How ChatGPT is Changing the Game for Freelance Copywriters

Let’s talk about what every freelancer has been talking about all the time: artificial intelligence (AI).

More specifically, ChatGPT.

What is ChatGPT? What are the pros and cons for freelance copywriters? What is your future as a freelance copywriter with AI on the scene?

The AI landscape is rapidly changing, but I’ve been doing my best to stay abreast of the technology and experiment with ChatGPT regularly.

If you want to learn what ChatGPT is, what it means for your freelance business, and my personal thoughts on it, then keep reading!

What is ChatGPT?

First things first: What the heck is ChatGPT?

Basically, it’s artificial intelligence that uses machine learning to understand written prompts from you (the user), and then it comes up with answers.

It has been fed like a whole bunch of text from all different sources, so it can write on any subject. One major limitation is that all the text it’s been fed occurred before 2021, so it doesn't know anything new.

(There are quite a few limitations, but I’ll get into those later.)

ChatGPT was created by a start-up called Open AI. So if you want to access it, it's at chat.openai.com.

It's free to use and easily accessible, but the servers are often over-capacity and you can’t use it. However, there is now a ChatGPT Plus version ($20/month) that generates your responses quicker and allows you to use the service when the servers are over-capacity.

What can you use ChatGPT for?

There’s all kinds of stuff you can use ChatGPT for, including copywriting. You can use it answering questions, brainstorming topics, writing social media captions, language translation, summarizing books, and writing cover letters. I use it to put together a meal plan, and write poems, songs, and comedy sketches.

What are the pros of ChatGPT?

Now, let’s dive in to some of the major pros and cons of the AI service for freelancers.

Pro #1: It speeds up the writing process

Let’s be clear about this: I don't mean that you just put in a prompt and copy and paste whatever it spits out and give it to your client.

You should never do that. ChatGPT is not good enough for that, even if you are quite good at writing the prompts.

You can use ChatGPT to come up with topic ideas, draft an outline, or help generate ideas when you get stuck. Also, if you were writing a listicle, you could use ChatGPT to come up with some additional items to put on that list. All of these uses help speed up the writing process.

Pro #2: It helps with burnout

Since ChatGPT speeds up the writing process, it also helps with burnout.

I feel like I can take on more work because of ChatGPT. Even if I'm not actually working less hours, I’m spending less time typing my thoughts out on my keyboard, which can be very draining.

ChatGPT reduces some of the heavy-lifting when it comes to the writing process. Instead, I'm spending more of my time editing, which is less of a cognitive load than actually writing.

I’ve found that I'm less burnt out, which opens opportunities for taking on more client work.

Pro #3: It can be helpful for marketing

ChatGPT can be really helpful for marketing your freelance copywriting business.

As freelancers, marketing is something that can really go on the wayside, especially if we have a lot of client work.

But it’s important to keep your hand in the game and keep putting out your own content about your business so that you can get more clients.

You can use ChatGPT to help you write email newsletters, social media posts, or any other type of content that you put out there to attract new clients that doesn't exist specifically for the purpose of search engine optimization (I’ll talk about that more in a minute).

Pro #4: It can help you edit your work

The final pro of ChatGPT is that it can help you edit your work.

I think the editing aspect of ChatGPT ise most helpful for anyone who is writing in a language that's not their primary language. If English isn't your primary language and you want to write in English, I think this would really help you a lot. It's not going to make you sound like a native speaker, but it will help edit your existing content.

What are the cons of ChatGPT?

Time to get into the not-so-great qualities of ChatGPT.

Con #1: You can’t use it for SEO content

This is the biggest con of ChatGPT if you’re a freelance SEO blog writer like me.

Like I said before, ChatGPT can help you with any content that doesn't exist specifically for the purpose of search engine optimization, which is the type of content that people put on their websites in order for their websites to show up in Google search results.

And if you're a freelance SEO blog writer, a big chunk of your day is spent writing blog posts for your clients so they can show up in Google.

Why isn’t ChatGPT good for SEO content?

Because Google has stated that their search engine algorithm views AI-generated content as spam. Since AI-generated content is a violation of their guidelines, that means they punish anyone who has AI-generated content, and they put them to the bottom of the search results or they take them off altogether.

And you may be like, “Wait, how does Google know?”

Well, there are a lot of services that can detect AI-generated content. One that I personally use is called originality.ai, a plagiarism detector and AI detector.

Con #2: It writes boring, generic content

Like, total snoozefest content.

ChatGPT is always very logical and formal, even when you ask it to write more casual and friendly. It doesn't sound human, and it doesn't write in different tones very well.

It creates content that makes sense, but it doesn't necessarily have any kind of flavor to it

Seeing the kind of work it produces and how it writes, you’re able to spot other AI-generated content anywhere.

Some people say, “It can write good content, you just need better prompts.” But most people who say that just don't know what good content is.

Con #3: It makes up facts

If you ask ChatGPT to write something, you're going to have to do fact-checking for every single thing that it says.

You have no idea what is true and what's not with ChatGPT.

I asked it to come up with an article citing different scientific studies. And it was like, “According to the Journal of Adolescent Medicine…” and then it listed a bunch of statistics and where it found the studies. I though it was great!

But the I actually clicked on the links.

And it turns out they were just gibberish links that didn't actually link to anything. Or if they did link to something, it had nothing to do with what I was trying to write about. Also, the statistics it cited were wrong.

With ChatGPT, I have to go through and Google every single fact that it talks about, which wastes a lot of time.

Con #4: Your clients may not be happy about it

This con depends on your client.

Some clients would argue that the content is being finished, so why does it matter?

But others may feel like they're paying for a human to write it, so if you are having a computer write it for you, then we don't want to pay you.

Plus, it’s super easy to check if you’re using AI to write your content via tools like originality.ai.

And as I said before, AI-generated content is penalized on Google. So if your client’s main goal is to improve their search engine ranking and you're turning in AI-generated content without their knowledge, then they’re probably going to be angry.

What does AI mean for freelance copywriters?

If you’re a freelance copywriter or a content writer, you should definitely be paying attention to AI tools like ChatGPT and learning how to use them.

Will AI take your job eventually? That depends. And anyone who gives you a firm answer on that doesn't know what they're talking about. Because no one can predict the future.

Here's some things to consider: businesses, especially big businesses, are rarely quick to adapt to new technology. There’s often a huge chain of command that everything has to go through and they're usually just not thinking about it anyways. They pretty much just heard of TikTok.

Another thing to consider is at the present moment, AI is not capable of writing exceptional content, or even acceptable content.

And if Google doesn't change its algorithms, then AI will remain useless when it comes to SEO content.

Plus, even with the time that AI saves, there's still quite a bit of work involved in prompting the AI and editing its work. So your role may change to more of like an AI wrangler than a writer. Some people call that being an editor.

Regardless of all of that, the world still needs deep, authentic content with original ideas, research, and recording, and AI can't do that.

So don’t worry about it too much, buddy! Who knows what the future has in store? Experiment with AI and ChatGPT and get to know their services, and keep rocking it as a freelancer.

If you want to learn more about freelance copywriting, check out my resources for freelancers here.