2 Ways to Keep Your Freelance Business Thriving

Huh. Really.

That was my reaction yesterday when I saw another How to Start Your Freelance Writing Business post. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen a lot of these kinds of posts over the years.

Not one of them yet has said anything new. It’s the same general info — find a niche, identify your ideal client, secure the work, do the job well…

Isn’t that a bit obvious? And the niche part –you don’t really need one (nor necessarily know one the minute you start). I came away from this latest “guide” feeling the same meh I have for so many other similar (nearly identical) posts.

If you’ve found something helpful in one of those articles, bless your heart. But let me address the elephant in the room —

Have you maintained your freelance business?

There’s where the magic is, isn’t it?

And luckily, magic is easy to make.

I nearly danced with glee when I saw Jennifer Gregory tweet:

I’m declaring it Follow Up February! Following up is the most important step of sending LOIs and #contentmarketing #writers must follow up on leads in order to land new clients and more assignments. buff.ly/2TFEaTj #freelancewriting

Preach it, sister.

Proof of the magic of following up occurred with me last week.

I contacted a client with whom I’d completed one project. Back in June. I’d reached out twice afterward, but heard nothing back. In January, I made a list of all of the clients I’d worked with in the last 12-18 months who I’d not heard from again.

Some I knew were gone for good — the one-off projects, the lack of rapport, or in one case, the really unsure-of-himself client. (If a client won’t finalize approval of the draft he asked for after two months of back-and-forth and three revisions, that’s his indecision, not your skills. It happened on two projects. And with an ad agency at one point.)

But there were those clients who just disappeared down the in box.

Those are the ones. This client I contacted last week was one of them.

He responded right away. My timing was perfect, he said, and we’re now lining up a number of projects.

Follow up. It’s where you pick up the money that otherwise would still be on the table.

That’s the first rule of maintaining your freelance writing business. Here’s another:

Market your ass off. Consistently.

How consistently? If you’re pretty new and have two or three clients, then you should make marketing part of your daily tasks. Every. Damn. Day. How much you market — and your marketing methods — are up to you. But even five minutes to send out one LOI, two tweets, or write a snail mail letter is better than no marketing at all. But send something, call someone, whatever you decide is your way to do it, do it.

Then the critical component of the entire business maintenance process comes into play:

Follow up. Consistently.

You seriously didn’t see that coming? Building a stronger freelance writing business is all about being consistent. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

[bctt tweet=” #Freelancewriting success requires this: consistent marketing and follow-up.” username=”LoriWidmer”]

Truth is you could probably get by with these two steps (it looks like three, but it’s really two). But if you want to grow that business even more, you might want to do this, too:

Learn something new.

Read. Study. Take a course. Buy a book.

Free courses abound. So do paid ones, but be careful who you’re handing your money to. Too often, they’re just repeating the same advice you could be getting for free elsewhere. Sometimes, they’re not even practicing what they preach. Go with free when you can. When you can’t, vet your sources.

Writers, how have marketing and following up built your business?
What else have you added to that to grow your business?
Any advice for beginning writers on how to run a successful business?