Days 5 – 13 of My Freelance Journey
It's been ~2 weeks since my last blog post. After writing them for 4 days I concluded a few things.
Writing them everyday is good writing practice. Flexing my writing muscles everyday felt good. It provided me the opportunity to try out new things that I've learned.
On the flip side it takes mental energy and time away from my freelancing work. Writing and editing posts takes already limited time away from actual freelance work.
Because of the time and energy drain I've decided to post on a weekly basis. This will give me time to brain dump and then ruthlessly edit my posts. This will be my last lightly edited post.
Freelance Update
Here's what I've been doing the past ~2 weeks.
Everyday I review job boards, websites, subreddits, etc to find leads. My time is spent on 2 tasks. Finding a good lead and finding that leads email address.
Finding good leads
30% of my effort goes here. These are the questions I ask myself when reviewing a potential lead.
- Is their copy crystal clear? If so, next lead. If not, go to question 2.
- Does their meander? If so, reach out. If not, go to question 3.
- Does their copy have a clear audience in mind? If not, reach out. If so, go to question 4.
- Do they have a blog? Either way, reach out about doing a guest post.
When I reach out I've been adding 1 tidbit of advice on improving their copy. This is to give the appearance that I know what I'm talking about.
Once I've identified a good lead I move on to the other 70% of my time.
Finding an email address.
Finding the lead's email address
This is hands down the most difficult part of pitching. Finding someone's email address is incredibly hard. I know understand why there are so many services that make it easy to find anyone's email address. Damn near any pricing is worth it considering how much of a time sink this is.
How am I doing thus far?
Thus far I have made $0.00. I've pitched ~40 leads with no response. Unfortunately I don't know why they aren't biting. I think it's because of my lack of results and content to show.
How I'm going to fix this
I'm going to implement 2 changes. One is to publish a long-form (1K+) piece each week. I chose long-form because Google seems to love it and it gives me ample space to practice my editing.
Last change is to drop adding advice to each pitch I send. Coming up with an actionable tidbit takes time and really slows down my pitching velocity.
Hopefully these changes help.
Until next week,
Thy