| Dear Chase, I have a friend right now who is kicking ass as a copywriter, and it inspired me to write this email. He's around my age, and he's starting to make an absolutely ridiculous amount of money. As a generalist freelance copywriter, you stand to make between $2-5k a month per client on retainer. That's mostly what I've done. Once upon a time, I was able to stack clients around that size and I got up to $48k a month. It was a lot of work, but I pulled it off. However… My friend is able to get paid $10-20k PER CLIENT as a "copywriter". For this one specific reason: He has a supplemental skill outside of just copywriting that allows him to add WAY more value to his clients. And that's the magic sauce. This led me to create the 5 zones of copywriting skill level. Here they are. Zone 1: The desperate freelancer. You're taking on whatever you can get, and it's often low-paid work that you don't really love. A lot of Upwork and Fiverr vibes over here in this zone. Zone 2: The confident freelancer. You're a sought-after copywriter, and people are coming to YOU for work. You're charging more money, and you're getting referrals. You're the talk of the town. Everyone loves you. Zone 3: The productized freelancer. You're not just a copywriter. You serve a SPECIFIC purpose outside of just writing words that people use to grow their businesses. You have supplemental skills that you use alongside copywriting, and your ability is rare. Before we talk about the other two zones, let's talk about Zone 3 copywriters. My friend is an expert at building webinar funnels. The reason he gets paid SO MUCH from his clients is because he takes people that already have an existing business, uses this webinar model to help them make millions, and then takes a percentage of what he generates for them. He also really understands email, ads, and SMS. He's kind of a wizard. When I was a Zone 3 copywriter, my thing was email. I knew that REALLY well. I still do. Better than most. I was able to bring on a client, write killer email copy, and operate all of the backend stuff that they needed for email. That made me super valuable. That's where those $5k a month retainers started coming from. If you have the skill of copywriting, you should start to think about how you can add a supplemental skill to your offer so that you can charge more. For my friend, it's webinar funnels. For me, it's email. For others, it's SEO, CRO, Facebook ads, or VSLs. It only takes a few days or weeks to develop competency in one of these side skills, but it can allow you to charge a LOT more money to your clients than just writing copy and sending over a Google Doc. If you're really curious about the last two zones, here they are… Zone 4: The leveraged freelancer. You're still freelancing, but you have a team under you to help you do more work. You have maybe 1-3 junior writers that you pay a percentage of each project (or a small retainer/salary), and you can take on 3-5x the number of clients as you could on your own. That's where you go from $20-25k a month to $50-60k a month. Feels good. Zone 5: The former freelancer (AKA the offer owner). Now, you don't work with clients at all. Instead of using your magical copywriting abilities for others, you're doing it for yourself. That's what Stefan Georgi has done. He's SO GOOD at writing sales letters that he decided he should just do it for himself. Now he has health supplement offers that he makes 8 figures with upon launch. That's where every real copywriter ends up at some point. You become so good that you launch your own thing so you can take all of the money that your work generates. I've been through every zone, Chase. I kinda miss Zone 2 and 3. Those were so fun. Anyway. Hope that was helpful. Talk soon. Yours truly, Alex. Sent from my Macbook M2 MAX | 
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