A few months ago, I posted on my blog that 2013 had been the worst year of my 12-year freelancing career, that I was burned out on journalism, and that I needed something to change.
Change did happen, but not in my circumstances. It happened in me.
Writing that post made me see clearly and without excuses all that I’d done wrong this year and showed me concrete ways to fix it. Now that I had publicly declared how I had failed, I made it my mission to come back from this setback, to get my career back on track again. I started two businesses, one with my husband and one as an experiment and while those got off the ground, I rolled up my sleeves and started marketing. Like a maniac. I vowed that 2014 was going to be a six-figure year for me and started laying the foundation for that to happen.
I billed $4,000 in freelancing last month and am set to beat that in November.
How did it happen? Intense marketing. But more than that, it happened because I played the game of numbers and for the first time this year, I played it right.
See, marketing is a process. It’s not a task on your to-do list that you can mark as done one fine morning after you’ve sent out three queries.
Marketing, for a freelancer, is a moving target, something you schedule into your every day, like walking the dog. You don’t do it because it’s fun, you do it because you don’t want dog crap on your carpet. And you keep doing it until you get new clients and then you do it all over again until you can replace them with higher-paying ones. You market after you lose a client because of budget cuts and you market when a client goes out of business. You market to replace clients when your own cost of living goes up or after you’ve had a baby because while your expenses have gone up, your working hours have actually gone down.
When freelancers say that pitching is a numbers game, they’re not saying send three queries and go relax. Those are not the numbers that will get you results, not in this market. But send them every single day and twice on Sunday and the results are almost guaranteed. In September I must have sent out hundreds of queries and letters of introduction. In October, six of those resulted in regular gigs, including two from $1-a-word markets. At least two dozen more resulted in conversations of the “send us an idea” or “we’ll be assigning work in 2014, can we call you then?” variety.
Your queries have to be fantastic and your letters of introduction head and shoulders above the rest of your competition, but once you’ve got those sorted, the only way to grow your freelance business is to put your work out there in front of as many people as you possibly can.
It’s a numbers game. And if you aren’t winning, it’s time to ask yourself: Are your numbers high enough?