What Are You Doing Today to Get Work for Tomorrow?
You’ve got a 5:00 deadline, 3 pages of copy to revise, 2 logos to vectorize (or whatever magic you design folks use to make things pretty), and a status report to complete to wrap up another project. It’s almost the perfect trifecta –your three current projects ending at the same time. You’re smoking busy right now, but as N.C Winters points out – you might not have enough work tomorrow to warrant getting out of bed.
So what are you doing to keep fresh projects coming your way?
I’ve still got that new freelancer smell, but a few things that I’ve been trying to do seem to be working so far:
- Tweetdeck Alerts – anytime the word “copywriter” is mentioned on twitter, I get an alert that pops up. I quickly scan it, and if it’s someone looking for a copywriter I’ll send them a quick note. This would probably work with keywords like logo, graphics, template, etc. This has been a huge source of new business lately – small and big jobs.
- Job Board Mailing Lists – Most of the sites that I’ve found have an option for daily notifications about new postings within your search parameters. They seem to be delivered at the same time each day, so I set that time aside to review the postings and bid on the ones that interest me.
- PPC Campaigns – Not a lot of luck for me here yet, but I’ve been playing with Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, and Google ads. There are a few trial coupons out there, so you might be able to get some exposure without spending a dime.
Are you waiting for your next assignment to find you, or do you have some great ways to score your next project?
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Making cold calls, that’s what!
Any particular advice about this? I’m new to the cold-calling game and I’m unsure where to begin or how to approach it.
Hey Martha,
I’m not a huge fan of giving (or receiving) cold calls.
Are your calls truly cold (grab yellow pages, start dialing) or are you calling businesses that you have had some contact with (Chamber of Commerce, BBB, Mixers, etc)
As I claim to be a writer, I think Amber’s suggestion of cold emails might be more effective – but the anti-spam laws need to be considered.
thanks for commenting – love the feedback
brandscaping
i don’t use tweetdeck — is there a way to set up alerts through the original twitter site? or with another 3rd party app? tweetdeck takes up far too much screen real estate for me.
Hey Frank – I like Tweetdeck, but I also use Hootsuite.
Hootsuite’s a web app, but if you dig into the setting a bit, you can add custom alerts. Not sure if it’s exactly right for you – but much better than the twitter.com site.
I’ve heard echofon is good, too – but no experience with it.
@brandscaping
thanks, jason! i actually use echofon on my phone (note to self: check settings!), but on my desktop i use twhirl, and it doesn’t seem to have an alert setup like tweetdeck — but i’ll check out hootsuite. if it’s something i can set up on a site and forget it, except when it sends notifications, that could be workable for me.
Frank, on twhirl do a search for the keywords you want and then click on “Activate”. You will start be getting alerts for the keywords on your “Home” tab and on an extra tab on the Search one.
If you don’t already use an app that supports it you can always use a web app like http://www.twilert.com/ which sends you an email.
The fastest I’ve used is an hour but even that is pretty near real time.
figured out how to toggle saved searches with Twhirl, but man oh man, i’m drowning in the flow now. i’d be interested to hear how the author of the article filters down the stream a bit. (maybe a follow up article?) : )
Cold emails work a whole lot better than cold calls
@ Aaron and Jason:
I’ve written articles on cold calling and warm calling for FreelanceSwitch. Here they are:
http://freelanceswitch.com/the-business-of-freelancing/freelancing-911-turn-your-business-around-with-cold-calls/
http://freelanceswitch.com/freelancing-essentials/freelancing-911-turn-your-business-around-with-warm-calls-and-e-mails/
As for finding leads to contact, I’m not very fond of the mixer circuit. Reason: I’m hard of hearing, and going into rooms full of talking people is difficult. The noise makes it difficult to focus on what anyone is saying. Staying at home and using the phone is much easier to handle.
I have grabbed the Yellow pages and started dialing. But that didn’t work well. I found that my calls went a lot better after I defined my Ideal Client Profile. That would be science, technology, engineering, and math programs in universities, and companies and government agencies with a similar focus.
How do I find them? Via the Internet. They have websites, and, once there, I can find phone numbers and e-mails. Then I start my calling engines…
I’m not really looking for work at the moment, but when I do I would usually update my proposal templates, my freelance profiles, my blog, and of course browse through my favorite job boards for potential jobs to apply for.
Funny thing … I set up a search tab in Hootsuite for the word – logo – and kept getting a lot of portuguese tweets. It appears the word ‘logo’ means “soon” … had to adjust the search LOL.
@Aaron – you can check out Dan Turner’s freelance workshop (free online) at http://freelanceworkshops.com – look in the left column for #6 Getting Clients – he has great advice for cold calling businesses. You might find the rest of the workshop helpful too, I know I did.
… Scott
Has anyone done any heavy (or light) Seo on their own name and profession related to a resume only website? I setup a domain using my name and uploaded my resume to it. I am thinking of optomizing it for jobs id be interested in landing. I realize it might fall into to the category of passive job searching but wouldn’t it can’t hurt.
Have been getting tons of referrals from satisfied clients.
I always forget to look for work even when I’m busy, It just seems like there’s not enough time in the day. I get 4 or 5 grand worth of work coming in and I focus 100% on that. Then my days go 16 hours and i’m only sleeping 4 or 5 hours a day. There’s just no time!
Then I wake up and realize, oh crap… I have no work for today. I think this continuous cycle is really hindering my ability to be profitable all throughout the full month. I’d love to see a much more in depth article, even by a successful freelancer on this site, that is all about what you, as a single person freelance business, do to advertise yourself and keep continuous work flow without spending 6 hours a day on it. I could use some ideas.
Hi,
I’m new to tweetdeck and was wondering – How do you setup alerts for keywords?
I finally figured it out yesterday. There’s a (+) icon on the top left. Click that, then hit “search”. Enter the search you want to track in that tab. like “web design” or whatever. Then click save and it searches your term every few minutes.
Wow! I tried out that tweetdeck thing and it’s been a real lifesaver! Instead of cold calling countless uninterested clients now I can see all the interested ones! The first day I installed this program I got a job making a music video. now 4 days later I have 3 more potential jobs (fingers crossed). This is so much better than everything else I was trying! Thank you Jason!
I just gave the tweetdeck one a try, and in less than 1 minute I got a lead. Lets see if this goes somewhere!
Yup, Tweetdeck has worked great for me.
Twitter has always been my major source of business.. ’cause I’ve no luck in bidding yet.. :/
I have 3 search panels always open on tweetdeck (except all friends, dm and @replies).
1. #Webdesign
2. #WordPress
3. Looking for Web Designers.
Panel no.2 and 3 have been really awesome for me. try that !