Let’s say you want to earn $150,000 this year.

Okay. Can do.

Here’s the math:

To pull in $150,000, you need to attract at least 150 clients who spend about $1,000 a year on your stuff. (Every week, you must snag three new clients. They need to arrive on a conveyor belt.)

Or, you need to land 50 clients who will use about $3,000 of your services. (One new client a week.)

Or, you can find 5 clients who can send you about $30,000 worth of work during the year.

Or maybe just one client with a $75,000 budget, plus a bunch of others who buy a lot now and then.

The point is, the realities of freelancing overwhelmingly favor bigger-paying clients. Higher-fee projects. Repeat work from busy customers.

There is no Walmart model for freelancing. There is no freelance equivalent of the $1.99 iPhone app.

Every freelancer I know always makes more money working with big spenders, heavy users, and high-ticket projects. Repeat, always.

You want to clamber ever higher on the food chain.

If you’re getting, say, $2,000 for given bit of work now, the goal is to attract people who will pay $5,000 for for that sort of work. And up and up. That is the only way to scale.

It means that eighty percent — no, make that ninety-four percent — of our hunting energy should be aimed at the big fish, the cash cows, the frequent flyers, the folks with the deliciously plump budgets.

Yeah, even when you’re starting out. And yes, even if you think you suck (like I did), or you have no portfolio, or you’re just a coward (like I was.)

Always have your eye out for the whales.

Picasso didn’t get famous by selling paintings to shopkeepers at $2.37 a pop.

Where the money is

Me?  I wasted entirely too much time where the money isn’t: with the smaller, onesie-twosie clients: the local entrepreneur, the spunky start-up, fledgling rock band, the trendy new restaurant in town, a two-man insurance agency.

I told myself I was being smart, carving out a niche in an underserved market. I figured I could be a guru to these folks, with few competitors to worry about.

And I had a fantasy that these little enterprises would miraculously grow and start buying more work and paying me more handsome sums.

(If you’re laughing aloud at that, good for you. You are already savvier than I was.)

Sure, working for small clients can be creatively satisfying. Like an artist friend told me, there’s a certain buzz in seeing your logo writ large, driving past on a bakery truck.

But there is simply not enough tonnage among the small companies and infrequent users. And not enough hardcore, do-or-die need.  You are always tangential.

And I discovered, duh, that I couldn’t feed myself writing cutesie ads for a balloon delivery service at $51 each, fun or not.

So if you’re doing something like that now, cut it out.

(Okay, you can play around down there for a while, just to limber up, just to break in your invoicing software. So give it a month, then cut it out.)

And keep your radar tuned to the kind of clients you can build a career on, clients that can afford you.  Clients who actually need you.

So who are these big-money clients?

People who need a lot of what you do

I’m thinking of the marketing manager for a company that makes software for purchasing managers.

She’s responsible for a 90-page web site, a pile of product demos, some webcasts, a bunch of whitepapers, and a lot of downloadable ‘how-to’ info. She buys copy, design, and web programming every day of the week. She has to.

If you forge one relationship with her, you can feast on work for months. Or years.  And you don’t have to start from scratch each time.  She is worth $20,000.

And when she moves onto a bigger job next year, she’ll take you along.

But the guy who’s opening that Asian/Mexican fusion restaurant across town?  No.

He buys one identity, one website, then he’s done until 2014. Nice guy, maybe, but small money.

It’s far smarter to chase that creative director of the advertising agency/design firm/web development shop. He hands out freelance assignments all the time. Illustration. Specialized copy. Conceptual photography. Somebody who can work magic over a weekend. He needs to get stuff done.

Even if he doesn’t pay the highest rates on the planet, his lush volume is worth a busload of one-shot clients.

I know a photographer who grows positively tumescent when viewing a website with 1,204 product shots. There, he knows, is a client worth wooing.

Clients whose job is to buy stuff like yours

If you build content for a living, hook up with people who buy content for a living. There is money there.

Are you an illustrator? There is an editor at a publishing company who commissions 300+ illustrations a year for textbooks or children’s books or promotional posters. She’s looking for and talking to illustrators all day long.  You want to know her.

Find the producer at a video/animation firm that creates multimedia for high-profile companies. He orchestrates scriptwriters, shooters, animators, CG specialists. And he spends two hours every Friday afternoon authorizing invoices.

The project director at a development shop, a game developer. He has code crying to be written. All the time.

These people are professional buyers. You don’t need to hold their hands and explain every little thing. And you can usually reach them somehow. It’s their responsibility to keep an eye out for talent, for people who can deliver. They get it.

Yes, these folks can be tough, opinionated, capricious. They may blow you off, or keep you waiting in the wings forever, alongside nine other hopeful freelancers. But if you win them over (and you can), they can be fiercely loyal. And profitable.

Companies that live and die on what you do

The closer your work affects the core of a company’s business, the more money there is.

Example.  Crate & Barrel spends lavishly on design, photography, UI. It is what they do. They will talk your ear off about design and user experience.  They have budget for that.

So does Nike, Apple and Ikea. And all the eager companies trying to be the next Nike, Apple and Ikea.

The CPA firm? Nope. They don’t care. You’ll always be ninth priority. You might as well be selling copier toner or carpet cleaning. You are an expense.

A designer friend invited me to meet with the owners of a concrete company who needed a website. These guys made piles of money. They were wearing wristwatches that cost more than my car. They ran a fleet of huge trucks that delivered concrete all over the state. They had just spent $4.2 million for some fancy rock crusher.

But they were pinching pennies on the website, and spent most of the meeting checking their iPhones. They just didn’t give a shit about design and content, which to them, were no more important to the business than brake linings or having the parking lot restriped. They would never be big-money clients unless we were selling rock crushers. We were too far from the core.

We left.

Appealing to the bigger clients

It’s all about dependability

In the small-client world, you’re working with the owner, the founder, the sole proprietor.

But with bigger clients, you’re working with someone who has a boss. And that changes everything.

Your creative director or webmaster or editor or design director has to answer to a higher-up,  someone who can ask where the hell the project is, who hired that idiot, or why does this look like crap?

And your client will usually have people downstream waiting on the content, or the pages, or the shots, or the code. They will have their own ‘clients’ within the company, who will be all over their ass if things go south.

They do not want to go to their bosses and say, um, well, it’s not finished yet, or it came out lame, or it’s all wrong, because, well, some freelancer gave me a hard time.

These busy, bigger-money clients are looking for people who can deliver. People who will make them look good, relieve pain, make stuff that everyone likes.  End of story.

Which means everything about your web site, your emails, your portfolio, your phone conversations must scream “Pro,”  “Reliable”, “Gets it”, “Will not crap out.”

No, you don’t have to become a dry corporate drone. Be quirky if you want. Or wildly creative, edgy, distinctive. Keep your personality. Take a point of view. Stick with your style. But you must come across as pro. As reliable as the sun. (No, saying you are ‘reliable’ doesn’t cut it.  Been there, doesn’t count.)

They must see you as someone who can put the goods on the desk, no matter what.

You want the client to consider you an ally, a co-conspirator, the go-to guy who can make them look like a genius and/0r pull their nuts out of the fire on demand.

Do that and you will have a die-hard client for life.

They have their own definition of ‘good’

As a writer, I look at Cisco’s website and drool at the 1620 metric tons of technical content packed into their web site.  And I know for a fact they have a slew of writers on their freelance roster.

But I also see that their definition of ‘good’ copy is turgid, pompous, abstract marketingspeak. Techno-paradigm gibberish. Which means, if I wanted to work for Cisco, I’d have to write their version of ‘good’. No matter how painful and embarrassing it might be. (My notion of ‘good’?  They don’t care.)

What one client considers tacky, another thinks perfect.

Sometimes the mission is to give them something entirely and utterly different.

Sometimes it’s a matter of giving them something entirely different, provided it looks pretty much like what they have now.

Sometimes it involves tuning into their house esthetic, doing something ‘new’ but still making it sound like ‘us’.  Sometimes you’re charged with thinking way out of the box. Breaking rules, or challenging assumptions.  (But, usually not.)

The point is, ‘good’ is what they think it is. And the better you can tune into that, the better.

It’s still personal

I’ve worked for maybe a dozen Fortune 500 companies.  And often made a ton of money at it.

But truth is, I have no real relationship with any of those corporations.  They have no freaking clue who I am. Nor do they care.

But what I do have is relationships with Ruth, with Bob, with Kathleen and Kevin. When they move on, I can go with them.

This will spare you untold agony. And it can shape your career for the better.

Let me explain.

We freelancers must occasionally endure a lot of crap that never besets our properly-employed bretheren.

Such as the client who doesn’t send the damn check. Clients who can’t make up their minds.

Clients who themselves can’t design a whit, but tell us to shave two pixels off the height of the navbar. The client who says “I can get it cheaper.”

Clients who want eleventeen pounds of work for six dollars. The client who doesn’t send the damn check.

Okay, so that is sometimes our lot. But we do not whine and whimper.

As the aging mobster Hyman Roth reminds Michael Corleone in Godfather II: “This . . . is the business we’ve chosen.”

In return, however, we are granted a saving grace.

We have, always within reach, the ultimate pressure-relief valve, a soul-satisfying way to preserve sanity, dignity and bank account.

The freelancer’s right to bail.™

This is your irrevocable right to beg off, turn down, or walk away from any client, any project, any situation that threatens to maim the wallet, taint the soul, or turn one into a shameless hooker.

Unlike the hapless salaried employee, who is obliged to eat whatever the boss ladles onto his plate, we are always free to say, “No thanks.”

“I’ll pass.”  “This isn’t a good fit.”  “You’d be better off with a different writer.”  “Find yourself a new sap.”

No, this is not about being a quitter, a scaredy-cat candy-ass who can’t take the heat. It’s not about being a prima donna who won’t soil her hands in a little skunk work now and then. It’s not about leaving a client hanging because “I’m just not, you know, sort of feeling it right now.”

(We are pros, after all. Incorrigible renegades, maybe. But still pros.)

The right to bail™ is about deciding, day by day, project by project, client by client, what we will do, and what we won’t do. Whom we will work with, and whom we will not. Based on whatever our mission is at the time.

I know. In “an economy like this” walking away from work sounds like the most foolish kind of heresy.

But understand:  You will not invoke this right often. You will not invoke this lightly.  (And you will never invoke this right in a fit of anger, or after way too many beers, he said from experience. Wait until morning.)

Indeed, the beauty is, you need never actually use this right at all.

For most of us, just knowing we are not permanently shackled to this client, or to this sinking ship of a project is enough to keep our spirits up, our heads on straight.

It’s comforting just to reach over and finger that ripcord on your vest, even if you never actually pull the damn thing.

Ah. And if you ever do invoke the right to bail™, the effect is usually profound.

Some clients will be incensed, insulted. (What? You refuse me?). That’s okay. Not every client is worth having.

Others will be brought up short. Your status rises. They will look at you anew. (Hey, maybe we can talk about this.)  That may lead to good things. These are your best clients.

Some clients, of course, won’t give a shit. Which is okay.  Not every client is worth having.

Sad to say, but some of the most satisfying moments I’ve had as a freelancer weren’t always the huge wins, but the times when I said, “No thanks.” When I asserted my sovereignty. (Like last week, for example.)

The jobs and clients you don’t take will shape your fortunes just as much as the jobs you do accept.

Yeah, and there’s this.

We’re the ones who usually hear the ‘no.’  (“No, we don’t need any help right now.  No, we like the freelancers we have.  No, we won’t pay that.  No, we’re not going ahead with that project.”)

So every once in a while, every now and then, it feels good to turn the tables.

Yeah, it’s childish. Yeah, it may not always be bean-counter logical.

But sometimes, it just freakin’ feels good to say, “No thanks.”

We need that, every now and then.

Yes, we want referrals. We want a plethora of referrals.  A veritable parade of referrals.

We want our phones to ring, two or three times a week, with calls like this:

“Hi, I’m Ruth Martin. I got your name from Ted Baker who says you’re something of a genius with copy. We are revamping our website and I was wondering if I could talk to you about it?”

Even if they don’t actually say ‘genius’ (which I tend to hear whether they say it or not) a referral is always a stroke to the ego. It’s a validation of your choice of career, a confirmation of your brilliance and your worth to humanity.  At least for that day, anyway

Referrals are also money. With a referral you jump past all the pain of chasing, courting, and talking about yourself. Someone has already verified that you are not a lunatic or a crook or a bumbler. You start on third base with an 82% chance of scoring.

And better still, a referral can beget another client who can in turn beget another referral .  It creates a biblical chain of begetting: A snowballing, critical-mass, cascading thing that can keep you busy for years.

It means that one ripe referral is worth five random inquries from your web site.  Or even ten.

So how do you boost the odds of one client recommending you to another? Without nagging or being an ass about it, that is.  (Yes, you need to do good work and not screw up. But you are doing that already.)

Here’s the only thing that ever worked for me and the freelancers I know:

Make it so the client likes to pass your name along.

Make it so they get a friendly little buzz, a happy stroke to their ego from sending someone to you.

First, ask

Oddly enough, clients are usually glad to refer others to you, but simply don’t think of it. They aren’t spending their days looking for opportunities for you.

I was also aghast to hear many clients say “I didn’t give him your name because I wasn’t sure  if you were taking on new clients. I thought maybe you were too busy.”

That was a WTF moment for me. Now I set everyone straight with an email or phone call:

Joan:

Really enjoyed working on the new identity and packaging with you. And you were definitely right about showing the team different font options. (Much as I hate to admit it.)  I’m liking the way it turned out.

Thanks for the opportunity.

And if you ever have a colleague who’s considering a design project, I’d be more than happy to talk to them and discuss a few ideas. Any time. Really. They mention your name, they get a-list attention.

The point is, of course, is that you’re eager for referrals because you just love doing this stuff.  You liked working with that client so much that you’d be willing to talk to a friend of hers any day of the week.  (It’s never, never because you’re hard up for work.)

And you’re assuring her that if she does send someone your way, you will respond and be helpful and enthusiastic. There is nothing worse than for a client to hear:  “Hey, I called that guy you recommended. Never got back to me.” That kills future referrals dead.

The exact same tactic works or people who aren’t clients. Maybe people you meet socially.  Or people who don’t buy your services directly, but may have contact with people who do.

Gail:

Enjoyed talking with you the other night. I must apologize for bending your ear so much about web site design.  I tend to get on a soapbox about such things.  Can’t help myself sometimes. Anyway, thanks for listening. Next time, you can do the talking.

Oh, and if you ever know of someone who’s wrestling with a web site, send them my way. I’d be more than happy to chat with them. And I promise not to go on so much.

Thanks.

Say thanks

Always, always.

Ruth:

I want thank you for referring Ted Hagen to me. We had an interesting discussion about his new site. Ted seems like a bright guy. And he has an uncommonly good understanding of his market.

I’ll be sending him a formal proposal next week.  I’ll let you know what happens.
And again, thanks for mentioning me to Ted.

Even if it doesn’t work out.

Chris:

Thank you for sending Don Baker to see me. I think he’s onto something with his new restaurant concept.  Very intriguing.  But based on his budget, I thought another designer might be a better match for him. He seemed to appreciate that. I suggested a few names to him.  He’ll be contacting them shortly.

I was actually quite flattered you thought to recommend me. Very kind of you.  Feel free, any time.

Follow up

I used to be lax about this. Which was a mistake. Clients seem to like hearing they did a good thing.

Ruth:

Good stuff!  Just wanted let you know it looks like Ted Hagen and I will be moving ahead with his new web content. He seems eager to get going.  And I’m looking forward to working on it. This could really be good.

Thanks again for thinking to send Ted to see me. Worked out swell all around.  And I’m glad I could live up to your recommendation.

Lunch is on me next time.

Even if it doesn’t work out.

Ruth:

I just wanted to follow up about Ted Hagen’s project. It seems he’s going with another writer this time around. But we parted friends, and it was certainly fun to be in the running.  I learned a thing or two in the process, too.

And thanks again for thinking to recommend me. I appreciate the opportunity.

Does this seem like too much work?  Good. Then maybe your competitor won’t do it.  Does it sound like too much thanking?  No such thing.

I’ve been holed up working on a batch of new material on winning the bigger-money clients.  And this idea came bubbling up from the deep.

I have never tried this, nor seen it done, so it comes without warranty of any kind. I am posting the recipe without having baked this particular soufflé.

Here’s the idea:

You’ve identified your A-list dream clients.  The well-moneyed, heavy-using customers you would crawl through broken glass to have as clients.

You find a way to make contact with the right person. In your email, of course, is the url of your website.

And there, on your site, easily findable, unmissable, is a link, a text box, or a sidebar that reads:

Companies I admire.

Or, Work I like

Creative Directors I’d love to work for

Or Web sites that get it right

The five best UIs on the planet

And there, maybe number two or three in the list, is the company or brand or client you are wooing.  Along with a few lines about why they make your hair stand up.

Ostensibly, this list serves the same purpose as a blogroll, or a list of your favorite links, or books you read last month.  It’s a shorthand way of showing your leanings, your sensibilities, your style and outlook. Who you like shows who you are.

But for that specific client you’re courting, it’s a way to demonstrate — publicly — that you are in tune with what they’re doing. You’re of the same mind, you’re on their side, you get what they’re about.  You freaking love their stuff. And you say aloud, in public.

I’m thinking, if you were a client, who would you rather entrust a project to?

Some good freelancer with a nice portfolio?

Or some good freelancer with a nice portfolio who also happens to be a die-hard fan and has studied pretty much everything you’ve done and holds it up as the paragon of kick-ass work?

Be careful

- This cannot sound like transparent, vague and empty butt-kissing.  Whatever you say, make it specific, thoughtful, detailed.

- Maybe add this to your site a month before you make your contact.  Just in case your client is savvy enough to check your source code for the date of last update?  This can’t seem like a set-up.

I think there’s something to this.

Keep this top of mind.

Especially on those days when you feel bullied about by some intimidating client.

Or when you have to endure the friend who endlessly raves about her swell new job at this cool company where everybody makes a lot of money and they all get dental and there’s free sushi in the company lunchroom.

Consider this: They can’t do what you are doing right now.

I’m not talking about being able to draw or write killer content, or wrangle PHP.  I’m talking about being able to carve out a living on their own, on their own terms.

The vast majority of the working population doesn’t have the desire, the huevos, or the smarts to pull it off.  They simply can’t do it. Most don’t even want to.

What you are doing right now, this afternoon, even if you’re flailing and wobbling a bit at the moment, they cannot do.

I’ve seen this more times than I can count. (And, yes, shoot me, I take something of a perverse satisfaction in this. But that is just between you and me, of course.)

Example.

Once, on a freelance gig for a unit of Ogilvy, mega-conglomerate agency in New York, I wrote copy for a Creative Director who had apparently been anointed a genius. He was quoted in Ad Age.  He wore red high-top sneakers. He terrorized his copywriters and designers. He supposedly oozed conceptual brilliance.  (Although, after 2 pm, what he was oozing was 80-proof tequila fumes, I think.) I actually liked the guy, even though he hacked at my copy with a machete.

One afternoon, he quit the agency in a huff, tired of the petty politics and creative constraints, he said. He was going freelance, to offer his brand of brilliance direct and unencumbered.  This was announced with great fanfare.

Three months later, he was quietly back in an agency job.  On staff.  On salary.  A company guy again.  He couldn’t do it.

Another example.

Whenever one of my tech-company clients would go through a downsizing, I got calls and emails from the staffers who had been sent away with some goodbye money.  “Free at last,” they’d say.  “I’m going to do consulting, build web apps, open an omelette shop, write for the trade press. Let’s talk.”  We would kick some ideas around, brainstorm some things.  They got excited. They tried some things.

And one by one, they always ended up back in corporate jobs.  They couldn’t do it.

Latest example.  (Skip on down if you get the gist aready.)

One of the smartest clients I ever worked for.  She was VP of Communications for a Fortune 500 company.  Ran national campaigns.  Orchestrated the Annual Report.  Sponsored PBS series.  A savvy writer.  A list of credentials up one arm and down the other.

She left to form her own communications business. We exchanged a bunch of emails on pricing ideas, web sites, business cards, the usual.  She was psyched.

Then there was a long lull.  Until she sent an email asking for help updating her resume.  There were some jobs she wanted to apply for.

Here’s the nub of it, I think.

What my VP friend and the others discovered was that they couldn’t really function unless plugged into the company machinery.  Where someone else brings in the business, a boss puts assignments on their desks, somebody else pay the bills, and there is a budget and a staff to send scurrying.  Without all that infrastructure, they’re uneasy, ineffective.

But you and me, all it takes is a Mac and phone.  Or a potters wheel, or a camera or two, or easel and brushes, or even a Bic pen and legal pad, and you can put food on the table.  And even do some damn good work now and then.

Don’t get me wrong. I like people with jobs just fine.  I respect what they do.  (And they often have to eat more crap than I could ever stomach.)

But they can’t do what you’re doing.

How do you look from the client’s side of the screen?

What is it like to work with you on a project?

Marketing people call that the customer experience.  It’s the term for what it feels like to shop at a particular shoe store. How delightful it is to play with your new iPad. That feeling you have after the last scene of the movie.  How irritating it is to use your software.

I’m coming to think, as a freelancer, the client experience you deliver is pretty much everything. Your dazzling creativity may or may not be the deciding factor.

Clients will work with you, or not, based on how you make them feel.

I know, I know, that sounds like a lot of huggy-kissy psycho-foof. “Kum-ba-ya” customer relations. But ask anyone, I am not known for endlessly pondering my feelings, or anyone else’s.  I’m very guy-like that way.

I would much prefer to think that my ingenious copy, my insightful solution to the problem is what matters most. But after re-examining my countless screw-ups, lost clients, missed opportunities and blown projects, I have to come to realize that the client experience is pretty much all there is.

Clients will work with you, or not, based on how you make them feel.

Man, if I could rewind a huge segment of my freelancing adventures, that is one thing I would erase and do over.

Make it so they always feel better after talking to you.

Dumb simple.  Deceptively dumb simple. And not at all easy to do.  But that’s about all there is to client handling. There is no number two.

There are a thousand permutations and variations and nuances to it. But the rule is simple:

Make it so they always feel better after talking to you.

Do that, and you will win 6.2 times as many clients as any other freelancer.

I first heard this idea years back, from a guy who was five-star master at this.

He ran a small ad agency here in Jersey.  A good client of mine.  One afternoon, we’re in his office chatting.  He was interrupted by client calls four or five times. Once, a big client called to bitch about a blown deadline.  Another called about a toothache of a rush project.  Another griped about her boss.  One even called to fire him, sort of.

But each time, by the end of the call, everything was cheerful, settled, assuaged. Sometimes it was a matter of being contrite. Sometimes just listening. Sometimes he confidently steered a client to a logical fix. Sometimes he simply commiserated. “Geez, I don’t know how you do it.”

It was difficult work. It took time and patience. But they always hung up laughing.

And, he made a lot more money than I did.  So I took notice.

“Aways leave them happier than you found them,” he said.  “Then they keep calling.”

(I realized, months later, that he had done the exact same thing to me. There were times, in the odd afternoon, I’d call him just because, well, it would be an uplifting five minutes or so.  Or, when he called me, and I’d see his name come up on the caller ID, I knew it would mean something good. Maybe som new work.  A rave review from a client.  Something good.  I always picked up.)

I cringe when I wonder what my clients thought when they saw my name come up on the caller ID.  “Oh crap, more bitching about the changes. Pestering me again for background material? Another delay?  More arguing about strategy?”

Another lesson.  Years back, my wife was told she needed some scary surgery. Our health insurer required us to see a bunch of other specialists, whom we visited one after the other.

Each time, we left the office confused, or dismayed, or feeling like clueless dumbasses.  Or, we’d drive home feeling like we had just heard the standard approved patient speech for diagnosis code 234.1.  We felt worse after every visit.

That is, until we saw Elliot Stein.

He didn’t spend any more time with us than the other guys. And he gave us essentially the same advice. (“Yeah, you need the surgery, and yes, it’s scary, and yes, you’ll feel like hell for a while after.)

But for the first time, we left his office feeling better. “Yes, we’re doing the right thing.  Hundreds of people have been through this. Let’s do it.”  We were committed, confident. A great weight had been lifted.

What did Elliot do differently? We felt like he gave a damn. The meeting was about us. Not about his credentials or the outcome statistics or that plastic model of the heart sh0wing the valves and chambers.  It was all about us and what we were worried about. Here was one guy, one doctor, on our side for once.

My wife still sees Elliot Stein to this day.  Are his credentials and qualifications any better than than other guys’?  I have no idea. All I know is, when she sees him, she always feels better after.  No matter what.

Those other docs?  Don’t even remember their names.  They get none of her business.

I know this sounds like so much airy nonsense. But it’s precisely why I choose Gelormini’s auto repair over the four other guys I could call. Why a hard-assed project manager calls one programmer versus another. (“That other coder makes me nervous.”)

So try this for one month.  The next thirty days.

(Okay, I know you won’t do this. Nobody does that 30-day trial stuff, including me.  It’s just for emphasis.)

What if, what if you worked it so every client, every prospect, every referral, every person who contacted you felt better after talking to you?  For real.

What if they felt more confident?  More convinced they had found the right guy.  Satisfied that they were doing the right thing?  Glad to find they could do this for less than they had planned?  What if they saw that there were at least nine ways to fix this, and all would be well?

Or what if, simply, you made them feel you were really glad they called?

What if they were excited to see your name come up in the email.  Or in the caller ID?

How much better would you be doing?

The conventional thinking goes like this:

“Once I get more experience with ‘x’ and build up the portfolio, I’ll be able to charge more.”

“As soon as a get a better feel for what clients like, I can get higher fees.”

“When I sharpen my design philosophy a little, I can bump up my prices.”

First you hone your abilities, then you get to charge more.

But in reality, it also works the other way ’round.

Crank up your rates, and your chops will rise to meet them.  You will get a lot better, very fast.

I know that sounds bass-ackwards. But I see this happen all the time. With me, and with every other freelancer I know. And I suspect it is always thus.

It starts in your head

Try this.

Let’s say you have been getting $1000 to create a custom WordPress theme.  Or to design an identity for a product line. Or to write some product copy. Whatever.

What if, tomorrow morning, you decreed that as of 9 am sharp, that fee is now double.  $2000.  Boom, just like that.

I know, I know.  There are 94 reasons why that’s crazy and stupid and you can’t possibly do that. Bear with me a minute.

Making that purely arbitrary, audacious, utterly impractical rate hike will do wonders for your head. Which will do wonders for your business.

You will start thinking:  Holy crap, what can I possibly do to make this worth twice as much?  Push the envelope a bit?  Try a few more iterations?  Learn more tricks?  Break some new ground? A little more research?  Focus intently on what this client wants? What his problem is?  Push two steps beyond the obvious?  Or maybe, maybe I can figure out a way to make working with me the most satisfying experience ever?

That’s the kind of thinking that gets you out of the minor leagues.

Making that mental rate hike also changes your mindset, your attitude. You sit down to work that day thinking, “Okay, now I’m a $800-a-day copywriter.  Or, I get $4000 for an identity.  How would a 4K designer hit this job?  This proposal?  What would Coudal Partners do here?”

Maybe you won’t get that rate right away, or every day. But something has changed in your head.  You’ve turned pro, moved up a notch.

A photographer friend remembers when she first got the guts to quote something like $1500 for a day’s shoot.

“That day, for the first time, I felt like a photographer.  Not some scared-ass pretender newbie scratching around for a job. No, I didn’t get that gig, or the next. But my work instantly improved. I walked into a shoot and man, I just knew how to nail these shots. Hell, I was a 1500-a-day shooter.”

Time to move on?

I know what you’re thinking.  Your clients would never pay double.  Or even 33% more.  They beat you up over the price as it is. They want everything for six dollars.

Chances are, you’ll realize it would be hard to raise your game with the clients you’re working with.  They are always short of money.  Or their business doesn’t live or die on what you do. You like working with start-up restaurants, but they have peppercorn budgets, and their website is, well, not everything to them. The struggling band loves your logo and cover art, but well, they can’t pay right now.

You want clients who need your creativity, your code, your copy like they need oxygen. They need a lot of it.

So maybe it’s not about getting your current clients to pay more (which never, ever works) but finding the guys who already pay more.

—

Adapted from ‘Talking Money’.  Coming soon from The Freelancery.

If you’re going to actively look for clients (as opposed to lie in wait for them), who should you be pursuing?

What kinds of clients are worth hunting?

1.  Rich ones

This may sound blindingly obvious, but it only pays to chase clients with money. And by money, I mean spendable cash that is in the checking account right now.

I wasted way too much time pursuing little businesses and start-ups thinking they were easy pickings for a newbie freelancer. No. They may be a source of work, but a lousy source of income.

Same with cash-starved producers and agencies who finance their projects on the backs of freelancers. (“Soon as we get paid, we’ll pay you.”)  No.

You want to work with thriving businesses, busy firms, or individuals with fat wallets.

2. Heavy users

The economics of freelancing overwhelmingly favors repeat assignments, long-term relationships. You want clients who use a lot of what you do. (Sometimes cynically called “chronic clients” or “repeat offenders.”)

So spend your energy wooing clients who need boatloads of content, plenty of web design, photos, illustrations, copy, programming, whatever. Maybe they are design firms or agencies or web developers. (See Rule 1, however.) Or companies and businesses who do a lot of marketing, development or creation themselves.  Sell them once, get work for years.

Nothing wrong with one-shot clients — if they walk in the door or come to you by referral. But if you need to hunt down and sell a new client for every assignment, you will exhaust yourself. (And you will spend 83% of your time seducing instead of working.)  Better to focus on the frequent flyers.

If you sell something clients use only once — such as an identity — it’s more efficient to chase branding firms, marketing groups, consultants and others who can serve as your scouts and procurers.

3. Kindred souls

I’m embarrassed to admit that I got this part wrong for years. And so did many of the freelancers I know.

Look for clients who think like you. People with tastes, attitudes, outlooks, and philosophies that jibe with yours. They will be more profitable and easier on the psyche.

You write edgy, irreverent, ballsy copy? Chase firms who already have edgy and irreverent websites. You sell design? Court those companies with a design sense that makes you drool with envy.

You build tight and minimalist interfaces? Chase developers who already ship that way. You’re into human, emotionally-resonant marketing?  Call on companies who act that way right now.

Me? I often did the opposite. Like a dope, I sought out clients whose marketing copy was riddled with corporatespeak or incoherent technobabble, reasoning, like a dope, that they were aching for my brand of silken prose.

They weren’t.

I discovered that clients who used stiff, corporate copy (a) actually liked it that way (b) couldn’t care less or (c) hated my silken prose.

It was far more productive to go after companies whose copy I liked. We saw eye to eye.

My proofreading friend Miriam found tons more work by chasing firms with pristine and error-free websites. They were the ones who loved proofreaders enough to pay them handsomely. (Not the lummoxes with typos in their brochures.)

There’s no money in trying to convert the philistines.

You’re drawn to working on your own because you want to do it your way.  You don’t want a boss. You hate punching a clock, asking permission to do stuff, going to meetings, trusting your fate to some company.

You’d rather run your own life, and not be blown around by someone else’s winds.

Yeah, me too.

But there’s flip side to all that sweet autonomy. It hit me sharply about three days after I went freelance.

All my excuses were suddenly null and void.

Once I took the rudder, I couldn’t blame a bone-brained boss, or crotchety company policy or a damn re-org for my troubles.

I realized that when you have virtually complete say over who, what, where, how and when, griping and whining get you no sympathy points whatever.

Worse yet, the only thing that bitching does is instantly give you a list of stuff you have to fix, start doing, or stop doing.  (Which is, when you’re hoping for a little sympathy, is irritating in the extreme.)

On the other side of your gripe is your game plan.

For me, the internal chatter goes something like this. (Oddly, the other voice sounds like that hard-chinned English teacher of mine from high school, the one who brooked no bullshit in her class whatever.)

“Oh, the economy sucks right now. Nobody has any budgets.”

Really?  Nobody?  How many clients said they had no money?  Three hundred and twelve?  Every company east of Pittsburgh? You can’t find three, four or five clients who have some money? Look for companies who are used to paying twice what you charge. Then offer them brilliance for 20% less.

Better yet, why can’t you offer something amazing they will find the budget for?  Um, . . . I don’t know, try something.

“Clients just don’t value this work. They just want cheap and fast.”

So?  Are you chained to these pinchpennies?  Find clients who thrive on really good work. Start with companies who have dazzlingly good web sites, brilliant content, irresistible product photography. Contact them.  Find agencies, marketing firms, web developers who are doing amazing stuff. Attract them.  Or, duh, find out what clients will pay big money for.

“Everybody takes so long to pay.”

Then don’t work for laggards. From now on, get half the money in advance.  Make them commit, up front, in writing, when they will pay. If you must wait for your money, double your rates.  At least you’ll be waiting for a bigger check, no?

“There are too many people doing [ insert trade here ]. And they’re all working for peanuts.”

So don’t be ‘just another’ [ insert trade here ].  Be something entirely different.  Nine times more appealing, smarter, more distinctive. Offer something they don’t. Or can’t. Or won’t. Specialize in something insanely narrow, like menus for noodle shops, copy for people who hate to read, black-and-white logos, one-page web sites.  And really, if you can be outdone by someone who works for eleven dollars, you’re doing it wrong.

“I’m no good at promoting myself.”

Then stop promoting, hawking and marketing yourself like an ass.  Instead, engage some people, one on one.  Send a human-to-human email (or even a handwritten note) to three new people every day for a month. And make it about them.  Don’t yammer about yourself.

While you’re doing that, make your current clients feel so damn excited that they can’t help but tell nine other people about you.

Put something on your web site that is so stunningly different that it scares you. Do some work for small local charity that has a crappy web site with god-awful content. Do something.

“Some days I just can’t stand the work.”

Would you rather be twenty feet up a ladder, sizzling in the sun, scraping fifty years of paint off an old house?  Remember that?  Or driving to your cubicle job with an awful twist in your guts because you’re about to get chewed out?  Remember that?

Yes, I remember. Never mind.

1.  We’re afraid we won’t get the assignment.  It will go to the cheaper guy.

2.  We’re afraid of being laughed at.  “How much?  For that?  Are you serious?  Wow, you are way out of line here.”

3.  We’re afraid the client will say yes to that big juicy fee, and holy crap we’ll actually have to deliver something that justifies all that money which will be hard because the client will be expecting to be blown away and we might not be able to pull that off which would be hugely humiliating especially if the client wants the money back.