5 Of The Best Ways For Freelancers To Find Great New Clients

5 of the Best Ways for Freelancers to Find Great New Clients As a freelancer, at least 25% of my time â€"- usually far more! â€"- is spent trolling for brand spanking new shoppers. Because freelancing tends to be a boom-or-bust sort of enterprise, it’s clever to search for new shoppers even when you have a full workload. Take me, as an example. Right now, I have one steady, excellent client whose assignments pay the payments after which some. But I know from expertise that having just one shopper isn’t a superb concept. Even if likelihood is slim to none that this consumer will drop me in the subsequent few months, I’m still looking out for new purchasers to assist increase my revenue and make me less nervous about my freelancing life. (On that observe, if you’re out there for a freelancer, be happy to offer me a shout!) So whether you’re a freelancer simply starting out with no purchasers to your name, or your queue is filled with work to do, you need to at all times hold trying to find your subsequent (or first!) nice shopper. (Click right here to tweet this thought.) Luckily, in the on-line world, there are plenty of glorious ways to search out excellent shoppers. Here are simply five of the simplest: 1. Cold Calling I’ve yet to fulfill the freelancer who actually enjoyscold calling, but it is, nonetheless, some of the efficient ways to start your profession as a freelancer â€"- or to fill in the gaps in case your other business-gathering strategies aren’t working. Peter Bowerman of The Well-Fed Writer is thought for being an advocate of cold calling. Bowerman, who has had many readers and college students land their first purchasers through cold calling, notes that it’s mostly a numbers recreation. If you call 500 to 1,000 businesses, you’re sure to land some work with which to launch your freelancing profession. Of course, chilly calling, like any other marketing approach, is usually about targeting the best market. When you cold call, you need to ensure your list is stuffed with firms who can really afford to pay for a contract author. But as long as you put together a good record of firms to call and stay persistent, you’re bound to land no less than some work. Resources: 2. Set Up a Lead-Generating Website Many freelancers have had quite a lot of success with a lead-generating website. Carol Tice of the Make a Living Writing Blog is thought for leveraging her personal website to land clients within the enterprise world. This post from her blog provides links to 10 freelance writers’ web sites that efficiently attract new shoppers. Setting up an internet site with the right blend of good design, Search Engine Optimization (search engine optimization) and work samples takes time. But the good thing about this advertising method is that once you get it going, you don’t have nearly as a lot work to do. Just await the potential purchasers to contact you! Resources: 3. Check Out High-Quality Job Boards There’s a cause I embrace the modifier “high-high quality” on this suggestion. There are actually hundreds of job websites and boards on the market for freelancers. The downside is that 99% of them are junk. Many websites are filled with startup businesses and shady web optimization operations on the lookout for cheap content material â€"- like penny-a-word low-cost. (Remember, don’t ever, ever, EVER write for a penny a word, or do different freelance work for an equivalent crappy price!) That doesn’t imply you should rule out job boards completely. You ought to simply be extra selective about which job boards you shop. Also, be taught to pick good purchasers before you even fill out an software. Typically, good purchasers will embrace a full job description, might be upfront about their capability to pay an honest price and can ask for clips, a portfolio or some other sample of your work. (You really don’t want to work with a consumer who doesn’t care what your work is definitely like!) Some sites, like Elance, are a combined bag. I started out on Elance making a terrible fee, and it left a nasty sufficient taste in my mouth that I’ll by no means return. That mentioned, I know that some freelancers who are choosy concerning the jobs they bid on do make an excellent dwelling touchdown clients primarily on Elance. If you may get good jobs there, more energy to you! Resources: four. Mail Your Materials In the Internet age, it could seem like conventional snail mail marketing is outdated. But it could possibly actually be an effective way to get in entrance of potential purchasers who're inundated with emails on a daily basis. I’m truly in the course of putting together my first direct mail marketing campaign, in an effort to land some new business writing shoppers. Chris Marlow of The Copywriters’ Coach is taking me by way of her step-by-step unsolicited mail marketing course of, so I’ll be sure to let you understand how that goes in a few months. Direct mail isn’t just a good choice for marketing writing services. It could be a good choice for freelancers in any variety of industries. If you’re not a whiz at stringing phrases collectively, you might want to seek out help from a author to place collectively an extended-kind direct mail letter. But junk mail could be a superb approach to create recognition, generate leads and connect with potential clients. Resources: 5. P artner Up One glorious way to land more freelancing work, regardless of your business, is to team up with another freelancer or set of freelancers. This appears different for different individuals. For instance, Peter Bowerman is a part of a group of local freelance copywriters who get collectively frequently to assist one another’s businesses. Sometimes they team up on paid advertisements, or one member may even hand a project over to a different when they’re too busy to take it. This association works properly because despite the fact that the group is made up of all copywriters, they focus on completely different niches and don’t sometimes overlap when competing to get purchasers. Another way you can team up is to join with a freelancer whose specialty is complementary to your individual. A traditional team of this kind is the Web writer and Web designer staff. If you possibly can provide your providers as a complete package, quite than simply providing the providers you your self can provide, you’ll be more likely to land purchasers, who don’t wish to take care of the effort of managing both a author and a designer. While designer/author groups are the most common, you could pair just about any useful combination of freelance expertise to land more shoppers. When you team up, you can break up the marketing burden, share each other’s contacts and even cut up the cost of advertising campaigns. Resources: These are just five glorious methods to search out new purchasers, but they’re definitely not your solely choices. You also can attempt in-person networking, social media, public speaking, email advertising and extra. Freelancers, chime in within the comments part. How have YOU had success discovering new purchasers? Abby Hayes is a freelance blogger and copywriter who writes about private finances for Dough Roller. She loves detailed budgets, dark chocolate and fats Victorian novels. Image: Flickr