The Sound of Silence

 Ever faced this situation?You are invited to bid on a project. You happily respond right away with an intelligent bid, and you’re feeling confident that it’s in the bag. Then a few days go by, and you don’t hear from the buyer. You contact him, but he doesn’t respond. You wait a few more days and contact him again. Still nothing.  You’re left scratching your head, wondering what is going through the buyer’s mind and how you should handle it.  

Ilise Benun, national speaker, author of several marketing and self promotion books , and co-founder of a one-on-one coaching program for small business owners called Marketing Mentor, offered this advice, originally published in Graphic Define Magazine, “It takes an average of seven (some even say 10) sales calls to close a deal. So if you always give up after the first couple of tries, you’ll never sell your service to anyone. It’s your responsibility to remind your prospects (sometimes again and again) that they are interested in your proposal. It’s your responsibility to be persistent until they’re ready to continue the conversation.” 

How many times have you followed up? Once? Twice? Never?  Ms. Benun goes on to outline 5 followup techniques for those who are timid or uncertain about how exactly to handle the silence: 

1. Ask for a simple “yes” or “no.” People are very busy. Make it easy for them.
2. Put “Second Request” in the e-mail subject line. This will remind the buyer of their silence and hopefully elicit a response.
3. Give the buyer a deadline to respond. Some people only take action when a deadline is looming. So ask your prospects to respond by a certain date, even if that date is arbitrary.
4. Express concern. On a second or third try, express concern by saying “I hope you are all right.” This works especially well with people you know personally. It brings the interaction to a human level, reminds them that there’s a real person trying to reach them, and usually provokes a response.
5. Put them on auto-drip. Whether or not you have a deal pending, you should have an automated marketing tool in place to help keep your name in all your prospects’ minds such as a monthly or quarterly e-mail newsletter, a print newsletter, or a direct-mail postcard.

And lest you feel like you’re ‘bugging’ your customers by following up, the rule here is to use good common sense when walking the fine line between harassment and persistence. This line will be different for every customer, depending on how well you know the person. Remember to remain professional in your approach, and ask leading questions that require the buyer to think and hopefully respond, such as: 

“When shall I contact you next?”

“May I stay in touch with you every month or so?”

May I put you on my list to receive my newsletter?

Following these simple but effective communication strategies may break the silence and push the project forward. But if not, your professionalism and efficient followup techniques will keep you in the forefront of the customer’s mind so that you are the first one they call when the time is right.

 For more information or assistance with bidding and followup, contact me directly at victoriaaipri@yahoo.com.

Don’t Forget Your Manners

If you work for a company, you know exactly what is expected of you each day. Aside from your actual job duties, no doubt you’re considerate of other employees, you say ‘Good Morning’ when you arrive, and you check your email frequently throughout the day. So why is it that when you become a freelance writer, all of those manners fall by the wayside?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Elance writers respond to buyers without beginning the email with Good Morning, Hello, or Dear So-and-So. I’ve also seen writers respond in IM language, like they’re texting on a cell phone. And I’ve seen responses that offer no clue as to who the writer is or how they can be contacted. Who does business like that?

If you’re working as a freelancer- be it writer, designer or programmer–you’re in business for yourself. Even if you only work at it very part time. Everything you say, do and write reflects back on you, your company, your professionalism and your ability to get the job done. There’s simply no excuse for forgetting your manners just because you’re sitting in your home office as opposed to your corporate office. In fact, your level of professionalism is even more important to the success of your business because of the intense competition in the freelance world.

So here’s a few tips on getting it right:

• Greet your prospect and do it properly (‘Good Morning’ instead of ‘Hey There!’)
• Ask questions to convey your interest in them
• Provide your contact information, including name, phone number and email or website
• Provide your hours of availability (i.e., 800-555-1212, 9 am to 5 pm ET Monday-Friday)
• Offer to initiate a phone call to prospect within a reasonable geographic area to discuss the project (i.e., If you’re in the United States, I’d be happy to call you to discuss your project further.”)

These details are normal communications expected in the corporate world but so often ignored among freelancers. Stand out among your competitors by excelling in your attention to customers’ needs. People do notice. And they will show their appreciation by choosing to do business with you.

If you are a freelance writers who needs assistance in any phase of the business, please visit www.OneStopSEOShop.com and click on For Freelance Writers Only, or feel free to write to me via the Contact Us page.

How a Freelance Writing Niche Can Strengthen Your Appeal

Take a quick peek at www.Elance.com, www.sologig.com, www.guru.com or any of the freelance job boards, and it’s soon obvious that the average freelancer is outnumbered. Before you even have a chance to convince a buyer of your skill, you’ve got to somehow cut to the front of the line. Not easy to do with thousands of competitors. You may be awesome, but that buyer may never know it. How to stand out in the crowd? Specialize.

Corporations and even small boutique companies have been doing this for ages. Why shouldn’t you? But choosing your specialty may not be so easy. When I first began as a freelance writer, I did anything and everything, from editing to writing to transcribing audio. The bills had to be paid so I did what I could. Over time, however, I felt drawn towards specific areas of writing. At first, it was copywriting, but writing someone else’s sales letters all day wasn’t my idea of fun. Soon , I learned more and more about SEO (search engine optimization), and although writing is only a part of this growing craft, I enjoyed it and I was good at it. So this is where I have stayed.

You can do the same. If you specialize rather than generalize, you may feel a bit lost at first. You may not be as busy with multiple projects and deadlines right away; ultimately this is good, as it gives you needed time to learn more about your area of specialization so you can excel more quickly. You can still take on the odd jobs to keep money coming in. I still take an occasional editing job or sales letter project just to stay in the game. But specializing offers you the opportunity to do one thing really well and, eventually, to become a master, charging the big bucks and cultivating a valuable list of clients.

Want to know more? Check out www.OneStopSEOShop.com and click on For Freelance Writers Only.

Why ‘Cookie Cutter’ Responses Can Hurt Your Elance Success

Are you using so-called ‘cookie cutter’ responses to bid on Elance projects? They may save you time…ergo…money. But they will not help you win more projects or bid more successfully.

Why? The buyers are on to the game. They can smell a canned response miles away, and many of them are refusing to even consider responses that are not unique to their project posting.

Cookie cutter responses tell the buyer you don’t really care about his project or his needs. It says you only care about yourself and getting as much work as quickly as possible. Conversely, taking the time to craft a well-thought-out, personal and targeted response catches the buyer’s attention. Since so few Elance providers actually bother to craft original responses, your fresh approach will win the buyer’s attention and, if you can deliver to the buyer’s specifications, you’ll win the project too.

The Elance Crash Course: Your Super Personal Elance Coaching Program tells you exactly how to create a unique response to each bid without recreating the wheel and spending hours bidding. Interested? Write to me at victoriaaipri@yahoo.com and I’ll give you all the great details.

In less than one hour a day, spent consistently, you can build a strong freelancing business based on leads from Elance only that can bring you as much money as you want to make, part time or full time. I know it can be done, because I’ve done it! I look forward to helping you do it too.

What’s Wrong with Elance?

For freelance writers, the holy grail is that one plum job that makes them a lot of money in a short amount of time with minimal effort. Multiplying that scenario over and over makes for the perfect lifestyle most freelancers spend their careers striving for. While www.craigslist.com , big job boards like www.monster.com, and other freelance job boards like www.sologig.com, www.guru.com, www.ifreelance.com and other lesser known boards seem to never run out of jobs from which freelancers can choose, no one does a better job in my opinion than Elance.

I understand Elance has some detractors. And I understand why. It’s gotten more expensive to win less jobs for less money. Competition is fierce, much of it from foreign countries where $1 an article might be an acceptable deal. The fees to join and continue on in a higher level membership can seem exorbitant.

ButI still believe Elance is one if the best deals going. Let’s compare for a sec with how my day used to go. I logged on to craigslist, checked the Writing Gigs and Writing categories for every majoy city, maybe found 2 decent ads worth responding to. Sometimes, by time I found them , they were a few hours old and the person posting the job ad already had a mailbox full of inadequate responses from which to choose. There was no point even writing.

Honestly, I got a couple of decent jobs out of craigslist, though, and for a while it was the only way I found work. I tried monster.com and some of the big job boards, but, since some companies think of freelancers as on-site temporary workers, not all freelancing jobs on those boards were also work-at-home. So that was pretty much a waste of time. I signed up for www.guru.com and www.sologig.com, but they were mostly techie jobs with some low-paying, ‘give-me-your-cheapest-bid’ buyers for writing. I tried www.ifreelance.com as well. Not thrilled. When I found Elance, I thought I’d finally found the secret to what other writers were doing. And, truthfully, with all the changes they’ve gone through in the last few  years, I still think they’re the best. They’re professional. The jobs generally are higher quality (of course, you still get the low-ballers in there). They’re more responsive now than in the past. And their system overall works very well. Yes, it’s not cheap. But taking into account all the time I spent for very little return using other methods, it’s worth it to me to log on to one place, spend as much time as I want, scroll through the bids, place my bid, and check out my competition while I’m at it. Elance is safe, and although I hate to admit I have been screwed out of money owed me from craigslist and other companies, I’ve never had that problem on Elance.

I could go on. I may do that in another post. Suffice to say that, for my money, and my time (which I think is truly worth something) Elance still gets my vote. I’m fortunate that I have a great group of clients who keep me busy. So I don’t have to troll for work on Elance like I used to. But if you’re new to freelancing and you want to get started somewhere where there’s a support net to catch you when you fall, I’d give it a shot.

Hey. No one said you have to stay there forever, and if you play your cards right, you won’t.

By the way, if you’d like some help navigating Elance, bidding better or more effectively, or setting up your Profile or Portfolio, drop me a line. I’ve got some great strategies for you. Until then, Happy Bidding! 

A Short Deadline is Better Than A Long Breadline

So much has been written about niche marketing, the topic itself is almost a niche. What does this have to do with freelance writing? Give me a second and I’ll get there.

You see, when most people think of niche marketing, they think it means conjuring up a completely new concept. Ummm…reality check. There’s not much new under the sun these days, so that goal may be a bit elusive…and one of the main reasons people fear finding a niche to promote in the 1st place.

The truth is, you can become a successful niche marketer selling a product or service many others are already selling…if the market remains hungry enough. As long as there is an audience, you’ll make money.

Take the topic of ‘making money online’. You would think the market would be saturated on this topic by now. But no. Apparently, it’s just beginning, as more and more people leave the 9-to-5 drag of the corporate world for a virtual lifestyle.  New ‘make millions online’ products arrive daily, all cleverly designed to make us believe that if we only plunk down $47.99 for this latest “Internet marketing guru secret”, we can get rich tomorrow.  No doubt it works for some, which is what keeps the industry going.

For most, though, it takes a set of skills that must first be slowly learned, then doggedly implemented and precisely tracked…no matter how much the program promises to put your new, staggering earnings on ‘autopilot.’

I promised I would correlate this to freelance writing, so here it is:

If you’re working as a freelance writer, or hope to begin, you’ve already found your niche. Think about that for a sec. And you don’t have to pay for anything to get started. Why? Well, using nothing but your computer (with Internet connection), your own God-given brain, and your well-honed writing skills, you can make money as a freelance writer starting tomorrow. Not just money, but a decent living! Can you make a million dollars? Doubtful. $100,000? Some certainly have. More realistically, though, you can make $20,000-$40,000 per year working in your bunny slippers and setting your kind of schedule…with plenty of time for little Johnny’s hockey game, little Susie’s dance recital, or to pursue hobbies, goals and dreams that have nothing to do with work. Even better, you can work at 10 o’clock at night, 2 in the morning, or every Sunday, as long as you meet your deadlines. And you can get paid as often or as infrequently as you wish if you play your cards right.

Let’s say it like it is: There is no niche more profitable than the one that comes naturally to you…the one you are already passionate about. Freelance writing is the most personally and financially rewarding way to make a living in today’s virtual world for those lucky few who have the skills to do so.

The Internet is overflowing with opportunities to make money. Every single person alive can pay money to buy someone’s program and learn how to make money online. But very few, comparatively, have what it takes to be successful as a freelance writer. The ‘program’  is already in your head. The ‘software’ is already in your brain. Use what you’ve got to create your best life now.

If you’ve got questions about freelance writing, I’d be happy to help. Drop me a line and let’s chat.