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Research Methods for Finding Private Clients

September 24, 2009 | Posted by admin

Freelance writers and bloggers face the same challenge day after day, finding clients to fill their financial needs. This applies to writers who solely depend upon their freelance writing business for their monetary support. In my experience, I have found that this drive to fill a “quota” often detracts from my creative desire to write the type of articles that I really want.

Raise your hand if you can relate.

My creative zeal and my desire to write gets quashed whenever I push hard writing lots of articles every day to add some invisible calculator until it reaches X amount of dollars. ..just so I can pay the rent and bills or buy groceries. I write many articles for content sites or paid blog reviews for lower dollar amounts so that it takes much more effort and time to reach that X dollar sum for the day.

It is exhausting….and frustrating…..and disappointing…..

And this practice doesn’t allow time to pursue the creative magazine stories or that favorite research project or that novel on the shelf collecting dust.

Enough already!

It’s time for solutions. End the hand wringing long hours at the computer typing away lost in a fog.

Revive your freelance career by taking positive measures for improvement.

This will be the topic of our discussions in this series for improving your freelance writing business. It all starts with finding private clients who pay well to free up your time and talents for loftier pursuits.

Are you ready to explore this area in your freelance career? If you’re writing for other companies and waiting on work from content mills and affiliate sites or how to page generators…..

I hope you raised your hand in an affirmative “YES!”

Let’s explore some of the common techniques used to find private clients, then come up with ideas for new ways to generate interest in you as a freelance writer.

Post a resume or portfolio online using various methods, sites and formats.
Create a bio on your personal website and/or blog.
Search the internet for opportunities then communicate with a proposal to individual listings.
Advertise your work on social sites like twitter, Facebook, My Space, Linkedin and etc.
Join content sites who pay you per view and write tons of content for a free bio listing and the exposure you will gain from their audience.
Word of mouth through friends, family and your immediate circle.

This is only an introductory list. It will expand as I research common methods for finding private clients with a little help from doing research and your important feedback. Please share your information below by leaving a comment.

How do you find private clients? We really want to know your techniques, if you will share with us.

The audience is listening with bent ear….

When you leave your comment below, please leave a link back to your site so I and my readers can find you when we want to read more on your site.

In the next part of this series, Finding Private Clients, we’ll define the methods in 1-6 and show some examples. Then I want to explore the effectiveness of each technique while we uncover some new or unknown methods for increasing your client base.