How to Build Your Ultimate Contact List
Note: A few times a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of FreelanceSwitch. This article by Martha was first published April 12th, 2009, yet is just as relevant and full of useful information today.
A few years ago, articles of this sort were all about building one’s mailing list.
And we in the design field knew the drill quite well. We’d create a list of likely prospects, design something cool to send out, and then wait for the phone to ring. Sometimes it rang, sometimes it didn’t.
A-a-a-ah, the olden days.
Back then, those spinning business card files bearing the Rolodex brand were like gold. If you are of a certain age, you may remember that strict “Don’t Take the Rolodex with You” policy if you decided to leave Company X.
While you were at Company X, the cards in your Rolodex spent a great deal of time on your desk, waiting for you to give them a spin. Occasionally, they had to be spun into a mailing list, and you may be curious as to how that would happen.
Want More Clients? Just Ask!
One of the ways that many freelancers get new clients is simply by asking.
And one of the ways to do that is to email companies and offer your services. To do this, an effectively written letter—similar to a cover letter you’d use to get a job—is all that you need.
Here are some tips to creating an effective solicitation letter that can yield to freelance projects. Continue Reading
Just Get Going: The Single Most Effective Marketing Trick
Creative freelancers suffer from a peculiar form of procrastination. For lack of a better name, I’ll call it the “I must get all of my ducks in a row before I start promoting my business” syndrome.
We all know people who’ve spent weeks and months perfecting their marketing materials, searching for the right office space, poring over purchases large and small, while all sorts of business opportunities are flying by.
The solution is to become like Jim Koch, founder of the Boston Beer Company. Shortly after the company started, Koch was talking with a wealthy relative who also was one of his investors. Koch was waxing ecstatic about the computer system that would track the company’s sales. The relative stopped him short with a simple question: Do you have any sales yet?
How to Ask for Work Without Looking Desperate
A recent thread on a forum I follow centered on how to ask for referrals to new clients. Some posters mentioned that they are reluctant to ask their existing clients for referrals because they don’t want their clients to know if they’re struggling. And they don’t want to ask other freelancers, because they don’t want their competition to think they’re weak. I admit that I sometimes grapple with these concerns, but existing clients and fellow freelancers can be great resources for referrals.
Here’s how to make the ask without making yourself look desperate:
Six Valuable Things Web Design Clients Won’t Tell You
When running a start-up web design business, unless you have some kind of incredible good luck (or no competition), you’re always working hard to acquire new business. Sales leads are valuable, regardless of where they come from. The number varies, but for every ten leads you contact, you’ll be fortunate if two or three of them turn in to paying clients. This means you have to talk to a lot of people. Still, getting a new lead is exciting because it has the potential to be your next big sale, helping you pay your bills and getting you one little step closer to start-up success.
Reslanting and Reselling for Writers
It was one of the most brilliant article ideas you’ve ever had. You sat down and wrote up a beautiful query letter, tailored it perfectly to the publication you were targeting and sent it off. Now to sit and wait to receive the assignment from the editor.
The reply comes faster than usual but instead of containing a word count and a deadline it’s…the form rejection letter.
It wouldn’t normally be a big deal except the article was about a niche topic and this was the perfect magazine to publish it.
Time to toss the idea and move on, right? Wrong. It’s merely time to re-examine it and consider other ways it could be written.
7 Ways to Turn Miss(ter) Modesty into a World-Class Freelancer
As a freelancer, modesty will get you little. Unremitting self-promoters need only apply.
Expressing inadequacy or uncertainty can cost you precious time and money. Clients just want their job done. All they want to know is that you can do it. And you can!
We all have different levels of self-confidence and this changes throughout our lives. With age and experience, people tend to gain more confidence. Here are seven tips to help you excel now.
1) Visualize success. If you look at a map, yet have no destination in mind, how can you chart your course? Spend time regularly envisioning your ideal career situation so that you can figure out what steps you need to take to get there.
Not Getting a Rise out of your Elevator Speech?
Read a few books and websites with marketing advice and you’ll soon encounter a discussion of the “elevator speech,” the compact little monologue you’re supposed to have prepared to deliver at a moment’s notice at networking opportunities and chance encounters.
The theory is that you should be able to present yourself effectively to a complete stranger in the time it would take you to share a ride in an elevator. Whether that is thirty seconds or a minute, or even slightly longer, you are supposed to distill the essence of who you are, what you do, and what you offer into an irresistible mini-pitch that opens up opportunities for you with new contacts.
Great idea. In fact, the only things wrong with it are:
- the basic concept and expectations, and
- its execution by most freelancers.
How NOT to Get Freelance Work
It goes without saying that in the process of doing business, mistakes will be made — especially in the beginning. Small mistakes and stumbles happen, but there are a few that beginners make that can put a freelance career on the rocks before it has even started.
Although the items on this list may seem like common sense behaviors to avoid, they’re all things that people have done. Don’t do them! Continue Reading
4 Steps to Create a Great Pitch and Sell Your Writing
One of the constant struggles of freelance writing is finding work, and gigs in the print world (and, increasingly, online) require writers to pitch their stories to editors.
As a freelance writer, your pitch is your greeting card, your foot in the door, and, hopefully, your meal ticket. Because editors don’t usually have time to review full articles, those queries will likely affect the bottom line more than your writing itself.
That said, it pays to know how to sell yourself and your ideas: in other words, how to quickly craft compelling pitches.
