Eight Ways to Expand Your Business

If you’ve been freelancing for a while, perhaps it’s time to think about expanding your business. Other small business owners have the luxury of being able to hire help, open branch locations, even franchise their business. Unfortunately, most of those don’t work with freelance writing.

Working for yourself, by yourself, means that you can only do as much work as you have time. And there are only so many hours in a day. That puts a limit on expanding your business. Sure, you can take on larger projects, but when you work on a large project, such as writing a book, you don’t have time to do the smaller ones. And frankly, most book projects don’t pay nearly as much in the long run as working on a bunch of shorter and less complicated pieces. So how can you expand?

1. Revise your sales presentation. When the same bland renewal notice for a magazine subscription arrives in the mail, you don't give it a second look. If you want to renew an editor's interest in your material or build up assignments on a higher level than in the past, you must revise your presentation. Analyze the way you pitch ideas now and see if you can improve on it. How well does your current method sell your ideas? Is your timing and the sequence of ideas logical? Is the market holding you back or are you holding yourself back through fear, lack of expertise, or timidity?

2. Create a brochure. Don’t forget you are a business. And businesses advertise. Some kinds of writing may allow you to run ads in journals or newspapers. But the majority of what you do most likely doesn’t lend itself to direct advertising. So why not create a brochure of your work. Hotels do it. Airlines do it. All sorts of businesses do it. This doesn’t have to be an expensive, glossy affair. It can be nothing more than one page folded in thirds. You won’t have too much room, but there’s enough to include teaser quotes from your writing and perhaps a few photos. Short excerpts of articles will do the trick.

3. Keep up with marketing chores. And don’t forget, that many top freelancers spend several hours a day doing marketing chores, staying in contact with publishers, editors, agents, and other clients either by phone or Email.
    
4. Use books as premiums. If you’ve written books, consider using copies of them as premiums—gift books to corporate executives which they then gave their employees or rewards for contests that you run on your Web site and Facebook. Naturally, you’ll want to sign each copy.

5. Create or improve your Web site. And speaking of Web sites and social media, if you don’t have a good Web site yet, create one. Today, more and more people look to the Web to find professionals, including writers. But don’t just focus on selling, give visitors to your site something in return—information on writing, itself, or the subjects you write about. Both will draw them to your site.

6. Publish pieces on Kindle. The longer you’ve been freelancing, the more material and information you’ve acquired. Use some of it to create articles or short stories and perhaps short ebooks that you can sell on Kindle. While this may not bring in lots of cash, it helps you use materials that lie fallow in your files.

7. Promote a book through articles. If you have a book about to be published, you might want to try to write several short articles on a related subject and get them posted at key Web sites online. They’ll give you greater visibility and subtle promotion for both yourself and your book.

8. Apply for grants or enter contests. Lastly, consider applying for grants or entering contests from time to time. Nothing boosts a career like an award. But don’t concentrate on either of these. It’s actually easier and less time-consuming to just write and publish your work than it is to seek out a chancy result like either of these.

Writing vs. Selling

Many beginning freelance writers are so consumed with the act of writing and producing material that they forget about selling their work until the last minute, after they’ve finished writing it. But writing and selling should go hand-in-hand. One job needs the other to be a success. So before you even begin to work on a project, have an idea of where you’ll potentially sell it.

The best salespeople begin their sales campaigns by developing a list of prospects. They glean names from whatever source they can, building a list of people to contact. Though over time you’ll amass a list of people you can count on to help with research, you also need to begin a list of potential markets—and not just markets but personal contacts in those markets. You can achieve this by sending out queries for projects or sending material out on speculation that some editors will begin to buy. Once you have your foot in the door, insert a doorstop and keep that door open.

After a top salesperson has a short list of contacts, they’ll sort through it to find the best-sounding prospects so they'll save time and money by avoiding blind alleys. They make their initial contacts, then review what happened, noting all reactions. Then they use these notes for follow-ups. They’re constantly looking to expand their market.

While many freelancers tackle the first step—creating a partial list—they fail on the remaining ones because, let’s face it, most freelance writers are lousy salespeople. While creative burnout and procrastination often plaque their writing, the same thing happens when they're trying to sell their work. In order to expand your freelance writing business, you have to avoid this. Remind yourself that at times freelancing may be 50 percent writing and 50 percent selling. And while large businesses have sales departments to handle selling their products, you don’t.

Be realistic about your markets. Remember, there’s loads of competition—a recent statistic puts the number of freelance writers in the U.S. at nearly 70,000. To get anywhere, you have to stand out from the crowd. Your material and your presentation of it have to offer editors the best and more of it than others can provide.

The first step is developing your prospect list. You’ll need to study the market and learn the possibilities so well that the market seems to evolve by itself. And don’t start at the top. You’re sure to fail. Begin at the bottom and work your way up. Start with the easiest markets, which most likely will also not be the highest paying. But the easier ones have less strict requirements and demand less work overall than the highest paying ones. Plus, you’ll have a much better opportunity to get published in them. But remember that you’ll only be working with them for a while to build up your credibility as a writer.

If you’ve already begin to publish your work, review your original markets. If you're working well with them, negotiate with the editors for higher pay or perhaps ask if can become a contributing editor. As such, you won’t get any more pay, and you won’t be doing any editing. But you will have your name on the magazine’s masthead, which will impress other editors higher up the pay chain.

When the same bland renewal notice for a magazine subscription arrives in the mail, you usually toss it in the trash. If you intend to renew, you most likely don’t do so on the first notice, but two or three later. The same goes for the reaction by an editor to the same presentation. If you want to renew an editor's interest in your material or build up assignments on a higher level than in the past, think about upgrading your presentation. How well does it sell your ideas? Is your timing and the sequence of your ideas logical? Is the market holding you back or are you holding yourself back through lack of expertise, timidity, or just plain fear?

Today, freelance writers have all sorts of sales tools at their disposal—Email marketing, Web sites, social networking, etc. But just like regular advertising, you also have mass mailing. Have you ever thought about designing a brochure showcasing your work and sending it along with your queries? Can you do the same digitally and send it along with Email queries? Have you given any thought to developing your own Web site. Not a personal one, but a professional business site that’s aimed at editors? (These and many other marketing topics will be appearing in future editions of this blog.)

Remember, some of the nation’s top freelancers spend as much as three or four hours a day on the phone and the Internet keeping in touch with publishers and editors. Start making the time to do the same if you want to become a success in this business.