This is a spooky phenomenon that I cannot explain. Don’t ask me what’s behind it, or how it works.

But you can apparently invoke this to your advantage, almost at will.

Let’s say your workload starts to slow down. Or you want to expand your stable of true fans. Or maybe you’re just itching for fresh faces and different work.

So you start to reach out more. Instead of waiting, you begin pursuing.

You contact a few companies you’d like to work with. You call people you haven’t spoken to in a while. You send ideas to your clients to plant the seeds for new assignments. You hustle.

And after a few days of this, or maybe a week, or even two weeks, lo and behold, new stuff happens.

New work shows up.  New clients ask about a project or two. Inquiries land in your inbox. The pot begins to bubble again.

But here’s the odd part: none of the new stuff comes from the people or projects you were chasing.  None of it.

It comes from unexpected quarters. From a guy who had worked in the cubicle next to you ages ago, who has moved to a new company and needs work done.

Or from someone who stumbled across your web site a month ago and has been meaning to call you.  Or a client is referred to you by a person you don’t even know.

You beat the bushes, and new opportunities fly out. But not from the bushes you’re beating.

It’s almost as if, by diligently and earnestly doing the right thing, you somehow trigger random events in your favor, now.

This sounds so goofy, I’m reluctant to bring it up. Except I have experienced this dozens of times.  And I’ve heard the exact same story from a freelance information architect, a freelance composer, freelance project manager, many freelance designers and writers, and even a guy who sells concrete.

They don’t know why this works, either. But there it is.

Oh, and as we have all discovered, you can’t game the system.  It doesn’t work to copy and paste some lame emails or make half-assed calls for an afternoon, hoping to be mysteriously graced with work from on high. You must pursue in earnest.

If you have an explanation for this, I’d like to hear it.  (And no, that woo about the theory of attraction isn’t an explanation.)

Meanwhile, go do.

What if you haven’t amassed a huge body of work to show clients?

Re-do something that bugs you. Alan Siegel re-imagined the typical credit card agreement. Opened some eyes with it, too.

Or what if your portfolio is 82% skunk work that you’d rather keep under the bed?

No problem.

Dazzle them with makeovers.  Redesigns.  Rewrites.

It’s actually a more interesting way to convey your skills, your voice, your sensibilities.

Befores and afters

Find some website home pages, or marketing copy, or photos, or interfaces, or whatever it is you make.

Then re-cast them as YOU would do them.

Pick examples that bug you. Or examples from the types of clients you want to work with.

Attack some visual cliches. Fix common UI errors. Translate some high-profile corporatespeak into English.  Or rethink the package or logo as you see them.

Put the examples side by side in a downloadable e-book, or .pdf. Or post them on your site.  Three, four or five are plenty.

Show the before, show the after. The format is more engaging than a portfolio. There’s a story line, a voice. Clients seem to be endlessly fascinated by this.

You don’t have to redo entire sites, or rewrite all the product copy. Snippets and pieces are fine.  Maybe explain why you changed what you did.

The trick can even get you some good press, too.  Last year, interface designer Dustin Curtis generated huge buzz by posting a redesign of the United Airlines home page on his blog. (The UX architect from the airlines actually got fired for responding to the post, however.)

Naturally, don’t pretend you did these makeovers for those companies. You’re just trying to show your chops and viewpoint.

Oh, and if you’re tempted to do a makeover of a client’s stuff, and send it to them in hopes of landing some business:  resist the temptation.

The stunt usually backfires. (I have the soot stains to prove it.)

Redo somebody else’s stuff.

For ideas on the marketing side of freelancing, read Seth Godin.  The refrain:  Be unforgettably remarkable or go home.

For help with the head-game, creative, staying-sane part, read Steven Pressfield:  Amazing stuff happens when you quit diddling and do your work.

Today Pressfield interviews Godin as part of a new series on the creative process.

A productive writer asks a prolific writer, ‘How do you do it?’  Linchpin meets War of Art.

Godin’s sticky-note quote for the freelancer:

“Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.”

How much stuff do you need on your freelance web site?  How many words, pictures, samples, blog posts and pages does it take to prompt a phone call or inquiry?

Probably a lot less than you think.  (Well, way less than I used to think.)

Click for the full effect. All 6kb of it.

I’ve been all over the map on this question. I’ve tried fat and rich websites.  And bare bones. And in between.

But I’m thinking there’s a lot of power in being more lean.  Laconic.  Not so talkative.  It’s smarter not to say everything.  Let the customer fill in the rest, the way they want to.

Example.  I’ve bumped into this web site for Oak Studios several times now, and have always been intrigued.

It’s a page.  Barely.

Now mind you, Oak Studios is no newbie fledgling.  They designed the idsgn blog, did launch work for kayak.com’s branding agency and plenty more.  They’re a busy shop doing class work.

But to me, their 19-word site works.  And by works, I mean it’s just enough to get a client to think, “Maybe we should talk to these people.”

Yep, the web and branding gurus would say Oak’s site lacks content, a definitive brand positioning, proof points, customer validation and testimony, portfolio samples, compelling content, and viewpoint.

Phooey.  I say it has all that, in about 6K of bandwidth, and without all the usual blather and chatter.

We know what Oak does. We know they don’t talk much. We know they’re not haughty.  (“Hi . . . Get in touch.)  We know their phone number and email. We know they’re not trying too hard to sell us.

In a way, it lets a client paint their own picture of Oak, based on what they want a firm to be.  It’s a clean slate.

But here’s what’s even more important:  There’s nothing to turn you off.

The usual thinking is, put a lot of stuff on the site — a lot of portfolio examples, essays, philosophy, bios, commentary, childhood pictures and dancing flash — and you have a better chance of serving up something the client likes.  Something that spurs a client to call you.

But all that content also boosts the chances of making a client lose his initial interest.  One portfolio example he doesn’t like.  Some high-sounding ‘philosophy’ that makes no sense.  The expectation and the curiosity are gone.

Too much life story on the first date.

A cagey old salesman once told me, when they’re sold, shut up already.

What’s the smallest, leanest, sparest site you could possibly get away with?

What Oak says

Incidentally, I was so curious that I emailed Oak about their web site.

Skylar Challand told me that Oak does indeed lean toward a minimalist approach to design and development .

But as it turns out, the real reason their site is so spare is because they have been way too busy with client work to build a bigger one.  Too busy with work to fuss with their own web site.

That is where we all need to be.