Taking the Pain out of Content Creation.
Gabe Arnold is the Chief Pencil Sharpener at Copywriter Today.
Copywriter Today provides high quality content for smart business owners on a consistent basis that will help you beat your competitors and rank higher in search engines. They meet the content needs of everyone from business owners to marketing agencies who want to find a new and consistent way to reach your target audience members.
Learn more about how Copywriter Today can create your high quality content by listening to this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur above and don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – Spotify –Google Play –Castbox – TuneIn – RSS.
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Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, we're all reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.
Right in with us right now. We've got Gabe Arnold, Gabe, you are the Chief Pencil Sharpener at Copywriter Today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me, Josh. I'm looking forward to this. Well, you founded the company back in 2014. And you've met with some pretty great success. And I think really the best thing to do is just start by explaining how copywriter today works. And I think there's gonna be a lot of people that are going to listen
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This conversation and go, Okay, this sounds like someone I need to know. Because I think you've come up with a great productize model that solves a major problem that a lot of business owners today face. Yeah. I mean, it really came out of observation of what I what I saw happening for some of my clients, I, you know, and my own pain too, which I think is a good good problem to solve, right? Because over the years, I had just been doing a ton of web development, and I could come back, this was back in 2014, is when we actually started copier today, I would come back to somebody's site, you know, three months or two years later, and look at their blog. And there was still that, you know, coming soon blog post or, or we would be building a site and we'd be asking somebody, oh, can you give us your About Us page copy, because we can't launch that page without having you tell us what you're about. And I realized that there was really just two major scenarios that people fell into, they either didn't have the time to write their own content, even if they liked writing because like, I still find that sometimes which is nice.
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They have a team of writers now. Or they just really didn't like it because they didn't enjoy it in school or something happened or like they just never practiced it. And so most folks just don't have the time or don't have the interest to write. And and then they invest all this money in an asset like a website or even just on like their LinkedIn profile or anywhere they're spending time or trying to get something going. And nothing happens, even though they spent all this time and money and effort. And so after I actually got the idea from listening to Dan Norris on another podcast, the foundation podcast, and he had talked about WP curve, where he created this subscription of WordPress support solution. I was like, Oh, I could do that for content, because, you know, people need blog posts, and it could be something that on an ongoing basis, they're getting content that really drives engagement, keeps them in front of their audience and, you know, consistently gets their message out there. So as I have done with many ideas, which always sounds crazy when I reflect back on it, I built the website overnight. If you look back in the web,
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archive, it's ugliest thing you would ever see. And I launched it. And I just started to talking to my clients and connections and folks on LinkedIn about it. And I've never had this happen since, you know, since this but in a week I had 10 customers. And from there, I started writing all the content. And you know, then it scaled and we hired writers. And it's awesome, because it's all US based writers that write our content. And then we have editors that edit every single piece of content that goes out.
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And it It took off a lot faster than I thought initially that it would, but that's kind of the origin story.
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So I think one of the things that's very attractive to copywriter today is and you're on the web, I should say, at copywriter today. dotnet is that you've productized blog writing is that is that it? Yeah, and there's there's advantages on all sides of the model, which was, you know, which was my goal and is because a lot of the content model
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out there, or you can go buy a one off piece from a writer. But then next time you need another piece of content, you're starting from scratch, and you go have to post in a marketplace and hope that you get a good writer. The way we designed it is you work with one account manager, so they get to know you and your brand and everything about you. And then they manage the writers on the on your team underneath of that. And so every time you come back, they already have a brand document of who you are what you're about, you've already given them feedback on the first few pieces that have come in. And so you can really create this content creation engine, instead of it being the last thing on your to do list, which is super important. But we don't get to because it's so much effort to just go in and find another writer find the right the right thing. So the advantage of this way is you really get to have a writing team on your side on your team that's continually cranking out content for you around your brand and around your message. And the subscription model makes it consistent for my team and my writer so everybody knows that they have tons of work coming in. It keeps it top of mind for us.
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clients, so they always know, you know, we're going to continue to create content over the course of the year for you. And it really ends up, you know, being a win win, because everybody knows what to plan for. And it solves that problem of staying in front of your audience. And what I see and hear from some of our clients, as they say, you know, people come to me and say, Oh, I see you everywhere. I saw your blog post, I saw you out there. And it makes those initial conversations like so much warmer, so much easier. And it has a big impact on warming up your market. Oh, completely, completely. So. So currently, if somebody has, you know, they've got a SaaS product and, and they've got this blog, and and they haven't been updating it for quite some time, or, I mean, they're just they just don't have the resources. Right. And I think that that's very, very common is that a lot of us kind of look at our content, specifically our blog content, and it's kind of like look, I'll do it, but it's not my highest priority right now. I know I need to be doing this because I know you know, SEO is kind of a
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Long Term play and this is ultimately going to be good for me. But right now it's tyranny of the urgent I'm focusing on getting my product out the door supporting that product marketing, I'm spending money on advertising and we're doing client acquisition, that sort of thing. So I think it could be really easy for things like SEO and our content game, to you know, it's like gosh, you know, I need to invest my time and effort in the things that are going to get us more revenue in the next 30 days. Exactly. I mean, and you have to it's not I mean, it's Yes, it's it is like you say the tyranny of the urgent but you can't not pay attention to the urgent you won't have it. And and this way, it really gets set on autopilot for you like you invest a little bit of time upfront for us to onboard you and get to know you, you know, inside and out brand wise and what you want and then we handle everything for you. And so with that, you know, for as low as a few hundred bucks a month because we do want to offer something for those that are starting out.
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All the way up to we have clients who we give over 100 articles a month to and you know, they're they're big projects, big agencies, wherever you fit, we build a scalable model that solves that problem of putting content out there. And that's how you get eyeballs and traffic and you build your audience and you have to communicate to people in the way that they want to be communicated to. And yes, absolutely, video is a huge thing. But the writing and written content is still incredibly powerful. I've watched it very closely, obviously, over the years, and there's still a huge group of people that would much rather sit down and read your blog post than watch your video. And, you know, you said I think people sit in somewhere where they don't have the ability to like turn on a live video or just like that they're sitting waiting, like content is still super powerful. And not to mention, you know, email marketing content that we do white papers that we write. And even on top of like the regular subscription, we write full length books for folks be you know, too, so there's just limitless options. And again, it solves that problem of you don't have the time or you don't have the skill or interest.
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Write your own content and you don't have to we can do it for you. So, yeah, um, so Gabe, I guess then someone's kind of looking at what what are their options? And so, I suppose, you know, someone could say, well, I'm going to go and find a freelancer. But I, you know, that can you know, that can present a whole new series of challenges. And so talk to me about the problems that copywriter today solves that a business owner may encounter if they say, Well, I'm just gonna hire my, my friend's kid, you know, they're doing I guess they might be able to do it. Or, you know, I'm going to say, you know, I'm going to go on Upwork and I'm going to hire, you know, a team of people from the Philippines to update my blog. So talk to me where copywriter today comes in and makes that process a much better
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system for a business owner. Yeah, so I'll just give you the numbers. So that
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Because this is the reality of it, and business owners have to make the choice that is right for them. But just so everybody knows, we get 400 applications a year at the top of our writer application funnel, and we hire about 10.
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So if you think about that for a second, that we have an elimination hiring funnel so that nobody low quality even has a chance getting to the end where we'll even consider hiring them. You know, if you're the business owner going out there, number one, do you know what high quality content is like from an SEO perspective from you know, a conversational reading per se? Like what content Do you want out there? Are you going to train that writer in SEO writing so they don't overstuff things or do things the wrong way? And are you willing to go through dozens and dozens of writers to find the right one, we reverse engineer that whole process and we do that automatically before we even offer somebody a position. And so if you have that time, and that's how you want to handle it, absolutely do it. But we've just realized that we do it day in and day out.
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out so we can eliminate people that should never have a shot. We hired literally that that's like two and a half percent right? I'm thinking right.
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And they get to write for you. And that's, that's where people forget, like, absolutely, you can outsource because we're 100% remote team, all of our writers, all our editors, everybody right here in the United States. So you can outsource wherever you want to. But you have to get really good at outsourcing if you want to outsource. And it's its own skill set that you have to learn on top of is this good writing. And then you have to manage to the writer I mean, you know, it just really spins out of control pretty fast. So, and I should say too, that you can find the current pricing at copywriter today dotnet. As of when we're recording this, your pricing ranges from 265 to 465 a month. And so now can you explain how those packages work? Yeah, so we're actually this year doing some upgrades to what we offer, but essentially we're moving to wherever
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thing is edited we we do, we are still going to offer that $200 level package, there's going to be a couple slight modifications in it. But with all the packages, now, the content gets researched and written by the writer, they do a self edit and proofreading and then it goes to the editing team and then we return it back to you. If you want to be at that autopilot level or that posting for you level that you know, that's where you'll go to the higher level and we're expanding some things there. But essentially, one of the shifts that we're making actually within the next few weeks is you know, you you can get a price per word so we're we essentially land anywhere from if you have a smaller lower package, your top end that you're going to pay us as 1415 cents a word down to when you buy the most from us, you end up at about eight or nine cents a word and that's fully researched, edited everything. So what our account, the folks that have managed accounts with our clients our client success managers do is they sit down and plan out your entire
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years worth of content with you. And you approve that whole plan. And then we handle it from there. So you get updates, and it's posted and managed, but we actually take away all the content marketing planning as well for you, mom.
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Well, this, I mean, it really sounds like it solves a lot of headaches. In terms of, you know, I've been through writers, and it can be so frustrating. It's in many ways, it's like, you know, hiring developers, you know, if, if you want to babysit all that, like, you know, we've been through writers that end up taking me so much of my extra time. And that's not good for our business, when I'm having to do copy editing,
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you know, when I should be doing SEO stuff.
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And so I can see how this could solve a huge, huge problem, you know, and it's not just, you know, having good sentence structure or good grammar, good spelling, but it's, it's also you know, looking out for
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The cultural things like, you know, I remember one time when we tried hiring an overseas writer, and there was and this was for my other company savings Angel, and there was a a brand of cheese that had been recalled, because people were contracting listeria disease from it. And so she had actually written that, you know, if you have this cheese, you know, either throw it away or give it to your pet. And I'm like, Oh, wait, what? No, like, I you know, I'm not sure if that would be good advice. I don't think it would be good advice even for where she was from. But in the United States, there's no way like my my audience for savings agencies or moms in the suburbs. I would I would have been like, you know, they would have tied me up drugged me behind a car if I tried to do something, say something like that. There's no way so you know, there's there's cultural things that come up from time to time and again,
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I think that you know, unless you want to review everything, and just do a lot of rewriting, that's, that's so stressful, is it worth a couple of hundred extra dollars honestly, to make your life better. And, you know, as we were kind of talking about earlier, actually, let's talk about this just one more, just a little bit more. And that is the return on investment from having great content. And it is, you know, it can be a little bit more of a long play if you're not repurposing well, and getting that you know, in front of people directly in social media. But But how else, uh, you know, should people think in terms of how content is going to help grow their business. It's definitely two sided. For me, it's all about efficiency of time and then reaching new people. So there's two sides to it to me. Often we will write ebooks or guides or longer FAQ piece. FAQ documents for people because you don't need to
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answer the same question over and over, when somebody walks in your door, if you're a brick and mortar business, or if somebody is working with you, and you're an online, you know, type entity, you can save a ton of time by writing something really clear that helps answer the questions you answer over and over. That's like one simple example of how you can save time, internally and externally with your clients. And then on top of that, yes, it is a long term play, you know, as far as building traffic over time, but to have an asset to hand somebody and say, Hey, you know, I know we chatted about XYZ service, whatever you offer, I have a little guy that recaps how it works and and what you should do, you now are a step above, honestly, a lot of your competitors because you have something valuable you can deliver immediately during or after that initial conversation.
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And the last thing I always think about is like, you aren't like if you're writing service, obviously, you're not gonna hire us. So you're not a writing service. And you should focus on what you're good at, because at minimum, I was having this conversation with a friend the other day, you're worth 150 an hour 200 an hour $400
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If you really break it down, so that you doing something you're not good at is foolish because it will hurt your business. So solve the problem one way or the other. And if you aren't going to solve it, you might as well you know, do it with a team that's really really strong and can manage it the right way for you. Yeah, yeah. Well, this is really great. Gabe, um, aside from going to your website and learning about the the productize services that you offer, what are some other things that people might kind of start their relationship with you caught any content of your own that you'd highly recommend? Anything that people can? can maybe start enjoying for free? What resources would you come ready to share? Yeah, two things. One, we always want to get to know people before we jumped in because we want it to be a good fit for them and so they can go right to the site and they can get a free sample 400 word article just to see how the process you know is working with our team seeing that whole process so they can try it out. Absolutely no money we don't ask for you know, credit card. We don't
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For $1, you can go in and get a free sample and see how that works. And then another thing that we offer just to help people with their, you know, get their creative juices flowing and stuff is we have a headline idea tool, that if you're super stuck, and you still have to do some of this on your own, go in right under our free marketing tools. There's our headline generator, and it gives you 250 ideas, starters. And yes, it's a software that we built. So it's not like, gonna give you the perfect thing, but it's gonna give you all these ideas that you can run with, and there are plenty of 80% of them are usable out of the box. But those are the two things that we felt like, you know, these will really help people move forward one way or the other. And that way, if it's a good fit, we can help them and if not, we give them something of value either way. Now, well, Gabe Arnold, you're the founder and CEO of the Copywriter Today on the web at Copywritertoday.net This is great. You and I are going to be chatting.
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And so I'm am so glad we got connected. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me on, Josh. I really appreciate it.
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