Freelance sales copywriting

The claim

“I made a FULL guide on how you can make $10,000 per month with AI copywriting side hustle. Usually, I’d charge $200 for this, but today I’m giving it away for FREE. Like + Comment “Send” & I’ll DM it to you for FREE (Must be following me)”

@JafarNajafov, 25 June 2024, 46,609 views¹⁵¹

We hold only 3 tweets on this scheme, and the text of none gives a price per project, a number of clients or the hours worked¹⁵¹. We did not view their images, videos or linked guides¹⁵¹. The page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted.

The sums

Copywriting is writing the words that sell things: adverts, sales pages, marketing emails. $10,000 a month is $120,000 a year, so the question is what that takes at the prices in the sources. The sums below are ours, before any fees.

Five or six sales pages every month is a full-time practice with a steady flow of clients.

Winning the work is the hard step. On Upwork, a marketplace where freelancers bid for posted jobs, one tracker’s week of data found that about 3% of proposals (bids) won on fixed-price jobs, across all categories and not writing alone¹¹.

What happens to most people who try

No source we found measures what share of beginners ever land a paying client. Every survey covers people still in the trade, and every income is self-reported. So the picture for all who try is worse than these figures.

In a 2022 survey by The Copywriter Club, a business that trains copywriters, 63 side-job copywriters reported a median of $5,000 a year⁷. (“Median” means the middle person.) That is about $417 a month (our sum from⁷). Full-time freelancers reported a median of $60,000 a year⁷.

In a 2026 survey of mostly UK copywriters, the middle freelancer was in the £26,000 to £40,000 band, and 9% reported under £10,000¹⁰.

AI is not an edge. In one experiment with 444 professionals, ChatGPT cut writing time and raised quality, helping weaker writers most⁶⁸. But 74% of copywriters in the UK survey already use AI¹⁰. A job-data firm reported that Upwork writing jobs fell 33% between November 2022 and February 2024²³.

The upside

In the UK survey, 9% of freelancers report over £100,000¹⁰. Among 33 copywriters in the UK survey who founded an agency, a third report over £100,000¹⁰. That is a small group, and means employing or subcontracting other writers, not solo side work¹⁰. We found no income report from a freelance sales copywriter backed by payment records.

The usual path takes years. Average income worldwide in the 2022 survey was $12,895 a year for those with under one year of experience and $114,890 for those with over ten⁶⁴. These are averages of people still in the trade, so the middle person earns less: for all copywriters the average was $62,672 and the median $36,228⁷.

Fast starts are reported, rarely. In that survey of 942 writers, one with under a year of experience reported over $100,000, and 15 with one to two years reported $100,000 to $250,000⁶⁴. It does not say how many respondents were that new, so no share can be worked out⁶⁴. A healthcare writer reported a projected $103,000 for 2024, a little over two years after going full-time; we saw only a second-hand copy of her blog post, and it is unverified³⁰.

For someone starting in 2026, $1,000 to $3,000 a month within 12 to 24 months would be a good result, not a typical one (our estimate, from⁶⁴).

What it takes to compete

• People who already know you. In the UK survey, 86% of freelancers named referrals and word of mouth as a source of clients, and 18% named outreach¹⁰. A newcomer has no past clients. This is the main barrier.
• Real experience and a specialism. In the UK survey, 85% of copywriters named on-the-job experience as a main way they learned the craft, and 44% of freelancers named a niche as what sets them apart¹⁰.
• What it costs. Little in money: roughly $40 to $90 a month in tools (our estimate from¹³) plus Upwork’s bidding credits³. The real cost is hundreds of unpaid hours of pitching and practice.

How to tell early (our own suggestions): Can you name five businesses or people who might hire or recommend you? After three months, has anyone paid you, come back, or passed your name on?

Who else makes money from it

Course sellers. A search for “copywriting” on Skool, a platform for paid communities, returned 170 communities; of the first 30, 17 show a price, from $7 to $199 a month or $8 to $2,000 once²⁷. No seller we read publishes the share of students who earn anything.

Platforms. Upwork sells the bidding credits each proposal needs, in bundles at $0.15 a credit³. It then takes 0% to 15% of each contract when the freelancer is paid².

The account quoted. Its profile links to a page offering advertisers a sponsored tweet for $400; we did not check whether any slot has been bought⁵³.