Do you want to learn how to become a copywriter?

Copywriters are the creative minds behind the words that sell. From writing website content (like blog posts and landing pages), marketing emails and newsletters, and advertisements (such as Facebook ads, brochures, billboards, and more) to crafting product descriptions and social media campaigns, copywriters help businesses connect with their audiences and drive results.

This is a very flexible and highly rewarding career, especially if you enjoy writing and want to run an online business.

Today, I have a great interview to share with you. It’s with Nicki Krawczyk, a professional copywriter with over 20 years of experience working with major brands like adidas, TJMaxx, and Hasbro. She’s also the founder of the Comprehensive Copywriting Academy, where she has taught over 12,000 students how to launch successful copywriting careers.

Nicki started her journey with a passion for writing and turned it into a six-figure career that gives her complete control over her schedule and clients. She’s sharing her best tips on how you can do the same.

In this interview, I ask Nicki questions about becoming a copywriter, including:

• What is copywriting, and how is it different from other types of writing?
• How much money can a copywriter earn?
• What skills or qualifications are needed to succeed?
• How can someone find their first copywriting client?
• Is there room for new in-house and freelance copywriters in the industry?
• Plus more!

Whether you’re looking for a side hustle or dreaming of a full-time career that’s flexible and creative, today’s interview is a must-read.

You can click here to learn more about the copywriting course.

How To Become a Copywriter

If you want to learn how to launch your copywriting career, this interview is a great place to get started!

1. Tell me your story. Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is Nicki Krawczyk—I’ve been a professional copywriter for more than 20 years, writing for multi-billion dollar companies like adidas, TJMaxx, Keurig, Hasbro and more, down to solopreneurs and every size business in between!

I’ve also taught more than 12,000 students to become professional copywriters through our Comprehensive Copywriting Academy. We’re the #1 all-in-one online copywriting training program. 

2. What is copywriting, and how does it differ from other types of writing?

Copywriting is, hands down, the best-kept career secret for people who love to write—even though I guarantee that there’s copy within an arms distance of you right now! Copywriting is marketing and advertising writing. We’re the ones who write the websites, emails, Facebook and Instagram ads, banner ads, direct mail, billboards, back covers of books, product descriptions on websites, product packaging… All kinds of stuff! Copywriting is writing that’s designed to persuade or to sell; to get people to take action. But more than anything else, it’s about creating connections between people who have a want or a need, and the best solution to that want or that need.

Part of what I love about copywriting is that it’s this fun mix of creativity and strategy. And most writing is creative, of course, but because we have direct impacts on companies and organizations, they’re willing to pay us so well for our strategic expertise.

There are a lot of things that make copywriting different—or at least, more specialized—than other kinds of writing, but I think the first thing that strikes people is how well copywriters are paid. (More on that in a bit!)

It’s an awful truth that most writers don’t make much money. The vast majority of novelists need a day job to make ends meet and even journalists aren’t paid nearly as much as they should be. Even trying to write blogs for clients (which is called content writing—it’s writing that’s designed to entertain, educate, and/or inspire) is, generally, a low-paid, churn and burn industry because there’s such a low barrier to entry. 

But copywriters are the writers who are in high demand and get paid well—for doing a job that’s fun to begin with!

3. Why did you decide to become a copywriter, and how did you get started?

The funny thing is, I was actually writing copy long before I realized it! My dad was a marketing director and, when I was in high school he would bring home extra writing work for me to do. Then I went to college for PR, discovered PR wasn’t for me, I worked events and management at a health club…and had a little career crisis.

My mom sent me a book about copywriting—and the book itself wasn’t actually very good, but it reminded me that copywriting was something I could do. (Don’t ask me *why* it never occurred to me!)

So I dug in, started finding clients, made lots and lots of mistakes, but now, 20+ years and dozens and dozens of clients later, my students benefit from all of the mistakes I made and all of the things I’ve learned. 

4. How did you find your first copywriting client?

Okay, so bear in mind that this was 20-some years ago! Because I worked at the health club, I really understood health club marketing and sales, so I actually went to the library to get the addresses of the local health clubs, printed up postcards, and sent them out. (This all makes me sound like I’m 130 years old.) Obviously, the internet has made it soooo much easier to find and reach out to clients. 

The thing that I tell our students is that clients want you to reach out to them—when you do it in the right way. When someone in business realizes they have something they need to get done, it’s actually such an annoyance because then they also realize that they have to find someone to do it! When our students show up in people’s inboxes, they’re making their lives easier by providing a solution. 

But this is key: That outreach cannot be at all salesy or focused on what the copywriter wants. At all. We teach a step-by-step system that’s focused on providing value first and foremost, and that’s why our students regularly report back that people thank them for reaching out! 

I know that some people think the easiest way to get started as a freelancer is to look for work on job bidding sites like Upwork or Fiverr, but those are actually the worst ways for a copywriter to try to land work. You’re constantly creating a ton of proposals for free (and they have to be well-written, since you’re a writer) and you have to decrease your rate to be competitive. On top of that, you’re putting all of the control in someone else’s hands, and that’s a very dangerous place to be. You can’t build a freelance business when other people have all of the control of whether you get work or not.

Our system of outreach lets the copywriter decide how much work they want to take on, who they want to work with, and how much they make. All they have to do is follow the steps!

5. What do you enjoy most about being a copywriter?

I mentioned earlier that I love the blend of creativity and strategy—that’s definitely the top element for me. Fundamentally, it’s just a really fun way to make a living. But, on top of that, I get to be in complete control of my career. I get to decide who I work with and on what, how much I make, when I work, and even where I work. For a couple of years, I was spending 3-4 months overseas and it didn’t disrupt my work (or my fun) in the least bit. 

I like the variety of projects I get to work on and the variety of businesses and people I get to learn about. And I really like being able to tell people that I’m a writer. 

I definitely do less client work now that I also teach, but I’ll never give it up. It’s too much fun!

6. How much money can someone realistically earn as a copywriter?

I think it sounds a little exaggerated when I tell people that it’s perfectly possible (probable, if they follow the steps) to make six figures as a copywriter. So, I usually follow that up with some math. 

A starting hourly rate for a new copywriter would be somewhere in the $50-60 per hour range. Not every project is going to be by the hour (we teach our students exactly how to price their services and when they should charge by the hour or by the project), but an hourly rate is a good place to start benchmarking.

Well, if someone makes $55 an hour and wants to work 40 hours per week, that comes out to $114,000 per year. And, of course, not all of that time is literally spent writing—there’s brainstorming time, outlining, editing, client calls, outreach, etc. 

And, certainly, their rates will increase as they get more experience and land more clients. One of our students became a copywriter and within the first three years, she was making six figures working just 20 hours per week, and actually retired her husband to help her run the business. 

This isn’t a get rich quick scheme—there’s definitely learning and work to do to get there. But it’s a career that’s valued by our clients and pays us very well. 

7. What skills or qualifications do you think are needed to succeed as a copywriter?

First and foremost, someone needs to be a good writer. I know that sounds obvious, but I think a lot of people who have that talent discount it. They figure everyone can do it because they can do it, and that’s very much not true. But if you’re the kind of person whose friends are always asking you to write their cover letters or read over their emails to their bosses or any of that kind of stuff, you’re a good writer and you shouldn’t blow that off.

Beyond that, really, the next important things are to be open to learning and to be willing to get out of your comfort zone. Maybe that sounds obvious too, but you’d be surprised at how many adults can intellectually accept that they don’t know something, but then be caught off guard when they discover they have to learn something new and hone those skills. And doing something new, anything new, makes you get outside of your comfort zone a bit and, inevitably, kicks up some resistance in your mind. It’s a natural part of the process—I added a whole mindset course to the program because of it. But if you can work through it and keep making progress anyway, you can absolutely be successful.

Certifications. Certifications are…B.S. All a certification proves is that you’ve paid money for something. Believe me; people ask if we give certifications all the time but I absolutely won’t do it because they’re meaningless. With copywriting, the proof is in the pudding: If you can write great copy (and you’ll demonstrate that in your portfolio), people will hire you. No matter your background, age, gender, whatever. It’s the quality of your copywriting that matters. In fact, if you went into a Creative Director’s office trying to show off your “certification,” you’d get laughed out of the room. Sorry—I get a little worked up about this one. It’s such a gimmick and people think certifications mean something. They don’t; they just make you look like an amateur to the professionals. 

8. What does someone need to get started in copywriting?

Really, not much.

They need a computer and access to a good internet connection. Sometimes people ask if they can get by with a phone or a tablet, and maybe, but that just strikes me as really difficult for writing and reviewing a document. They can use Google docs for free to write their copy and a gmail email address is fine. They’ll also need a portfolio website, but the sites that let you create and host those usually cost around $15 a month. That’s it. 

9. What does a typical day look like for you as a copywriter?

This career can be really flexible. If someone wants to work on-staff (at an ad agency or on a company’s internal creative team), then you’ll be a bit limited by the hours the company wants you to work. But if you want to be freelance, you can decide when and how you work. A lot of our students start out writing copy as a side business while they’re working another job or caring for kids during the day (or reversed if the kids are at school during the day!), and you can decide how many hours you want to put to it. Working a few hours a week is perfectly enough to make $1,000-$2,000 per month, and more as your experience increases.

And then, of course, if you want to do it as your main job, you can decide how many hours you’d like to work. (When I was full-time freelance, I liked to stay in the 30-35 range and had no problem hitting six figures per year.) You get to make your own schedule. Sure, you might have to coordinate calls with clients to talk about new projects or review ones you’re working on, but that accounts for maybe 5%-10% of your time. The rest of it is up to you to schedule as you see fit, whenever and wherever it works for you to fit.

The average day for a freelancer would probably have a mix of writing, editing, concepting (brainstorming), outreach for new clients, emailing with current clients, and, like I said, maybe a client call. And how you lay that out in your day is up to you. I’m utterly useless in the mid-afternoon, so that’s when I usually go do errands or read or take myself out for a late lunch.

10. Is there room for new copywriters in the industry?

There is so much room for new writers! There is so much more need for skilled copywriters than there are writers to fill it. There are, literally, millions of companies and organizations in the US alone.  (And you don’t even have to limit yourself to companies in your country). And there are somewhere between 4 and 5 million new companies started every year! Every single one of them needs effective messaging. Every one. Now, will every one of those hire a copywriter? They should, but no. Still, considering a copywriter only needs 4-5 clients each month to make a six-figure income and several of those clients will probably stay with you month-to-month, it’s an absolutely incredible opportunity.

I’ve been saying this to students since I started teaching in 2012 and I was laughing yesterday as I was saying it again, but it only becomes more and more true: There has never been a better time to become a copywriter. Companies are only increasing their understanding of how crucial great messaging is to their success. 

11. What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a copywriter?

Well, I think the biggest challenges were when I was first starting out—I didn’t know how to find clients, how to figure out my pricing, how to get repeat clients. I made a lot of mistakes back then and cost myself a lot of time and money. Luckily, my students can learn from my mistakes and all of the things I’ve learned to do since then. There isn’t a project or a client issue I haven’t faced and can’t coach them through. 

But I think the biggest challenges that our students face are inside jobs. When you’re doing something new, your brain is going to kick up a lot of resistance. There is, literally, a part of your brain that’s main job is to keep you safe, as in, sitting on your sofa eating Cheetos and not doing or trying anything new. But all of the best and most fulfilling things in life—a new career, a relationship, having kids, traveling—all start out outside our comfort zones. Our community has been a big factor in our students’ success because they get that personal support and they know that, not only are they not alone, but that they’re not feeling anything different than anyone else is.

The secret to success is really not sexy: It’s just a combination of persistence and consistency. Get on the path and follow the proven steps, yes, on the days when you’re motivated and winning at life, but also on days when you don’t feel like it or when you’re doubting yourself. (And when you’re feeling that way, get support!) I always tell my students that you can complete a marathon by taking baby steps, as long as you keep taking those steps. Creating a copywriting career is nowhere near as challenging as completing a marathon (thank goodness!), but the same principle applies. Just keep following the steps and you will hit your goals.

12. Can you list the steps someone should take to get started as a copywriter?

The first place someone needs to start is with getting some training. I know that this sounds self-serving since we have a training program of our own, but you can’t charge for something until you know how to do it. It’s a career—just like a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a pastry chef, etc.—and just like all of those, it requires training in order to actually know how to do it. 

After training—learning how to do it—you need to get experience. You need to practice it. A lot of people think you can’t get experience without having clients, and that you can’t get clients without experience. The second part is true (you need experience to get clients), but you don’t need clients to get experience. You need to practice your skills and get feedback to hone them and then you need to use those skills to create spec pieces (pieces you create and label “spec”) that demonstrate your skills before you have clients. We teach our students how to do all of this.

And then the third part is that you need to have a system for finding and landing clients. If you don’t have a plan for that, you can’t be successful. Like I was saying earlier, trying to get work on Upwork or relying on referrals or just hoping work is going to come to you—all of that is a recipe for disaster. 

People think that freelancing is “risky” but that’s mostly because they don’t know how to actually go and find and land clients. The truth is that dry spells or “feast and famine” income are absolutely not inevitable for freelancers; they only happen when either freelancers are putting the control in someone else’s hands or they’re lax about finding clients.

When you have a proven, repeatable, reliable system for finding and landing clients, you’re in control of the work that’s coming in and you can avoid dry spells. Not only that, you can dial it up when you want to make more or dial it down if you want to work less for a bit. 

Training, experience, and a system for finding clients—that’s really what it comes down to.

13. Do you think it’s important for a copywriter to have a niche?

Not only is it not important, it’s actually dangerous for a copywriter to choose a niche when they’re first starting out. Think about it: How could someone who’s new to copywriting possibly know which industry or which type of writing they’re going to want to do indefinitely? And how could they know if that industry is going to have enough work for them?

Plus, when you go all in on a niche, you gear your website and all of your marketing toward that, so even if someone in another industry came to your website to see about hiring you, they’d see that you have that niche and would assume you don’t want the work.

By choosing a niche right away, a copywriter is unnecessarily and artificially limiting their opportunities. When you’re just getting started, you want to get as much depth and breadth of experience that you can: all different kinds of work, different kinds of industries, and different brand voices. When you have a portfolio that demonstrates you can do lots of different kinds of work, a company is more likely to hire you because they can have more confidence that you’ll be able to do their kind of work. 

On top of that, it’s valuable for a company to have a copywriter with experience in other industries and with other kinds of projects. There are learnings and ideas and tactics that you’ve picked up that you can share that this industry hasn’t seen yet. You don’t have that opportunity if you only stick to one niche.

If a copywriter really decides they want to go all in on one area after a few years, they absolutely can, but it’s a very bad idea to try to do it at the outset. A potentially career-damaging idea. 

And, frankly, I think the variety is part of the fun of copywriting! I’ve never chosen a niche and no other copywriter needs to, either.

14. What are your best tips for someone who wants to become a copywriter?

Well, we’ve covered a lot of them! Certificates, niches, Upwork—all of that is just a recipe for disaster. 

We talked a little, too, about consistency and persistence; maybe that’s the best thing to dive into. So many of us make plans to do something new or change something and we don’t end up following through. Or, we try to go all in for, like, four or five hours and then we burn out. The best way to follow through on something—and this sounds so simple but stick with me—is just to put it on your calendar. Literally, open up your google calendar or iCal or whatever you use and schedule the time to do what it is that you want to do. It’s such a little thing but it absolutely predicts the people who’ll succeed from the people who’ll get lost in the weeds. 

If you want to be a copywriter, you absolutely can become one. You absolutely can hit your goals. But you can’t get there if you don’t put in the learning and the practice to do it, and you very likely won’t do those if you don’t put them on your calendar.

I tell our students that they can become copywriters in the time it takes to have a cup of coffee. (I like to savor my coffee, so, 15 to 30 minutes.) And that is completely true—but they have to actually do it. Put those 15 to 30 minutes on your calendar, five days a week, and just follow the process. It really is that simple. Maybe not easy, but definitely simple.

15. What are some effective ways for copywriters to grow their client base or increase their rates?

You know, increasing rates and growing their client bases is really not difficult at all. When copywriters want to increase their client bases, they refer to (or fill in) their list of companies to pitch, and then move down the list doing outreach. (In a way that provides value, first and foremost!). As I tell our students, creating that “pitch list” should be fun; it’s probably the one time I’ll tell them to go down rabbit holes and get a little lost on the internet as they look at companies and then explore other companies that are their direct and indirect competitors, other companies that are adjacent to them, etc. Including sometimes just going on Instagram or Facebook and noticing who’s advertising to you, not to mention looking at the emails in your own inbox! 

And increasing rates is pretty straightforward, too. As a copywriter increases their experience and/or works with a client for a while, they’ll do one of two things, depending on the type of work they’re doing. For their “project rate” projects (again, we teach our students exactly how to figure all of this out), they’ll just factor in a higher rate per hour as they calculate all of the elements that the project will include. That’s just going to naturally raise their rates, without having to announce it to anyone. And if a copywriter is doing hourly work, they’ll just quote their higher rate to their new client and let their current clients know that their hourly rate will be increasing. I usually recommend giving clients at least two months’ notice and, of course, they need to respond to acknowledge it before you can start billing at the higher rate.

With both of these, though, it’s easy because they’re both built on a solid foundation. If you want more clients, you dial up your outreach system. And if you want to increase your rates, you use the systems you’re already using to calculate your current rates. 

16. How is AI affecting the copywriting industry? 

I know that some people are concerned about this and I understand: It feels ominous. But the good news is that, in a nutshell, it’s not going to replace copywriters. All of the big business gurus who were saying a year ago, “Uh oh, is this going to replace writers?” are all now saying, “AI is a great tool…but you need a human to actually use it and incorporate the output it gives you.” 

And AI is a great tool—we’ve added a course into the program to teach copywriters how to wield it for research and brainstorming—but it just can’t replace copywriters. First, it fundamentally can’t create anything new. It can regurgitate what’s already out there, but it can’t create. And, second, the actual writing is only part of what we do. AI can’t partner with clients, and strategize with them, and get them to dig deeper into their projects, and make suggestions where they see opportunities or oversights. AI can’t advise a client to change a project’s direction based on what that client has told them about their goals and their target audiences and it can’t offer new ideas for different ways of approaching a target audience or coming at a message differently.

Content writers (we talked about this way back toward the beginning) should be a little concerned, since the quality required for content is much lower. Granted, right now search engines are penalizing sites for using too much AI in their content, but still. Content writers should be concerned about AI (and about several other problems with their industry).

But copywriters should be excited about AI and all of the developments being made; it all just helps us do our jobs even better. 

17. Can you tell me about the copywriting course you offer? Why should someone take it?

Our program is called the Comprehensive Copywriting Academy and we don’t call it “comprehensive” for nothing! We’re the #1 all-in-one online copywriting training program and more than 12,000 students have trusted us to help them learn copywriting and build their careers.

We teach people absolutely everything they need to know to build a thriving copywriting career from knowing nothing about copywriting to learning the craft, honing their skills, building their experience, and consistently finding and landing great-paying clients.

The training and exercises are self-paced and we have twice monthly live coaching calls with our copywriting coaches, not to mention a very active student-only Facebook group for getting feedback, asking questions, and celebrating wins with me, our coaches, and the entire CCA community.

And, on top of that, the program comes with lifetime access so, yes, you can always take a break if life gets in the way and then hop back into it. But also, there are trainings that you won’t even need until a client requests that kind of work! At the same time, we’re always adding to the program (we just added a course about using AI as a tool) and our students get access to any new elements we add.

Our program is the most thorough one out there, not to mention the only one that offers lifetime access to not just the course, but the community and coaching as well. Our team is dedicated to helping all of our students hit all of their goals—whether that be through an on-staff job, full-time freelancing, or even part-time freelancing—and experiencing all of the fulfillment, freedom, and financial success that comes with a professional copywriting career.

You can click here to learn more about the copywriting course.

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