Great!! More More.

fantastic. i’ve tried a few of these things over the years, but not consistently. i’m going to print this one out! ~m

excellent post. I can’t wait to read the in-depth articles. If all else fails, you could stand on a corner with a cardboard sign and balloons…. guaranteed people will look at your sign if you have balloons..

great post. this one’s definitely getting filed in delicious.

I agree this is a great post. It would be nice is there was a print this button on the page that created a printer friendly version.

Thanks for the post.

Great list of ideas on how to promote yourself. A lot of the simpler sounding ones, such as having a elevator pitch, can be very useful, you never know when it could come in handy.

Lately, I’ve been trying to promote myself more online, on various blogs and design portals, I want people to see my work. I can’t stress how important it is to network, both online and offline. Something as simple as a friendly conversation with someone can lead to some potential work or better yet, a business relationship.

Excellent ideas for any industries on this post. I will keep coming back for good ideas like this.

I have received some traffic from leaving just this kind of comment on blogs. Now–how to convert link traffic to customers!

Great Post. I do a blog on selling for independent professionals that might be of interest. I will also offer sales coaching very soon, including the dark art of prospecting (finding customers). When you “have to sell to eat”, it helps to have a little training. I would even be happy to guest write on some of the items on your list!

That took a while to read – great tips; looking forward to reading ALL of those articles

Great article, I’m in the planning stages of setting up my own freelance company, and some of the ideas that you have listed above will come in very handy, Thanks!

Wow, that’s good stuff Good ideas

This is some of the best advice i’ve seen on how to promote yourself, and it’s mostly things that can be done in a matter of minutes!

Another thing that a lot of people overlook is a good business card. I’ve received a decent amount of freelance work just purely on my business card.

Other than that, I’ll be implementing a lot of these shortly. Thanks a lot!

Another idea i have done is pick up business cards from stores and look for the ones that have yahoo, gmail, or hotmail email addresses. This will give you a good idea they need web design/development services. Then either mail then a flyer of what you do or go visit them personally.

Oops those images had vanished for a while but they’re all fixed now!

Wow, what a thorough list! I am definitely bookmarking this page! THANKS!!

“Pitch an article to an industry publication”

We’re always on the lookout for great new writers at Digital Web magazine – like Cyan says, it’s a great way to get your name out there, position yourself as an expert in the web industry, and get some extra traffic while you’re at it:

http://www.digital-web.com/contribute/write/

Good collections of suggestions. Few things missing. One could sign up with the freelance marketplaces like getafreelancer.com, rentacoder.com.

Rajesh Shakya
http://www.rajeshshakya.com

For more info please visit: http://www.businessonmarket.com

you said : “Send out an email to everyone in your address book, announcing what you do, where you are and what you can offer” nowsday it can be considered as SPAM . And you can be until arrested. Take care .

Or, you could be part of a word-of-mouth referral club, like Business Network International. http://www.bni.com

Plenty of chapters in different countries.

I’m a gaprhic design and I joined this club and I tell you, say goodbye to cold-calling and cold-emailing. Plus you get quality and qualified leads and you can train members to find those projects that you would love to work on

This is my chapter http://www.bni-rendezvous.com

You’ll get to interact with people from industries and share ideas. It’s all good!

Vicki

Whoa! Nice ideas!

Which are the most effective though? And which apply better to certain industries? Because doing all of those won’t leave any time for doing any freelance work.

Wonderful article – so many avenues with which you can get your name out there. Exposure, exposure, exposure. Kinda like, location, location, location. Thanks!

I have found that Craiglist is the best source of Freelance work. I point my RSS reader to the section about computer gigs in my area and I have a never ending stream of jobs to go after. Sometimes you deal with cheapskates but that is everywhere isn’t it.

Great stuff!

Ryan Haden: I agree. Craig’s list computer gigs section is nice.

Not only an email newsletter, but a print newsletter. Even today, not all decision makers give out their email address or spend much time reading email. I know, SACRILEGE:) Still, it’s true.

A print newsletter will get you noticed. It’s not as difficult or expensive as you’d think. 5 reasons to have one are on my blog at http://www.rescuemarketing.com/blog/2007/05/17/5-reasons-why-your-business-needs-a-newsletter-part-1/

Also, write a column for local publications. The editors of your local newspaper, business journal etc are always looking for content. If yours is good, they’ll use it. Instant credibility – after all, if it was in the paper, it must have been true

There’s some awesome ideas in here – I appreciate your hard work putting this together for us “freelancers”.

This is my new favorite website! Keep up the good work!

Cheers
/cm

i am a software developer

Sites such as:
http://www.guru.com
https://www.it-globalized.com
http://www.rentacoder.com

would also be specific ideas for how to get more freelance work, but from what I could see this was also linked to in a related article.

I’m glad I found this site! Great advice.

Cool…

Yes… the point of view in this post is….

Always creative and do something new and different

Great article.Lots to learn from this article.
— GDzine Studio Kolkata, India

“Advertise in online directories”

There aren’t many good directories of freelance consultants, but a few that are worthwhile are http://www.FreelanceLocalTech.com (for most technical consulting, including web/app dev, tech writing, and graphic artists) and FreelanceDesigners (primarily graphics and creative folks).

I love your article…^^…I didn’t really realized before how varied the avenues that I can use to get more freelance work…Thanks Cyan…^^

Some good tips. FYI; I have recently picked up several “gigs” by posting a free ad on backpage.com. Thanks to the magic of copy and paste it took me less than an hour to post ads to several dozen cities.

Good and useful read!

I’m Bookmarking this and hoping the future in-depth articles on each topic/idea will be added to this page as links. (*hint hint*

Did you mention the use of places like MySpace and YouTube?
If so, I’m sorry if I missed it. I have already used some of the ideas suggested here. Excellent!

Atlast I found a spam free info source on freelance business ideas. Thanks for the great efforts.

Very good article pack with useful advise

great stuff, already bookmarked!

Nice ideas and great article

Very very good article I love reading it. wow cool

Great article, Ive learn a lot on this. Thanks for sharing.

Nice job putting all of this information together!
Super effort.

Remember the number one way to get work is through people referring you.
It’s usually a sure job. They key is how do you get it. Answer— doing great work
and time in the market.

Wow, that is certainly a great list of promotional ideas. I just wrote an article with 120 self promotional ideas for graphic designers and freelancers and I thought that your users might find it useful – http://allgraphicdesign.com/graphicsblog/2007/11/28/120-self-promotion-ideas-for-graphic-designers-freelancers-free-or-almost-free/

Thanks again for the great article.
Rachel

Excellent article, great collection

hey, the “Start a Newsletter” link in the body of the article (points to http://freelanceswitch.com/marketing/harnessing-mailouts-a-complete-how-to-guide-to-email-marketing-for-freelancers/ ) returns page not found….

Otherwise excellent advice there; great article!

Great article !

Done some of the above myself but i never knew there are so many other options

Thanks some great ideas here. Basically I’m just now learning how to network locally and you gave me some new ideas.

Great post…. I was just compiling a similar list for personal use and this would be very handy!

I enjoy writing insights from life – do take a look at my blog at:

http://www.letstalkinsights.blogspot.com

Perfect. We learn new things every day. We will definitely use some tips and tricks in our company.
http://www.syntacticsugar.com
Sarka (Czech republic)

Cyan,

I enjoyed reading your article and linked my readers to your site in my post today about freelance work. Keep up your good work.

Regards,
Randy Place

Awesome article and tips. I’m going to try some of these with my Administrative Services business.

Thanks.

http://www.RnTProadmin.com

Excellence! These are good comments.
I also suggest the website so that freelancer, software developer..can find ideas work.
http://www.getoffshorexperts.com

The 2 “Start a newsletter” links are dead.

Something to keep in mind when trying out any of these ideas is that repetition and a long-term perspective are key. For instance, an e-newsletter is a great marketing tool, but only if you keep it up and produce interesting content consistently for your readers. It may be many months before you see results from your efforts, which can be frustrating. My experience, so far, in running a small design shop, has been that you should pick a few marketing channels and then work them systematically and relentlessly. I wish I had the time to effectively execute ten percent of the marketing ideas on this list.

Network with other clients and freelancers – whizolve.com

I think it’s great word-of-mouth for a photographer to have a blog too.

I’ve tried many things on this list.

Now I’m gonna go with “Get t-shirts made with your URL” and “Write an eBook or Report for your target market and promote it online”, although I’m not much of a writter =)

Sites like Craigs List and oDesk.com help a lot to freelance begginers. Also GetAFreelancer.com, although I didn’t try this one.

Excellent list guys, great job.

Well, we all gotta start somewhere, here I am reading this great post and leaving a footprint by spreading the word of my freelance switch. Check out my website for graphics photos, magazine and blog, I”m sure someone will find interesting. Spread the word too if you like or subscribe to newsletter.
Thanks for the tips Chad and you got me as a rss feeder.

krossmedia.net

Good tips. Thank you.

bookmarked for sure. an excellent article about how to promote your business. i always forget to bring business cards with me. you gotta have them to pass them out.

thanks

Finally – a super comprehensive list. I have a couple friends just about ready to cut the corporate chord and they’re good, highly skilled professionals. They are just worried about keeping the business flowing so that they can keep feeding the family. I’ll share this post – it’s good.

This is a super helpful list – something I have been looking for since I recently started freelancing.

Word of mouth seems to be the best, and your list helps to consider some of the “not-so-obvious” ways in which you can generate more word of mouth.

Thank you for putting this together : )

I love this article. Thanks for all the great ideas! I actually have implemented a lot of these and so far, they have worked tremendously for my business! Thanks Freelance Switch…!

That is a great article indeed. Thanks!

Awesome article. Every freelancer needs to read it.

Great post and great ideas to follow!
Isaac
http://www.jasfy.com

sure you must get paid for your orignal state of the art words.. here you are thump up… thanks , Amirlay

Dostrum Harbidende İyiymiş Yaaa

Yes! Exactly the advice I was looking for; thank you for your consistently great content!

I’m going to forward this to every freelancer I know. Thanks!

If you live in a major metro area (San Francisco, LA, Seattle, NY, Chicago, etc.) check out The Creative Group. They area staffing company that finds project work for you and they work with Designers and Writers for everything from 1 day projects to 6 month contracts.

I’m only repeating what everyone has already said, but these are some terrific tips. Thanks for these!!

Thanx Cyan for the tips and inspiration! I need to read these every couple of months
to get the momentum [ foward ] again!

Mark Jaquette @
BAMmGRAPHICS.com &
illustrationISM.net !

Any advice for independent Film/HD production company? Awesome advice nonetheless, i can implement this to my business already.

This is an excellent list. Saving …

Hi this is krishna your ideas are great …… thank you very much

Passion for games and C and C++ are in my blood from childhood, I have pursued it all my life. Starting as a C and C++ graphics programmer with a goal to make games, I have over 4years of C and C++ game development experience as a free lancer. I have freelancer C and C++ game development efforts spread across platform like PC, with various clients across the Engineering colleges and student projects. I have worked on various games like sports, action-adventure,and card games. Though I started my carrier as a Freelancer programmer to develop mini games , I have successfully worked up in the roles of Game Programmer, I had worked with student projects in C and C++ and game projects like card games and sports.Hands on experience in Software development using C and C++ Technologies.Ability to understand requirements and transfer them into design and code effectively.Proven ability to work efficiently in independent and teamwork environments.Excellent interpersonal, analytical and leadership skills. And i can able to develop any kind of projects like java, .net,VC++,PHP,oracle,etc any platform i can able to develop projects.

Warm Regards
Krishna Maddikara

Great, great, really great article. I’ve included a link to it in my freelancing newsletter and you’ll be on my blog roll. Fanstastic stuff! Thank you.

It’s a great list, if only I had time to do all of them and still get any actual work done! Something that really stuck out for me was contributing a column to a local newspaper or publication, I’m definitely going to try this, maybe tie into some of the less jargon-heavy stuff I might write on my blog.

In my experience random flyering/cold-calling of local businesses doesn’t get you too far, but maybe that’s just a lack of persistence; I think being persistent with any promotional effort is very important. They might hear/see your name once and forget it, but people retain it in memory if it’s put in front of them on a regular basis, especially if you have strong branding. My 2 cents anyhoo.

Cheers!

One of the best pieces of the internet. I frequent this post regularly.

I have two ways to go at the moment, and I have been rather down recently.

I am highly skilled in IT, but have database skills, not web skills for freelance work.

As a result I have taken on writing work (which I hate) to get money.

I am re-training for the web stuff and I can now do some basics.

However, I was considering giving it all up and just going back permanent in the work I enjoy (IT work). Only problem is, the economy and the job situation probably won’t let me. I had even considered becoming unemployed and just training till the situation picks up so I can get another job.

So… I have decided to use your ideas and promote my freelance work up the hilt, and hopefully
get some basic web site work until I become more skilled.

THANKS FOR GIVING ME A LIFT ….

ANDY

This website is as good as I would expect good website to be which is very good.

Keep on rocking!

great , Thanks for all the great ideas

Good article, but STRONGLY disagree with a statement in the illustration section about doing work for stock image sites. These sites are devaluing illustration and directing work away from the freelance illustrator. Freelance illustrators should avoid contributing to these sites for the sake of the future of their and everybody elses freelance careers.

Yes! Exactly the advice I was looking for; thank you for your consistently great content!

Yes! this is it i want from

I have signup as a freelancer with amazon.reply,how i can get data entry jobs frequently via member area.thank you!!!

Nice roundup list and thanks for all the tips you share in here

Great list! I really like the ’start a magazine’ bit. Any recommendations on how to start a group or pull folks together to contribute?!

I’ve tried craigslist, but didn’t have much luck.

Thanks, I needed thease.

Nice job! It is great to find a site that is informative and supportive for freelance designers.

Are you looking for cheap web hosting proveder? Just go with Shinewebs Technologies. They are offering one free domain name and 500MB web space at just $29 for one year.

Thanks for the great list. I need to keep this around to refer back to when I get stuck.

Great post! Since I consult almost exclusively for design agencies, not all of these really apply, but still some great ideas here!

Thanks!

i have to try every one of them, i had have some promblems with cold calling but yeah, sales sales

Great post, thanks!

Can’t wait to try these out!

Hey, this is a great little idea for a blog. As a struggling freelancer, it is very hard to find new work all the time while doing a great job for all your existing clients. It is a bitter enemy of mine. I have to spend most of my time trying to get clients when I should be focusing on search engine optimization. Thanks for the tips…I have a plan to use some of them.

Great tips and advice. I have spoken to many people, and we often overlook this simple input: speak at events – conferences, lectures, meet-ups. A Service Provider of-
http://morefreelance.com/

Great tips

Great list. I am on my way to becoming freelance full-time and some of these will help. Getting on the radio is the next step and isn’t as hard as it may sound.

Great Site I was searching the same thing from a long time. Really it gives me a lot of knowledge.

Thanks, will help me on my freelancing journey. =]

Nice work dude, your ideas worth a lot, hopefully a lot of readers will get success in getting more clients.

Great tips . Thanks

wow what a great list, defo be bookmarking this site. thanks

great tips like it…

Great ideas … Must be applied

Yet another awesome article to bookmark! Thank you so much for sharing. I am definitely going to put some of these things into place.

yes its great but you know what should be limited it seems to do alot of for getting a freelance work ?

Perfectly composed. I will definitely going to try these ideas. posting is comment is also one of them

Hi this is a great article for people who need direction in the field. Its a great time to be freelancing. Here is an article on my blog that I wrote “Complete toolkit for Search Engine Optimization” Check it out and leave a comment.

Thanx again!

Great article! Great ideas! Can’t wait to try some of them out!

Print newsletter definitley better these days as more the people are reluctant to give their email address just due to spam problems.

Hi,

I own the website http://translationpayments.com/ where translators and other freelancers can comment on the payment practices and reputation of the outsourcers they have worked for. It is high on google for keywords relating to “payment reputation” and are supported by my pages on other domains (all of which are the only ones near the top of google for these keywords).
The database works in different categories than just translations and more can be added. The user can compare companies within categories or even regions. I am not aware of any online database as useful and robust as this one, and I intend to keep it a free service, so traffic should get high, as well as the PR.
I believe such an online database would be useful for your freelancers and I was wondering if you would be interested in a link exchange.

Thank you,

Karel Kosman

Definitely the best ‘how to get illustration work’ article, in that it has loads of interesting and varied ideas, not just submit your work with the masses to art directors (does this ever work!). I’ve found writing articles for blogs and websites works really well ( it did for my guitar tuition website ). When your emailing one on one to someone who doesn’t get 200 email enquiries a day, their quite likely to respond, and then you have some communication…so at least you don’t feel you’re in a sealed bubble with no change of getting anywhere.

peace

Chris

Great article and I gained so much knowledge that will help me! You see I am already using some of your ideas! Thank you!

Fantastic post. There are some seriously great ideas in here, the elevator pitch being one of the simplest, yet most forgotten!

In terms of freelancers listing their services they can also connect with like minded people at http://freelancerunplugged.com – Discussions, events and connections at the click of a button. Hope it helps.

That was a great blog post. I fully intend to harness some of these points as I am just starting out as a freelancer myself.

Thank you!!

Nicer Article and use full tips.

I’ve just discovered this website (and page…), I love it. The information I’ve come across so far is just what I needed for inspiration and direction, in starting my own freelance business. My current direction is graphic design, but I find I like to fidle with correcting and restoring photographs very much too. I’ve been asked to do compositions for several clients, and I like that too. My career expertise is in commercial printing, but I find everything to do with design is also (and still) revolving around printing in one sense or another. I’m excited!!! …and thank you for having a site like this one. I will definately come back, time and time again….

Flippy,

We definitely have some similarities but the having to put the left sock and shoe on before the right one really stuck out. I had no idea anyone else HAD to do that. basil

nice i like this site. i will keep reading new post and comments. i had a new website all about
driving traffic for your site for free im doin seo i will apply all i learned here

Its funny – i wish i would have read this post before i had to buy a book and spend 2 weeks reading what i just read at your post. thanks!

Hi my name is Josy Johnson I’m a Event Planner and I really enjoyed reading your article. It is very informative and you’re a great writer. Thank you so much.

Great Post, very useful information and lots of great ideas to explore. Good Stuff

Thanks! Love the ideas, a lot of out of the box thinking!

Thank you for putting together this long list of useful tips. Asking satisfied clients for referrals – how sensible, yet I always forget to do that. The tip about cross promoting is also good. I will bookmark this page.

Great! Thanks for the info! I will use this information to the best of my abilities!

good post

very informative & detailed post, I really liked it as one of the important and nicely written article – I am very very positive about these points and would try my best to use most of them as much as possible – thanks!

This is an amazing article. It is informative and educating.

This is a fantastic list of lead generation techniques! I’ve started implementing some of these after only a couple of days, and plan more for the future. Some things on here I’d never considered. Thanks.

Nice Article. I fully intend to harness some of these points.

Great stuff, man!

Just what I was looking for.

I’ll hopefully get some great publicity from the local paper. I’m looking to start small (local pubs) and go bigger!

That was a great blog post. I fully intend to harness some of these points as I am just starting out as a freelancer myself.

Thanks this is really useful – gave me inspiraiton to find new clients!

Great stuff! Thank you! I just added my business to yellow & white pages after reading this
Thanks again!