How To Get More (And Better) Clients With Less Work

Let’s say you’re a freelance copywriter. (I know… original as hell.)

You’re trying to move up in the ranks from freelance monkey to actually being paid well, or you’re trying to move from content mill to being an actual copywriter. Maybe you’re even a copywriter who wants to move onto bigger, greener pastures.

Let’s say you don’t have hundreds of positive testimonials, a rolodex of clients throwing money at you or a thousand dollars a day to throw in Adwords.

All you have is your mighty pen and your wily silver tongue.

The Problem

Nobody wants to hire somebody without a track record. If you haven’t got proof that you’re good at copywriting, then you face an uphill struggle.

A lot of the traditional options aren’t open to you. You can’t throw the branding budget into the PPC furnace, you can’t come out and say, “I’ve made millions for people!” and you can’t rely on word-of-mouth advertising.

Also, you have kids or a cat to feed. There are tons of people on business forums who say things like, “Make sure you get paid what you’re worth!” and “Don’t work for pennies when you can work for pounds!”

That’s all well and good, but you can sit on your backside saying, “I’m worth a million bucks!” until you starve to death, and the business world won’t notice.

You don’t want to end up looking like the fat-fedora dude who says  about the supermodel, “Sorry, her elbows are too pointy there’s no way I’d date her!”

On the other hand, you don’t want to be one of those creepy guys on Instagram who message random girls with “hey girl I’ve got a massive dick and I want to use it on you tonight!”

It’s the same with approaching clients. On the one hand, you’re holding out for the massive pay and getting no clients for being too fussy, and on the other hand, nobody wants to hire the dude that’s begging for a job.

So what do you do?

Fear not fellows, I’m here to tell you.

One Thing: Scarcity

Scarcity is one of those rules that always works. We want what we can’t have, be it biological, magical or psychological. Who cares, really? It works.

So, the first thing you need to do is make yourself scarce when it comes to getting paid.

But there’s a fly in the ointment here.

One of the absolute worst things you can do is create obvious false scarcity.

If you say, “Yeah I only take on clients that pay me a million in cash” and you’re living on the street and stealing free wifi, then you’re not getting anything good. You’re the fat guy who hates supermodel elbows.

But you can take advantage of this rule completely honestly and know that it’ll work.

How To Use Scarcity For Your Freelance Business

Freelancing isn’t passive income.

You have a limited number of hours to work in a week.

Ergo, your freelance work is in limited supply.

That’s the basis for your scarcity.

Now, let’s say you want to work on freelance stuff for twenty hours a week. (After all, you’re busy with other projects – we’ll get to that.) That’s a pretty limited time.

Now, let’s say you want to earn 5k a month from your freelancing.

You currently charge $200 for a sales letter. But you want to charge $500 (and why not make it $1000 if you’re good?)

Guess what that means?

It means that you can only possibly take on five clients for the month. (I mean, sure, you could maybe slip another couple in, but we’re talking scarcity here.)

That’s really limited. It’s also totally honest, depending on how you switch the numbers around.

Back when I was working for content mills and earning $5 an article, I thought, “I’ll do as many of these as I can because I’m  not getting paid enough to turn down work.”

Trust me, after a few weeks of writing 15000 words a day on mundane subjects, you question that idea. I recommend everyone do it though, you’ll have fun and learn tons of stuff, becoming a better writer in the process.

Also – you’ll realise quickly that there are subjects you hate. Guess what that means? Better targeting and more importantly more scarcity. Because with just those two things:

You only take on a limited amount of work and your service is not for everyone. You only work with select clients.

There’s a ton of scarcity there, and we haven’t even told a fib. You could use those lines and take on a new client every day in every niche apart from dog grooming and you’d still be telling the truth.

Now let’s move on to the real money model.

How To Build Scarcity

If you’ve watched Pirates of the Caribbean, you’ll know that Jack Sparrow has a magic compass. It helps him find all kinds of magical adventures based on what he actually wants.

That’s a cool story, but we’re talking about funnelling customers into our business. What’s important is that Jack’s magic compass helps him to find an island that you can only find if you’ve been there before.

We live in an age where everything is available every time. You can fly to Bangkok this weekend with a few months’ pocket change. If you want to get your favourite spice, it’s probably on the supermarket shelf.

And if clients want to hire you or buy your products, then there’s no hurry. They can get them wherever and whenever.

So what we need to do is create that magical island where it’s not there all of the time and potential clients can only find it when we decide they should be able to.

Essentially, we’ve got the magic compass and we want to occasionally let potential clients peak at it.

That’s scarcity, and it’s best delivered in a three pronged structure.

1. The locked door.
2. Your sales letter.
3. Sorry, You Missed It.

The Locked Door

Remember, you can’t have a secret island if you can find it on a map and access it at any time.

For a lot of the time, you aren’t taking on clients. (nudge, wink.)

That means, for those times where you’re too busy, you present a locked door as opposed to letting your potential customers go about their business.

This can be a simple landing page, repeated references to secret services or a sign saying, “OUT TO LUNCH.”

Don’t make it complicated, but present it as an obstacle and make those clients work for it. Even if you say, “If you hire me I’ll start on the 1^st of the next month” you’re still creating a tiny barrier.

Your Sales Letter

We talked about this yesterday, but you all know the story here.

You write about how you only take on a certain amount of clients but give them some awesome stuff and hey presto, they’re here having overcome your un-business-like  locked door and so for the next three days, you’re taking on clients until all slots are filled.

You also tell them that your service is impeccable and you’re better than everyone else.

Here’s the key thing though; you never let the secret island metaphor out of your copy. You’re open now, but you won’t be. You’re taking on clients, but only five. When it comes to clients, if they’re pains in the backside, then you’re going to quit on them and basically throw their money back in their face with malice.

You get the picture.

What’s crucial here to the whole system is that you close the door and make it clear you’ll do so.

If you say, “I only take on new clients in the first week of the month” then you’d better do just that. Otherwise the clients will smell a rat, and you’ll be constantly worried you’ll get caught out.

Sorry, You Missed It

That leads us on to the final point: You have to put the obstacle back in place at times. The magical island is back out of sight.

However, don’t think this is turning away clients.

You know what you should do?

Build an opt-in form.

“Hey Bob,

If you’re seeing this page, then I’m really sorry, but I’m out of spaces until I finish one of my other projects.

I hate turning people away, especially when they’ve got great businesses like yours, but I can only work with 5 people at a time, otherwise quality suffers and nobody wants that.

Listen… throw your best direct email in the box below and I’ll send you an update as soon as the space is free.

[Insert Opt-in]”

By doing this, you accomplish multiple goals:

1. You retain the warm leads
2. You make those leads feel like you’re sincere
3. They’ll want your service more
4. You’ll probably build up a waiting list (more scarcity, more authority, more social proof!)
5. Upping your prices will make sense
6. People will offer to pay more to get in the closed door
7. You get to set your schedule and your terms
8. Higher difficulty = more money. For instance, someone asking for 24 hour delivery is going to have big money when you’ve already got a waiting list. Just doing your job becomes a favour to your client

The list could go on, but you get the gist by now.

Final Thoughts

Like the list above, this article could go on forever. However, I’ve given you the basic gist of honestly building scarcity into your product. With a little experimentation, you can do a whole lot more with that structure as well.

From Cialdini’s book, there are six main rules:

1. Reciprocity
2. Consistency
3. Social Proof
4. Authority
5. Likening/Mirroring
6. Scarcity

If you can embed all six of these into your business offerings, then you’ll expand at a rate unthinkable.

None of this is dodgy, lying or even sneaky. It’s all authentic and can be swapped into copywriting but also any other business. It doesn’t require exaggerated claims or a track record at all.

It doesn’t cost any money, just a change in attitude and a few simple webpages.

What’s awesome is that you can automate this whole process with a few plugins and a couple of decently worded sales letters and landing pages. Throw in an email autoresponder and you have the world’s simplest funnel that makes your business look like some secret society front.

There’s nothing complicated about the technology or the psychology here, it’s just simple steps built in a specific way that’ll bring big results.

As always, let me know how you get on.

P.S. This post is going password-protected by the end of the week. Maybe sooner. I’m not a fat guy who hates supermodel elbows, so this isn’t a joke.

After Friday, it’ll definitely be a friends-only post, because otherwise everyone and their mum is going to use this exact same template (and probably in completely boring and unoriginal ways.)