My So-Called Freelance Life - Michelle Goodman [79]
If you own the copyrights to your creative work (as you should; see Chapter 12), you can reduce your hours worked and boost your income by reselling or repurposing your writing, illustrations, or photographs. We journalists will resell or cannibalize our stories whenever possible. Failing that, we’ll sell two or more stories on the same topic to noncompeting markets to maximize our research. On the visual arts side, Molly Crabapple sells originals of the promotional posters, magazine covers, and other illustrations she’s been commissioned to do right off her website. And artist Nikki McClure, who says she’s all about “less images, more money,” has recycled and retooled her popular image of a diver, called Return and first created for a 2000 calendar she self-published, seven times.
If you’re thinking you couldn’t possibly ask your clients for more money because you haven’t been working solo five to ten years or you don’t have twenty-five clients in your portfolio yet or you haven’t taken that project management class you’ve been wanting to take, stop right there. The time to start keeping up with the cost of living is now, not three years from now. None of us will ever be 100 percent perfect, no matter how much experience we gain. So we might as well stop waiting for that mythical day when the heavens part and the freelance gods place a gold star on the lapels of our Adidas track suit and instead charge what we’re worth today.
Bride of the Son of Shameless Self-Promotion on Steroids
When you’re a rookie freelancer—and even when you’re an old salt like me—you probably won’t have much cash on hand to spend on marketing and advertising each year. You’ll obviously want to build and maintain a website, as we discussed in Chapter 5. Likewise, it’s worth spending a hundred dollars or so to join a professional association that goes out of its way to refer potential customers to its members (not to mention offers legal advice and a health plan).
You might also decide it’s worth your while to attend a $300 to $500 industry conference if you stand to learn some valuable new skills or insider information, or if the event promises to be a feeding ground for dozens of potential clients. But I wouldn’t encourage you to rush out and spend several hundred or several thousand dollars on web or print ads right away, at least not until you’ve exhausted all the other work-hunting tactics discussed in Part 2.
The good news, as you already saw, is that most freelancers become hot commodities simply by doing stellar work and racking up the referrals. That said, there is some variance from industry to industry; wedding photographers, marriage counselors, and dog walkers are more likely to advertise than, say, writers, cartoonists, and filmmakers. But whether you’re a therapist whose client list is looking a little lean or a painter eager to propel herself into the spotlight, there are loads of ways for you to spread the word about your talents on the cheap. More often than not, all that’s required is an investment of your time.
This section highlights some of my favorite ways to get your name out there, several of which can even earn you some cash in the process. Because any time you invest in unpaid marketing efforts is time you can’t devote to paid (billable) work, think long and hard before you rush into any self-promo tactics that require more than an hour of your time. Spend a few hours at the end of the year talking to other freelancers in your trade about which marketing tactics have paid off for them and which have bombed. Don’t commit to anything unless you know why you’re doing it and what you stand to gain from it. Then, at the start of the new year, decide where you’ll invest your marketing efforts and commit these goals to paper, right in your Business Plan To Go for the year.
JOIN A PLANNING COMMITTEE. Donating your ideas, talents, and organizational skills to a high-visibility pro bono project (an AIDS walk, an arts conference) can pay off in contacts, client referrals, and that almighty PIE.