What To Do When Your Freelance Writing Business Has No Clients
I bumped into an old friend today. I haven’t really seen him since I started freelance writing. We were talking about life and work, and I was telling him about freelancing. He brought up that it must be worrying to have inconsistent work.
This article will talk about that, because I’ve been thinking about my response all day.
My Response
I told him that it wasn’t so bad. I told him that it was a worry when I didn’t have any work for quite a while, but it made up for the times where I’ll work wall to wall and generally work from when I wake up to when I go to bed.
Those things are true. But having thought about it today, I realise that I don’t worry so much about inconsistent work. I’ll tell you why later in the article.
The Truth About Freelance Work
When it comes to freelance writing, you will have periods where you’re not working. It’s just the nature of the work. Some gurus will claim to get you more customers than you can deal with, and maybe they can, but it’ll take a while to build up your client base, and no matter how you juggle your clients and how popular your service, businesses will come and go, customers will come and go and there’ll be times where you’re doing less and earning less.
I’m saying this as a person who has been freelancing only a short time on the scale of things. I imagine if you’ve been freelancing since before the recession of 2008 through to (it hasn’t really finished yet) then you’ll probably have more direct experience of this; it doesn’t matter how good your writing service is, if a massive recession hits and companies are disappearing left, right and centre, you’re going to have to go through lean times.
Now, there are two things you can do to deal with this, plus the magic third, (which, again, I’ll talk about later,);
The first is that you can get a regular job with regular hours and a regular salary. There’s nothing shameful about thinking, “freelancing isn’t for me because I have a family to feed or bills to pay.” It’s a considered choice and it’s one you might want/have to take. (I’m not going to do the e-guru thing where they tell you everyone who isn’t an e-guru is living a slave life, because that’s ridiculous.)
The second thing you must do if you opt not to do the above is to plan your way around the up-down nature of freelancing. This approach requires budget control, time management and a pretty versatile and comprehensive means of attaining clients.
Get to the good bit… what’s the magic third thing?
I keep repeating myself on this blog over and over again… you need to engage in your own projects. Hopefully, those will give you income. If in doubt, try the niche site challenge.
I told my friend this morning that I didn’t have any work on. Technically, I don’t. However, I now no longer think of empty days as empty days. On an average day with no client work, I’ll write five chapters on a book project, write a topic of the day for this site and write whatever posts I need to for any other sites I have going. At the moment, I’m also doing the niche site challenge. I planned thirty sales letters this morning, so that’ll give me a month’s worth of work for an hour or so a day.
Even on a day where I have no client work, I’m writing a few thousand words. I do this not for income’s sake only, but because it’s psychologically helpful. Most freelancers (including me) get worried when we go a week with no work. For some it’ll be two days, for others it’ll be a couple of weeks or so. Eventually though, the time comes where we start shivering uncontrollably and start mentally raving about our pending economic doom.
Creating your own projects and sticking to their creation helps get rid of that anxiety. This is especially true if you’re working on similar things to your freelance work anyway. I could be being paid directly for writing a review for someone’s site, for instance, but instead I’m doing exactly the same thing for my own niche sites. When you have clients who repeatedly come back to you, you know that your sales letters work for them and so you know they’ll work for you, the only difference is the timeline of payment.
Final Thoughts
Obviously the reason we freelance is because of the immediate cash flow – i.e. getting paid – that freelancing provides you. So when you income dips, it’s only natural to worry about this.
Stick to your marketing plan. If you are sending out letters or doing follow ups with potential clients, then you’re doing what you need to. Do not spend an hour writing pitches or sending out letters and then seven hours worrying about whether anyone will read them though.
Instead, direct your time on projects that you enjoy, are profitable and will give you an asset for now and in the future.
(P.S. This article probably reads differently to my usual fare. I’m writing it on a tablet because I bought a new Bluetooth keyboard and it won’t connect to my P.C. but it will connect to my tablet. Sorry about the typos etc. Hopefully I’ll have fixed this by tomorrow.)