Not always does it happen that an entrepreneur has funds to hire a bunch of people in the starting.
Especially when I talk about Digi-preneurs ( entrepreneurs that have an online product/service). In this scenario, and in many other scenarios, it’s a case of solo-preneurship. One person, trying to do everything to make ends meet.
There’s nothing wrong with it. I’ve done that as well.
I bootstrapped Scribbify. From the day 1, it has been profitable. No matter how small or how big, we do make profits each and every month.
After 7 months of starting Scribbify, I had already lost my office, and I was sitting in my favorite restaurant thinking. I was wondering why is the company grew so slow. I noticed that the restaurant owner had hired 2 cleaning guys. Although the restaurant didn’t even get that many walk-ins. For some reason, I asked him why does he have 2 cleaning guys when he doesn’t have that much rush.
He responded, “If I start doing all the work, I’ll be exhausted and won’t be able to sell more on the counter“.
This dialogue kept repeating in my head. I walked my way to home and realized the problem; I was trying to do all by my self.
If I start talking about why you should hire a cleaning guy, or maybe a sales guy, or try to cover everything, I’ll be sitting here all day. In this article, I’ll cover one single area – content writing (since that’s what we sell). I’ll talk about 10 Reasons I think (and encourage entrepreneurs to invest in content writing)
1. Moonlighting ( Working two jobs )
A lot of entrepreneurs work on their passion side by side a regular 9 to 5 Job.
No matter how it sounds, no matter how small your business is, you still have to deal with expenses every month. No matter how small a business is, it will have some amount of expense every month. If I let that slide, you have regular living expense as well – food, water, rent, travel & more.
Movies and motivational documentaries don’t cover it, but that sure is one thing to worry about. This is why a lot of entrepreneurs have their dream going on side by side their regular 9 to 5 Jobs.
Jobs and Schools are designed to leave no time for creativity or extra work. ( Share this ! )
The time you’re back from your first job, your mind needs rest. But, due to circumstances, you jump in and start working on the second job(kudos to your spirit though). But, no matter how strong your dedication is, your mind is tired. You can do a lot of work at this time, like checking out emails or doing something that doesn’t essentially require a fresh mind.
When it comes to content writing, it simply doesn’t work. Not only do you need to be fresh, but also have your creative juices flowing to use the right combination of words. That’s why I do all my writing work before 10 am ( morning ) or after 12 pm ( night ).
If you have a 9 to 5 alongside your dream that you’re building, it heavily impacts your productivity and creativity(which highly reflects in your content).
2. More and More Work
Let’s take ScribbifyRetail for example.
When I started the project, there was no one onboard. I basically set up a woocommerce website and used a PNG design I had to create a mockup and make some listings. I was very frequent in posting the designs on Instagram, reaching out to influencers and making facebook ads.
As the time progressed, the store got more sales. With more sales, comes more responsibility.
What if someone wanted to know about their order?
I needed a support guy
What if I wanted to put forward more designs every week?
I needed a graphic designer
How do I alone pass on all the order data to our printers?
I needed someone who could help me in fulfilling orders
How do I keep the social media channels updated so that sales come?
I needed a social media management person
Now, I’d have decided to do ALL of this by myself but I’ve learned a lot after burning myself in past.
My point is, as your business grows, you need more and more hands in order to keep you going.
3. Writer’s Block
I have a budding entrepreneur, blogger and freelancer writer @Saiyam Chutani. A few weeks back he was telling how he has too much work and doesn’t feel the energy to write anymore. Saiyam was planning to hire more writers on board in order to further scale his agency.
I’ve been writing for 4 years now and I absolutely love the content production. But, there are multiple reasons why you might not be very pumped to publish blog posts frequently
Procrastination: Open one youtube video, and Youtube will tell you why it was a bad idea. Open Facebook and their endless feed will tell you the same. There are multiple ways (all effortless) to procrastinate, but, it takes a lot of strength to sit down, and get shit done.
Burned: Let’s talk about Saiyam. He certainly loves content writing, but having done it for so long, he now is burned about it. He doesn’t want to keep doing the same thing over and over again. That’s the problem with content creation, you just can’t create content with a tired or bored brain.
4. Decreased Quality
In the first few weeks, or maybe months, people are very pumped.
It’s because they’re doing it because they love it.
But, after those few weeks and months, it becomes a chore. No ones like a chore.
If you’re bound to write one post a week, it feels burden now. And again, this reflects in your content quality. You’ll be making more errors, your users will start pointing out mistakes, and much more.
It’s better to spend a few bucks to maintain the consistency in quality rather than saving them and ruining the brand in long run.
5. No growth
Your mood reflects in content, and the site number reflect the content.
Some signs of poor content are increased bounce rate, the amount spent on time, and user engagement.
These things are supposed to grow as your brand progresses. But, if the chart is going down, you have to buckle up and work on them. There is no “I’ll work in this area when I get money”. If you don’t publish good content, there are tons and thousands of people doing the exact same thing and one of them will do it.
Don’t let poor content affect your site’s growth.
6. You’re the best Writer
I know this point too well (my friend @Aloukik Rathore can vouch for this habit).
In the past, if someone talked shit about my content or even pointed out mistakes, the very next second, I would get defensive.
Although, After working more and more, I’ve got rid of this habit.
This happens a lot with writers when they’re trying to scale their agency. They keep pointing out mistakes in their employee’s writing.
Listen, I know you’re the best content writer, that’s a superpower, but you’re no longer a content writer only. You’re shifting from small business to big business(or are you ?).
In order to do that, you have to let the entrepreneur inside you take over the content writer ( hmmm hmmm hmmm hmm hmm *wolf of wall street reference )
https://youtu.be/cPIVTbQECzk
7. Too Many things to focus on
I don’t want to begin listing things that I have to do (cause that would be long and I am lazy).
But, I have to handle a ton of work. Let me tell you this, it’s not a troublesome task to focus and handle 10 writing gigs. But, it’s a difficult task when you have to focus on getting sales, talking with clients, go to meetings, make invoices, handle social media and so on.
Your focus becomes a shotgun in long-range i.e, there is so much spread that it doesn’t work. You need to be a sniper i.e laser-sharp focus, one target at a time. ( Share this ! )
8. Emotions and Engagement
Often times, my budding entrepreneurs report that their landing pages aren’t working as well (since I recommend them to do PPC). 99% of the times when I check their page, I find content that simply isn’t written to convert.
Copywriting is a blend of right words. Words that spark emotion and information at the same time. Put that into a good format that you know is optimized for clicks, loading fast, and that target segment, you get a landing page.
Sounds like too much learning curve right?
It is. For every landing page that I write, I spend a lot of time researching about the audience itself.
With a business going, you simply can’t focus this much on content writing since you have a lot to deal with.
9. SEO
If you want to calculate how much money you’re leaving on the table by not focusing on SEO, follow a quick tutorial.
Install any plugin or extension such as keywords everywhere ( available for both chrome and firefox ). This extension will tell you about how often people search for a query.
Suppose you’re manufacturer fishing rods.
Using the extension you’ll find out that the term Best Fishing Rods has 5.4k searches roughly ( data estimated ).
If you manage to show up on number one position for this query, you’ll get roughly 1.6k-2k people on your website.
These are the people that are your laser target audience. They were looking for fishing rods and they want one instantly. With a good landing page, you’ll be able to convert a lot of leads every month.
The only problem with this sweet dream is, SEO isn’t very easy.
It takes time, effort and ton of $$ if you have poor content. Poor content takes a lot of time to rank. Time and again you’ll be outranked by someone with good content and you’ll have to purchase more and more backlinks again.
A good content writer ensures that you get a 100% SEO optimized landing page which is bound to be search engine friendly and rank quickly.
10. Conversions
It won’t be a shock to reveal that Scribbify stands on a bunch of Amazon niche websites.
I’ve learned conversions by driving more and more sales.
Time and again, people come to me showing their amazon websites and telling that they’re not getting enough conversions. Again, like the landing pages, I tell them content isn’t good enough (it feels bad to tell them this though).
A good content writer charges a good price for the landing price because they know that the page is bound to perform. There is no chance you’ll not make money if a good writer works on that page. Quality writers know what words to use, where to use and how much to use.
Conclusion
Being an Entrepreneur is hard. It’s like walking on a slippery floor with bare feet.
Being a bootstrap entrepreneur is even harder. It’s also like walking on a slippery floor with bare feet, except this time the floor has shards everywhere. ( Share this ! )
Don’t let content hold you back. If you need any assistance in upgrading your content, Scribbify is just one email away.