This cold-email template helped a copywriter build her business

Free subscriber-exclusive audiobook!“No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention”Get it now on Libro.fm using the button below.Shortly after Sarah Turner launched her copywriting business in 2013, she discovered one of the clients she'd gotten through a job board was underpaying her by hundreds of dollars.Turner said she was accidentally included on an email in which her employer, a content agency, said they typically paid $300 for work like Turner's. But she was booking $30 per assignment."That was the catalyst for me to get my own clients, charge $300, and cut out the middleman," said Turner, whose 8-year-old business, Sarah Turner Agency, offers freelance copywriting for clients in the healthcare industry, content-marketing strategy, and training programs for copywriters.Today, Turner avoids job boards and instead relies on a roster of stable clients that she built from cold-emailing people she wanted to work with, she said. Make sure you research the recipient enough to find a relevant or personal topic you can reference, but avoid making it sound like clickbait, Turner said.