
different industries
clients
lucrative niche
transitioning
thought
experience
chris pearson
recognise
Hey everyone, how's it going? I hope your week is going great so far. I do not have a name yet for this podcast, but it's definitely going to be about helping teachers transition to copywriting and making sure they're paid well for it. So there's this great discussion I'm having right now with three different teachers on the copy chi forum, about transitioning into copywriting finding your niche. And if you're not on that forum, I highly recommend that you check it out. So this week's episode is going to be part two about finding a lucrative niche because I realised from talking to everyone that I have a few more thoughts about it. And so let's get started. I just want to give a shout out to people who have contributed to this discussion. You know, next week, I'm going to be the copy chief live event in St. Pete Florida. So we'll be doing a few of us will be doing a live interview. I'm not sure how it's going to happen yet, but apparently there are professional cameras and microphones involved. And one thing in particular and next week, I would love to pick the brains of people who have you know, haven't niched down and what that experience is like, you know, working with different clients, different customer avatars, writing for those avatars. So I think that's gonna be really great discussion. So, the three teachers who I you know, have these, like really great responses on the copy chief. The first one, Ben, you know, he currently doesn't have a niche, but I think he's doing really great, you know, we they were on. I think we both have a similar timespan in terms of when we left teaching and transitioning to copywriting. He's one of the people I'll be talking to copy chief live next week. So I think he has lots of interesting experiences to share. And I'd be excited to find out more about his process. You know, he works with different clients as an email list manager and an email copywriter, you know, and he works with people ranging from course creation, to event travel and educational technology. So I think that would be a really great conversation to have in person is so you can look forward to that. I'll also be talking to Chris Pearson, who also is really, really successful email copywriter. The other thing I wanted to highlight was Elizabeth's really great medium articles and I'm going to link them below. Below meaning in my LinkedIn profile. I read those articles last night and they're so great. They're about the heart and soft skills that teachers bring to copywriting and I think it's really important to recognise and leverage those things because once you realise you have those skills taken care off, you can relax a bit on those front and focus on the craft, off copywriting and on making money, which is you know, looking for clients. You know, and when you realise that you have all those other skills down pat, you can breathe a little. And as Elizabeth said, it gave her the motivation to keep going. And today I just want her to you know, also talk about Charlotte made this super cool post about her journey in finding her niche. And I think she has the coolest niche ever because she defined it for herself. She calls it dream builders and it's not industry specific. It's specific to the goals of her clients. And those are clients who help people build their dream lives. And think that's a really smart way of thinking about your niche. Instead of thinking about what industry do you want to write for? Think about, you know, whose goals can you relate to the most? Whose goals are you most aligned with? Whose goals are you most passionate about? In terms of copywriting you know, who you feel great writing copy for? And in that sense, you know, because copywriting is all about connecting to the desires right of our prospects and our customers and finding this pocket of commonalities between different industries, which is people who want to build your dream life, I think that's really incredible. I would love to, you know, talk to Charlotte more on a separate episode about what this process looks like. And what you know what commonalities she might find between the different industries. She's she's mentioned I just think that I have never seen anything like it myself, you know, defining a niche and this way and I just, when I read that post, I was like, Whoa, that's cool. So here's the surprising thing about my the early parts of my copywriting journey, I definitely didn't niche down i i definitely had no idea what I wanted to specialise in all I knew, as Tynion said in his post was that I wanted to make money. I wanted royalties. And when I found out about financial copywriting that's kind of what I fixated on. But before that, you know, I was on Upwork and did all kinds of copy for crypto, real estate. I think for SAS company as well. And this was based on this very unusual advice that I got, which is you, you know, niching down early. In your journey can be quite a futile process, because you really have no idea yet what you're good at, or what you'll like, and what will make you lots of money and whether you're good enough to make that amount of money. I thought that was a really interesting perspective. And the person who shared it with me, you know, is a financial copywriter and you know, he's one of the best financial copywriters I know. But he doesn't believe in niching down he came from a background that had nothing to do with finance. He didn't like finance. You know, he was, oh, he was also a teacher. And it's the combination of, you know, life experience that really Prime's you for that very specific niche that will fit you like a glove eventually. I think the reason I found my niche so quickly is because I've done that already the whole life experience going down lots of paths that were not right for me, and then spending six years kind of stuck in a path that really wasn't right for me. And I'll talk more about that in a second. But yeah, after trying out lots of different things in my you know, in the first year of my in the first year of my professional life, it became so much easier to know exactly what I want and recognise the right fit when I see it. So what I mean by that is, you know at the age of 18 Obviously I was young and dumb like everyone else, but I was also very idealistic, very passionate about fine art. I really thought I was going to become a visual artist. I firmly believe that I will still return to you know, making visual art for show in the future. Right now. I just paint and draw for fun. I haven't abandoned that altogether. But when I realised the amount of work that goes into marketing your art, you know outside of making the art and the art I used to make was very labour, labour time and resource intensive like I used to make these giant installations which you know, when you're in school, you and if you're lucky you you get subsidies on art materials, or the school just pays for your crazy installations. But when you're out on your own, it's a different story. Right? And my dream is that one day I will have the money to build, you know, a huge ask art studio and make all those installations. And now that I've developed my own marketing and promoting skills to be able to show that work to the world one day and I think that's the same thing that comes with niching down, you know, maybe one day financial copywriting won't light up my brain anymore. And I'll be okay I want to be okay with walking away from it for a while and then coming back to it later.
And then you know, I love teaching kids I love working with kids because I am a huge kid myself. It was everything else that came with it that I didn't enjoy. But I know that I still love the act of like teaching someone mentoring someone coaching someone I know I'll come back to it someday. So I think it's it's okay to go down the wrong path. And to earn those battle scars and realise that something's not for you. Because you don't know. And you you you won't realise until the time is right that those scars are just priming you for a really weird ass job that you never imagined you'd be doing. That turns out to be the perfect fit for you. So, yeah, that's what came to my mind. I've always been told that you know what, like, why can you just focus on one thing? Why are you interested in so many different things? And I used to feel bad for it right? I'm one of those people who start and stop things. And now I realise, you know, I didn't stop any of those things. I'm still obsessed with all those things. There's just a season for each one of them. And I believe the same thing is true for copywriting and for finding a niche. Yep, so those are my additional thoughts this week about finding a niche. I hope you found this interesting. And do keep a lookout for the live interview that I'll be doing with some copy chief members next week. And I'll see you then