In our last post we talked about marketing your freelance writing services and how you should focus on basic market research, specialty target markets, and creating a marketing plan instead of aimlessly trying new ways to market your services. In other words, don’t just send pitches to anyone who might want to hire a writer. Narrow it down a bit. Figure out exactly who you want to target and find out what works and what doesn’t when selling to that audience by seeing what the competition is up to.

Now let’s talk about tactics — all of the things you actually do to land new gigs, from query letters and cold calls to increasing referrals from members of your network.

Freelance Job Boards Aren’t Enough

One of the most common questions I get from freelance writers is this:

Where do I find the high paying freelance writing jobs?

These individuals get frustrated because they spend countless hours on freelance job boards, classified sites or bidding sites (like Elance). Most of the writing jobs they find offer very low pay. They see other writers talking about better opportunities, but they aren’t sure where to find them for themselves.

That’s the inherent problem: they’re thinking about where the better jobs are. They’re asking the wrong question.

If this sounds like you, it’s time to rephrase. Instead ask how you can land these high paying freelance writing jobs.

Most of them are not found on job boards. I mentioned it in a recent post, but it’s worth repeating. The best freelance writing jobs are usually obtained in the following ways:

1. Repeat work from past or regular clients
2. Referrals from clients or colleagues
3. Clients finding you as they search for a writer for a specific project
4. Directly pitching clients you want to work with

Let’s explore these four things in more depth to explain why (and how) it might be time to leave freelance job boards behind.

Land More Work With Repeat Clients

Some of you may have only worked for content mills. If you don’t have any past clients, this section doesn’t yet apply to you. You’ll want to focus on the other tactics discussed below.

If you do have a stable of past clients (or existing clients) that pay better than content mills, it’s important to keep those connections alive. If they needed to hire a writer like you in the past, chances are good they’ll need you again. But if you don’t pop into their minds when that situation arises, they might give the gig to someone else.

What can you do?

1. Blatantly ask past clients if they have any upcoming projects you might be able to help with.
2. Pitch specific projects to them. For example, if you helped them with a holiday newsletter last year, send them an email and ask if they could use your help again this time around (maybe they forgot to plan one and your email will encourage them to get on it).
3. Offer a limited time, one-order sale for past clients who come back. This can be a great idea if you added a new service to your offerings and you think previous clients would have an interest in it.
4. Just be friendly. Get in touch. Maybe wish them well as we approach the New Year. Ask how things are going (and actually have an interest in what they have to say). Socialize with them using social media tools.

All of these things can help you stay on past clients’ radar so your name comes to mind the next time they need a writer with your specialty.

Be a Referral Magnet

Keeping in touch with past clients as mentioned above can do more than land you new gigs with them. When you become their go-to writer, they’re also more likely to refer you to others.

Just as you probably network with other writers (despite many of them being the competition), your clients do the same. They have their own industry contacts. And when people need referrals for writers or any service providers, they’ll turn to their trusted network.

It isn’t enough to stay in touch with past clients though. You can come right out and ask them for referrals; ask if they know someone else in the industry who could use your talents. Some won’t want to share you. Many are quite happy to refer you to their colleagues. You could even offer referral incentives (such as 10% off their next order for each referral they send your way that results in an actual contract).

Speaking of colleagues, don’t neglect your own. Whether you keep in touch via email, have local get-togethers, comment on each other’s blogs, or use social networking platforms, stay active in your community of writing colleagues.

Freelancers often get inquiries from prospects they can’t take on. Maybe the gig is out of their specialty area. Their time could be fully booked. Or maybe the gig just doesn’t feel like a good fit to them. If they think you might be a better fit, they’ll refer you for the job.

Giving referrals makes a lot of sense. I refer gigs to about a half dozen writers every week, and sometimes much more. Why? Because it makes you look good to the prospect when you put their needs first, even though you can’t directly work with them. On many occasions, prospects I’ve referred elsewhere have remembered that and come back to me for other gigs down the line when I could work on their project.

So get to know other freelance writers, especially those in your specialty area who are landing the kinds of gigs you really want. Let them know if you accept referrals. And send referrals their way when appropriate.

The referrals I give usually go to the writers I know best. That’s because if someone asks for a certain kind of service, I refer the first competent person I think of in that specialty. Those who stay in touch and build a professional relationship as a colleague come to mind quickly. If I only know someone in passing, chances are good I won’t even consider them.

In the end, referrals are about two things:

1. Trust
2. Presence

If you stay visible by maintaining an active presence in your community and your colleagues (or past clients) trust you to do right by their prospects, you’ll get more referrals. And remember, the more you give the more you’ll get over time. People remember when you do something nice like that for them, and it can make them much more likely to return the favor.

If all else fails? Ask. There is nothing wrong with mentioning that you have some openings in your schedule if anyone has a referral to send your way.

Helping Clients Find You

If a prospect needs a writer fast, they might not have time to ask for referrals. They certainly don’t have time to post job ads, wait on applications, compare those applications, and eventually hire someone who happened to see the ad.

Instead they visit Google or their trusted search engine of choice. Or they visit a community they’re a part of and search there for service providers (such as forums or social networks like LinkedIn). If they find you and you feel like a good match, they’ll contact you. If they don’t find you, well, you’re out of luck.

We live in an instant gratification world. If a client wants someone now, they’ll find someone now. But if you aren’t easy to find, you’ll miss out on these potentially great freelance writing gigs. This is why I push the concept of building your writer platform so much. Your platform influences your level of visibility.

Here are some things your writer platform might include:

1. Your professional website (well-optimized for search engines)
2. A niche or industry blog
3. Free e-books or reports
4. Your articles strategically placed on other sites (such as through guest blogging)
5. Your social media profiles

In other words, these are places clients might find you on their own, and tools that would encourage others to tell prospects about you (like free e-books naturally attracting links and therefore helping your site rank higher in search engines).

There is a lot to writer platforms, which is why I’m finishing an entire book on the subject. What you need to know early on is that they’re designed to help clients find you instead of you having to actively seek out every freelance writing opportunity.

When you’re visible in your specialty area, rank highly in search engines for terms your prospects will likely search for, and you’re recognized as an authority source, you can have more inquiries than you could possibly handle.

If you want more examples of things you can do to build your writer platform and help clients find you more easily, check out this post from our archives:

30 Ways to Build Your Writer Platform

Teaching you about all of the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) is beyond the scope of this article. There are entire sites dedicated to it. For example, you might want to check out Michael Gray’s SEO Blog.

Hand-picking (and Pitching) Clients

While I’m a big fan of query-free freelancing (letting your writer platform and network handle the heavy lifting), you can’t always wait for gigs. Don’t get me wrong. Query-free freelancing doesn’t exactly take forever to benefit you. But setting up a website now won’t likely bring you a new gig tomorrow. And that’s exactly what some of you moving away from content mills need.

How can you attract great prospects with barely any wait at all? You can pitch them directly.

1. Decide what kinds of clients you want to work for.
2. Better yet, choose specific companies or publications you’d like to write for.
3. Evaluate their website or publication and come up with story or project ideas to pitch.
4. Contact the company and offer your services (in as non-spammy a way as possible).

This is the traditional way of landing new freelance clients, and it’s still popular (and effective). Here are three types of direct pitches you can use:

1. Traditional query letters
2. Email queries
3. Cold calling

Why do direct pitches work? Sometimes it’s just about following standards (like queries for magazine writing gigs). Frequently though clients don’t realize they even need your services until you pitch them. They’ll never advertise because they aren’t officially hiring. They don’t know they’re missing out on awesome opportunities (like launching a company blog or getting help crafting social media profile content).

Just like I said about referrals above, if you want something sometimes it’s best to come right out and ask for it.

Want to learn more about writing queries or making cold calls? I highly recommend Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer which offers a lot of information on cold calling, as well as Linda Formichelli’s and Diana Burrell’s The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters that Rock. These books go into far more detail than I can here in a blog post, and both are worth having in your professional library.

As you hopefully now understand, freelance job boards are not the best way to find new gigs. You certainly won’t find most of the high paying opportunities there. Does that mean you have to completely ignore them? Of course not. You get to choose the ways you’ll seek new gigs. Hopefully you’ve found at least one new method here that you’re interested in trying though.

Do you have other ways of attracting clients? Share your tips and ideas in the comments below.

Here are a few tips I came up with:

1. If you receive an @reply from someone you don’t know and they link you to job sites, don’t click. – These are usually spam. If you visit the user’s profile page you’ll find they do almost nothing but post the same self-promotional message over and over again to get people to their new job site or to a site where they have an affiliate link (and therefore get paid when you visit). When I get these messages, I don’t look for gigs. I report them as the spammers they are. And you have to be extra careful about clicking shortened links from people you don’t know in general there. You never know when they lead to a malicious site.
2. If you plan to use Twitter search, get specific. — Don’t search for “freelance writing” or “freelance writing jobs.” You’ll find a lot of spam and countless low paying writing gigs. Search in a specialty area instead to weed out some of the garbage.
3. Ask your network for referrals. — A quick mention that you’re available for new projects and open to new referrals won’t hurt anyone. And you never know who might see it and have a relevant gig for you.
4. Check your feed. — See what your followers are saying. I have a particular client who frequently needs writers in niches I don’t cover. I usually offer to tweet to my network if I don’t know a specific writer to refer in that area. Pay attention to colleagues at a similar level and you’ll find decent gigs mentioned as opposed to low-balled offers from every Tom, Dick and Harry on Twitter.
5. Edit your profile. — Is your Twitter profile too general? Does it make it clear that you’re a freelance writer? Is there a call to action for people to contact you if they want to hire you? If you only use Twitter for personal networking, that’s one thing. But if you use it for business networking as a freelance writer, you need to make sure your profile works for you. Include your name, URL to your professional site (either in the URL field or the profile background), and let people know what you specialize in. Getting the good gigs is about visibility and networking much more than stumbling across ads, on Twitter or anywhere else.

How do you use Twitter as a freelance writer? Do you actively look for freelance writing jobs there? Have you gotten referrals through Twitter? Share your own tips and stories in the comments below.

Everyday is different in terms of marketing. For instance, one day I may send three query letters but the next focus on calling current clients and asking for referrals. While these are two entirely different tasks, they both help to drum up new business.

In terms of time, no two marketing tasks are the same. It takes me longer to research and write a query letter than it does to call a client and briefly talk about referrals.

Even though there is no cut-and-dry answer to this common question, I have formulated the following tips:

1. Make sure you do something marketing related everyday. It does not matter if it takes you two hours or two minutes, when you are marketing your services you are putting yourself in position to land a new client and earn more money.
2. If you have down time it would suit you well to turn to your marketing plan. There is bound to be time during your week when you are not writing. Instead of browsing the internet or slacking off, let your marketing plan guide you towards doing something productive.
3. New freelance writers have more time for marketing. Since you don’t yet have a large client base, it is safe to say that your day will be far from full. If you want to change this in the near future, start marketing your services in as many ways as you know how.

Remember this: it does not matter how much time you spend on marketing. What matters is that your marketing plan is generating new clients and increased income.

How Referral Fees Work

Here’s an example of how a referral fee might work, based on a referral I recently gave a colleague for some content writing and copywriting work. In reality, my client contacted me about a project. I didn’t have time to work it in immediately, and it wasn’t really in my specialty area. I knew a writer who specializes in similar topics, so I referred the client to her. He hired her. All went well.

If I charged referral fees, that colleague then would have had to pay me after agreeing to take on that gig (or after being paid, depending on the fee terms – and obviously they would have to know about it before the referral was made). So, for example, I may have charged a flat fee (like $50) or I may have charged a percentage of the total contract (such at 10%).

Why I Don’t Charge Referral Fees

I don’t believe in charging referral fees for things like writing jobs for a few reasons:

1. I know that networking plays a huge role in successfully working in a service-oriented field like freelance writing. To me, that networking should involve free and honest communication if it’s going to carry any weight.
2. When I do refer freelance writing gigs to someone, I want them to know that I referred them because I honestly believed they were a good fit for the job, and not because I wanted to make a quick buck off their back.
3. Frankly, there are better ways to earn money as a service-provider without having to risk integrity in your network.
4. I know that referring gigs freely and honestly leads to more of the same (the goodwill you earn with colleagues by treating them as more than just competitors can earn you far more money than referral fees ever will, as we often return the favor as we learn about those coveted unadvertised writing gigs).

Why I Don’t Accept Jobs with Referral Fees

On top of not being willing to charge referral fees to colleagues, I also refuse any referrals that come with a fee attached. Why?

1. I put a lot of effort into my marketing and networking to bring a regular flow of natural referrals in for my services. For me to take a gig with a referral fee, I would either have to work for less than what my time is worth based on the demand for it (once committed, I would likely have to turn down a gig at my regular rates), or I would have to charge the client more to cover it – neither is acceptable in my book.
2. Even if I didn’t happen to already have gigs lined up when the referral fee offer came in, I know that my time would be better spent marketing to attract more future clients at my full rates. When I set my rates, I set them where they are for a reason. I do make exceptions once in a while for clients I have long-term relationships with or those I desperately want to work with (doesn’t happen often), but the return I’d get from the cost on a referral fee for a new client can’t generally be justified compared to those situations.
3. Alongside that issue of working for less money comes another issue – you have to deal with more administrative work. You have to not only collect your client payment, but then issue another payment out. I just don’t have the patience.
4. There’s really no good excuse for referral fees these days. The colleague or client always has the option to hire you directly as a sub-contractor instead, marking up the services to the end client to their heart’s desire if they want to earn from the referral. I let people know that’s an option available to them (I still get paid my full rates without extra admin work, and they can still set their price / profit).
5. Perhaps most importantly, I simply think it’s a bad practice, and I choose not to support it (even if a referral fee gig did come in for a client I’d kill to work with, I’d turn it down and pursue working with them in other ways in the future if it meant that much to me).

You have to decide what kind of image you want to build in your freelance writing circle and whether or not charging referral fees will help you achieve that. For me, it wouldn’t. I don’t want (nor would I give) any kind of referral that isn’t 100% honest and based on ability – not financial gain.

What about you? How do you feel about referral fees, whether charging them or paying them?