Get Paid (Well) for Writing Simple Emails in Your Spare-Time
By Roy Furr

If you've got a writing bone in your body … If you can write simple emails that tell a story or share a piece of information and ask the reader to take action at the bottom … Then this is a spare-time biz opportunity you should seriously investigate.

What am I talking about? Writing email autoresponder copy.

Autoresponders are emails that go out automatically in response to a customer action such as registering on a website or placing an order. They deliver a set sequence of messages — which could be a multi-part sales pitch or education series. The emails go out to the prospect or customer over the days, weeks, or months following their first action, when they've just shown their interest in — and excitement about — what a business offers.

Autoresponder emails have also become one of the most in-demand pieces of copy in Internet marketing. Which means there's tons of opportunity here, too.

The best part for you? Writing autoresponders is very easy to do in your spare time. And judging from the project I'll show you below and others I've done like it, it can be very lucrative, too.

To show you the kind of money you can make doing this and the time flexibility it allows, I'm going to give you a breakdown of an autoresponder project I just finished.

Get your foot in the door with autoresponders

Here's a quick hint for how to land autoresponder writing projects.

Whenever I speak with a new potential writing client, I ask how they're communicating with their prospects and customers. If they say "not at all," or are only using a form of communication requiring them to actively press "send" on every email — such as a monthly or weekly newsletter — I know they're prime candidates for an autoresponder series.

I just ask, "Wouldn't you like to communicate with your customers when they're hottest — when they've just raised their hand and said they're interested in more information from you? Instead of just adding them to your regular newsletter list, getting around to them as much as one month later with your next communication? Don't you think they're more likely to buy if you communicate with them regularly for a few days or weeks following their initial interest?"

It's hard for a client to say "no."

I had just that scenario happen recently. I approached a client advertising for writing help. After a short conversation, I learned he wanted to communicate better with customers who had just placed an order, to help them use his membership website, and to upsell them on higher levels of service. This is exactly what an autoresponder can accomplish — and I jumped at the opportunity.

The project outline

Like I said, it was hard for him to say "no." My recommendation of an autoresponder series lined up perfectly with what he was looking to accomplish — so I drafted a proposal.

I would write a series of seven autoresponder emails, to be sent to new subscribers one per day, for each of the seven days following their order. Each email was to be up to 1,000 words long (many far less). And for topics, I could draw on quite a bit of preexisting material surrounding his service.

You see, an autoresponder email sequence doesn't even have to sell. This project was a good example of an autoresponder series where the primary purpose is to add value to his service. The secondary aim was to get new subscribers to engage more deeply with his service — to start using the website. Yet I didn't have the pressure of hard-selling in my emails, the emails are simply communication pieces.

The fee for the project? $2,100. $300 per email.

He admitted the price was higher than he expected, then wired me the first half of the project fee to get started ASAP. He knew my emails would increase customer engagement, subscription renewals, and would lead to upsells into higher levels of service — quickly paying for themselves, then generating profits for him for years. (This is such a "duh" project that clients don't hesitate to pay you well.)

You can do it all in your spare time, too

I picked my timeline, too — and because I wanted to do it in my spare time, I offered to do two emails per week until completion. So the project was completely dictated by my schedule.

Well, I got started, and the first two emails took maybe 30-45 minutes each to write. The next four took a little over an hour each. And the last one was quick — about 30 minutes. About six or seven hours total writing to get first drafts on the entire project.

Working with the client to refine the emails a bit will take a few more hours. And the phone calls and administrative work around the project will add up to another couple hours.

Maybe a total of 14 hours in my spare time, and this project will be done. Divide the $2,100 project fee across those 14 hours and my hourly fee on this project is $150 per hour. Not too bad.

(Could you see yourself getting paid this well, for work like this?)

Remember, too, this is something I did in my spare time — he didn't care if I wrote the emails from nine to five, at midnight, or whenever, as long as I got them to him when I said I would. (I like to write from about five o'clock on, early in the morning, when there's no distractions.)

And the content? I drew heavily on other information surrounding the service, including a free report for subscribers he'd already written. The content was the easy part — it just needed to be original writing in his voice. And by the end of the email, it needed to tie into taking action to engage with his service on a deeper level — to visit the website and use it.

You can do this, too, for good money

This really is something you can do if you can write clear, simple emails on a single topic. It doesn't require the same level of sales copywriting skills it takes to write a sales letter. And, as this project proves, it's completely doable in your spare time.

Maybe you won't start off making $300 per email — but at first you can easily charge $100 per email, and that fee can quickly grow. I spent a lot of time at Bootcamp in November talking to Jay White, author of AWAI's Autoresponder Apprentice: How to Become a Successful Copywriter Without Writing Sales Letters, and he charges $500 per email, and can blow through them at two per hour.

In fact, I've been going through Jay's course recently to hone my skills, and I have to say it's worth every penny.

Click here to check out Autoresponder Apprentice and decide for yourself if this is a good spare-time gig for you too.

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Published: December 8, 2009