The highest paying copywriting jobs, assuming you’re a successful and experienced writer, are:
- Long-form sales page writer
- Pay-per-click (PPC) campaign manager
- Search Engine Optimized (SEO) content writer
The amount of money you make in a freelance copywriting job will vary wildly depending on your experience level, your willingness to guarantee results, the volume of work on a per-client or per-project basis, and the amount of time you’re willing to devote to your writing.
In this article, we’ll break down the details of the top-paying jobs and what factors you need to know to maximize your revenue. You’ll also get some pointers on what you can do to fill in the gaps if you don’t have all the ingredients to make the most money possible.
Long Form Sales Page Writer
Top writers can command as much as $10,000 per letter with the added incentive of earning a cut of the sales if the letter converts well. If that seems like a lot of babble you haven’t heard before, don’t worry. Here are a few explanations to help you out.
What is a Long Form Sales Page?
A Sales Page is a document posted to the Internet that entices potential customers to buy a product or service. It’s not as simple as putting out a page that says “Buy My Stuff!” over and over again. There are specific methods that mix art with science to help people with the purchasing decision.
It’s called Long-form because it can be several pages long. If you’re interested in quick-hit, short-text writing assignments, this is not the one for you. However, if you like to take your time and do research to get deep into the heads of potential customers, the financial rewards are the best of the bunch.
Did I mention getting a cut of the sales? Yes, it’s not uncommon for long-form sales page writers to get a percentage of the sales generated from the letter they write. The cut you get is a form of royalties that keeps generating cash every time your client uses the letter. It’s not unheard of for a single sales letter to keep making you money years after you wrote it.
PPC Campaign Manager
It may not sound like a PPC Campaign Manager has anything to do with copywriting, but a successful PPC campaign is completely dependent on effective copywriting and testing. Lots and lots of testing.
A copywriter who knows how to deliver results for their client with PPC campaigns can earn as much as $6,000 monthly per client or 15% of the client’s ad spend, whichever is higher.
What’s Involved in Becoming a PPC Campaign Manager?
First, it helps to understand exactly what is a PPC ad. Those are the little ads you see at the top of Google search results or intermittently inserted in your Facebook feed or that occasionally pop up in your Twitter timeline.
PPC ads are very short compared to other ads since their main job is to get customers to stop scrolling through their feeds just long enough to click on the ad and get redirected to the client’s sales page.
A PPC ad is the bait on the hook. Once you snag a customer’s attention, your number one goal is to reel them over to your client.
Copywriters who are PPC Campaign Managers not only write the ads but they manage the campaigns on the platforms where the ads run, they check the data to see how well the ads are performing, and they adjust the ads to keep pushing the click volume as high as possible.
That’s where the testing comes in. Testing different headlines. Testing multiple versions of the first sentence. Adjusting the targeting to make sure the platform, such as Facebook, is showing the ad to the right audience.
It’s a constant flow of tweaking and adjusting to make sure your client gets the most clicks for the least amount of money, And the whole process happens very fast. It’s not uncommon for an ad campaign to need multiple adjustments in a single day.
This job is right for you if you like writing short copy that packs a punch AND you like to look at the data to see how your ad is performing in real-time. If metrics are not your thing, this job type may not be the best fit for you.
SEO Content Writer
It’s all about the rankings. People use Google thousands of times per hour to find answers to their burning questions. Your client will always want to be at the top of that list of answers so they can get the most traffic and sell potential customers the most stuff.
To make sure your client is at the top of every search results in their field, the content on their website needs to be optimized for search engines. That’s where you come in.
Top SEO Content Writers that consistently demonstrate they can get their articles, blog posts, press releases, and reviews to show up on Google’s all-important first page can earn as much as $700 per article for a 5-page website. That’s $3,500 for a single project.
Better still, SEO Content Writers that know how to get those top rankings are much more likely to get repeat business.
What’s the Difference Between SEO Writing and Regular Writing?
There’s too much to cover completely here, but the types of clients and the types of content those client’s need can be just about anything. Press releases. Informational blog posts. How-To Articles. Best-Of lists. And on and on. There’s no limit to the types of content, but all of them have something in common: Keywords.
When people search for answers, they use predictable combinations of words (aka Keywords) to describe their questions. Google knows how to look for patterns of words and phrases in a client’s content to match it as the best answer.
When you optimize written content for Google, you learn how to write helpful, meaningful content with the patterns of keywords to match what people are searching for.
Your job as an SEO Content Writer will be to either write original content or re-write the client’s existing content to maximize the chances the content will show up as the top result in a related google Search.
Of all the top-paying jobs mentioned in this article, this one has the most variety and flexibility because it depends on what types of content you want to write and how often you want to write it.
Now that you have a better idea about each job type, let’s take a look at some common questions copywriters ask about earning those top dollars.
Do I Need Special Training to Become a Top Copywriter?
No, but it helps. When you’re writing for a client, you’re taking their money with the expectation of results. You can figure it out the hard way through trial and error, running the risk of making a lot of clients angry in the process.
For example, if you market yourself as an SEO Content Writer but have never worked with a mentor earning a copywriter’s salary or taken excellent SEO Content Writer training, your chances of being successful are very small.
Can Copywriting Make You Rich?
Yes, if you have the right factors in place. Time and commitment are essential. It’s great to make some extra cash copywriting in your spare time, but it takes a full-time commitment, with continuous improvement, to earn top dollar.
What is the Most Profitable Niche for Copywriting?
Small question, big answer. Too big to cover comprehensively in this article, but it largely boils down to the product or service, the client volume, and the customer volume.
You can make big money copywriting for a very few clients that sell big-ticket items like boats, houses, or cars. But you can make just as much money copywriting for a high number of clients that offer a commodity like plumbing services or shoes.
As a solid rule of thumb, always look for clients that are already making money. They’ll understand the value of investing in your services.
Take the Next Step…
Now that you have a better idea about the types of best paid online writing jobs, your next step is to pick one of the freelance writing jobs mentioned in this article that fits you best.
Seek out a mentor or take awesome training to help you get started, and never stop improving.
You can do it!
