58: Chelsea Baldwin: Freelance Writer to Serious Business Owner + Course Creator

In this episode, you’ll hear Chelsea Baldwin's journey where she started as a freelance writer after she had hard time finding a job in journalism after graduation. She later worked in at a firm in content marketing and was promoted to their CMO, but online entrepreneurship was calling her name. Determined to take her business seriously, she set up a LLC, started serving clients and eventually created online courses so clients who couldn't afford her services could still learn from her.

Listen in to hear about her advice on why you should just get started and make improvements from there.

Transcript:

Speaker 1 (00:01):

Welcome to Course Creator's MBA Podcast. I'm your host Destini Copp. And in this podcast, we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. Before I begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my Course in a Box program, which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week Course in a Box is on the AppSumo marketplace at a special deal. And the link, for Course in a Box on AppSumo is in our show notes. And today we're in the middle of our course creator series where I'm chatting with ordinary course creators, just like you, we're talking about their journey and their online course business, how they got started, the challenges they've experienced and how they overcame them. These are real discussions with real people today. My special guest is Chelsea Baldwin. Chelsea owns two online businesses, both of which she uses to sell online courses.

Speaker 1 (01:02):

Her first company copy power is a copywriting agency where she specializes in providing clients with high-end copy that results in higher than average conversion rates, often double or triple the numbers they were seeing before she created her first ever course for this company to teach people who couldn't afford her services, how to write amazing copy for themselves. Her second company helps freelancers and service providers grow the revenues to $25,000 per month. And she sells a few digital courses there at well, along with private one-on-one coaching. Chelsea, thank you so much for joining me. I'm very excited about our discussion here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:50):

Thank you so much for having me I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (01:53):

Yeah. So I really want to dig into this with you. Could you start by telling the listeners about your journey and your journey into online entrepreneurship and your courses? You can start from the beginning and we'll take it from there.

Speaker 2 (02:10):

Yeah. So working online started back in 2010. So I graduated in may of 2010 with a degree in journalism and that was off the end of the last recession where a lot of things happened in the market. But one of the things that happened was a lot of print media publications closed that were primarily print space. Because at that time, like a lot of newspapers were going online. Everything was going digital eaters. I mean e-readers, and obviously online news had been around before, but it was really, really starting to take hold. And it sounds funny because we just absolutely take it for granted now, but it really was a thing. So one publications were closing. They were folding in to the ones that were surviving or weren't hiring. So I had to find other ways to make money. And so I started freelance writing online.

Speaker 2 (03:07):

Like I started out really cheap, but I didn't know what I didn't know. So I just started writing articles like how to articles for this company. And over time, that sort of evolved into me getting better at online marketing, understanding where online copy fit into online business and how it all kind of contributes or should contribute in some way to the bottom line of the business that you're writing for. Like at least if that content is going to be successful and worth the time or money you put in to get it developed. So that was really exciting

Speaker 1 (03:45):

To me. And as that sort of evolves, I got some jobs like

Speaker 2 (03:51):

With content, with writing. At one point I was a content director and then chief marketing officer of an app development company. But that didn't last long because I just, I had already gotten the taste of freedom from freelancing and being self-employed. So I went back to that, but when I went back to it, I had like a lot more experience under my belt. And so I knew I could make more as a freelancer established my own company, which I did, which was copy power. So I established my own company first. I was just as a freelancer, but I grew that into being able to have it and an agency set up and then the demand started coming as I got more and more traction in the marketplace, more and more intention to what I was doing to teach how to do it. And so that's where the interest and need, I guess, for online courses came in and where I developed my first one. And then after I developed that first one, it was really easy to see how others could fit into the puzzle of what I was

Speaker 1 (04:50):

Doing. And then my second

Speaker 2 (04:53):

Company came about because I was good at teaching copy. And so people then wanted me to teach other things like, how do you get these high paying client deals? How do you get this? How do you get that? So that was more of the business coaching thing. And then long story short, that was just like too much under one umbrella. And so I've split them into two companies.

Speaker 1 (05:15):

It was too much under one umbrella where they two different target markets, right.

Speaker 2 (05:20):

They kind of are so copy power has two different target markets, just inherently one for clients who need copy written for them who have the budget to afford high-end copy. But then also people who appreciate good copywriting, but maybe can't afford it yet. So they buy the course, but then you would add like a third one, which is freelancers or solopreneurs or people who just admire the business model and want to know that. And so they were asking me for that stuff. So it just got there's too many offers. It was too confusing. I even started offering like a membership where I copy and business in the membership and it just, it was too much happening under one brand. And so some things kind of didn't w started not going the way I wanted them to go. And then I made that realization and split the two, one was copywriting focus and one was business focused. So obviously copywriting and business go hand in hand, but they are two separate companies doing two separate things.

Speaker 1 (06:24):

So I'm going to kind of go back to where you started. So in may of 2010, you graduated with a degree in journalism, but we all know what was going on back then. And you were having trouble finding, finding a job. So you started freelance writing. You said eventually you went back to kind of the corporate world. It looks like it was more like a apps, SAS startup or app development. What year was that?

Speaker 2 (06:54):

That was shoot. Well, I quit the job for good in April, 2014. So like a year plushest plus ish before that was when I kind of went back in, I initially was like, okay, I think I'll just get an internship to learn some more things so that I can make more money as a freelancer. But then actually the first opportunity folded, and then I got another opportunity shortly after that, I took to be a content writer and then two weeks later they saw that I was good at what I did. So they promoted me to content, content director. And then six months after that, I got a promotion to CMO.

Speaker 1 (07:36):

And you left that CMO job to go to, to start your own business. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (07:42):

Yeah. To go do my own thing to freelance again.

Speaker 1 (07:46):

It was that wasn't April of 2014. Yes. Okay. So you've been, you know, in these, in this entrepreneurship role from your corporate job, if you would, since April of 2014 when you first moved back in to entrepreneurship, what, what, what were things like for you? Like how, what was the transition? How did you make that transition? Did you have like an exit plan or how did that work?

Speaker 2 (08:14):

Yeah, well, I had gotten freelance clients before, so I just went back to what I knew about getting freelance clients. And I had had like one to two freelance gigs here and there as I had that corporate job. So I just went back to doing what I knew. So I was essentially a freelancer at first, again, just went back into freelancing, but I had all this experience under my belt. I knew I was much more valuable than just being a writer than just being a hire pen because I had all this insight and knowledge into marketing and this real world experience with it. So I to take myself more seriously on one of my clients to do the same thing. So I went back to the drawing board with my website copy, which is something that I teach people to do. And I did what I teach.

Speaker 2 (09:06):

So I went back to the drawing board. I realigned everything to who I wanted to work with. And then once I did that, I started getting more clients, but I, I really wanted to take it seriously. I really wanted to be successful as an entrepreneur to make a lot of money, to have my freedom. So I felt like if I established an LLC and wasn't just a freelancer, I would take myself more seriously if I had a proper business name instead of just being Chelsea Baldwin. And it, I did it worked. I took it more seriously. So in the early days of that, all I did was take my freelance clients and switch them over to a new contract where everything, instead of paying Chelsea Baldwin, they're paying copy power and the money got paid into my business bank account. So, but from there I was able to grow it. So does that answer your question?

Speaker 1 (09:57):

Yeah. So I, I'm just trying to paint the picture here for folks. So you went back to what you knew, which was freelance work, then, you know, decided fairly quickly that you wanted to establish a real business and make a real business out of this. When did you set up your website?

Speaker 2 (10:14):

Oh, I've had a website since a long time ago. I set, I remember redoing my website because I named my business and I filed the papers officially in 2015 for copy power. So I obviously got, get copy power.com back then, but I had another website before that, which was like Carolina, freelance writer.com. But yeah, so I would say I probably, I set up my website probably back in 2011, my first like website Carolina, freelance writers, 2011 or 2012.

Speaker 1 (10:56):

And for this new business, this new LLC, you say, you know, somewhere around 2015, you set up your new website and then position yourself more as a business instead of a freelancer. Right. how, how long was it before you got into online course creation? And tell me about your journey there.

Speaker 2 (11:18):

Yeah, so I probably, I really should go back and look at the dates, but I think it was like maybe later 2016 or early 2017. It was probably early 2017 when I launched the first course. So like I said, I was getting more established in the market as a go-to freelancer as an expert with conversion based copywriting. So my email list was growing and people were asking me if they could learn how to do it for themselves. And so I would try to help people when they emailed me or messaged me or whatever, but it's really hard to teach copy through email. You kind of have to see it. You have to be hands-on with it. You have to share screen with it. So I would sometimes like help people one to one with their copy on screen, but that's just a fix. It's not really the process.

Speaker 2 (12:11):

Right. So you can fix copy, but you can't like teach people how to go from like zero to 60 from starting with nothing to having good copy if you're just sharing screen and fixing things. So I had been obviously also in the online entrepreneurship world and learning about making money online. So having the idea of having courses and selling courses for passive ish income, I say passive fish because it's not fully passive was on my radar. So I signed up for some guys training to teach me how to make an online course. And that's what I did. And it took me eight months to get it up to the first one I've been going, which so much time it doesn't take me nearly that long now, but yeah, so that's kind of where it came from and that like early 2017, so four or five years ago now was when I launched it.

Speaker 1 (13:10):

So the, that particular, their first course that you launched in 2017. Tell us a little bit about that. It took you eight months to do it. Tell us about the process that you took and what you would do differently this time.

Speaker 2 (13:24):

Yeah, well, actually I have, with my other courses, I have done a lot differently because I was in hindsight, I'm pretty unhappy with the content of the training that I bought to teach me how to do it. Cause a lot of the work that guy took us through was incredibly unnecessary. Should I spend so much time in market research when I already had the market telling me what I needed to do, but it was like, he was very insistent that you had to do it and like they wouldn't unlock the modules for you except for over a certain period of time. So it was like, well, I paid for this. I may as well use what he's putting in front of me now. But yeah, so after that course though, and actually that course is really good. I'm still very proud of it.

Speaker 2 (14:08):

I actually am revamping it right now. And I'm about to totally relaunch it, which is really exciting because it has helped a lot of people. So I don't really regret taking the time to do the learning process, but like for example, almost immediately after that, I saw a need to teach people SEO or search engine optimization. And I could do that really easily, easily and quickly because I was getting stuff ranked on the first page of Google for keywords that were directly related to target audience. Like anyone who saw who typed in that keyword would be my target audience. And I got on the first page of Google for it. So that was something that I could teach in like less than an hour. I could teach it. I don't remember how long that video is, but it was something really quick that I could make and teach. So I just made it, I made the video, I made a little like check sheet thing to go with it and I sold it for $47 and I still sell it. But yeah, so I've learned to be a lot more agile in making courses if that makes sense over time and that has really paid off as well.

Speaker 1 (15:15):

Wow. So what other courses do you have? I know you have copy power and you have, this is the SEO one that you're talking about. What other courses have you launched over the years? And tell me about the process in terms of why you decided to launch them.

Speaker 2 (15:32):

Yeah. So for copy power, I have write a better website, which is the first course. I have the little mini SEO training and I have the blogging with bald masterclass and that one came about similar to the demand for right. A better website. It was like, okay, website, web copy, but okay. Chelsea, you're also a really good blogger. How do you do that? So I taught that in the blogging with ball's masterclass. And then I started, like I mentioned, getting them demand for coaching. So who would teach people how to get clients and stuff like that. So under business pitch, I have like landing five figure client deals. I have what do I call it? It's about passive income. It's like easy passive income. And it's actually about like making a miniature chorus. Like I made the miniature SEO course and sold it for really cheap.

Speaker 2 (16:24):

And it teaches people how to make these miniature things so they can get something going and get it started, start selling. And then obviously you can scale that knowledge that you use to make something small and to making something big because you know, we're I to reteach myself stuff in hindsight, instead of taking this other guy's training, that's what I would do. And I think that's more beneficial for people who were in my position. And I also have workbooks under business. So I sell four workbooks to kind of, they're called be your own business coach workbooks, and they're on four different topics. And so they're a workbook and an audio training a piece. So those they're not really courses, but they are digital products that sell like a course and they're inexpensive. So I really just kind of have things at all different price points. So the demand just comes about for people telling me, Oh, I want your high-end service, but I can't quite afford it. What can I do? And so I have content across the whole spectrum. I obviously have free stuff on my blog, YouTube, my podcasts. And then I have the lower paid stuff like the $20 workbooks, the $47 SEO course. And then I have the slightly more expensive courses that run and like the $200 to $500 range. And then obviously you can hire me one-to-one and that's more expensive. So let's talk

Speaker 1 (17:50):

About your traffic strategy. So you have a wide range of products that you offer on both of your websites and then you have your one-on-one services. So those are any other income streams or is that it that's pretty much it. So your one-on-one services, your digital products, which, you know, you have a set, a lot of them for between the two websites. What are your traffic strategies? How are people finding you? Are you doing paid ads? Is it all organic through the SEO that you're doing? Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 2 (18:22):

Yeah, well I'm about to actually start doing paid ads for the right a better website course. Like I said, I am redoing it and it's a really solid course, but I just made it better. I have like a ton of great testimonials from it over the years. And so I'm about to start running paid ads to like a freebie slash webinar workshop type thing for that. But I haven't really done paid ads over the years. I've tried a couple of times, but they, I didn't have the confidence to do it myself. So I hired someone else in it. I only tried twice and it totally flopped both times. So my traffic strategy has been in content marketing. So guest blogging, guest podcasting posting on social media. And the cool thing about social media is you don't necessarily have to have a massive following as long as you resonate.

Speaker 2 (19:17):

And you're targeted with the right people. And lately I'm doing a lot of traffic from LinkedIn. So I've just gotten very, very active on LinkedIn. Mostly as an experiment to see how things would go. But my content there, the stuff that I share is not bland. It's a little bit sassy, but it resonates with the right people, the right people reach out to me that it drives a lot of signups on both of my websites. And then, you know, I, anytime someone signs up for a freebie, I have an email sequence that upsells them to one of my paid my digital paid products. And then after that, they can upsell to like a discovery call to work with me one-to-one but that's mostly my traffic strategy. So it hasn't been like super, super high, high, high numbers of traffic. But I have been very deliberate about getting the right people to my website. Like I mentioned, with what I teach in the SEO course, which was what I did for myself first was finding these copyrighting keywords to rank for in Google so that, you know, it doesn't get like thousands of visitors per day, but the people who do come to it and do click on it are 100% of my target audience. So that's kind of what I focused on. Basically content marketing, inbound based content marketing.

Speaker 1 (20:41):

So, so let me ask you this. And I know from we, we chatted in a few minutes before we actually started recording episode. And one of the things that you focus on is your conversion rights. And I think that speaks to what you just said there with being very targeted in your content marketing. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Speaker 2 (21:02):

Yeah. Well, when you're selling courses online, well, really wouldn't, you're selling anything online, but especially courses because as course creators, we like to be as hands-off as possible. I think that's kind of the point in making a course or it's one of the points in making the course. At least from a business model perspective is to have something that can scale and that doesn't require a huge amount of time and energy conversion rates are everything. Like if you are driving a ton of traffic to your site or to your landing page freebie, for example, and no one's signing up for it. No one's even going to hear about your course or if people go through your freebie, but then in the freebie, no one signs up or pays for your course. What's the point there? So you paying attention to conversion rates is really, really important.

Speaker 2 (21:56):

It's what I focus on with my copywriting clients and like the stuff that I teach in copywriting, but if you don't have it, you don't have the money coming in that you can't have or that you should have because, you know, I make my courses for reasons other than money, and I'm sure everyone listening does as well. Like you genuinely want to help people, but at the end of the day, if you're not making money, if you're not creating those conversions nothing's happening and you're working for nothing or for smaller amounts of return, then you should be getting or that you deserve to get.

Speaker 1 (22:33):

I think that's very, very well said there. Can you tell us a little bit about what do you see as the next steps for your two businesses in 2021?

Speaker 2 (22:44):

Yeah. So the next step for copy power is definitely getting my my right a better website course sort of sold on automation or somewhat automated with ads and then webinars and really showing people well, basically giving a free workshop as the webinar, because I don't really know how to just be salesy. I just have to like teach people and let my teaching sort of speak for itself. And that's how I convert is doing that because that is going to really be a game changer for me. And I was actually on a podcast last week where they said like, what would you tell yourself to do differently? And it's like, obviously I should have done this away sooner, but I did have really good conversion rates from just launching it occasionally to my email list. So I guess the pain point, wasn't really there to force me into doing it.

Speaker 2 (23:40):

But anyway, that's neither here nor there right now because it's the past and I can't go back and change it. But that's definitely something I'm focusing on hugely for copy power and getting that to like a certain amount of money per month, which I know that I can do. And then for business and focusing a lot on getting more one-to-one clients there. So I have been very active on LinkedIn with the business content and it's been a lot of fun and I'm really like, it's a fun brand just by the name of it. And I know our conversation is a little bit serious and very businessy, but it is a lot of fun and, you know, you can have a lot of fun in business. So that's what I do. And I really kind of draw in those people who are ready to take the next step, who are tired of being like plateaued at, you know, like $5,000 or less per month. And really just want to skyrocket to potentially that 25,000 per month income level. But at least like doubling it to like 10 K or eight K is six figures a year. So yeah, getting more of those people in my orbit so I can coach more of them, get them more empowered financially and just kind of help them grow and help myself grow by way of that.

Speaker 1 (24:57):

And let me ask you for your right, a better website course that you have, and you're going to be, you know, beefing, beefing up that funnel doing paid traffic. You're going to be is the webinar that you're doing. Is it like an evergreen recorded webinars?

Speaker 2 (25:12):

It will be. So the first ones I'll do will not be evergreen, but I will record them. And then, because I want to learn as well. Like you can't just like assume something is going to work and then slap it up and have a business. I mean, you can, but like, again, it comes back to this conversion rates. And then also like I've never done a huge ton of webinars. I've run a bunch of workshops in person obviously before COVID. So I'm basing the webinar off of that because those workshops that I did, which were also called like write a better website, but you know, much less content because we only had like an hour to do it in. Yeah, I'm basing it off of that and I'm assuming it's going to, well, I know it's going to really help the people who sign up, but I'm going to see how that works with offering the sale of the course on the back end of that. So actually today that we're recording, like when we hang up this call, I'm going to send out an email to my lists about, well, it's just going to set them up for, you know, I'm going to start sending out like free lessons on copywriting, how to write better copy. And then I'm going to offer the webinar or the online workshop for free as a part of like this launch. And then, so I'm starting that like right now

Speaker 1 (26:40):

You'll have to let us know how it goes. You'll have to come back. So let us know how that goes. Yeah, for sure. So the closing question I have for you is what advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there?

Speaker 2 (26:54):

Honestly, I would say, just get it out there, just get something out there. You can always go back and improve and change it later. Like I have improved and changed, right. A better website over the years and it's fine. Like even the first version of it helped a ton of people. And that's kind of what I do when I work with my clients. You want to have a business model around selling digital products. It's like, well, just get it up. Like just make something. And you don't have to make the most expensive version. Like when I teach people to start selling digital products, like of course our training, you know, $15 or less is a really great sweet spot to just sell something quick and cheap and inexpensive to test your market. If they're not already demanding something from you, just so you can know how it does. And like, at that point, it's really easy for people to say yes to buying. So you don't spend a huge ton of time making something and then you make a profit from it on the backend and then you just learn really quickly. And then you can grow with real time and real world, real world feedback instead of waiting months and months and months, and months and months to make your first one before you put it out, which was what I did. Yeah, but that's my advice.

Speaker 1 (28:09):

And I think that's some great advice, Chelsea, where can people find you? Yes.

Speaker 2 (28:15):

So my copywriting website is getcopypower.com and there is like a free copy course like, if you want free copywriting lessons that will help you convert more than you get like three free lessons, you can sign up for that. I'm at businessbitch.com. There's a freebies tab there. You can check stuff out at I'm on the Business Bitch podcast, which is on Apple and Spotify and on LinkedIn. You can just search Chelsea Baldwin and I'm the one with the Business Bitch branding. So you can say hi because that's where I'm most active on social media

Speaker 1 (28:50):

And Chelsea, I will make sure all of those links are in the show notes. So everybody has them and there'll be able to find you and Chelsea, thank you so much for joining me today. I loved our conversation here. If you have any questions about Course in a Box, which is offered on AppSumo, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or DM me on Instagram. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Chelsea would love for you to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.