VOLUME 18, ISSUE 3 – MARCH 2019
THIS MONTH’S MENU:
I. APPETIZER: ARE YOU “POSITIONED” FOR GREATER PROFITABILITY?
Commercial Clients Pay More for Projects that Would Earn Less Elsewhere
II. “FIELD” GREENS: HOW MUCH LEARNING IS TOO MUCH?
OH FLCW’s “Instructional Detox” Leads to More Focus, Responsibility AND Earnings!
III. MAIN “MEAT” COURSE: THE 4 STEPS TO YOUR IDEAL TARGET MARKET
ATL Small Biz Coach Advises: Skip “Hot Sectors”; Instead, Start with YOU!
IV. DESSERT: SWEET SUCCESS STORIES & TIPS
IL FLCW: How a Chat OTHERS Had Led to My Biggest Client
TIP: Is There a Small Pot of Gold Waiting in Your Old Files?
I. APPETIZER: ARE YOU “POSITIONED” FOR GREATER PROFITABILITY?
Commercial Clients Pay More for Projects that Would Earn Less Elsewhere
Say a newly-minted CPA sets up shop in the rougher part of town. Heck, rents are cheaper, right? But, if he or she plans on drawing business largely from the immediate area, they’ll likely struggle. Not many “locals” could afford their services.
But, if that same CPA with the exact same skills simply moves to an upscale neighborhood, assuming a similar level of marketing, their business will likely thrive. Pretty logical, no? File that away.
So, a few weeks back, I finished up a project for a Georgia-based charity. It was an article that appeared in the organization’s annual report. Pretty straightforward.
They gave me 3-4 links to pieces written about an interesting and colorful tangent to an annual event this group co-sponsors. I was tasked with creating an 800-word article on both the event and the tangent. Plus, some minor editing on the annual report’s content.
As I worked on it, it struck me that my assignment was something that most any decent writer could handle: a feature story and a bit of copyediting. And the relative ease of the project underscored the fact that half the battle in this business of ours is positioning.
Meaning, when you’re operating within the context of a commercial-writing framework, in addition to tougher writing tasks that DO require more honed marketing-writing chops, you’ll also end up landing jobs that just aren’t that difficult.
But, again, because they fall within the context of our higher-paying field, you’ll end up earning far more for that assignment than you would if you were being hired by someone to “write an article and do a little copyediting”—skills possessed by countless similarly-skilled (and hence, lower-priced) practitioners.
Now, for the record, I do think the article I crafted for the annual report was of higher quality than one most garden-variety “freelancers” would write, but that’s a different issue. Even if it were the same caliber, I’d still have earned more because those clients expected to pay more.
So, the challenge in our field is not just to become a good writer—someone able to execute a broader array of projects than just articles and blog posts.
Just as importantly, it’s about getting to that work through “roads less traveled”—i.e., not just bidding on projects with hordes of others, and thereby consigning yourself to a far lower wage. On that “go-where-the-money-is” note, let’s eat!
II. “FIELD” GREENS: HOW MUCH LEARNING IS TOO MUCH?
OH FLCW’s “Instructional Detox” Leads to More Focus, Responsibility AND Earnings!
Cincinnati, OH FLCW Holly Helscher’s piece below will no doubt resonate with many of you. It IS easy to fall into “analysis paralysis” based on too much data, and even have you throw in the towel (as she almost did!). Great stuff!
Holly sent me this piece in mid-2018, and when I asked her for an update, she wrote: “I’m even more successful now!”
Ever had someone try to “fix” your golf swing, batting stance, or tennis technique? I have. And when each well-meaning helper was finished touting, “I guarantee this will work,” I was worse off, not better. The same is true with business advice.
When I first started out copywriting, I signed up for everything. Everyone had good, sensible advice. I tried incorporating everything into my business. After all, these were all successful people—they must be right!
After a year of absorbing what felt like decades of information, I was drowning in advice. Plus, nothing worked consistently. I decided I wasn’t cut out for freelancing. Then I remembered a piece of advice I’d always given my sales staff in the corporate world:
“Lots of systems and methods work. Ours does, too. What doesn’t work is to pick a piece from this method, another from that one, and a third from the other. They won’t work together because they’re not designed to. So, use the one you’re learning here. If you do, you’ll be successful here.”
While the advice worked for that business, I learned it works for freelancing, too. I wasn’t successful because I was trying to incorporate too many suggestions from too many teachers.
So, I detoxed my learning. I picked three mentors whose methods worked for me, and whose styles most closely suited my value system, ethics and personality.
This accomplished three things. I had more time to implement business strategies because I ended up with a manageable series of steps; I started thinking clearly because I was no longer overwhelmed; and my cash flow improved because I wasn’t constantly buying courses!
By the way, when I was continually in “learning mode,” I was also continually putting off doing the hard stuff—like approaching people, sending out warm emails, etc. Sound familiar?
The detox shifted my strategy from hope to action. I was in charge, even of my mistakes. My confidence rose. My risk-taking improved. Most importantly, I started making money. Less than two years after starting my freelancing venture, I was working full-time, writing what I enjoyed writing.
Try an instructional detox. No guarantees, but it sure worked for me.
III. MAIN “MEAT” COURSE: THE 4 STEPS TO YOUR IDEAL TARGET MARKET
ATL Small Biz Coach Advises: Skip “Hot Sectors”; Instead, Start with YOU!
Solid, sensible piece from friend, colleague, ex-FLCW and small-business coach, Ed Gandia (look for regular pieces from Ed here) on the best way to zero in on the appropriate target market for you—one that will make you valuable to prospects while reducing your own personal learning curve (always a plus to clients!).
So many want to chase the “trends,” which may work with fashion or food, but not so much with a professional career direction. So what if a particular market is “hot”? If you know little about it, why pursue it? Thanks, Ed!
Selecting a target market is one of the most important things you’ll do as a freelance writer. But where do you even start?
Many novice freelancers start this process by researching the hottest markets and then trying to shoehorn themselves into those markets.
But that approach is backward.
Instead, why not start with a self-inventory, and then move on to evaluate industries and markets that might be aligned with the results of that self-assessment: your background, experiences, skills and strengths?
1) Take a Self-Inventory:
Start by evaluating your experience, background and skills. See what you already have. After all, there’s no point in targeting, say, the construction industry, if you have zero experience and contacts in that industry.
A clarification: You don’t need to have 10-20 years experience and have achieved “master” status in your chosen arena, but you do need to have knowledge in that domain that can’t be acquired in an overnight cram session.
2) Evaluate the Industry:
Once you’ve completed your self-inventory, look for markets that fall within your realm of those identified skills, background and experience.
Specifically, and ideally, look for markets that sell products and services that need to be explained. These tend to be ones that are new, expensive and/or complex. And when those three factors are in play, it’s only logical that those clients will need to produce a lot of written marketing materials.
3) Choose a Target Market and Then Test:
Putting a lot of pressure on yourself to get your target market right the first time, can effectively keep you from making any decision.
Remember: you can always change direction later. Far better to make some decision, and try it out, than to wait till you’ve “got it all figured out” (never?) and can nail it right out of the gate.
Life only opens up when you’re in motion. As you test your target market, you’ll learn a lot about it. As a result, you may need to refine your approach or find new opportunities. Whatever happens, you’ll be getting closer to where you want to be.
4) Start With YOU:
When you start your search for a target market by looking at “hot” industries, you’ll quickly go down a rabbit hole. AND, you’ll struggle to link your experience to that industry or market. It’s far more efficient to start with YOU — your experience, background and skills—and work from there.
IV. DESSERT: SWEET SUCCESS STORIES & TIPS
IL FLCW: How a Chat OTHERS Had Led to My Biggest Client
TIP: Is There a Small Pot of Gold Waiting in Your Old Files?
As the following story—from Woodbridge, IL FLCW Rachel McHardy (check out her cool niche)—shows, it’s nice to have others looking out for you and your business, even when you’re not around! So make sure you let others know what you do!
After that, a tip that’s borne writing-income fruit for me more than once.
We had just moved across the country that summer. In our new congregation at church, we got to know a family who was about to move as well, and went to their going-away party. I wasn’t around when my husband was talking to the husband, about the new online education company he was starting after he moved.
My husband thought it sounded really interesting and said, “Well, if you need a writer, be sure to talk to Rachel.” He replied, “Writers are EXACTLY what I need right now.” We later talked and he thought my experience (both my background as a former language arts teacher and the writing projects I’d done) was a great fit.
I was the first writer he started working with over a year ago and I’m still getting great work from a casual conversation I wasn’t even there for!
In several recent past issues of this ezine, we’ve heard from several folks (including me) about the gold waiting to be mined from contacting old clients.
In addition to going through your list of prospects/clients (however you keep them), another simple way to unearth folks like this, about whom you may have forgotten, is to browse through your old documents.
I’ll typically save documents for a new client in a “Misc” sub-folder in my Work folder. If that client turns into a “regular,” I’ll give them their own folder. It’s often while browsing in that “Misc” folder that I have a few “I-forgot-all-about-them!” moments.
Easy to do if you’d done 1-2 projects with them a long time ago, and then perhaps landed some new clients that pulled you in new directions. Or, maybe you discussed some projects during an initial contact, but they never pulled the trigger.
A quick follow-up email only takes a minute. Maybe it dead-ends, maybe not. Years of experience has taught me, again and again, that clients often get pulled back to front-burner tasks, and abandon new directions. But, sometimes a little outreach can get them back on track.
Also, with new outreach, someone who’d kept you on their radar for writing work, but stopped doing so when you stopped contacting them, now puts you “top of mind” again. So, take a stroll down document- memory lane from time to time. Who knows where it might lead?