As a freelance writer you probably spend the majority of your day writing. This makes perfect sense. But at the same time, being a successful freelance writer means obtaining new clients as often as possible. Anytime that you don’t have much going on during work hours you should think about how you can market yourself. Over the years I have found that downtime is perfect marketing time.
When do you have downtime during the day? This depends on the schedule that you are used to working. I usually have some time in the afternoon to make phone calls, send emails, and look into other methods of generating new clients. That being said, I know many freelance writers who do their marketing in the morning. Fortunately, it doesn’t really matter when you are marketing your services as long as you are doing so in a manner that helps you better your career.
Instead of spending all your downtime checking emails and browsing the internet you should get busy with marketing your services. Believe it or not, you can get quite a bit done in 30 to 60 minutes. It doesn’t take too long to make a group of cold calls or to write a query letter for a publication you are dying to break into. If you complete just one marketing task during your downtime you will feel as if you made major progress; especially if your action results in a new client.
To better your chance of freelance writing success you should spend a lot of your downtime during the workday marketing your services.Â
Lately, a lot of people have been asking for my advice on getting paid for their work. It seems that more and more freelance writers are completing work for “so-called clients†but never getting paid. I am a big believer in asking for payment upfront. This protects you from those who want to take your hard work and run. This leads to the question: will clients really pay upfront?
There is no denying that when you receive upfront payment that the client is going out on a limb. After all, they don’t know if you are going to take the money and never send the work. This is what can make asking to be paid upfront so difficult. Of course, this is something you definitely need to talk about no matter how you or the client feels.
Finding a happy medium for the first project can often times be the best option. For instance, you can ask for half payment. This helps to ensure that you are getting some money for your work without asking the client to put out the entire amount. Additionally, I have found that most clients that pay half upfront will immediately send the remaining balance upon delivery of the completed project.
You will never know if a client will pay upfront until you ask. This is something that I do with every new client. When they pay upfront once they usually do so from that point on. After one project they trust me to deliver, so they have no reason not to send the money from the get-go.
Not every client will want to send 100 percent of your payment before receiving the work. You should be ready to negotiate. As long as you receive at least 50 percent of the agreed upon price you should be happy.Â
Hey all! I am hoping that some (or all) of you can help me with a contest I have been keeping my eye on. This doesn’t have anything to do with freelance writing, but with one post already up today I figured it would be okay.
A good friend of mine, Zack Fettig, is in the running to be the ESPN Radio Army Athlete of the Week. At this time he only has 20.7 percent of the votes and needs to make up some ground before Thursday of this week.
