Here are four essentials for profitable marketing.

1. The More Marketing You Do, the Better: Everything Is Cumulative

Marketing your writing services business isn’t a “do it once and forget it” thing. It needs to be constant. There’s a reason companies big and small advertise — it’s to get and keep clients.

Once you’ve completed a project for a client, even if the client loves the work you did, there’s no guarantee that he will recall your name six months or two years from now when he’s looking for a writer.

Therefore, you need to market consistently, not only to attract new clients, but also to stay in touch with current and former clients.

I market every day, and so does every other professional writer who’s booked solid. Marketing is a must, and it’s cumulative.

2. Enjoying Marketing: Make It Fun

I hated marketing my writing services for many years, until I realized that if I could market for others, I could do it for myself. The key was ensuring that I only did the kinds of marketing I enjoyed.

You can do this too. Choose one marketing method a month, and do it for the entire month, but make it something that’s fun for you. Blogging and social media marketing are fun for me, so I often choose these forms of marketing. You may prefer advertising or creating press campaigns.

3. The Four Ps of Marketing, Applied to Your Business

When you say “marketing” many writers assume that that means “promotion.” While that’s true, there’s more to marketing than promotion. Use all the basics of the marketing mix, the “4Ps” of Product, Price, Promotion and Place, in your marketing.

That is, think about the products you provide (offer services your buyers need and want), assess your pricing periodically, and target different locations with your products.

4. Be Your Own R&D Department

Large companies have Research and Development (R&D) departments, and you should too. Don’t get stuck in a rut. Study new forms of writing, and develop new writing services you can offer.

When you spend time researching what buyers of your writing need, and then develop services and products to meet those needs, you’ll never run out of marketing opportunities.

Discover the secrets to marketing your writing services with Angela Booth’s video series and marketing ebook. Give your writing business a marketing boost today – you’ll be thrilled with the results.

Writing: Marketing Your Writing Services Business for Clients and Cash is a post from: Angela Booth's Sell Your Writing Online NOW Blog: make money writing for the Web.

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Here’s an excerpt:

Are you a new freelance writer who’s worrying about the competition? Relax. To all intents and purposes, your only competition is with yourself. You’re unique, and so are your clients: you just need to find the perfect clients for YOU.

Here are four steps to boosting your freelance writing income, and beating your “competition.”

Enjoy.

“3. Develop Your Writing Skills: Spend Time Learning Every Day” is especially applicable to your work with Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) — at the end of your Web writing training, you’ll have great writing skills, and these translate to money.

Get all the writing jobs you want is a post from: Angela Booth's Sell Your Writing Online NOW Blog: make money writing for the Web.

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Here are some tips to turn you into a bidding dynamo.

1. Give a Detailed Proposal After You’ve Communicated With the Buyer

Avoid making your bid proposals too detailed until you’ve communicated with the buyer. Some “buyers” are just lookers, rather than serious buyers of your writing. Write a short proposal, asking the buyer to contact you for the details.

Once you’ve made sure that the buyer is legitimate, give a more detailed proposal, but not too detailed. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that some unscrupulous buyers will take the scope you’ve written, and hand it to a cheaper writer.

2. Quote a Project Rate

Rather than quoting an hourly rate, give a range. For example, if you’re bidding on an ebook, you might quote a range of $1500-$3000, depending on how much research is required. The lower end of the range would apply if the buyer supplies your research material.

(If you’re a fast writer, you can always make more money when you bid with the project fee rather than an hourly rate.)

If you are totally new to bidding on projects, however, you must bid via hourly rates until you get a sense of how quickly you can write certain types of projects. For example if you’re an experienced writer, you should be able to write at least two Web articles within an hour. When you’re new, you’ll take longer, and this is fine. Practice makes you faster; your speed will increase with time.

3. Ask Questions

Asking questions will help you to tailor your bid. I once had the unfortunate experience of quoting a fee for a writing job without reading the project brief with complete attention. I ended up doing three times the amount of work I’d expected to do; my income was shot for that week.

Never feel you’re being silly when you ask for a clarification. Your buyer wants you to do a good job, and you can only do a good job when you have complete information.

4. Once a Client Has Accepted Your Bid, It’s Time to Negotiate

Unfortunately some clients have a habit of loading extras onto you once they’ve accepted your bid, so make sure that you charge for any extras. If however you feel that client is being unreasonable and is trying to take advantage of you, you can always politely back out of the project.

5. Ignore the Other Bidders

It’s fatal to assume that just because everybody else bids low for project, that the lowest bidder will win. This is rarely the case. Always bid a project rate that you are comfortable with, you’ll be surprised at how many bids you win. Genuine buyers want good, reliable writers because they know that the “cheap” writers will cost them money because they either won’t complete the project, or the work will be sub-standard.

If you’re looking for writing jobs, the outsourcing sites are your happy hunting ground. Turn yourself into a bidding dynamo, and you’ll land all the writing jobs you can handle.

Want more help on acing the outsourcing sites? In Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON), we cover winning bids for writing jobs in the first couple of weeks of the training — discover how YOU can become a bidding dynamo, and win more bids at great rates.

Freelance Writing Job Bidding Dynamo… or Dunce? is a post from: Angela Booth's Sell Your Writing Online NOW Blog: make money writing for the Web.

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