This is the fourth post in the summer slump series – view all the posts & read the others here.  In the other posts in the series, we’ve covered things from my point of view – but, as awesome as that point of view is (not that I’m biased or anything), it’s certainly not all-encompassing. For the last installment in the summer slump series, I wanted to get input from other business owners on what they do to avoid the summer slump and how it’s worked out for them. Below, you’ll find quotes from sixteen business owners across a variety of industries about exactly that. If you want to skip straight to my findings, you can click here for the TL;DR version! Love a particular piece of advice? Want to share it? Simply highlight it & you’ll get an easy-peasy share button for Twitter + Facebook, like so:

Get some downtime & experiment

I use summer to do more relaxing tasks, like review client portfolios, dream up new content, and design freebies. I just let this time be a time where I explore and experiment without obligation to commit to anything.

–Lauryn Doll

As a freelance writer, when assignments slow down in the summertime (many of the blogs I contribute to regularly cut down on the number of posts during summer) I take advantage of the (relative) lull to try something truly outrageous and eye-catching. In a few weeks, for instance, I plan to write a romance novel totally live on-line. I don’t mean I’m going to post a new installment a day and let people comment on it. I mean I am literally going to use software where you can watch me type each word; mistakes, revisions, deletions, missteps and all.

–Alina Adams

Refine your systems + follow up, follow up, follow up

From Laura George, a woman after my own heart:

I like to refine systems in the summer or implement time-consuming projects. That makes use of slump time pretty well. I also start the summer by following up with leads from previous months who have gone dormant. Sometimes they just need to be reminded that it’s been 6 months and they’re still in the same place and need the kick in the pants I can provide for them.

And of course, set up your follow up reminders (read more about that in the first post of this series):

Given that my clients are small businesses and nonprofits, I do see a little dip during the summer. I do follow-up continuously throughout the year using a task tickler called “follow-up.” Weekly, I send follow-up emails to anyone that I’ve met during the week reflecting on our conversation, providing information about my services and soliciting for referrals. Also weekly, I send personal handwritten thank you notes (with business cards) to anyone that I’ve met with. Again reflecting on our conversation, thanking them for their time and reminding them of my services. I’ve found that doing this weekly means that I’m not scrambling so much to book work. For my existing clients, I begin conversations around March about either expanding our current project to extend through the summer or creating a new project for the summer months. For my nonprofit clients, creating a content driven campaign has been critically important in keeping their work top of mind for their donors.

–Rochelle Dennis

I definitely see a slow down in the summer for my business and my clients as well. Here are my tips:

• Mention to your clients that normally have slower summers and that you can use this time to work on their business development. Do they need to redo their website, increase their social media efforts, finalize that special offer someone gets when they signed up for their newsletter, etc. You can also work on these tasks as well. The key to making this work, though, is to have a plan and know what you are going to work on.
• Plan your holiday marketing. So many businesses do holiday promotions and come October go crazy trying to get it all done. Do it now and then just fine-tune closer to the holiday. You can increase sales substantially when you do this.
• Do more marketing for your business now. If you slow down in the summer, then it might be necessary to spend some extra money to ensure you reach a new audience.

–Diana Ennen

Create great content

Slow periods are boner kills! I take that time to start creating great content that leads into my next launch – that way, when people come back I have their attention. Also, I try not to worry too much and enjoy the quiet time.

–Halley Gray

My business does get quieter in the summer months and for a period in December/early January.  This summer, I’m hosting my first telesummit June 9-22 and it’s generating a lot of interest! It’s an online event where I interview 20+ top international experts on the nutritional solutions for anxiety, panic, social anxiety and OCD. Doing something like this is a great way to reach a large number of people (I have over 2500 attending already) from all over the world. It’s very exciting!

–Trudy Scott

Have some fun with your clients!

I create really fun retreats and workshops, rather than serious business ones. It’s like a vacation, but actually productive in a roundabout way. I had one in early June called Sacred, Sassy and Sovereign. It’s a full day retreat, at a lower price point too. Hot tubbing and fun role playing using the Goddess archetypes in their brands. We even got a photographer to do headshots for everyone. Bottom line, make something WICKEDLY fun and you can stay busy in the summer too!

–Kris Oster

Get out there and meet people

Whether that’s by going to conferences:

I attend conferences and focus on in-person meetings over the summer. Travel is easier when business isn’t slammed and I get to build some quality relationships.

–Chrissy Das Or offering free checkups:

The first part of the year my firm prepares income taxes for educators and their families. It’s extremely busy and the customers have a deadline to get their taxes completed. The rest of the year our firm manages educators retirement accounts. The summer months can be difficult to get them to respond to your requests. So every summer we offer a free financial checkup – a quick 30 minute meeting where we get together to discuss how the year is going and to make suggestions to minimize their tax liabilities for the rest of the year. We also host free Educator Retirement Survival Boot camps. We provide a dinner and a short presentation to get the latest financial facts. We are also in the process of hosting bi-weekly webinars for educators around the country to attend.

–John Bustrum Or volunteering:

The best way to beat the summer slump is to focus on free marketing events to make your business relevant, even when the season has people distracted. My company focuses on personal branding and job readiness. Since many companies do not recruit as heavily in the summer months, my clientele tapers off. Instead of servicing clients, I use this time to volunteer my services and then use those as PR opportunities. I also reach out to new organizations that have summers off, but whose businesses pick up in the fall. It’s also important to attend summer networking mixers, as those are people in the community who are active and still looking to creative lasting partnerships.

–Andrea Berkman

Diversify your client base

My summer slump is a winter slump. [Note: to read about what I’m doing to avoid my winter slump, check out the profitable planning post earlier in this series.] New consulting projects are slow to start and no one seems to be in their office when I call. After suffering through that period in my first year in business, I took a three pronged approach to avoid future slumps:

• I target industries that are traditionally busy in that timeframe (such as retail with big holiday sales efforts)
• During the early summer, when coffers were flush, I talked to the bank about a working line of credit (very small at first while I establish a track record). Having a relationship with my local community bank manager before I need her makes us both happy.
• A personal mind-shift. I’m convinced that if I keep asking myself the question “How can I insure that my slowest season is my most worry free season?” my brain will figure out a way to make it so.

–Greg Chambers

The printing business definitely has a summer slump, and it’s pretty substantial. We plan for and take advantage of our summer slump by taking the time to work ON the business. When business is busy, we don’t have time for planning, strategizing, marketing plans, etc. because we’re too busy and working IN the business. During the summer months when we know we will be slow, we are able to look at what products we want to add to our offerings, pricing structures, marketing calendars, the website, social media marketing, email marketing, print marketing, head count, and so much more. We experience the same sort of slump in November and December when people are focused on the holidays. Business usually picks back up again in January and we’re ready for it because we’ve planned ahead, we don’t panic, we keep marketing and building relationships and we’re able to take a little more time than when it’s super busy. For the holiday seasons slump, we’ve also taken a look at what we can do different in our business to attract more consumer type clients for holiday printing. Our typical customers are small business owners, not consumers. Our business didn’t slump as much in 2013 for the holiday season because we added more products directed at helping our clients as “consumers.” They already know and like us, we just needed to have them see us in a different light so they realize we aren’t just “small business printing,” we can do anything printing related, including helping them with their holiday cards. The shift made a big difference in the way we ended 2013 and we expect it to be even better this year.

–Nadine Larder

In my photography business, winters have typically been the slump time. People want more outdoor “lifestyle” type of portraits and usually brides have feared the snow. The latter is starting to change a bit and I’ve booked at least two December weddings each year for the last three years. But two weddings does not a slump-buster make. There are a few ways I feed the monster so that there really isn’t ever any down time. First off, a few years ago I started making serious pushes into other types of photography, including product and architecture. Today these two areas actually are my bread and butter, despite my primary reputation for portraits and events. The next thing I do is to continually be networking and selling myself. A great deal of people don’t realize how they could use my services until I point out that they may want to update their LinkedIn profile, or add imagery of their retail space on their website, etc. This usually doesn’t yield immediate business, but a few weeks or months down the road I usually get a call. Last but not least, when heading into winter I email a discount on prints to all my portrait and event clients, which is a good money maker. So in short, look for one or two steady clients that aren’t necessarily in your wheel house. Always have a card on hand and your elevator speech ready, and try to make one new contact a day. Lastly, don’t neglect your previous clients.

–Tom Clarke

Revisit your purpose

In downtime, I think it is best to revisit your systems and purpose. Systemizing means asking yourself, “What do I like to do? What don’t I like to do? What can I do better? What do my customers want me to do/to do better?” When you answer this, you can have a better idea how to guide your work, areas you may want to outsource or hire an assistant for, and what to develop your skills in. I mention purpose because freelancing is not easy. This is especially relevant in slow times, when you aren’t so sure of your earnings for the upcoming months. Ask yourself, “why do I do what I do?” You have to be honest with yourself as to why you are freelancing. It can be a lonely and emotionally stressful endeavor to be self-employed. Reconnecting with your life vision and purpose allows you to have something to go back to during trying times. And of course, being open to adjusting your vision allows for great insight on yourself.

–David Bradley

Book ahead of time & learn more

Summer is notoriously slow for many travel agents. I use this time to encourage clients to encourage people to book for the future so they can take advantage of early bird booking rates and extended free layaway programs. If we’re not booking, we’re marketing or fine tuning our websites and participating in industry education. There are always new classes to take, new resorts to preview. We actually need a break so that we can continue to expand and update our industry knowledge. Personal growth in the travel genre is critical to our business success.

–Teri Hurley

Notice a pattern?

Out of the nearly 50 responses I got from business owners about how they avoid the summer slump (not all of which are posted here), they tended to fall into a few very noticeable categories. The first two categories are:

• discounts/sales
• saving money

Obviously, both of these can work, but discounts works best with products (doing it too often or with too much of a discount with services can devalue your services and leave you overworked and resenting your clients, which is not an ideal place to be). Saving money is smart, but is definitely a very long term strategy in my experience. That’s why I didn’t put a huge focus on either of those tactics in this article.

The other categories were:

• planning ahead
• client & lead follow up

Which are topics extensively covered in my products. The last category that emerged was planning your marketing for the future, with many business owners mentioning content marketing specifically. And once again, I’ve got something that can help – check out the guest posting to rock your biz class.

Want to learn more? Read the rest of the summer slump series:

1. How systems save my business from the summer slump
2. Everybody hates dry spells: experiments in profitable planning
3. Thirteen things you can do today to beat the summer slump
4. Sixteen business owners sound off about how they avoid the summer slump

This is the third post in the summer slump series – view all the posts & read the others here. 

The first two posts in this series dealt with systematizing to avoid slumps and planning ahead to avoid slumps (respectively), and they are long – almost 3,000 words combined (2,870, to be exact). This one is pretty hefty too…but instead of going seriously in-depth on 3-4 systems/strategies, I wanted to cover more things in an action-oriented fashion so that you can pick and choose what works for you + your biz.

Without further ado, here’s your homework – resources included:

#1: Try a new social network

Haven’t set up your Pinterest or Instagram accounts yet? Have a LinkedIn account but haven’t touched it in years? Pick a social network you don’t normally use and make a real effort to be active on it (in a proactive way, not in a “I opened my browser and looked at it” way) every day for at least one week, maybe two. Post. Comment on others’ posts. Participate in groups. You know the drill.

Resources: 

• International Freelancer’s Academy podcast on using LinkedIn effectively
• 52 tips: how to market on Instagram
• 26 tips for using Instagram for business
• 3 unique ways to use Pinterest for business
• 5 tips to master Pinterest for business

#2: Do a live (online) event

This doesn’t have to be a webinar or a teleclass, though those can be effective if you decide to go that route. You could also do:

• A month-long blogging challenge, inviting participants to participate, giving them prompts, and providing accountability via emails and a Facebook group
• A week-long Facebook event with posts every day and homework for participants to do
• An hour-long tweetchat about a specific topic (you can also participate in other tweetchats to meet new people – here’s a directory)
• A Q&A day on Facebook where you’ll be around answering questions
• A Spreecast, Google Hangouts, or Vokle event with live video and personal interaction

Resources: Online webinar/teleconferencing tools

• Uberconference (Teleconferencing tool – intended for meetings but can be used with classes, free with limits, paid account is $10/month)
• FreeConferenceCall (Teleconferencing that is, you guessed it, free)
• GoToWebinar (Webinar tool, considered industry standard by many, $80/month)

#3: Do a live (offline) event

This might sound intimidating and expensive, but it doesn’t have to be either. Host a free meetup – promote it to your local friends on Facebook and ask them to share to anyone who might be interested (make it fun, informative, or both). And if you have any local coworking spaces, hit them up and ask if they’d be interested in you giving a free (emphasize free and no-pitch, and follow through with that promise – don’t be a spam-monster, yo) talk to their members. Chances are, they’d be delighted to have you provide a bonus to their membership, and it’s a great way to meet other entrepreneurs and potential clients in your local community.

Resources: Google-fu.

#4: Get off your computer and network/meet up in person

We’re so used to meeting people via the internet that we can default to that, and while it’s pretty freakin’ great (true fact: I met my boyfriend and my two best friends over the internet!), it’s certainly not the only way to meet people. Networking in person can expose you to a whole segment of your market that you may have been overlooking, and it’s also better for getting a vibe as to whether someone will be a high maintenance client or not.

Resources: 

• A recent Word Carnival revolved entirely around this topic – lots of good tips in the articles!
• Creative Mornings – one of my favorite events to attend! (which is saying something considering it involves being somewhere at 8:30 AM)
• Meetup, of course
• Crave: meetups for women in business around the country
• Network After Work

#5: Talk to 100 people

This is a great idea because:

• It gives you a goal – not just “talk to people and see what their needs are and what they’re struggling with”, but “talk to 100 people” – then you can set mini-goals (20 people this week, 20 the next, etc.) and track progress
• Talking to people about their problems tells you what they’re struggling with in their words, which is invaluable both for product/service creation, content creation (blog posts and paid content like courses), and creating sales copy and social media updates
• It gets you in front of a lot of new people – chances are you’ll have to stretch yourself to have a conversation with that many people, and that can kickstart word of mouth about you + your biz

Resource: Shenee’s 100 people project lab

#6: Do a time or number limited service offering

By this, I don’t really mean doing a sale – you don’t want to discount your services most of the time, as it often comes back to bite you in the ass later.

Instead, think outside of your business – what’s going on on a grander scheme that means your people need help? Did Google just redo their algorithm and now your clients might need their content reworked? New social media icon sizes? Two platforms combining in a way that’s going to confuse a lot of people? Find something that makes sense for your audience & business, create a package around it, and offer it for a limited time. Structuring it around an outside event automatically gives people incentive to buy and buy quickly, without icky fake scarcity tactics.

#7: Revamp old blog posts

Chances are, you’re sitting on an archive of old posts – some of which were way more popular than others. Analyzing your archives can let you know which posts get the most search traffic and which ones get the most social shares, which gives you a good idea of what content will be successful going forward.

For each old post, you can: 

• Turn it into a video and upload to Youtube (check out these tips for Youtube optimization)
• Create a worksheet to go along with the content and publish it in its own new post
• Turn it into a podcast and upload to iTunes or Soundcloud
• Create a follow up post containing your experiences, thoughts, and lessons learned on that same topic, since the last post was written
• If there’s a theme across them, you can put your best posts together into an ebook and make it opt-in only or upload to Kindle

Resources: Finding out which posts are the most popular

• Google Analytics (the standard analytic tool, free, but can be confusing)
• Clicky (great free plan with amazing features)
• Improvely (another analytic tool, starts at $29/mo, see my review here)
• Social Crawlytics will tell you what your most shared posts are
• You can see what people are pinning from your site by going to http://pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite.com/

#8: Do a joint venture product or class

This is a pretty simple idea: you join forces with someone else and do a class or product focusing on the area of overlap between your skill-sets/interests. I made Productivity for Multipotentialiates over two years ago with Emilie and not only did it introduce me to new people when we ran it, it still introduces me to new readers and customers all this time later.

1. Make a list of people you know that you think it would be a total blast to teach a class or do a call with. You don’t really want to cold-introduce yourself to someone for the sole purposes of this, as the chances of them saying yes are pretty low.
2. Think about the overlap between your audience, skill-sets, and interests.
3. And then ask them if they’d be interested in collaborating. You can even just do a free call if neither of you has the time or energy to do a full fledged product/class at this point.

#9: Send out review copies of your products

Again, this is pretty simple:

1. Create a list of people whose readers would be genuinely interested in your products.
2. Email those people and ask them if they’d be interested in doing a review and giveaway of one of your products. It’s good etiquette to offer a giveaway for their readers and/or affiliate commissions, just so that you aren’t asking them to cover your product for free.
3. Make sure to promote the review & giveaway on your end when it goes live – also good etiquette.

#10: Don’t have a product? Make one

This is simpler than it sounds. I made the yearly planners over one weekend nearly three years ago and they’re still one of my best selling items.

• Go over that list of most popular posts you made back in #7 and ask yourself: What’s the next step? After people read these, what do they need to know and do? What’s their next problem? Then, create a product that solves it.
• Think about what problem people have directly before they need your services. For example, if you’re a graphic designer, for your work together to go smoothly, it’s likely your clients need to know what mood they’re trying to convey with their brand, what color palette goes with that mood, what category of brand they’re aiming for…and so on. Create a product to help them fix the problem that comes before you work together, and then working together is a natural next step.
• When all else fails, make a list of the questions you get over and over from clients, readers, and friends, and create a product that answers them.

Resources: 

• Want to Build and Launch Your First Product – Here’s What Not to Do
• Why you should do a tiny product first
• The Freelancelift podcasts

#11: Be a guest writer or speaker

This has some overlap with #8 and hosting events, but is its own beast. You can:

• Contact local meetup organizers and ask if they’re looking for guest speakers (including national events like Creative Mornings)
• Contact local newspapers and magazines and pitch them on an article that’s in your area of expertise
• Contact online sites and magazines and pitch them on an article or series
• Look for local nonprofits or community organizations that are for your target market and contact them to see if they’d be interested in you doing a talk or workshop for their members

When done right, this will get you new clients & customers and establish your credibility as an expert so you can score future writing and speaking gigs (if you want), among other good things.

Resource: I’ve got a course coming up on guest posting effectively – check it out & sign up here.

#12: Pitch something outside of your comfort zone

I’ve got a post going up at FastCompany soon. Do you know how I got it? By doing something that made me literally nauseous with discomfort. After I decided to get over the nausea, buck up, and do it, it was pretty much just a matter of hard work and research.

Make your dream list of places you’d like to be featured or write for, events you’d like to speak at, and find out how to get in. (Hint: search for “writer’s guidelines”, “press releases”, “product samples”, “submission guidelines”, and/or “call for speakers” on their website.) Then pitch at least one in the next week.

#13: Follow up with five people, every day, for the next two weeks

Much like talking to 100 people, the main benefit here is that it gets you out in front of a lot more people than normal. But the idea is not to be salesy – it’s to say hi and genuinely see how you can help people.

• Contact past clients and see how they’re doing, if there’s anything you can do for them, and if they have any questions that they’d like to see you write about on your blog
• Contact readers you’ve talked to in the past and see how they’re doing and if they’re struggling with anything
• Email customers and ask for their honest feedback on your products and if they have any questions left unanswered after using them
• Email people when they sign up for your email list to welcome them and ask how they’re doing/what they’re struggling with (and no, setting up an autoresponder doesn’t count)
• Send a catching up note to people you’ve met at events and conferences in the past, but haven’t heard from in a while

Whew – there you go, 13 ways you can get yourself outta this slump and back into smooth sailing. You know what’s next: pick one, do it today, and task out the rest for the next two weeks.

Want to learn more? Read the rest of the summer slump series:

1. How systems save my business from the summer slump
2. Everybody hates dry spells: experiments in profitable planning
3. Thirteen things you can do today to beat the summer slump
4. Sixteen business owners sound off about how they avoid the summer slump

This is the second post in the summer slump series – view all the posts & read the others here. 

As mentioned previously, in the past, my business will slow down a little bit (but not a huge amount) in summer, then it picks up again in fall, and then it grinds to a screeching halt in October or November, not picking up again until mid-January.

If you’re in my camp (or if you want to keep this information around for the beginning of next year, to avoid next summer’s slump), this is the first year I’m trying these things, so I can’t guarantee ’em, but here’s what’s in my toolbox. If your summer slump doesn’t hit until July, you might have time to start on some of them if you want to give them a go:

Diversifying: different offerings

In previous years, my Q4 offerings were as follows:

• project management services
• starting in October, the planners for 2014
• the Rock Your Systems live course, open for enrollment November through end of December

This year, I’m going to be:

• offering my writing/editing services
• doing a Kickstarter in August & September to fund paper planners (a mashup of the yearly + weekly planners and the habit-building planners I created that currently aren’t for sale), which will be for sell starting in October, and will be sold through this site, Amazon, and local stores *knock on wood*
• having the digital planners for 2015 available starting in October
• offering either a one-day workshop (if I do that route, 2-3 different dates) or a 4-week class for 2015 planning + systems
• probably (but not 100% for sure yet – we’ll see how the beta round that opens this month goes!) offering the second round of the class on guest posting to rock your biz

Each of these is meant to fit a different type of customer/client – they’re not all going to appeal to the same type of person (as opposed to last year, when the offerings were essentially different levels of the same thing). And of course, the goal of the Kickstarter will be to fund the whole first run of the paper planners – so there will be planners left over to sell, which is a much more Christmas friendly gift than something digital.

My theory – we’ll see how it works out – is that offering a diverse range of things will:

• let me see which of these performs the best in the fourth quarter so that I know that for next year and can continue to improve
• give me enough streams of income that it’ll bring in more money overall, and even out the slump

(And of course…those products I mentioned above are all in the summer of systems bundle, if you want to pick any of ’em up! And that guest posting class might or might not be available for VIP presale to newsletter subscribers….just sayin’.) 

Diversifying: different industries

My boyfriend runs an eBay store with drop-shipped products, so that he doesn’t have to keep products on hand and in stock. It isn’t his sole income but is a nice side income stream, although it does require more time-commitment than the passive income gurus would have you believe. I’ve been an eBay user for an ungodly long time now and have a good feedback score, so I’m batting around the idea of finding something to set up a similar arrangement with, and then when business picks up again in January, I can scale it back or stop entirely.

My other thought is that sales across other industries pick up hugely in the last quarter of the year, even if my business usually slows down – 25-30% of yearly retail sales happen in the last two months of the year. (Source) Which means businesses in retail industries or businesses serving those industries will need more help…and I can seek them out. I’m working on building the tech aspects of my portfolio, and I think that’ll come in handy here.

Stack launches

This is probably a fairly basic thing I should have been doing all along…but the idea is that in addition to diversifying, I’m pretty much always in some stage of launching a class, product, or service (and at some points, in various stages of launch with more than one thing at a time). That way, there’s little to no “dead zone” where I’m just relying on my services and on unreliable passive-ish income from my products as my sole sources of income.

The typical advice would probably say that my audience will get “launch fatigue”, and I have no idea if that’s true or not; I’m hoping that since these are different “levels” people won’t get tired of hearing about the products/services/classes. Not to mention, I make every effort to provide really good free content out the wazoo.

By different “levels” I mean either:

• different audiences/interests (guest posting vs. paper planners vs. a course on business systems and planning for the new year)
• different levels of investment (a $15-25 planner kit is not the same level of money or time involvement as a 4-6 week class)
• different levels of promotion (as in, my level of promoting it – the Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing deal, so I’m going to be promoting it on a very daily basis until it, fingers crossed, meets its goal, but a class or course is more like a 2-3x a week promotion)

I’m also making a lot more effort to keep things on a tighter schedule. For example, I’m running the aforementioned summer of systems bundle until June 16, after which I have a class on guest posting opening for registration (which, also as aforementioned, is first-come first-serve to the newsletter subscribers), that will start on July 21. The Kickstarter is tentatively scheduled to start either the first or second week in August, and when it finishes, I might re-run the guest posting class in late October, so we’d move right into launch for that. If I don’t re-run it, I’ll still be debuting the planners for 2015 in October, and start selling workshops for 2015 planning/systems in November.

Will it be exhausting? I have no idea. My theory is that it will, obviously, be a lot of work, but that cycling through launches at this rate and diversifying what it is that I’m launching, I won’t get bored. One of the reasons I respect Shenee so much is that she ran Hot Brand Action, her flagship course, every other month for approximately two years, which means she was essentially perma-launching, always with the same offering.

I think that would make me want to claw my eyes out, but getting to work on a guest posting class, then a Kickstarter, then systems and planning, while possibly trying other new things to see how they stick…that sounds fun, even if hard work, to me.

Projects with a longer turnaround time (work on them now, get the rewards later)

For me, this is going to be my Youtube channel. I have over 300 subscribers there and make something like $150-175 from it every other month or so…and that’s with very, very intermittent uploads. My theory is that if I start updating much more regularly – my goal will be weekly, starting here in about two weeks when I get back from the trip I’m currently on- it will dramatically increase the ad income. This will probably be hit or miss, because some productivity tools, like Trello, are obviously getting searched for a lot more than others (and searches cause most of my Youtube traffic), but it’ll be an interesting experiment nonetheless.

If this works, it will mean more and more regular income, but it’ll take about 3-4 months to actually kick in, because of the delay in payment. Which means if I want to do this with the aim of helping out my income starting in October, I need to start now.

Almost every business owner I know has something like this – it’s bringing money in and it could probably bring a lot more money in…with just a little bit of work. This is me trying to prioritize that little bit of work now and see if it pays off later. Is it going to be annoying to make the time to record and upload videos weekly on top of other blogging, marketing, and client work? Probably – but if it increases regular recurring income, it’s worth it, even if it won’t happen for a few months. Also, I always remember videos being a huge pain, and then I do one and remember that I love doing them, so I bet once it’s a habit it won’t be nearly so bad.

So that’s the four experiments in profitable planning I’m trying this year, to avoid my usual end-of-year downturn. And of course, I’ll be checking back in November or so to talk about how it pans out – I’m sure I’ll learn something either way! (That I can then pass along to you, and save you the headache.)

Want to learn more? Read the rest of the summer slump series:

1. How systems save my business from the summer slump
2. Everybody hates dry spells: experiments in profitable planning
3. Thirteen things you can do today to beat the summer slump
4. Sixteen business owners sound off about how they avoid the summer slump

This is the first post in the summer slump series – view all the posts & read the others here. 

Summer is a super-slow period for a lot of freelancers & businesses. People are traveling, people are vacationing, people can just be tuned out – which of course, means less business for you. This was on my noggin after a post I wrote for Grasshopper, and I wanted to discuss the summer slump from more of a systems point of view – not a one time thing like “have a sale,” but “these are the things I do regularly that help my biz in slow periods.”

The disclaimer is that I don’t typically have a huge summer slump – my incredibly slow period usually tends to be towards the end of the year, although I’m 99% sure these systems are at least partially to credit for the lack of summer slowness in the first place. I’ll talk more about that slow period and how it plays into this advice in the next post in this series, but in the meantime, here’s what I’ve got:

Systematize your client follow up

One would presume that the rest of the year, you’re getting new clients at a fairly steady rate. If that is the case (and if it’s not, see the next tip), then keeping your client follow up systems in shape (or using the slow period to set them up) will help even things out. Every time I release a new product, service, or class, I let my previous clients and customers know about it…and they’re often the first ones to take me up on it.

Why bother spending time on client follow up?

Lemme hit you with some facts: 

• A 5% increase in customer retention can increase profitability by 75% (Source: Bain & Co.)
• Attracting a new customer/client costs five times more, on average, than keeping an existing customer (Source: Lee Resource, Inc.)
• Loyal customers are worth up to 10x as much as their first purchase (Source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs)

And the kicker: the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. The probability of selling to an existing customer? 60-70%.

(Source: Marketing Metrics)

Yes, you read that right: it is three to fourteen – fourteen! – times easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one.

So, if you’re steadily getting clients the rest of the year and following up with them regularly, that’s income you’d be missing out on otherwise – including during the slow seasons like summer. Of course, the client follow up action kit can help you do this – you know, if you’re looking for a step by step guide.

Systematize your pitching + promotion

This was essentially the whole topic of a whole post fairly recently: Empty funnel? How to get more clients, stat.

If, during the rest of the year, your business is driven mostly by your online presence (blog and social media) and word of mouth, then avoiding the summer slump might just be a matter of being more proactive than you usually are. At the moment, I’m selling my services almost entirely through having a very proactive, very streamlined pitching system. (That sounds like some kind of baseball apparatus…but you know what I mean.) And you know what? It’s working!

Here’s a few action steps to get you started:

• Set up automated systems (using IFTTT and other tools) so that you get the information you need without checking job boards daily
• Create a pitching template (or 2-3, if you have a few different specialties) for sending in response to posts/requests for proposals (but always customize it!)
• Set metrics and stick to them – decide to pitch three (or five, etc.) people a day and do it before you start your work for the day, or at the end of the day

You should really read the whole post I mentioned above if this is an area you want to shore up, because it goes into more details on each of those & includes an email template for you to swipe.

Systematize your services

What? What in the world does working on your services have to do with avoiding a slump in your business? I’ll tell you what:

Retainer services

By “retainer services,” I mean services that are a flat fee that are paid monthly (like my “editorial on call” service). With retainer services, you’ve got the same amount of money coming in each month, so it can even out the peaks and troughs that come with running a service based business.

The danger here is that you wind up relying on one or two retainer clients to essentially carry your business, and if one of them goes out of business or drastically changes their business model (as happened to me in October of last year, right before my super-slow period), you’re pretty much SOL. This time around, I’m deliberately not offering the same level of retainer services I was as a project manager, because it forces me to not rely on that income. (Which maybe sounds weird and roundabout, but hey, there you go.)

Time tracking

Use a tool like Harvest (referral link, that’s what I use), Freshbooks, or Toggl to track how you’re spending your time – both inside your business and with clients. This will:

• horrify you when you realize how much time you spend in your email inbox and
• let you know where your client time is actually going and how much time you actually spend on each client so you can create…

Higher profit margins

Because so many services providers don’t know precisely where their time is going, or have systems for their services, they’re working 60 hour work weeks with no idea why they’re not absolutely rolling in dough. For each of your services, you need to:

• Create a step by step system for your services that covers everything – including the associated administrative work, intake, and delivery/wrap-up processes
• Have an accurate time estimate range for each service, that covers how long it takes whether, for example, the client uses one round of revisions or all three (check out this video for a how to on that)
• Know how many clients you can maintain (at that accurate time estimate)
• And know that, at either end of the time estimate and at max capacity for your clients, you’re making the hourly amount you want to be making. A lot of times, freelancers will set a “dream” income goal that equates to, say, ten client projects a month…without doing the math and realizing that they can only physically handle seven clients at a time. (Then the question becomes, do you spend less time on your services, raise your rates, fill in that extra income with classes or products, or do some combination of all three?)

The kick burnout kit goes into detail about how to systematize your services and make sure that you’re actually making how much you think you’re making with them.

Want to learn more? Read the rest of the summer slump series:

1. How systems save my business from the summer slump
2. Everybody hates dry spells: experiments in profitable planning
3. Thirteen things you can do today to beat the summer slump
4. Sixteen business owners sound off about how they avoid the summer slump

This is a guest post from Jennifer Sights. 
You’re home from your day job. You’ve done any chores needing attention. Now you’re ready to work on your Next Great Novel, or Painting, or Sculpture. You have all night ahead of you to get loads of art created. You sit down, annnnnnd…nothing.

Maybe you stare at the blank screen for a while. Still, nothing comes. Your mind – empty. Devoid of even the faintest spark of creativity.

We’ve all heard of The Muse – that ethereal, Mystical being who supposedly ignites magnificent ideas in our souls. Yet all too often The Muse deserts us when we need her most. What do you do then?

I’ve got some tough news for you – if you really want to make a go of your art, you can’t sit around waiting for The Muse. Nothing will happen that way. You might get a lot of Facebooking done, but not art. You have to make your own inspiration.

But how?

Chance are, you get little sparks of ideas all the time, everywhere you go. The girl with purple hair lost in thought at the coffee shop. The billowing storm clouds against the indigo sky at dusk. The single discarded rose on the cold ground at the bus station. The lyrics to a song on the radio.

What do you do when these sparks come across your path? Ignore them? Glance at them, then turn away? Why don’t you try this instead – write them down. Take a picture. Create Pinterest boards of inspiring quotes and photos. Then, when the Muses has deserted you, you’ll have a nearly endless well of ideas to choose form for your next project.

If that doesn’t work, take a break. Go for a walk. Dance – even if it’s alone in the privacy of your own home. Practice yoga. Sing. Do something different, something out of your comfort zone. Challenge yourself to do something new, something scary. That’s a sure-fire way to get your creative juices flowing again, sweeter than ever.

DO NOT JUDGE YOURSELF. Whatever it is you do, be kind to yourself. Especially if you’re trying something new. No one is perfect at the beginning. In fact, most of us suck when we start something new. Keep trying. Take the challenges of learning this new thing and use it as fodder for your art.

Have Artist Dates with a few friends or colleagues. Meet at a coffee shop to bounce ideas off each other and work on your art together. I do this with my artist friend, Michelle. Every week, we meet at a chocolate shop and eat salted caramels and drink French press coffee. The change of scenery always helps, and when we’re stuck, we can help each other, and give each other feedback.

Be sure you constantly renew your well of ideas. But also be sure you get enough rest. Something you just need a good, long catnap to renew yourself and your creativity. And who knows – maybe you’ll have a dream during that catnap that leaves you with an idea so exciting, you can’t wait to jump out of bed to turn it into art when you wake up.

But most of all, never lose faith in yourself.

Never give up.

Be your own Muse.

Jen Sights is a fiction writer and lifestyle coach for introverts. Being an introvert herself, she’s had to figure out how to make her home-based businesses – and life in general – work for her in a world that is constantly on the go.

Whether you don’t yet know what your passion is, or need help implementing your BIG dreams, Jen’s the gal for you. She’s been there and knows exactly how it feels. And wouldn’t you love to work with someone who understands what you’re going through?

Going back to full time freelancing, my goal has been to do things differently (i.e., better!) this time around. One of the things that was a personal shortfall last time is that I was definitely not great at breaking my income goals down into smaller chunks and actually keeping track of money coming into my business. I had weekly goals, but I didn’t really keep track in any easy to use visual manner.

I needed a way to see at a glance how I was doing on my income goals, and gauge the effectiveness of my pricing. And – you know me – I couldn’t find one (…that didn’t involve spreadsheets, gag me), so I made it. 

Click on the image to download your printable:

 

How to use it:

It’s a pretty simple idea:

1. Take your monthly income goal (I used $3,000 for this example, since…that’s what I’m using right now as a realistic guess for my first full month back at freelancing)
2. Divide that by 22 (which is the average number of work days in a month, though if you wanted to get super anal-retentive you could count the actual work days in any given month)
3. Ta da! That’s your daily goal.

The planner functions as a bar graph, and each day is divided up into four sections for 25, 50, 75, and 100%. In my example, 150 doesn’t divide evenly by four (37.5 is not a very bar-graph-friendly number), so I just rounded up and have it go by increments of 40 instead.

Here’s what mine looks like right now:

(I went ahead and filled in guaranteed income for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, just to help illustrate the usage – normally I wouldn’t color that in until it had been worked and/or paid)

The specifics of how I’m using it:

• I’m tracking the work I do, as long as I know I’ll get paid for it. For example, if I write a 1,500 word post for a client, that’s my goal met for the day and I mark the day as complete – I don’t count the income on the day the invoice gets paid. (This could potentially bite you in the ass with a non-paying client, but again, the idea here is not detailed financial tracking; this is meant to be an at-a-glance planner that keeps your nose to the grindstone.)*
• The exception to this is if someone buys a product on a particular day – that income goes on that day or the next blank day.
• For money that comes in during the weekend (by which I mean, a product sold or a class enrollment, etc.), you can either not mark it on the hustle planner, and it’ll be some extra padding, or you can roll it over to the next Monday.
• If you really wanted to, you could color code by products vs. services vs. classes, but I’m not.

*Part of the reason I’m doing it this way is that one of the recurring issues I had before was that people would pay a retainer, then I’d count the retainer income as being a full week’s (or two weeks, etc.) income goal, without actually having worked off the retainer yet. As you know if you’ve done this, this catches up and you wind up incredibly overworked at some point in the future. This is part of my way of fixing that problem.

This is useful because:

It keeps the focus on arguably the most useful metric: money. It’s too easy to get swept up in “OMG! I got 10 new email signups today!” and think that that means you can take an afternoon off, or work on things that won’t necessarily generate ROI. Looking at your guaranteed income keeps you realistic as far as what you need to plan for pitching, marketing, and sales each day and week. It keeps you hustling. (Hence the name.)

It also makes my work-day really simple: I outline my work for the day, I work until the day is full and I’ve met my income goal, and only then do I work on email, social media, marketing, writing blog posts, and so on.

Using this planner is super helpful in setting priorities – if you’re nearing the end of the first week of the month, and see you’re “blocked up” through the end of the third week in the month, you don’t have to spend as much time or energy on sales/pitching in your after-goal time – instead, you can work on something that might have a longer-term return on investment (like writing a blog post or pitching guest posts).

It’s also a handy metric for knowing if your pricing is way off. If you regularly find yourself finishing a 6-8 hour work-day without having made that goal amount yet, or you do make the goal amount but you’re so freakin’ exhausted you don’t have any time left for admin and marketing, then you need to raise your prices. Administrative details and marketing is a huge part of what goes in to freelancing and/or running a business, and if there’s not enough time for that, then something’s broken somewhere along the line.

It can be really easy to spend far too much time researching the latest social media trends or reading the newest post from your favorite marketing blogger or dicking around on Facebook “networking.” This planner helps keep your attention on the hustle – hope you enjoy it!

PS: I’ve got some awesome news coming up on Friday, and some of that awesome news will only be available for subscribers – make sure to sign up for the newsletter below or here to make sure that you don’t miss it! 

This is a guest post from Tanja Gardner of Conscious Introvert Success.

Let’s acknowledge up front that I’m NOT the world’s most organized person.

Before I start talking about the miracle of systems, I want to acknowledge that I have a weird brain.  You see, I love creating elaborate systems. Sticking to them though? That’s a very different matter.

I think it has something to do with one of my core values being flexibility.  I might crave structure, but as soon as I start feeling locked in or trapped by it, my inner toddler rebels.

In other words, I’m hardly a poster child for a “natural born systematizer”.

I have, however, become an evangelist for systems that save me energy

Like many introverted business owners, managing my energy is a huge focus for me. In fact, in an informal poll, 30% of the folks who signed up for my last webinar said overwhelm/energy drain was THE biggest issue in their business.

So when I realized that the right systems wouldn’t just make me more efficient, they’d also help me make the most of my limited energy reserves?  That gave me some serious incentive to figure out systems I could actually stick to (at least most of the time).

And the energy I’ve saved by implementing just a few of them in my business has been dramatic enough that I’ve become a systems evangelist.

First though, I needed to look at my approach to systems in general

Before I could figure out the best systems for me, I needed to relook at my approach to the whole concept of systems.  I realised a few key things about the way my brain worked:

• No matter how awesome a system might be, I was never going to use it 100% of the time. Designing something that would fall apart the first time I slacked off, therefore, would be an exercise in frustration, and an immense waste of time.
• Whatever I created for myself didn’t need to be perfect: it just needed to save me more energy than whatever I was doing previously.  “Progress, not perfection” has become one of my favorite mantras.
• On that note: no system will be “forever and ever, amen” either.  My needs will always keep changing over time. As they do, things that used to work perfectly will no longer fit.  Because of that, I expect to have to keep tweaking things – and maybe even eventually replace the system altogether. Meanwhile, something just has to work for me NOW.

So when I talk clients through the process of figuring out what systems they need to save them energy, that’s where I suggest they start. I know from experience that the pressure to get a system “right first time” can often stop me from doing anything.  Knowing that all it needs to be is better than what I have right now helps immensely.

Next, I identified my major energy drains

The defining characteristic of introversion is that we introverts tend to spend energy on interacting, and then recharge by being alone. Of course introversion’s only one of the many aspects of our personalities, which means interaction’s not the only thing that drains our energy levels. For most introverts, however, it’s a pretty big one.

Many coaches I know work with the Pareto Principle, AKA the 80/20 rule.  When it comes to energy management, applying this rule means ~80% of the energy drain in your business probably comes from ~20% of your activities.

For most introverts, the activities in that 20% will fall within the most interaction-heavy areas of their businesses. (Not sure which activities are in your personal 20%?  Check out this free guide to figuring out your individual energy drains).

Identifying my own interaction-heavy areas helped me to figure out where in my business systems could make the most difference to my energy levels.

Finally, I tried to create simple systems that would reduce my interactions

For me, the three most frequent sources of unnecessary interaction were email, social media and client follow-up.  So here’s what I decided to do about them…

• For email: I tried to stop working with my inbox open 24/7, and set boundaries around when I’d check and reply to email. I started using Gmail’s filters, tabs and labels to help pre-organise what I see in my inbox, and reduce the temptation to action the non-urgent stuff.  And I started using Leechblock to lock down Gmail when I wasn’t “meant” to be using it.
• For social media: Much like with email, I tried to stop working with my main social media sites up 24/7. And again, I set boundaries around when and for how long I’d interact on  each one, and locked down the sites at other times.  I also made a point of pre-writing and scheduling a lot of my posts each month using a buffering app (Hootsuite).  That pre-scheduling doesn’t replace interacting – but it does mean I get more social media presence with less unnecessary interaction.
• For client followup: When I did Michelle’s Client Followup programme last year, she turned me on to Contactually (aff link).  That did wonders for helping me work out when to follow previous clients up, and what to say to them when I did.  The result has been that client followup has gone from something I stressed out about and never actually did, to something I feel almost on top of. (Thanks, Michelle, BTW.)

Of course, none of these systems works 100% perfectly for me. Some weeks I feel like superwoman because I’ve more or less used them as planned on multiple occasions. Other weeks I slack off, or stress out, or for whatever reason forget I actually *have* a system.  Sometimes I even beat my own Leechblock lockdown by bringing up email/social media in a different browser or on my phone.

But like I said above, my systems don’t need to work perfectly. They just need to work better – and free up more energy – than not using them would.  And that, my friends, has definitely been the case.

Of course, systems aren’t all there is to energy management

While systematizing the unnecessary interactions in your business will definitely lower your energy spend, it’s not a cure-all.

It doesn’t keep you from getting caught by overscheduling, insufficient recharging, or comparisons: the 3 Top Energy Sinks for introverted business owners.  And it doesn’t help you figure out how to best recharge your energy levels once they become depleted either.

Want a more comprehensive guide to ensuring you have enough energy to get what needs doing in your business done?  Check out Energy Management 101: it’s a complete training pack for heart-based introverts who keep finding themselves exhausted by their businesses.

And of course, if you have any questions about systems and energy management, just let me know in the comments below.

About Tanja: 

Tanja Gardner is a deeply introverted (but not even *slightly* shy!) heart-based entrepreneur who started business life online as a copywriter for difference-makers.

Somewhere along the lines, she discovered she longed to help introverts like her to build their businesses while honouring their introversion.  So she started Conscious Introvert Success: a treasure-trove of introvert-friendly information and resources.

You can check out Tanja’s thoughts about everything introvert-related on her blog, or follow her on Facebook or Twitter.

And if you’re want to learn introvert-friendly ways to manage your energy, her brand new Energy Management 101 training pack is just $47 until this Friday.

We’ve all been there. Sometimes, more often than we’d like to admit. Kinda comes with the territory of being a work-at-home type…so at least we can laugh about it:

1. You almost start an email with “listen here, motherfucker…”

Step away from the keyboard. Just. Step. Away.

2. You’re not entirely sure what the weather is like outside…because it’s 7 PM and you haven’t actually stepped outside all day.

Your roommate gets home from work and you’re all:

See also.

3. You haven’t put on pants. In days.

Seriously. Days.

4. You can smell yourself. And you’re horrified.

5. You don’t know what day it is.

Honestly? You’re not 100% for sure you know what month it is.

Suggestions for things to do instead of staying on the computer and forcing yourself into a halfassed state of kind-of-productivity:

• shower
• put pants on
• go outside
• walk your dog
• take a nap
• go to happy hour
• no, seriously though, take a damn shower 

Want to see more freelancing related humor? I have a tumblr for you.

Want to read posts that are probably somewhat more tactically useful (though I can’t guarantee have as many moving images) than this one? Well, you’re in luck, because this month’s Word Carnival topic is Rediscover the Real World: Unplug, Unwind, Unleash. Find out how the other Word Carnival bloggers recommend growing your biz by getting the hell off your computer. 

 

This is a guest post from Halley Gray, marketing strategist at Evolve & Succeed.

“Sorry, I’m booked out for the next 6 months.”

“Holy shit, really?”

“Yeah, do you want to secure your session for then?”

“Fuck yeah! TAKE MY MONEY!”

There’s a prestige that comes with being so in demand that you literally could not take on any more work. You’re so damn good at your job that people are clamoring for your table scraps of time.

And I know how to get you a wait-list and how to make your wait-list an awesome party that people will love being on.

(This would work better if you had – at least – the following: a website, 20+ blog posts, activity in relevant FB/Google + groups, services, and a marketing funnel in place.)

How to get started in getting booked out in advance:

• Calculate how many clients you actually need per month. (You’d be surprised what your actual number is.)
• Broadcast that you have a limited number of spots available. (Adding ‘Only 2 spots available and then booked out till [two months from now]’ to your sales page, social media, or blog post is a big juicy cow to a t-rex.)
• Write content that answers questions, builds up trust, and gets more sales. (What hesitations are stopping your peeps from working with you? WRITE IT OUT.)
• Push content – not sales pages. (Giving first before getting is the best way – in and out of bed.)
• Be loud and proud about new clients. (Every time you have a new client put it up on Twitter/G+/FB this does a great job of getting more sales!)

Logistics! I like to set my monthly client number and then once I’ve hit it, close out all my monthly availability in Satori App. The beauty of Satori is that you can have different availabilities like ‘main’, ‘rescheduling’, and ‘one-offs’. That way, no available sessions show, but you also keep flexible with rescheduling and one-off strategies sessions (if you want).

Now, let’s discuss how to handle the wait-list once you’ve got one. Waiting can be a major boner-kill to enthusiasm and even though most clients won’t mind, let’s make your wait-list a fun experience!

How to make it a party on your wait-list – nine ideas:

• Develop a workshop that will prep your client to be in prime condition by the time they get to work with you 1-1.
• Create a wait-list FB/Google + group for your waiting peeps and give them prompts to work on.
• Take some time to make a fun video series that your wait -list peeps get two weeks out before working with you.
• Send a card in the mail to acknowledge they exist and that you appreciate them.
• Email them a week or two before saying how excited you are to start working with them.
• Create a live video event for them to pop on with questions!
• Mail a little welcome package with a USB drive full of fun.
• Have a countdown app that allows them to see how much longer till they get to work with you.
• Make a special 8 tracks mix tape for them! Dancing or meditative or funny.

Have these little surprises ready & waiting and you’ll make working with you an experience that everyone will rave about.

Read more about how Halley can get you (yes, you) booked out in advance – because life is more fun when you don’t have to worry about money.

Halley Gray is marketing strategist over at Evolve & Succeed. She focuses on getting creative freelancers booked out in advance (plus booming in business). She does this by using a specific combination of science experiments, content strategies, and sales techniques. Read more about how getting booked out makes your life more fun.

 

This article was inspired by a question in a Facebook group I’m in:

Anyone have awesome resources for gigs? I’m looking at dribbble, behance, coroflot and craigslist right now to fill the (very large) gap but it’s not happening. Any places you can point a designer with a mad open schedule would be really great!

I’m pretty familiar with this process, as I’ve been working on this (albeit sloooowly, over the last several weeks, with the knowledge that it usually takes a few weeks to gain traction and that I had a buffer) in anticipation of my transition back to full-time self-employment (which is complete next Monday!). After leaving a few comments on the thread that were windy even by my standards, I thought, yanno, I should just put this all in a blog post.

So, without further ado, here’s a list of ways to get more work ASAP – even when you currently don’t have any on the horizon.

1. Previous client follow up.

Email every single person that has bought something from you, worked from you in the past, or expressed interest in working with you in the past, and give them an update on what kind of packages are available from you at this time. You’d be surprised how often this will result in more work, especially if y’all had a really good rapport the first time around.

If you don’t already have client follow up systems in place, a good time to set them up is after you’re out of this immediate crunch. (Self-promotion: I have something that is perfectly intended to help with that.) You can actually start working on it now, if your time that isn’t spent pitching yourself isn’t already full with client work.

2. Make it easy for you to find gigs, and start pitching them.

Make it easy for you to find gigs.

You can automate a large part of this process using IFTTT (more on that below, under the resources section). Once it’s set up, you’ll no longer have to check the job boards or Craigslist once or twice a day – you’ll just automatically get an email when something new is posted and can move straight on to pitching.

Have a template on hand.

Obviously, you don’t want to send a form template that’s literally copied and pasted for every single gig. That’s easily spotted a mile off and is not likely to get you new work any time soon. But it’s a good idea to have a framework to work off of – something that you can use to speed up the process and add/subtract as needed. If you have a few different areas you work in (for example, print design and web design, social media marketing and writing), it’s a good idea to have a template for each specialty.

Here’s a rough template for you, based on what I use:

Hi [name]!

I saw your posting on [job board] and wanted to send in my information. You’ll find my resume attached and you can view my online portfolio here: [link, and if a specific page has sample work or case studies, link to those pages individually as well]

I’d be a great fit for this because…[Talk about your background here. Good structure is one sentence covering your overall background, one sentence that mentions your experience and if you have any specialties within that experience – B2B writing vs. health writing, for example, and one or two sentences that mention a specific project that’s relevant to this gig.]

Let me know if you have any questions. I’d be available for a phone/Skype call or to meet for coffee [obviously, take that out if this isn’t a local job] sometime in the next week if you wanted to discuss the role and my experience. 

Thanks so much for your time and have a great day! 

[your name]

Things of note: 

• Make sure to look for a contact name and if there’s one in the post, use it.
• If they ask specific questions, answer them. Like I said, don’t just copy and paste your template mindlessly – tweak and refine.
• Don’t forget to thank them for their time – I’ve been the one reading job emails and it’s truly disconcerting how many just end rather abruptly.

Set goal metrics.

Depending on how busy I am currently and how quick of a turnaround time I’m working with, I’ll set a goal for pitching three or five gigs a day. Sometimes more. Having a set metric saves you from aimlessly wandering about trying to decide what to send in your info for and what to pass on.

Do five a day, first thing in the morning, boom done, move on to working on your other work for the day. (I’d suggest doing something that will bring clients to you in the longer term, if your day is empty of client work – guest posting, creating videos or blog posts, webinars, etc.)

3. Look at agencies and talent networks

Agencies are often looking for freelancers, short-term or long-term. There are many advantages from an agency POV to hiring a freelancer instead of a full time employee – so get on that, and also look at talent networks. (See specific links in the resources section, below.)

Also worth looking at: see if your city has Facebook, Google+, or LinkedIn groups meant for freelancers or job-hunters. For Austin, there’s Austin Digital Jobs and Austin Freelance Gigs, and probably other ones I’m not aware of – but just engaging in those two groups alone has been incredibly useful.

4. Reach out to friends & colleagues

You’d be surprised where client work can come from. With that in mind, email friends you know that exist in the business world, post on your personal Facebook page, and so on, just letting people know you have availability and reminding them of who you are and what you do.

In the same vein, but slightly less scattershot, email everyone you know that works in a complementary field. (If we’re sticking with the designer example, reach out to copywriters, developers…and so on.) Tell them that you’re looking to get to know more people whose work complements your’s, so that you can refer people to them. Ask them what their specialty is and who you should send to them. Most people will reciprocate and the good karma makes up for the ones who don’t.

5. Do a time or number limited promotion to fill the gap

I am definitely not suggesting that you discount your services. If you have products, doing a sale can help out in a time of tight-cash-flow, but discounting services often just leads to more stress and a feeling of resentment.

Instead, you can capitalize on something timely. Example: you’re a designer and you’re itching for some new clients. Twitter just unveiled those pain in the ass new cover images and larger profile pictures. Facebook is rolling out something similar soon, too. Offer ten Twitter packages that go with the new layout. The idea is to give people something they can latch on to. “Design services” is not as concrete as “$X for a Twitter layout that doesn’t make you feel outdated and inadequate.” (I may or may not have some baggage about the new Twitter layout, can you tell?)

Not that “design services” are bad at all – but when you’re in a crunch like this, you want to give people as much incentive as possible to act NOW. Huge networking conference coming up in your city? Do a LinkedIn profile writing package. You get the idea – come up with two or three options, get feedback on them, and move forward with the one that’s going to be the easiest sell for you, your skills & talents, and your audience.

The resource list:

Agencies and/or talent networks that hire remote workers and/or are nationwide:

This is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a place to start, at least:

Aquent
Razorfish
VitaminTalent
CreativeCircle

Also, check out temp agencies near you – they’re often looking for short-term designers, coders, writers, etc. Some of these places will have full time jobs, some will have part time or freelance positions, but they’re all worth checking out.

Job boards and the like:

Marketplaces:

You’ve probably heard of most of these, but in case you haven’t:

Elance
Guru
oDesk
PeoplePerHour

Job boards or aggregators of job listings:

Smashing Magazine (mostly design and development)
Envato Studio (ditto)
BloggingPro (shock: blogging focused)
ProBlogger job board (…ditto)
MediaBistro (this is the link to the freelance section of their board; mostly journalism, writing, or PR related)
Freelance Writing Gigs (collects writing gigs from across the web and sends them out daily; can be useful although getting to the listing before it’s posted here – which is where IFTTT comes in – is ideal, because after it’s posted here there’s usually a deluge of applicants)
WeWorkRemotely (collects remote work jobs from across the web, some full-time employees, some freelance)
Flexjobs (Similar to WeWorkRemotely, except it costs money; I’ve found some good opportunities through here, but none have come to fruition yet.)
AuthenticJobs (similar to WeWorkRemotely and Flexjobs in that it’s a mix of freelance and employment opportunities)

IFTTT: Set up an RSS feed -> email trigger for each of the job boards above, and set up a new Craigslist search result -> email trigger for words associated with the kind of work you’re looking for – both in the jobs AND gigs section. Here’s a quick how to video:

And of course, make sure this doesn’t happen again in the future:

Get the new & improved Client Follow Up Action Kit and use it to follow up with past clients. That way, you know this isn’t going to happen again in six months – consistent follow up, not only with prospects and people you’ve talked to in the past, but with previous clients, will definitely help (and can entirely eliminate, in some cases, especially if combined with a solid marketing strategy) dry spells.