Did you know March 19 is the first day of spring?

…As of today, we are just six days away from that!

Crazy to think that, as it seems the beginning of 2020 just rolled around.

Over here at Express Writers, it’s the beginning of a new season.

And it’s time to share the details of this ‘new season’ with all of you.

For a while now, we’ve been listening to our clients who have brands in high-level, advanced niches; watching the hiring industry change for expert writers; and testing what works.

About three months ago, we launched a higher-priced industry writing service called Legal Copywriting, and we’ve found that it was an absolute no-brainer for our law industry clients to invest in $120/500w and get a practicing or retired attorney-turned-copywriter on their work.

(We headhunt and do all the hard work of finding that expert for them, and then train them on modern content writing using my elite, Express-Writers-only training.)

Our test with high-level writing experts for the legal industry was a success; we’ve had clients leave over not receiving a true depth of expertise in their industry content, but we’ve found we simply can’t hire deep industry experts at the same pay rate we pay general experts.

So, here’s what just went down today in a short TL;DR (too long, don’t read) summary:

• Our Industry Expert Blogs are now called Blogs, and feature a basic industry expert writer. This is the same price you’ve already gotten familiar with, if you’re an existing client; $90/500w. We aren’t axing that at all — yes, you can still get this price and service — and we still have phenomenal writers for that category.
• However, if you are looking for a more tenured industry expert writer that will craft authoritative writing to satisfy a very high-level niche industry, that is now $120/500w, and you can pick your industry from the revamped Content Shop. The writers we hire for these industries must have a degree in the industry, 10 years of experience, and industry accomplishments under their belt. (It takes some serious HR time. And then we continue to train them once we hire them.)

Here’s our list of industry-specific expert content creation services, available at $120/500w:

Medical and Healthcare

Health, Fitness, and Wellness

Finance

Real Estate

Insurance

Tech and Engineering

Legal

Marketing

Sports

Keep reading for all the details.

We’re Doubling What We Pay Expert Writers… & More: Spring 2020 Updates at Express Writers

As already mentioned above, our former Industry Expert Blogs are now called Blogs, and feature a basic industry expert writer.

You can still receive $90/500w expert content; it will feature a basic, high-quality expert writer. Our writers for this category are rockstars. You’re getting beautiful content.

What you’re not getting at $90/500w now is a tenured industry expert writer that will craft authoritative writing to satisfy a very high-level niche industry.

Specifically, these industries:

Medical and Healthcare

Health, Fitness, and Wellness

Finance

Real Estate

Insurance

Tech and Engineering

Legal

Marketing

Sports

The reason we had to go up to $120/500w for these industries, and pay double, is because we simply cannot hire industry experts (true experts) and train them into expert industry writers at the $90/500w price.

Storytime: How We Found Ourselves Up Against a Pay Wall 

Last December, I spent an entire month trying to hire for one specific expert category we needed to hire for, at the “old” rates (the non-doubled pay rates).

Guess what happened?

After going through 1,500+ applicants and spending hours to test and interview, I didn’t find a single person. 😨 I remember even working on vacation in the terminal during our Christmas family trip to Boulder, Colorado. If I had a photo to document the stress, I’d share it, but you can imagine in your head: my five-year-old was running around the terminal, the hubby right behind her, juice and snacks in hand. There I was, sitting down typing away furiously on what should have been a family vacation — spending every spare vacation moment I had to hire like a madwoman for the open vacancy.

We went through so many resumes and did not find anyone to stick in our team for the industry I was hiring for. At the time, we weren’t ready to raise rates yet because we weren’t sure it was the right decision.

Well, after not finding a single expert available to put in their talent for us at that pay rate, we decided it was time to implement a simple campaign we called Pay-Our-Experts-Double. Our Content Manager, Korilynn, suggested it — good thing she did. To put it bluntly, there was no other choice. I couldn’t find an expert available at our old pay rate.

We began by hiring in the Legal industry at the new pay rate/client bill rate, and I worked closely with our Content Manager, Korilynn, to hire actual J.D.s that had passed the bar and practiced as an attorney. We found a former patent attorney with 20 years of experience who was ready to transition and work from home. We hired him full-time, and he has written some phenomenal content for our law clients.

Our new team of high-level legal writers, hired with a J.D. as the basic requirement and then trained by us in content writing, not only worked happily at the new pay rate (so important to a great work culture!), but also made every client that hired us for the $120/500w legal expert content writing service incredibly happy.  🎉 Win, win.

So, we’ve decided to apply this to 9+ more industries, and that’s what just happened today.

At $120 per 500w, we are paying double to hire expert writers that fulfill our new “deep expertise” requirements. These are the requirements we’ve listened to and learned that work best for our industry-expert clients (especially brands in tech, finance, medical, insurance, real estate industries):

• Have a minimum of 10 years of experience in that industry, as well as an advanced degree (preferably a Master’s), accreditation and/or a license, and verified, real-life industry accomplishments (achieving a #1 ranking in Google with content if they’re a content marketing/SEO expert, for example)
• Have a minimum of two years of freelance content writing experience, or if less, are willing to immediately start training with our internal courses once hired

We’ve found a serious need for deep, truly authoritative experts among the brands we service. High content quality has become a whole new level. We can’t pay the same rates we’ve always paid to hire these deeper industry experts, and then work to train them on content writing. We plan to spend more time, effort, and money on our side in HR to recruit “deep experts;” for example, a retired J.D. with a Master’s in Law that practiced patent law for 20 years in New York City is one of our legal-experts-turned-copywriters, and we are applying this hiring depth to every one of our industry expert levels.

Authority content now includes all of these expert areas, as well. With authority content, you’re getting a deep industry expert as well as an authority-trained writer. (I train industry writers on my internal, exclusive Express-Writers-only authority writing training, which instills mastery in online content writing for blogs and websites — extremely readable, engaging, powerful online copy.)

Blog Plan Changes

Our blog plans now feature both of our expert-level rates.

You can still hire top-notch quality blog writers from us at $90/500w: but if you want that deep-level expert, with industry experience, you’ll need to go for our new and revamped Industry Expert Blogging Plan.

• Industry Expert Blog Plans are now our basic expert Blog Plans (that include the $90/500w rate).
• Go for the gusto with our Industry Expert Blogging Plans, where we actually field a real, tenured expert for your advanced industry. As a reminder, we cover Medical and Healthcare, Health, Fitness, and Wellness, Finance, Real Estate, Insurance, Tech and Engineering, Marketing, and Sports in our advanced, updated expert industry writer staffing structure.

Content Shop Experience: Changes Are Coming

We’ve heard and listened to many of our clients complain about the lack of features when it comes to communicating inside an order, and being able to read status updates.

We are working on solving this for good. Behind the scenes we’re working on a completely new version of the Content Shop that will come out after our new, internal writer-and-team-only teamroom comes out. We don’t have a date, because, well, technology development is a bear — but, it’s coming! 🎉

Conclusion: It’s Worth it to Pay for Quality Content (& Get Happy Writers!)

Hiring industry experts that know how to write blogs and web pages is a real feat; it takes hours of time to staff and recruit, and then the art of retaining them is just as important. We’re working on nailing both by hiring experienced industry writers at a higher pay rate.

Happy writers, happy clients… happy life and real brand growth.

Go beyond average with our newly revamped expert writing services.

Quality is our #1 commitment. We promise. You won’t be disappointed. 🥂

Have you ever experienced one of those once-in-a-lifetime lightbulb moments?

You know, the moments you never forget about — ever? The ones that end up changing your life in incredible ways?

I can trace every big step in my life, from the launch of Express Writers to the idea for my first book, back to those flashes of inspiration.

And one of those moments is the reason The Expert SEO Content Writer Course is now open for beta enrollment, for the next ten days. (Code BETALAUNCH2018 saves you $100 – access the quick-link to the beta offer here.)

Keep reading for the story.

The Story Behind My All-New SEO Content Writing Course

I vividly remember the day, time, and place that particular lightbulb lit up.

Early one day this August, I was sitting at my desk.

It was a typical August day in Austin — HOT. The sun was blazing. It was one of those Texas summer days where if it was any hotter, I might as well go and sit on the surface of the sun.

Grateful to be inside an air-conditioned space, I was reviewing a new writer’s sample piece, reading through it carefully.

Then, it hit me. This is probably the 11,000th writing sample that has passed through my hands.

It’s true. Thinking back, I realized that I’ve been assessing, interviewing, and hiring writers since 2011, when I started Express Writers.

(By the way — that’s why I believe ‘luck’ and ‘success’ never go together in the same sentence. It’s self-disciplined hard work, the constant honing of your trade for days, weeks, and years, that truly gets you off the ground. But, I digress.)

And then another flash hit me.

These are the same issues, again. I see them all the time.

I was in the middle of typing a note to the writer and passing her to the next phase of our interviewing process when I realized that what I was sharing with this writer was the EXACT SAME THING I’d told the last four candidates.

These issues are a training checklist.

I know how to fix them!

…Why don’t I create a course on this?

And, the entire idea for The Expert SEO Content Writer course was born.

This is the same pathway behind my first course, The Content Strategy & Marketing Course. The entire idea for that course was born after a client asked me to come down to their office and teach them content strategy and marketing techniques.

I’ll be honest: I usually don’t just come up with “ways to sell my knowledge,” even though I’ve had people offer in the past to pay me money if I would consult with them. To be honest, I don’t have the time — between running a biz, writing books, launching training courses — not to mention running after a toddler at home.

Sidenote: I think this is a fantastic way to build a course. Don’t go out and search for a money-making course idea. Instead, let it come to you as you work and gain cred and a place in the industry. This way, it’s much easier when it comes to the selling part, too.

But Can’t Anyone Read a Blog & Learn SEO Writing? 2 Reasons A Real Need for My Course Exists

The first big reason I think there is a serious need for this course lies in the actual pain points I heard of, real-time, from people in my audience.

After I had the idea to build my course, I used Google Forms to create a survey, which I kept open for a few days. More than 50 people that were in my target audience filled out the form, and the survey results were conclusive: people needed and wanted this training from me. They told me so clearly in the survey where they took the time to share a huge amount of pain points.

Once I had my survey results, I took to my office whiteboard and created a graph of my survey takers’ responses to look for commonalities and create a course outline.

Watch my time-lapse video on Twitter as I real-time built a survey chart from their answers:

I’ve interviewed over 10k writers for @ExpWriters…and I constantly see missing content #writing skillsets. 💡So, I’m building a NEW product: a short, actionable writing course. 🔥 Get first dibs on launch: https://t.co/CSYko8exiC

Behind-the-scenes: https://t.co/QEQROEAape pic.twitter.com/3elOApykrm

— Julia McCoy / I’m at #CMWorld18 🧡 (@JuliaEMcCoy) August 13, 2018

The second reason can be found directly inside of SEO content writing itself, which I’ve been practicing for seven years now.

SEO writing isn’t easy.

To be perfectly honest… you can’t just read a blog and walk away thinking you know how to do it if you’ve had no real prior experience.

You need training, practice, and a guiding hand, if SEO content writing still feels like new or uncertain territory and you want to get to a “knowledgeable” level sooner rather than later.

A mentor who’s been there, done that can help you get there a lot faster.

I’ve spent the past 7 years perfecting the art of crafting content that wins rankings, traffic, clicks, and subscribers.

We’ve built our Express Writers presence to more than 1,000 blogs, and 16,000+ SEO rankings in Google after seven years of consistent SEO content creation.

Our site is bringing in upwards of 2,000-2,800 visitors/day on average — 100% organically — without paid ads.

And our subscriber list grows by 5-10 people on average per day simply through the “upgrades” and correctly pivoted lead magnets I’ve created and attached to our high-ranking content.

We’ve been able to achieve this kind of SEO content success for many of our clients, too.

When I surveyed my list, validation for the course was there in black and white. One person said, and I quote: “I want to use SEO in my content marketing strategy. Get more traffic and conversions. Create a community using my posts, books, etc. Be more productive by using methods, tools, etc.”

THAT’S IT!

That’s exactly the kind of knowledge you should have after effective SEO content training.

And that’s what I want to leave my students with in my coming course. A lasting knowledge of SEO writing that will empower them to create content that reaches and builds a community through one of the most powerful routes possible — organic rankings in Google.

SEO content is more powerful than ever — and it’s poised to continue to dominate ranking methods for the forseeable future.

Now is the time for well-trained SEO content writers to succeed.

Ready?

Take the plunge and learn more about the course here. Don’t forget your 35% off code at enrollment: BETALAUNCH2018

I can’t wait to see you inside. I know you’re going to love this course, just as much as I loved putting it together — and I cannot wait to welcome you inside!  – Julia