Playboy’s Guide to Building a Million-Dollar Clientless Copywriting Business
By Ben Settle

No, not the magazine.

I’m talking about the Twitter account — Wall Street Playboys. Recently, they tweeted the entire structure of a clientless copywriting business.

Here is what they said:

An idea needs: 1) to be scalable, 2) create *recurring* revenue, 3) address the masses or the rich. Miss on any of those = terrible idea

It’s astonishing how simple business can be when you break it down to these three elements. (The whole concept fit in 136 characters!)

To show you a real-life example, here is how we are building such a clientless copywriting business in the golf market:

1. Addressing the masses or rich

I say why not address both?

If you know the golf niche, you know this is a niche that (1) has lots of money they can’t spend fast enough on their passion, and (2) is huge — as big as weight loss and other mass markets.

The point isn’t to get into the golf niche.

It’s to find a niche that both targets people with money and has mass appeal. There are many to choose from, and it’s simply a matter of doing your homework.

2. Creates recurring revenue

The main offer on the front-end is continuity-based. That means, a customer signs up for our membership site, and they pay $100 per year forever until they tell us to stop.

Of course, that’s not where the real money is made.

Like any smart direct-response marketing company knows, the real money is made on the back-end. In our case, they are immediately up-sold on a monthly service, where they pay around $80 per month to get a box of high-quality golf products — like equipment, gadgets, apparel, golf balls, and the list goes on.

In this case, we have two immediate sources of recurring revenue.

And, we will build many more into it over time.

Some other ways we’ll be monetizing the back-end include:

(Both continuity and non-continuity)

1. Selling golf instructional videos — on every aspect of the game, from driving, the short game, and putting … to everything and anything else the market tells us they want (by observing what they are buying, not by guessing).
2. Selling lessons with established pros — by making deals with various pros to give us a cut of the fees they get from our people.
3. Selling health supplements especially designed for golfers — some golfers are 80+ years old … some are in pain all the time from years of playing golf and having a swing that tears up their shoulders, knees, and hips … and some just want to lose weight so they can play without wheezing and panting. We can find supplements for all these challenges and more, and build out multiple additional income streams, including more recurring income streams.
4. Selling high-ticket golf outings — when you sell to a market with money, you will be shocked at how much price doesn’t matter. They want experiences. They want stories. And they want adventure. In our case, we’re making deals with vacation destinations and resorts where our people will travel to and play golf, and enjoy every minute of the process of paying us. As the founding father of Internet marketing Ken McCarthy writes in his System Clubs Letters book:

“Not every customer is on a budget. Not every customer has ‘time considerations.’ Not every customer wants to be coddled. And the 99% who do? They’ll sit back in awe and buy the T-shirt and the hot dogs. It’s a no-lose proposition.”

There are many other products, services, and experiences we’ll be selling over time.

And the best part is, no matter what market you choose for your clientless copywriting business, you can “adapt” many of the above to whatever it is you’re selling.

3. Scalable

Since the business is not based on manual labor (like, for example, a freelance copywriter who can only take on a set number of clients due to time, energy, sleep, etc.) or selling something that is slow to build or create, we can scale it quickly.

That means we can grow it as fast as we want.

It also means it’s no more complicated or difficult to sell to 10,000 people as it is to sell to 1 person. And, it’s not location-dependent — we can do it anywhere we want, as long as there is an Internet connection.

This is the beauty of the clientless copywriting business.

It’s not complicated, it doesn’t have to take a long time to build, and it frees up your time to focus on other things (family, passion projects, travel).

The key is to understand direct-response marketing and copywriting, know your market, build a list, and then send your list offers they want and even look forward to paying for.

I’ve got much more detailed information about how to build a scalable clientless writing business and start making money in 30 days or less in my 10-Minute Workday program. You can check it out here.

Do you have an idea for a clientless business? Does it have all three elements? Let us know how we can help you get going by posting a comment below.