Freelancing Writing Secrets 3. It’s all about sales

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If you’re a typical writer, you’re an introvert. You don’t like pushing yourself forward, and the idea of SELLING your writing seems… well, crass. It’s not something that you want to do.

Relax.

You can follow an easy process to make your first sale (get your first writing job). The big benefit of this process is not only that it will get you your first job, but also that it will help you to get dozens of sales in the future.

The sales process

Sales start with marketing yourself. In essence, marketing is simply getting your name and your services in front of those people who have a need for your services — editors, publishing houses, businesses, agencies, and individuals.

The process works like this: marketing –> sales.

There are dozens of ways you can market your services. They include: proposals, queries, direct selling (also known as cold-calling), advertising, answering job ads, creating a Web site, sending out news releases, sending out brochures, telling people about what you do (networking).

All marketing is a numbers game. That is, you will need to market consistently to get results.

The three month limit

If you market consistently, you will get results. In my own marketing experience and that not only of writers, but of all business people (and writing for money is a business), the time frame from when you START marketing your services to getting CONSISTENT SALES is around three month.

Now, this seems like a long time, but it’s not. People take time to get to know you and what you can do. It’s all numbers - for every 100 contacts you make, you’ll get from two to five sales.

When I coach students to become copywriters, most achieve a sale within the first two weeks, and by the end of the two month course, they’ve established a business. At the end of three months, their income exceeds that of their previous career.

Previously in this series:

Freelancing Writing Secrets 1. Write — produce!

Freelancing Writing Secrets 2. Plan your writing career

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