Every consultant or freelancer has had to justify their cost at times. 

This fun swipe shows a dog groomer who was sick of people snarky remarks like, "WOW it costs less to cut MY hair than my DOGS hair 🙄"

So they made this clever sign as a price justification!

I decided to put this chart in the "Wisdom" section because so many people drink coffee and use it to concentrate.

If you're like me, you have no idea what different coffee's mean, but this little chart explains it all perfectly:

Kind of interesting that almost every coffee drink is just different levels of milk and espresso!

This is a great little chart that outlines what could be "pseudoscience" and how to spot it.

I love mental frameworks like this, and this is a great one:

Have you ever seen something (furniture, item, whatever...) and wondered where it's from? 

For example I have these little woven "stool" thingies in my garage gym area:

Let's find out how to buy more (or one's just like them for cheaper)!

You use "Google Lens" to find them. Just his that camera icon on the Google app on your phone:

...and point your camera at the stool, and it'll find similar items!

Instantly I can see a list of items just like it! A lot of times you can find the same item except way cheaper:

For example I like this lamp....so let's try to find it:

Bam! I instantly found a bunch of similar ones!

============================
"Don't Undercharge"
tl;dr: A quick story how not to undercharge when doing client work.
============================
In college I bought a used moped from a Ducati dealership, look at that hog 😏

Me and the owner of the Ducati dealership somehow began talking about ways to change his website to start ranking in Google at the #1 result for "Ducati Dealership."

He asked me to do the changes and send an invoice...

I had NO idea what to charge.

Being 20 at the time, I thought $500 would be incredible.

I told my mentor about this, and he said, "YOU BETTER CHARGE HIM AT LEAST $5,000 OR I WILL SLAP YOU!"

It was hard to fathom someone would pay that much for a simple SEO project..

Best case scenario I thought:
I'd tell him $5,000, he'd laugh in my face, and I'd negotiate down to $1,000. Still great money to me!

But a funny thing happened: I told him the price and he instantly said, "Ok cool, when do we start." 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯

He didn't question the price and he immediately agreed to it.

That's when I realized to him $5,000 was cheap to be ranked for "Ducati Dealership."

He sells $25,000 sport bikes all day long, so to him $5,000 wasn't much.

Lesson: When working with businesses, try charging high....like 10X more than you think. Charge for the value. You can always negotiate lower.

A company I run called Copywriting Course that has 8 revenue streams: 

These revenue streams include:
#1.) Copywriting Course subscriptions
#2.) SwipeFile.com ad revenue
#3.) Book
#4.) 1-on-1 Consulting
#5.) YouTube Channel
#6.) Amazon Affiliate
#7.) Email Sponsorships
#8.) Advising Companies

I made a breakdown of how each one works here in this video:

I think to further optimize these revenue streams for 2023 I would like to make the more "passive" revenue streams higher. 

This would include: 
- YouTube ads
- SwipeFile ads 
- Book revenue 
- Friday SWIPES email ad sponsorships

It sells a training course that teaches people to become better writers with a focus on selling. Small businesses buy this to learn how to write better copy, and companies buy it for their employees to teach them to write better copy.

If people want help on their copy, they post it here, and myself and writers go through it and change it up for them. Then on Thursdays we get on an Office Hours call and take up to 8 questions from members, and re-do copy or talk strategy live on the call.

So the Copywriting Course is a combination training and community…and we sell monthly and yearly subscriptions to it. 

A swipe file is a collection of good marketing materials you like or can learn from. Years ago I started building my own swipe file on a desktop folder. Also a phone folder. But then when I wanted to recall something like Pricing structures, I’d have to sift through the whole damn thing.

So I created SwipeFile.com, where the whole world could access my private swipe file. I wanted to SwipeFile to be an independent site, and not necessarily related to Copywriting Course. The way it makes money is it has Google Adsense ads on it, and when someone clicks an ad, I get a portion of that revenue.

Swipe File makes money and pays for itself, but the main goal of it is to build the worlds best swipe file.

I self published a book called This Book Will Teach You To Write Better. it sells on Amazon. I originally tried to make it free, but with Amazon I have to charge some money. I made it $5, and it was designed to be a readable-in-30 minutes crash course on writing copy. Till this day it still sells and has hundreds of reviews.

I will say, of any form of income I make from the copywriting world, this book is the most “PASSIVE” of them all. I published it a few years ago, and have done NOTHING since. It just naturally sells on the Amazon platform, and still keeps going to this day. Honestly if I wanted to boost my passive income, I’d re-do this book and boost the price to $20/pop.

Before I started copywriting course people would ask for help with their email newsletters, and I’d charge them by the hour, sometimes by the project depending on the client.

I would help people re-write things on the spot, which is honestly very rewarding in many ways: I got to see insider numbers of different companies, hear what methods work and don’t work for them, get to meet really cool people, and they pay me money. All around it’s pretty awesome.

If all I did was consult, that would make a pretty good living. I think the reason most people find other income streams though is if you ONLY consult, your time becomes quite in demand, and your business can’t function without you. In fact, YOU are the business. This is why finding other streams of income outside of just consulting is good.

I post videos about copywriting, people subscribe, and I get paid in two ways:

1.) People decide to buy our copywriting course training. So they signup for a subscription.

-and-

2.) I get a percentage of ad revenue. Whenever people watch my videos, YouTube will show advertisements, and you get to share in a percentage of those. 

You can see all my YouTube stats at CopywritingCourse.com/stats

When people click links (like these book links), and buy a book, I get a small percentage of that. This usually isn’t HUGE revenue, but if you make a few hundred bucks a month like this, it’s usually very passive. 

For example I wrote a post about how I setup my home office camera setup and lighting. When it started ranking in the search results, people would often buy the cameras I recommended, and if I get 4% of an $900 purchase that’s $36 I didn’t have to work too hard for.

So this isn’t full time income, but it adds up to a nice little nugget!

Sometimes people sponsor my Friday SWIPES email and pay me for it. This email goes out to just shy of 60,000 people every week, and sponsors can promote their product in a small section of the email.

I’m even testing out a self-serve method at copywritingcourse.com/sponsor

Sometimes medium to large companies will bring me on as an adviser. This means I get equity in the company, and a certain amount of advising fees. I often help the companies develop their email newsletters out, much like with TheHustle or AppSumo, and if there’s a sale or acquisition, I might see piece of that upside too.

It sells a training course that teaches people to become better writers with a focus on selling. Small businesses buy this to learn how to write better copy, and companies buy it for their employees to teach them to write better copy.

If people want help on their copy, they post it here, and myself and writers go through it and change it up for them. Then on Thursdays we get on an Office Hours call and take up to 8 questions from members, and re-do copy or talk strategy live on the call.

So the Copywriting Course is a combination training and community…and we sell monthly and yearly subscriptions to it. 

A swipe file is a collection of good marketing materials you like or can learn from. Years ago I started building my own swipe file on a desktop folder. Also a phone folder. But then when I wanted to recall something like Pricing structures, I’d have to sift through the whole damn thing.

So I created SwipeFile.com, where the whole world could access my private swipe file. I wanted to SwipeFile to be an independent site, and not necessarily related to Copywriting Course. The way it makes money is it has Google Adsense ads on it, and when someone clicks an ad, I get a portion of that revenue.

Swipe File makes money and pays for itself, but the main goal of it is to build the worlds best swipe file.

I self published a book called This Book Will Teach You To Write Better. it sells on Amazon. I originally tried to make it free, but with Amazon I have to charge some money. I made it $5, and it was designed to be a readable-in-30 minutes crash course on writing copy. Till this day it still sells and has hundreds of reviews.

I will say, of any form of income I make from the copywriting world, this book is the most “PASSIVE” of them all. I published it a few years ago, and have done NOTHING since. It just naturally sells on the Amazon platform, and still keeps going to this day. Honestly if I wanted to boost my passive income, I’d re-do this book and boost the price to $20/pop.

Before I started copywriting course people would ask for help with their email newsletters, and I’d charge them by the hour, sometimes by the project depending on the client.

I would help people re-write things on the spot, which is honestly very rewarding in many ways: I got to see insider numbers of different companies, hear what methods work and don’t work for them, get to meet really cool people, and they pay me money. All around it’s pretty awesome.

If all I did was consult, that would make a pretty good living. I think the reason most people find other income streams though is if you ONLY consult, your time becomes quite in demand, and your business can’t function without you. In fact, YOU are the business. This is why finding other streams of income outside of just consulting is good.

I post videos about copywriting, people subscribe, and I get paid in two ways:

1.) People decide to buy our copywriting course training. So they signup for a subscription.

-and-

2.) I get a percentage of ad revenue. Whenever people watch my videos, YouTube will show advertisements, and you get to share in a percentage of those. 

You can see all my YouTube stats at CopywritingCourse.com/stats

When people click links (like these book links), and buy a book, I get a small percentage of that. This usually isn’t HUGE revenue, but if you make a few hundred bucks a month like this, it’s usually very passive. 

For example I wrote a post about how I setup my home office camera setup and lighting. When it started ranking in the search results, people would often buy the cameras I recommended, and if I get 4% of an $900 purchase that’s $36 I didn’t have to work too hard for.

So this isn’t full time income, but it adds up to a nice little nugget!

Sometimes people sponsor my Friday SWIPES email and pay me for it. This email goes out to just shy of 60,000 people every week, and sponsors can promote their product in a small section of the email.

I’m even testing out a self-serve method at copywritingcourse.com/sponsor

Sometimes medium to large companies will bring me on as an adviser. This means I get equity in the company, and a certain amount of advising fees. I often help the companies develop their email newsletters out, much like with TheHustle or AppSumo, and if there’s a sale or acquisition, I might see piece of that upside too.