What do you do to brand you or your business?
I want my personal branding to position me as an expert in personal websites and consultant websites.
The end goal of this branding is to help me run my business: where I sell products to help people write, design, and market themselves through their website.
The more I’m known as an expert in these areas, the more my personal branding will help my business.
So here’s what I’ve done to brand myself:
- Write the purpose of my personal brand and the outcomes it will help me achieve
- Describe how I want people to perceive me and what I’ll do to enforce that perception
- Run my own personal website focused on my area of expertise
- Create content on my website, Quora, Twitter, and LinkedIn helping my primary markets (consultants) achieve the results they want (more clients) with my area of expertise (writing, design, personal branding)
The key is step #4 — consistency.
Personal branding is hard work. And you can only create a perception through habit: repeated actions that show people who you are and what you want to be known for.
Which is better, freelancing or blogging?
It depends on your goals.
Do you want to get clients? Freelancing is better (in the short-term).
Do you want to improve your thinking and writing skills — and build an audience? Blogging is better.
But you should do both.
Do freelancing (and consulting, too) so you can get clients and sustain yourself.
Then, write about what you’re doing during your client projects — and how you help your clients with your work. If you do this, your blogging will help your freelancing by making it easier for you to get clients.
When potential clients see you have a blog that…
- Demonstrates your competence (sharing your process)
- Demonstrates the results you can get for them (client results)
…they are much, much more likely to hire you instead of your competition — because very few freelancers do this.
Freelancers and consultants who write publicly are in a class of their own.
It’s not about which is better.
It’s about how you can combine the two — and use them to complement each other.
What are some of the best tactics you apply when writing a copy?
The “Sales Safari” concept by Amy Hoy will change how you write copy forever.
Instead of jumping straight to the writing, you start with research.
What’s that look like?
First, you find somewhere online where your target audience is talking about their problems and desires.
EX: I’m writing a book about how liberal arts students can get a job in tech, so I’ll look up a Reddit thread on this subject.
Second, you create 5 headers:
- Pain — what your audience is struggling with that is causing them pain
- Hidden Pain — the deeper issues around what your target audience is struggling with
- Jargon — the words and phrases unique to your target audience
- Recommendations — what people are suggesting to solve the problem
- Worldview — how your target audience think about the subject
Third, you read the thread, and you write down any language that fits within the headers above:
- Pain: “I’m scared I will regret getting this major.”
- Hidden Pain: Uncertainty, anxiety, stress
- Jargon: BA, American Studies, grad school
- Recommendations: “Do NOT get a degree in American Studies unless you want to be making crap money all of your life.”
- Worldview: A liberal arts education is not useful to society
Fourth, rinse and repeat. Do this with 10 threads.
By the end of this process, you’ll have dozens of specific, crispy words and phrases taken exactly from the mouths (keyboards) of your potential customers.
Then, when you open up a page to write your copy, you’ll have all of this powerful language to use.
Most importantly, you’ll understand your potential customer deeply. You’ll know them better than they know themselves. When they read your copy, they’ll feel as though you were writing directly to them.
That’s the recipe for copy that gets your prospects to take action — and buy.
Good copy is curated, not written.
What is a legit way to earn money online daily?
A legit way to earn money online daily is with your personal website and SEO.
Ed Latimore earns $300–$600 per day this way.
That’s a passive 6-figures per year.
Here’s how I think he does it.
Ed’s website has three things:
- Traffic — a lot of people visit his website every day to read his content
- Products — books and info-products which he offers
- Sales — a way for people to enter their credit card information and buy his products
He generates traffic to his personal website by writing really good, in-depth content.
He‘s packaged what he’s learned into books and information products.
And finally, he sells these products via Gumroad — making it easy for people to buy.
Let’s say 500 people per day visit Ed’s site from Google.
2% of them buy a product worth $50.
That’s $500 per day.
It’s quite simple.
But, it’s not easy.
Ed has unique branding (“Stoic-Street Smarts”), is a superb writer, has a lot of lived experience — and enlisted an award-winning designer to design his website.
So, if you want to earn money daily online, here’s how I would do it (like Ed):
- Create a personal website
- Write content to get people to visit it
- Offer them products that add value — and make it easy for them to pay
In doing so, you’ll monetize yourself.
Here’s what Ed had to say about his website:
It’s a great way to build my email list and generate income. It’s also a great portfolio for my work and connects me to people who are looking for speakers or someone to reach out. The website is working for me even when I’m away from the computer. It’s a great set up for any passive income I want to generate.
And you can learn more about Ed’s website (and the other top personal websites) in my article:
> 29 Best Personal Websites 2020 (And Why They Have Them) – Tsavo Neal