Article Two: Your Career Start-Up Timeline

Article two of five in the series "Setting Your Goal of Becoming a Copywriter"

You've chosen your reasons and motivations to become a copywriter. Let's tackle what goals those items generate for you.

For instance, let's say your first reason involves being able to leave your current day job and work for yourself.

Creating a timeline for your goal involves three things:
1. How much time you are able to commit to achieving the goal.
2. Your drive - how truly ready you are for this goal to happen.
3. The steps it takes to make that particular goal come to life.

Unless you've been working as an in-house copywriter already, the time to meet the goal of being able to leave your current job isn't dependent upon your experience. Rather, how much time and energy per week you're able to comfortably commit to learning copywriting is the true factor.

As a guideline, the average individual, with or without sales experience, should be able to initiate a copywriting business in six months while working a day job. This involves being able to commit at least one hour per day.

Now there are personal variances, based on other goals you set for yourself and your business. They could change this or they could not. This assessment is based upon what it takes to enroll in a copywriting course, such as those offered by AWAI, read books on the topic of copywriting, and study the master copywriters out there now and the ones who are the forerunners of this field. There's a lot available out there. You must be willing to take the time to see who the masters are and why they are masters.

Everyone learns at his own pace. Some are faster than others, some are slower. When you set your initial training timeline, be flexible. You may find out a few months into it that you will need more than 6 months. Or maybe you'll only need 4 months. No problem. As long as it's right for you, it's all good.

Now, let's say you've determined you will need this 6 months period to learn how the copywriting techniques. Next you'll need to set a time frame for your copywriting business to make money. For this step of the goal, you need to network and market yourself.

The networking is something you can work on as you train. Join copywriting boards, participate in internet discussions about copywriting, join business groups in your area and attend the meetings. When you learned enough to start marketing yourself, join in on more advanced discussions and meetings where you can "talk shop" and make the connections that will get you referrals.

For marketing your copywriting business you should do a few things:
• Develop a list of potential clients to contact.
• Adopt a strategy for presenting your copywriting services to those potential clients.
• Be brave enough to market yourself.

Will you mail a sales letter or post card to your potential clients? If so, are you prepared to face your insecurities and hesitations to follow up your mailings with a phone call?

The more aggressive you are about marketing yourself, the quicker your business will begin to provide you with an income. (Further help on this attitude is forthcoming in a future post.)

Whether you're visiting local companies in person to market your services or using email and snail mail, look at the steps involved in your marketing strategy. Figure out how long it will take you to gain jobs. If you're taking a quality course and following what the masters put out there for you to read, you will gain insight on methods that will work for you.

In my opinion, if you're timely in getting your name to potential clients and do follow up with repeat contacts with them, it's reasonably safe to say that your business can be earning an income within 4 months. So, in 10 months you can see your copywriting business producing a paycheck for you.

Honestly, this is a very SAFE timeline. For many, once they start studying copywriting they build momentum from the excitement of what they are accomplishing and the business comes to life before they expect it to. But you may be someone facing health, time, or family issues that bring you closer to the 10 month mark, or even takes you to the 12 month point. That is OKAY.

Tomorrow's Article "So When Do You Feel Safe To Quit Your Day Job?"