Secret Invite Only Work and What To Do If You Lose a Client

Hey

Hope you’ve had a good week This week managed to land a new client. And I credit the techniques and tactics that I’ve been working on. Reply back to this email with “I want clients” if you want some other ways to get clients.

Tweet of the Week

Jerry talks about the secret work of Upwork. The invitation-only work. These are some of the most lucrative jobs where the client hand-selects who they think is best rather than posting to the masses.

One way you’re not getting these jobs is by having an unoptimized profile. By following these steps, you give yourself every chance of being selected.

1. Pick a niche: There is so much debate about if you should pick a niche or not. The reality is that a client would rather work with someone with experience. Who would you rather have to build your house, someone with one month or ten years of experience?

2. Optimize your profile around your niche keyword: First, find out which keyword you want to optimize for. Come up with some keywords that are related to your niche. It could be “SEO writer”, “content strategist”, or “content writer”. Now go to Upwork and search those terms. You want to find the keywords that have the most job postings. There is no point optimized your profile if there are only a handful of job postings. Once you have chosen your niche keyword, start optimizing your profile. You want to ensure you include it in your title, description, job history, and experience.

3. Steal like an artist: Study other profiles in your niche keywords if you need inspiration. Ideally, those that rank above yours in the search. These profiles will inspire you on how to structure your profile and the types of content that will help you rank.

And there you go. It is advisable to start with just one profile. Then branch out with other profiles. Each focused on just one keyword. Then, you can enjoy being invited to jobs without having to submit proposals to silence.

Quick tip

I got a question from a freelancer in trouble. For the last two years, they have been crushing it. They got a constant stream of work from a single client, allowing them to comfortably pay expenses and more.

Their relationship was brilliant until the company was bought out, and his previous contact was let go.

But that change resulted in trouble.

They went from receiving 3-4 articles a week to barely one a month.

Yikes.

This is not a great situation to be in.

This is a perfect example of relying on a single client to bring home the moolah. Having only one client, it’s easy to manage, and you get used to what the client requires and the type of work they send you.

But as in this freelancer's experience, relying on one source of work is not great.

This is the advice I gave them.

The first thing I said was to contact their old hiring manager to see if they’ve moved to a new job and can help with any work. This is a great tactic if your workload drops and you need more.

The second thing was to make sure they have multiple clients. Even if you find a client that can provide you with other work, it’s better to request less and fill your spare time with different clients. The more you can balance your income across different clients the lower the risk.

A good strategy is to land a handful of retainer clients that make you 70% - 80% of your work. And use the other 20% for one-off projects.

The great thing about one-off projects is it helps you practice the cardinal rule of being a freelancer. Always be looking for work. And you might find a client with a better fit and better pay to replace an existing retainer client.

The last thing I mentioned was ensuring they were diversifying their skill set. Being able to provide multiple services to clients helps protect you even further. It makes you more valuable to your existing customer and makes getting work easier as you can pitch your new services to your existing clients. And it gives you a much broader field to look for work, rather than just looking for clients who want blog posts written. You can look for social media posts, white papers, and emails.

If you made it this far, you are a legend. Feel free to reply to this email to say hello or tell me your biggest problem as a freelance writer so I can answer it in future newsletters. I read and personally answer all replies. So don’t be shy.

Have a brilliant week, and I hope you crush it.

Craig