Living the Writer's Life: Jonas Munnich
A Quiz Set the Stage for His Future Profitable Writing Career
By Mindy McHorse

Jonas is thrilled to have found a career he can do at his leisure
that brings both income and royalties to support his young family.

Jonas Munnich began his career in sales because he’d heard it would be a good option for anyone hoping to be successful in business and entrepreneurship. Selling over the phone was not a great fit, but the concept of crafting words to persuade and improve sales fascinated him. Then a life-changing quiz set him on a direct path to copywriting and the promise of a terrific career. Read on to discover how …

Take me back to life before you came into writing.

Before I started writing for a living, I dropped out of college, and then I started with sales because I heard this would be a good opportunity if you want to be successful in business and entrepreneurship. I worked with mostly lead-gen agencies to sell their services. Pretty early on, I heard about copywriting. I learned that words are powerful and you can learn how to sell with words and to improve your pitch. But I thought I should learn selling over the phone first, or in person.

I didn’t enjoy selling over the phone very much, but I always wrote these follow-up emails and pre-frame emails for the calls, and I had a lot of success with these emails. I noticed, if I would write certain emails before the call, the prospect would react differently, or it would just make selling over the phone easier. At some point, I thought, Why don’t I just do copywriting instead?

How did you make that leap into copywriting?

I did a quiz by Perry Marshall. Basically, the quiz told me I should be a copywriter because I’m someone who’s better when he can prepare for something; I’m more introverted.

What kind of copywriting did you start with?

I learned quickly that you should niche down, and I chose financial right out of the gate, but I wrote some copy for the agency I’d been working with. That was an easy way to get started and I would recommend this to anyone. You can pick any company you’re familiar with or you’ve bought products from. You can write ads for them. Maybe they are interested in running them and paying you for them, maybe not, but you’ve learned something.

I then heard about Agora Financial, where Joe Schriefer is the copy chief. I wrote him a sales letter pitching myself as a writer, and he liked it and said it was one of the best he’d ever received. But it took me two months.

Clearly, all the time you put into it paid off. You’re a multilingual copywriter based in Germany, is that right? Which language do you prefer writing in?

Yeah, southwest Germany, the area where they produce Porsche cars and Mercedes. I write in German for Agora Germany, but I also currently work at Stansberry Research, and I write in English there.

I research mostly English articles, and my research material’s in English. At first, in Germany, from the get-go, I started studying American financial promotions, and it was actually hard for me to write in German because I didn’t know the expressions for certain things in German. Actually, I had to learn how to write good German copy.

What’s been your biggest reward so far, thanks to copywriting?

Recently, I wrote a promotion that worked very well. And then I got my first big royalty check, which wasn’t even that big, but it was cool. I’ve got a 2-year-old at home, and for me, it’s cool to pay for my family’s expenses with royalties and stuff and with writing.

Do you have any major copywriting goals?

One goal I have is to make a million a year gross income for myself at one time. I know very, very few writers make that ever, but I think it’s possible, especially in finance.

If you could go back and talk to yourself when you were still in sales, what would you tell yourself about the path ahead of you?

I would tell me, “Start copywriting now, as soon as possible. Start it today, or this second — start.” And I could be much farther ahead, probably.

What advice would you give to someone just getting started?

I would recommend picking a niche, and I would find out what the top businesses in this niche are, and then find out what ads and what copy they send out, and then read and study that all the time.

Jonas's Living The Writer's Life story was originally published in Barefoot Writer. To learn more about how you can start living your dream writer's life too, click here.

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