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(2) Top Tips for Freelancers: Can you sit and wait for clients to come to you?
By Ragini Werner of NEEDSer l Native English Editing Service
Good things come to those who wait. Oh yeah? Maybe that’s true for itty bitty spiders sitting in wait in their webs for a foolish fly to come into range. But for freelancers like me, making a living through the world wide web, it would be utter stupidity to sit around waiting for work to fly onto our desks. The spider depends on blind luck for his meal ticket. We freelancers can’t afford to follow the spider’s lead. Not if we want to eat. Follow my lead instead. I’m a well-fed freelancer, keen to share what I know about meeting new clients and keeping old clients. It’s important for my business to make potential and current clients aware of what I can do for them with my native-English Editing Service. I serve corporate clients, but mostly academics whose mothertongue is not English, people who need to publish their research results in international journals. So, I’m a language professional, in the English-editing business for authors, working from my home office. And what about you, my fellow freelancer? Whatever your business and whatever audience you want to reach, the tips I am sharing with you here – in this second part of my Top Tips series -- will surely to work for you as much as they work for me. Top tip #2
Keep up with your clients. Show personal interest in your client’s achievements. For example, I send my academic clients an email every once in a while, asking if that paper I edited for them has been published yet. Or I ask how are they getting on with the final draft of their new paper. And I suggest ever so subtly (not!) that they should always feel free to drop me a line if there’s anything NEEDSer can do for them. Try it! It’s also good business sense to develop friendly relations with your contacts at agencies but be warned: only do what comes naturally. Don’t be in a hurry and try to force things with a business contact. Stay professional, be patient, avoid plunging straight into unrequested intimacy. Let the relationship grow like a friendship does in real life. Be sincere, be flexible, be attentive. Be yourself. Bonus tip: Don’t ever overdo this chatty communication thing; stressing out busy clients is the worst. Extra bonus tip: Don’t ever forget to thank your clients or agency contacts for jobs they’ve passed on to you (and no one else!) and never, ever miss their deadlines. Hats off to NEEDSer! You can read more Top Tips for Freelancers in part 3 of this series.
Ragini Werner is an English-language editor and copywriter living in the far north of the Netherlands. She runs the international business NEEDSer (Native-English Editing Service) from the comfort of her home office. As the 'Bashful Blagger' Ragini writes an occasional blog on writing, editing, language and life in the fast lane of freelancing.
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Bashful Blagger, the NEEDSer blog
The NEEDSer thinking cap
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