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.