“Really good sales man” is how I was going to finish that title up.
So I want to talk to you all about selling yourself today, kiddos. I’ve been attempting to do this with myself for the past few days, because I’ve made the decision to go professional as a freelance writer. I’m not sure what many of my readers think of my writing style on this blog. I think it used to be good, but I’ve had to allocate less time for my writing now that I am working on many projects at a time. I probably shouldn’t be doing this. I’ll talk about that soon. Anyways, what have I been doing to sell myself?
Write some sales copies
This is an essential part of a freelance writer’s job. They do a lot of sales copies. I am not talking about writing for a client though; I am talking about writing then about you. I have about 5 different copies that I use to pick jobs off of forums. i could use just one, but I may never get a response. Instead, I write them into word, save them, copy and paste, and submit. I will wait a day to see if I got any orders, and if so, great! I will write down the amount of orders from that copy, and after the orders die down, I rotate. If a copy doesn’t get me clients, it gets shot out. This way, I can maximize my revenue by knowing what will work and what doesn’t. It’s all about testing the waters your audience sits in, much like bloggers do for their readers.
The Power of a Business Card
Pass out a business card. I am ordering some right now from a close friend of mine in the states. Ashley is an amazing freelance artist, illustrator, animator, graphic designer, and so many other things that I couldn’t list them. (You can check out her personal flash portfolio page here, and her deviant art account here) A business card can be handed to anyone. Give it to friends, give it to family, hand it out to businesses in your local area, drop a few on the floor at a mall (in a busy area that someone might pick them up). You may never know when someone, even if it is in a year, might be interested in what you can provide them.
I will be taking my business card around to Bangkok businesses lacking English menus, signs, or other advertisements to offer my translation services as well. I’ll take it to Thai websites to see if they are interested, too.
Build Up That Portfolio
If you have to, you might have to provide some things at a very low cost to none at all. Put your absolute highest effort into whatever you want to provide, and save it. Hold onto it and embrace it. If you feel like something you made is crap, that don’t use it. You will want to show clients what you are doing is something that you love and want to provide for them. I give out my top samples to any potential clients. It would be stupid not to. I don’t think I have to tell you this though.
Write a Blog About It
The main point of a blog is to write about something you love, something you are doing, or something you are thinking about. Well, it is also a great personal marketing tool. I am working on another blog design for my freelance content creation services, which will contain order forms, examples of my works, information about me, a resume, and a well updated blog about freelance writing. With a blog, you can show that you are a professional in the area of your service by providing excellent content about it. It can also help you pull in orders by showing off this expertise, as well as getting natural search engine traffic for some keywords. More clients, yo!
Keep Your Online Shadow Hidden
On forums, I’ve started to use an alias, and will only reveal my name to clients. Why? Because they will track it back to this blog. “Justin Dupre” in Google takes you straight to Blogosis. If clients read my quickly, poorly written blog posts, I might lose some clients. It would be bad enough if they read the poorly written things, but what if they read about those cute Thai girls. That would be great if I had to right some porn sales copies, but that is not what I’m all about, ya’ hear? I won’t be using my name as often here, and will change my post name to something else, as well. I don’t want my clients seeing that I wrote, “Damn, I got so drunk last night.” on my social networking profiles, so I will be lessening my shadow on those, as well.
There are some some things to think about there, especially in that last little thing I’m doing. Perhaps, I should become a little more anonymous than I am, in spite of what I have written about the topic on anonymity.
