How To Find Freelance Writing Clients
The Various Channels For Client Acquisition
18 days ago I posted a thread to the freelance writers’ subreddit that was added to the wiki by one of the subreddit’s curators (..yes, I can’t believe how geeky I’ve become over lockdown).
In the interest of widening distribution (and giving me something to refer back to periodically that isn’t on Reddit) I thought it would be good to rewrite that post as an article.
Before getting into the specifics of each channel, my two pieces of advice for finding freelance clients are as follows:
- Keep marketing even when you’re already busy with work. Not doing this is a very easy — but elementary — mistake to make. Consider creating a daily “keep fit” list for yourself if it helps keep you on track.
- Diversify your marketing by employing a few different strategies across different channels. This will also prevent marketing yourself from feeling monotonous. Cold pitching, in particular, becomes very tedious after a while. Inbound marketing is, in my opinion, more fun — but shifting between the two is a great means to both cover wide ground (inbound marketing) and laser-focus on a few targeted accounts, a-la account based marketing (ABM).
Outbound Channels
When thinking about approaches to marketing, I like to (currently) divide my attention between outbound marketing (find leads by interrupting them) and inbound marketing (find leads by drawing them in).
Let’s start with the outbound methodologies.
Cold pitching
If you want to find freelance writing clients, then an easy place to begin is to simply email some target companies and express your interest in writing for them.
Ideally, you should have a niche — or a series of them — decided upon before doing this. You should also ideally have a writing portfolio and a website.
There’s no need to overthink this. An enthusiastic and hand-crafted email addressed to the right point of contact can be enough.
To get cold emailing I would:
- Decide upon my qualification criteria. What type of companies and/or agencies would you want to write for exactly?
- Think about buyer personas. Who would hire me at those organizations? What job title would they have? Where would they be hanging out online?
I might also want to get some technology in place like:
- Klenty or Woodpecker for automating drip email sequences
- A subscription to Hunter.io for finding email addresses
- LinkedIn to see how organizations are laid out
- A CRM for more individualized contact
Sources for finding leads could be:
- Crunchbase if you’re targeting startups
- Clutch if you’re targeting marketing agencies
- Google searches to find clients by keyword
- Location-specific / mapping websites (see: builtinnyc.com) if you’re targeting local clients in a specific geography.
My thoughts about cold emailing can be found in the article below.
TL;DR: I’ve used it sporadically over the years because I’m quite familiar with it. However, increasingly, I think the odds of breaking through to quality client this way are just too thin. I recommend going very minimalist with cold emailing and only using it to laser-focus on a few high value prospects.
Digital Advertising
Unless we’re talking about placing ads in newspapers, more advertising these days is digital advertising.
Pay per click (PPC) could be used on networks such as Google and LinkedIn to find freelance clients.
- Note one: I haven’t done this yet.
- Note two: the consensus (source: Reddit) seems to be that this is likely to be a prodigious waste of money unless you really know what you’re doing.
If you’re a freelance writer that happens to have experience with PPC — and you have the budget to put behind it — then I say “why not?” I’ll leave more thoughts about how well this works for when I have accrued the experience.
Job Applications
People post that they need freelance writers and you apply.
There’s ProBlogger, LinkedIn, and other places like Facebook groups.
My observations are similar to cold pitching.
If you’re applying for remote writer gigs you’re giving yourself pretty terrible odds and are potentially up against thousands of other applicants all of who might be undercutting you.
You can also find freelance gigs on LinkedIn, by the way, as well as remote opportunities. =
Working Through Freelancing Marketplaces:
You sign up for a marketplace like Upwork and find gigs that way.
I’ve never worked this way so, again, I’ll leave the note-writing process to somebody with experience.
The general comments about UpWork from freelance writers about UpWork (including this one, at the time of writing) are that, commonly:
- It’s a race to the bottom with lots of clients looking for work at outrageously low budgets
- If you sift through it carefully enough, and have time to devote to figuring out the system, you can probably make a good income from finding clients there.
Upwork has its own subreddit so feel free to check out that page if you want to talk to people that have direct experience working through the marketplace:
And Upwork clients are commonly discussed on the main freelance subreddit (/r/freelance):
Events (Trade Shows, Conferences):
An observation:
Freelance writers— including myself — have a tendency to forget that there is a world that exists beyond our home offices and coworking spaces. You know — that place beyond your own four walls!
Obviously right now things are a little different, but there’s enormous value in getting out into the real world, replete with some business cards, and meeting potential clients.
For freelancers that aren’t seeking out local clients, things get a little bit more complicated.
If this describes you, you could consider flying to major world cities and attending conferences and meetups there.
Types of events that you may wish to consider include:
- Conferences, particularly those focused around content marketing and inbound. It’s highly likely that these conferences will have many potential clients in attendance. There are also events specifically geared towards writers, freelancers, and content marketers. The freelancer:client ratio might be lower here, though.
- Tech meetups. Many cities with startup and technology ecosystems have a meetup scene. If you want an easy way to find lots of these, check out Meetup.com.
Inbound
The above covers roughly the breadth of outbound methodologies that you can use to lure in clients to your freelance writing business (you could also rent an airplane and fly a banner advertising your writing site next to a conference center … but that’s just really a ridiculous example of advertising!)
But … there’s another way! Some would say .. a better way!
Note: it took me the best part of three years (five if you include part time freelancing) to begin putting effort into inbound marketing which is a terrible shame. Precisely because it’s a long game, my recommendation is that freelancers of all types get going on it .. from day one.
Content Marketing
If you’re a freelance writer working online these days then there’s a very high chance that this is actually what you spend a large chunk of your time doing for clients.
So how do you do content marketing for yourself?
Well, you just do the things you do for clients but apply them to furthering your own business!
You could start with:
- Keyword research to identify target keywords for your content
- On-site SEO optimization
- Developing an editorial calendar to plan out blogs, podcasts, and other forms of content
- Setting up some automation through systems like Buffer to schedule social media posts
- Setting up a blog and posting from it at regular intervals
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Content marketing and SEO go hand in hand but there are some additional activities you can undertake to further your writing website’s visibility in search engines:
- Conducting backlink analysis to see where your current backlinks are coming from. Then, using an SEO tool, see where your competitors are getting theirs from. Are there any link sources that you could target to boost your site’s authority and visibility in search engines?
- Guest posting. Develop relationships with third party blogs and websites that will allow you to post blogs on their online real estate. To be in with a fighting chance, remember to focus on adding value rather than on promoting your business. This isn’t the place or time.
If you really have some good original thinking to convey about the best way for clients to market themselves in your industry, then you could mix up some thought leadership with some content marketing. To understand more about the differences, check out my post below:
Word of mouth:
Lots of people build their freelance writing businesses on this alone.
Tap into your professional network.
Put out feelers indicating that you’re looking for freelance writing work next time you’re hanging out with friends etc.
Another point: when we’re talking about things like word of mouth and attending conferences, the lines between inbound and outbound start to get a little blurry.
If you rock up to a tech conference with a little booth selling your agency and a potential client walks over: did you come to them or did they come to you? A bit of both if you ask me! This is a good example of why diversified approaches make the most sense.
Referrals:
Finally, you should be proactive about seeking out referral opportunities.
I think that inbound referrals, in particular, are actually one of the most under-leveraged strategies for growing out a client base.
If you’re working with a medium or large organization, then ask your point of contact whether other department(s) might need your services.
A Variety Of Approaches Is Best
Having freelanced for five years, I’m by no means an expert on client acquisition.
But if I could pinpoint one tactic that works — and this is something I have other freelancers echo — it’s “all of the above.”
My opinion, at the time of writing (I add that disclaimer because they tend to evolve with time!) is that the best means of marketing oneself as a freelancer is to deploy a plurality of difference approaches.
Get going with inbound marketing as quickly as possible and realize that it’s a long road to success. Send out some targeted cold emails to some companies who you would truly love to work for. Don’t forget the real world. Do all the above to maximize your chance of success.
