After reading an article on the Washington Post website that shared the unfortunate story about a couple of freelance writers who had lost clients and were forced to take up other ‘offline’ work because of the AI tool, ChatGPT, I called a friend who works as a freelance writer to discuss the future of writing.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear that he wasn’t too fearful of ChatGPT taking his job just yet.
Firstly, he has been told by clients that he was safe. They like the ‘realness’ of his writing and the ‘personality’ that he puts into his work.
He also does other work which ChatGPT cannot do. So in that way, he cannot be replaced just yet.
And secondly, he has a back-up plan which he believes still has plenty of years of profitability in it.
His back-up plan interested me and so I want to share with you some of the things we discussed.
The reason I was interested in his back-up plan is that I know from firsthand experience how profitable it can be because it is something that we have done a lot of in the past, and still do.
His idea is digital and focuses on email and online, whereas what we do is physical and needs to be printed and then posted out to people.
What I am talking about here are newsletters.
There has been a surge in popularity for newsletters recently, and the great thing about newsletters today, is that they are digital and can be published at the push of a button and accessed by thousands of people from all around the world.
There are very few running costs with an online newsletter.
The reason why he is not necessarily concerned about being replaced by AI – other than being reassured by the people he writes for that he is safe – is that with newsletters, you can replace one or two good paying clients with several hundred people (possibly thousands) paying a small subscription fee… and do less work.
A freelance writer will do different work for several clients, whereas with a newsletter, you are writing for only one client… the paying subscribers.
The fact that they are all interested in the same thing means that you can write one article that will be enjoyed by hundreds of people, but with clients, a freelance writer needs to write a new article per client.
It also depends on the kind of contracts and clients a freelance writer has. They could write for one person and earn £2,000 per month, or they could write for 10 or more different clients to earn that £2,000.
There is a limit to what a writer can produce.
scroll down to carry on reading…
FREE Digital Copy - No Cost to You...
OVER 30,000 COPIES SOLD AT £19.95!
To claim your FREE COPY, simply complete your details below and hit the submit button!
Send For Your FREE Copy Now!
Even the fastest writers can only write for a specific number of clients each month. They cannot churn out thousands of articles and emails.
Unless they are one of the most sought after copywriters on the planet, there will be a ceiling to the amount of money they can make per client and per month.
With a newsletter… you can make a lot more money and write less because you are simply selling the same piece of written work to many people.
Let’s say that you earn £100 writing a one thousand word article. To make £1,000, you would need to write 10 articles.
But with a newsletter, you can write a one thousand word article and make £1,000 by having 200 people paying you £5 to access it.
If you have 400 people paying you £5 you will make £2,000.
Have 1,000 people paying you £5 and you will be making a nice £5,000 for that same one thousand word article.
A newsletter could be daily, weekly or monthly and may need more than just 1,000 words; however, you get the point.
You swap paying clients who each want specific content tailored to their needs for an audience all wanting the same one thing.
It makes your work load a lot easier.
With a newsletter, you can have as many paying subscribers as you can handle, which can be a lot due to the fact that it is online.
Last week I read about how a journalist was earning $1 million a year thanks to having 10,000 people paying him between $100 and $120 a year to access his newsletter.
I also read about how another journalist set up her own newsletter when she was made redundant in 2020 and now has over 20,000 people subscribing to it.
I don’t know if that is the amount of people paying $5 for the paid newsletter or the amount subscribed to her free newsletter.
If that is the amount subscribed to the free newsletter and she had a decent 3% of that figure paying her $5 for her paid-for newsletter (she publishes so much for free and charges for her best content) then she would be making a decent $3,000 per month.
If that 20,000 figure is the amount that are paying to read her paid-for content, then she is making $100,000 each month… which in proper money is around £84,000 per month!
You don’t get money like that writing for clients unless you are a copywriter at the top of your game.
She started her paid-for newsletter by accident when she caught the ‘paid newsletter button’ and set her work behind a pay wall, resulting in 400 people initially paying her to read her content.
That first edition of her paid-for newsletter earned her $2,000 all from accidentally hitting that button.
Having your own newsletter is a very appealing.
You only need to create the content once which can take as little as a day or two… depending on what content you are supplying that is.
In the video below (click the link), Andi, our techy guy, walks you through a great subscription business that provides a weekly newsletter of information that is easy to compile.
Revealed! A Simple Fully Automated Subscription Income Model You Can Start From Home… TODAY!
In that video, Andi, points out that the newsletter creator, Maggie Molloy, had two newsletters, she has since expanded her newsletter empire and today she has four.
Three of them are priced at €5 per month, and the fourth is slightly more expensive at €20 per month.
If you were to subscribe to all four newsletters, Maggie Molloy would be making €35 per month which is around £30 in real money.
Imagine that she had just 100 people all paying her £30 each month to receive these four newsletters; she would be earning a decent £3,000 each month.
That’s not too bad is it?
I have no idea what her actual subscriber figures are but the fact that she has expanded to four newsletters makes me think that it is worth it for her.
She may have several hundred people subscribing to one or more of her newsletters giving her a decent monthly income.
What Maggie is doing isn’t that hard. It is a simple business model supplying a simple newsletter that anyone can recreate.
If this business model appeals to you, I would recommend that you focus on one newsletter first until you were up and running and earning a decent income before expanding other newsletters.
You can watch that video here:
Revealed! A Simple Fully Automated Subscription Income Model You Can Start From Home… TODAY!
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PS… This is something which requires a simple website as show in The 30 Days To £30K Challenge, can be marketed for free using social media and takes very little time to work on each week.
Here’s that link again: