Five tips for building a six-figure copywriting business

Executive overview

Neville Medora grew CopywritingCourse.com into a six-figure business over roughly six years, starting from a cheap AppSumo course and $80-an-hour consulting.

The path was not a hack — it was consulting, consistent publishing, obsessive content quality, disciplined pricing, and small interactive tools.

Doing the work consistently, for years, beats any growth tactic.

Consulting as foundation

• Start with one-on-one paid consulting before building any product.
• Consulting reveals real demand — the same questions repeated constantly signal what to productise.
• Neville capped sessions at set time blocks on fixed days (Tuesdays and Thursdays); he never extended them.
• He used a shared Google Doc every session so clients left with a tangible artefact.
• Staying active with clients keeps your knowledge current — you learn what actually works, not what you assume works.

Consistency over time

• Neville registered his first site in 1999; CopywritingCourse didn't become a real business for another decade-plus.
• He published roughly 130–180 posts over three years — close to one per week.
• Almost any idea pursued consistently for one year will start producing results.
• Chasing shortcuts (the "I doubled this in 10 minutes" articles) causes people to quit before compounding kicks in.
• Pick something you genuinely enjoy doing — sustainable consistency requires that.

SEO through best-in-class content

• Google's job is to point people to the best content on a topic. Match that standard and ranking follows.
• For the query "what is copywriting," Neville ranks number one — competing with Wikipedia.
• That single article took 15–24 hours to write, with multiple full rewrites before it was good enough.
• The tactic: for any topic you target, make the objectively best piece on the internet. Most existing results are mediocre.

Pricing and productisation

• Start consulting at a price the market accepts, then raise it until demand slows.
• Neville went from $80/hour to $600/hour over time; the course started at $69 and climbed to $497.
• Demand that exceeds your consulting capacity is the signal to create a product.
• When raising the price on a course, add value to match — Neville added scripts, email templates, and bi-weekly office hours.
• Office hours attendance is tiny (often 1–2 people), which makes them function as private consulting for whoever shows up.
• Higher prices attract better clients: they arrive prepared, on time, with specific questions.
• If you feel the price is too low, it probably is. If charging it makes you uncomfortable, add more value until it doesn't.

Low-tech tools as SEO assets

• Instead of teaching users how to do something, build a tool that does it for them.
• Neville built a gross profit calculator; CopywritingCourse now ranks for that term alongside copywriting content.
• Tools can be built cheaply via Upwork or Fiverr — sketch the spec, post the job, vet by job history.
• This is a durable differentiation: information is commoditised, functional tools are not.