5 Projects to Start Your B2B Copywriting Business ─ Fast
By Lisa Christoffel

Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels

Wherever you are in your professional life, your interest in writing shows you’re ready for a change.

And this ‘copywriting thing’ looks pretty good.

I agree.

To someone like me, who was already deep into my corporate career, making a six-figure salary, taking a pay cut was not in my plans. But I very definitely wanted a change … the corporate world had lost its shine for me.

Then I found copywriting … specifically, B2B copywriting.

Where I could make a six-figure salary, while …

Choosing my own clients, ensuring I’m only working with people who are pleasant, easy to work with, and selling quality products and services in niches that interest me.

Picking the kinds of projects I want, as many as I want, so I can balance my income and my free time according to my own preferences.

And most of all, I can quickly add new work if I want or need to. Because most B2B projects are not intense month-long, all-consuming sales letters.

You can handle multiple projects at one time.

They’re often no longer than writing an email, or a short blog post.

In fact, I’d like to introduce you to five B2B copywriting projects that are easy to learn, don’t take a ton of time to write, and pay very well “per hour” of time spent on them.

String together enough of these projects, and you’ll find yourself easily clearing $100,000 a year … working less than 40 hours a week.

1. Short-Form Blog Posts

Short blog posts are usually less than 1,200 words, and for a moderately experienced writer, usually takes 3-4 hours to complete, between researching, writing, and editing.

And for that amount of time, companies will pay you $200 to $800 per post.

With most B2B marketers focusing on content creation as one of their main lead-generation tools, and 50% of B2B companies outsourcing their content marketing, you’ll find plenty of clients across almost any B2B niche you can conceive.

Let’s say you have five clients paying you to write one blog post a week for them ─ that’s a blog post every single day Monday to Friday for you. If we averaged your pay at $300/post, you’d be making $1,500/week or $6,000 a month.

Get your average post fee to $500/post, at $2,500/week, you’d be over the six-figure income mark.

Working less than four hours a day.

Because content marketing, including blog posting, does require the company to regularly keep producing more, you are more likely to get regular writing gigs.

And as far as learning how to write blog posts, as long as you understand the basics of good “business casual” writing, as Steve Slaunwhite calls it, you can learn how to write a good, SEO-focused short-form blog post in less than a day.

2. Long-Form Blog Posts

These posts tend to be 1,200-3,000+ words per blog. They’re longer because you’re diving deeper into a topic, either more technical or more prescriptive. These aren’t your “Six Tips for the Best …” kinds of blogs.

They may involve an analysis of a new market trend in your client’s industry, with advice for the reader on how to best match their marketing efforts to those trends.

Or you may be writing a post about how a new law will affect sellers in a certain industry, letting them know what changes they’ll need to make to their business to stay in compliance.

Long-form blog posts involve more research and require a more in-depth knowledge of the industry … but as long as you’re writing in a niche you’re familiar with, the extra time and attention they require will be worth the effort.

If you’re writing in an industry in which you’ve got work experience … well, all the better. You’ll be able to write more quickly and probably more authoritatively.

They typically pay between $250 and $1,000 per post. Writing one long-form post a month per client, just nine clients would put you over $100,000 per year.

That’s nine posts a month. Even if it were to take you a full day to write each post, you’d only be writing nine days a month …

These don’t require any additional training above the kind needed for short-form blog posts, so you could add both services to your business by learning one skill.

3. B2B Emails

Emails are a favorite B2B marketing method ─ because they’re often the least costly and most effective tool in a marketer’s toolbelt.

And for you, the copywriter, they’re fun, easy, and simple to learn.

Since companies can quickly measure how well your emails are converting, and they often send emails daily or weekly, you could become a go-to writer for a company mailing dozens to hundreds of emails a year.

The fee range for emails varies widely, depending on the size of the company, the length and depth of the email content, and the proximity to the sale (the closer to the sale, the higher the fee tends to be).

You can reliably charge $250 to $1,000 per email, but often even more, especially if the email is more like a sales letter.

Since most companies are going to communicate with their lists multiple times per week, you could build your business around email only and hit a six-figure goal with a handful of clients.

4. Web Pages

There are different kinds of web pages, and each has its own price tag.

Homepages tend to have the highest fee, because they’re like the storefront … they’re what brings the prospect into the store. They need to be clear, creative, engaging, and effective.

But even if your clients are happy with their homepages, the web copy on the rest of their site needs to be updated all the time to make the Google gods happy.

For example, you could write information pages, which answer prospects’ questions about a product or service ─ quick, easy to write, and you can charge $100 to $250 per page.

For each client, you’re probably going to write a dozen or more pages, depending on their product portfolio. So each project could net you $2,400. To write non-salesy, persuasive, clear content. And the project can be done in a few days.

One of these kinds of projects a month will deliver roughly $30,000 a year just for working a few days a month.

And every web project comes with opportunities for so much more work ─ Site Audits ($1,000 to $2,000 each), SEO makeovers ($1,500 to $3,000 per project), sales pages ($500 to $1,250 per sales page), About page makeovers, updating old content … the list is almost endless. The average (effective) B2B website is 51-100 pages, per HubSpot. That’s a lot of maintenance for the company … and a lot of opportunity for you.

A moderately-sized web project can earn you up to $4,000.

How long does it take to learn how to write web copy? You could learn in a weekend, less than eight hours.

5. Case Studies and White Papers

These content pieces have become even more popular over the past year of social-distancing.

A sales rep at a trade show can no longer demonstrate the product to a prospect. They can’t talk face-to-face to the prospect about their specific situation and how the product can help them achieve their business goals.

So how is a business who used to rely on trade shows supposed to attract prospects?

Case studies are very effective at telling the story of how the hero (the prospect) made the right choice by purchasing the client’s product or service.

And because you can build a business just around case studies, you could start your B2B copy business just by learning how to write case studies. They follow a specific formula, making them an ideal project for new writers.

Usually 1,200 to 2,000 words, you can charge roughly $1/word ($1,200 to $2,000 per case study). A few of these a month, and you’ve got a solid business.

Case studies are fun too: you get to talk to a happy customer about their experiences before they started using your client’s product or service … and then afterward.

And then there are white papers. Maybe you prefer not to interview customers. (It’s not everyone’s cup of tea.)

But if you like to do research, enjoy technical talk with the company experts, and then translating that information into a clear, persuasive guide or report, white papers might be the place for you to focus.

You can typically charge $2,000-$6,500 for a 5 to 10-page document.

And since it is also a service you can build a B2B business around, you can get your business started fast.

Which one will you choose?

If you’re not sure which of these fast projects you want to focus on first, Steve Slaunwhite teaches them all, plus a few more lucrative and in-demand B2B projects, in his Modern B2B Copywriting program.

Do you have any questions about getting started as a B2B copywriter? Please share in the comments.