Here’s an actual response I got to my email the other day, looking for other freelancers to farm work out to:
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Hi Daniel,
Nice to hear from you. Really insightful story about your mentor and your thoughts.
I write copy for (market), and I’m interested in working with you to delight clients who come your way.
Here are a few samples of blog posts, written to sell, that I’ve written:
(Links)
I charge $1500/page for landing pages with professional, effective copy to sell a product or service.
Kindly let me know if you need anything else, to get started.
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This guy’s blog posts weren’t bad, but since he was pitching landing pages, I followed up with a simple response:
“Hey, not bad blog posts. Any examples of landing pages you’ve done?”
His reply:
“Not yet. My key strength lies in persuasive writing, and getting readers to take action. And I can do the same for landing pages.”
Ah.
(A bit cheeky to charge $1500 then …)
Needless to say, he was promptly disqualified.
Now, no offence to the guy (besides, he’s reading this).
I checked out his site and he seemed to be a genuinely lovely bloke. Plus, his writing was decent — he clearly has talent.
But lemme tell ya somethin’, son: talent don’t mean squat to someone who’s fixin’ to hire ya!
Because, what’s the number one thing that a client wants to know before they hire you?
Hm?
Sorry, I couldn’t hear you there. A bit louder please …
Yes, that’s right:
They want to know that you can …
DO THEIR WORK.
NOTHING else matters. Not how talented you are, not how many blog posts you’ve written, not how good your reviews are. All that stuff is just to prove to the client you can DO THEIR WORK.
And the best way to do that?
Show an example of how you have ALREADY done what you are claiming to be able to do.
Sure, our friend didn’t have any landing pages, but it’s not that hard to get one:
Come up with your own product, and write a page to sell it.
Or go find someone else’s landing page that sucks, rewrite it for them for free, and send it to them (bonus: you could get a testimonial out of it).
Or heck, just make up a page if you have to.
You could probably do it in under an hour.
But if you contact someone without a single portfolio piece, it says two things:
- You have no experience
- You aren’t even willing to put in even one hour of work to GET some experience.
And that ain’t a good look …
Anyway, I told all this to our friend. And to his credit, he thanked me and promised to do it.
If he comes back to me with something good, I might even add him to my list of freelancers I use …
Speaking of which.
If you want to join the party, and get on my list of freelancers who I share work with (for a referral fee), offer’s open to you too:
Reply or hit me up at daniel@persuasivepage.com with what you do, what you charge, and a few samples of your best work.
Till tomorrow,
Daniel