Ed Gandia earns $500,000 a year doing 30 hours a week what he loves most: business writing and teaching colleagues how to build a thriving writing practice. He teaches them through both courses and private coaching for a selected group of clients.
GandiaBased in the Atlanta area, he started his copywriting business 14 years ago after a fast-paced career in sales. He gradually reached the point where he was raking in $750,000 in annual revenue and bringing in contractors when he was inundated with work. Then he decided that the pace of his freelance career was ruining his lifestyle.
“I quickly realized that I burned out quickly and sacrificed way too much time for my family,” he says.
Ed Gandia went from sales executive to copywriter to entrepreneur.
So Gandia stepped back and set new priorities – and now loves his current lifestyle, where he works Monday through Thursday and enjoys a three-day weekend every week.
Recently, Gandia shared his advice with me on how other writers can build thriving, high-income businesses like him. The answer is not to publish one article after another.
Here are some of his tips to improve your writing career.
Niche down. If you write regularly on a topic, try to develop expertise in a particular area. That will help you become the go-to person customer who considers when they need a writer on a particular topic. “Narrow your field so that you are the obvious choice for your target market,” Gandia says.
He has taken this approach with his podcast, High Income Business Writing. There are many podcasts about freelance writing and copywriting, but most are not as specialized as his.
Costs for ‘discovery’. One of Gandia’s colleagues found that he spent a lot of unpaid time helping his clients figure out what engagement strategies they needed, but he wasn’t making any money from that point on. Now he offers a certain program in which he is paid to help them refine their needs and make a plan. At the end of the consultation, they receive an audit and recommendations.
“It is of great value to help clients bring all their ideas down a very narrow path and plan,” Gandia says. “Customers can implement the plan themselves and find someone to execute it, or hire you. In any case, you were paid for the value you delivered.”
It’s all part of thinking as a writer and entrepreneur at the same time. “You have to be more than just a writer,” he says. “You have to help customers come up with creative solutions. This is where I think freelance writing is going.”
Collaborate with other writers. Gandia regularly collaborates with other writers to develop lessons, courses, and other collaborations that don’t take much time. He looks for writers who have already developed intellectual property that his audience would appreciate — and who would benefit from publishing it on his mailing list. “Once we record that workshop, we can later resell that information in a variety of ways,” Gandia says.
One successful workshop was with a writer who helps her clients build editorial calendars and content strategies in her ‘Content Calendar Playbook’. She teamed up with Gandia to develop a self-study course that brought them to Gandia’s list. The result? They brought in tens of thousands of dollars in additional revenue, Gandia says.
“Having automated much of my income gives me more time for active income, where I can be more picky about customers and charge higher fees,” Gandia says.
