I was talking with a freelancer the other day who explained how he was working with just two clients who had been giving him almost all of his work over the last 3 years.

In one sense, that feels like a dream situation for any freelancer. He has a constant, reliable source of work, every day. He doesn’t have to spend time marketing his business. He doesn’t get stressed about finding new work each month.

Perfect!

Not so fast.

If you think about it, he’s actually in a horribly vulnerable position. I have had clients like that myself. Sometimes they stay with you for a year, or maybe 3 years, or even 5 years. But they’ll never stay with you forever. Companies are bought and sold, key staff change positions or employers. And so on.

In other words, no client lasts forever. And that means that if all or almost all your income is derived from just two or three clients, you could lose half or a third of your income overnight.

It may feel comfortable to have just two or three clients, but it puts you in a very vulnerable position.

I don’t want to be comfortable. I would far rather be agile, responsive and prepared to deal with just about any circumstance. I want redundancy in my freelance business. I don’t want the loss of any one client or project to threaten my overall income.

When something disappears or fails, I want to be able to fall back on something else.

In part, this is about planning. It’s about making sure you don’t put your income at risk by having too many eggs in one basket.

That’s the easy part.

The hard part is about your attitude and state of mind.

I think most of us default to wanting to feel comfortable, to feel safe. But as we have seen, feeling safe is actually a pretty good indicator that you are at risk.

Instead, I work hard to remain uncomfortable.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like stress any more than the next person. But at the same time I know that I can’t fall asleep at the wheel.

I try to anticipate both risk and opportunity. Sometimes I get it right, and sometimes I get it wrong. That’s the way it goes when you try to look into the future.

But here is the thing. Because I maintain a state of mind that is always alert and looking out for both risk and opportunity, it means I am light on my feet and ready to respond as and when I need to.

By way of contrast, if you are immersed in the comfort of two or three clients, and something bad happens, you are in the wrong mindset to respond. You haven’t been studying other possible opportunities, nor have you built a broad network of contacts which might be able to help you with a quick change in direction.

In other words, comfort today translates into risk in the future.

But by being alert, light on your feet and a little uncomfortable today, you create an environment in which you can substantially reduce those future risks.

So here is the question: Just how comfortable do you want to feel?

NOTE: For help in planning for agility in your own freelance business, check out my coaching service for freelancers.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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Procrastination is a bad thing, right?

Well, it certainly can be. It can be a real productivity killer.

You have a deadline, it’s getting closer and closer, and you still haven’t closed your Twitter page and got started.

Some people argue they work best under pressure, so procrastination is a positive thing. I’m not sure about that. Sounds like a clever, or not so clever, rationalization to me.

All that said, I know there have been times when I have been procrastinating for what turned out to be a pretty good reason.

For example, in one instance I was due to send a prospective client a proposal for a substantial writing project. We had agreed on the scope of the engagement and I had told him I was going to submit the proposal by a particular day and time.

As the due date for the proposal got closer and closer, I was sitting around doing nothing. Or rather, doing just about anything other than writing the proposal.

Finally I paused and asked myself why I was putting this off. Why was I procrastinating?

After a period of introspection, I finally figured out that I didn’t really want the job. The money was good, but it wasn’t really my kind of gig. Furthermore, I was getting some bad vibes from my contact person. I hadn’t worked with him before, but I was getting a feeling that he wouldn’t be very good to work with.

Finally, I trusted those little voices in my head and declined the project.

The same thing happened to me when considering a business partnership with someone. On the face of it, all the signs were good. We had complimentary skills and resources, and a good idea to work on together.

But as we went through the process of putting our plan together I found myself procrastinating, again. And for similar reasons. In spite of the plan looking good, it ultimately didn’t feel right, and I let it drop.

My point is that when you find yourself procrastinating, it isn’t necessarily a negative thing.

Sometimes it is, and you need to address that. But on other occasions what feels like procrastination is actually something quite different. It’s a group of smart and rather quiet voices in the back of your head warning you that you might want to reconsider.

If you find yourself procrastinating about just about everything, that’s probably a problem you need to address.

But if you are generally pretty productive, and find yourself procrastinating only over specific tasks or decisions, you might want to sit back and listen for those little voices.

You might not be procrastinating at all.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Build your confidence to succeed with my ebook, Affirmations for Freelancers...

Find out about my coaching service for freelancers...

About fifteen years ago, when my youngest son was still playing baseball, we were gathered around before a game, listening to the coach’s pre-game pep talk.

The opposing team came from a low-income part of the city. Our team’s coach warned our players not to be fooled by the fact that the other guys didn’t have nice uniforms or fancy equipment. If I remember correctly, he told our team, “If they beat you, it will be because they have greater mental toughness.”

I don’t even remember who won that game. And I think it was a generalization to suggest that all kids from low-income families necessarily have more mental toughness than kids from middle-class families.

But his point was a good one, and I tucked it away in the library of my mind. Because mental toughness matters.

In fact, I think mental toughness is a freelancer’s best friend.

It helps you keep your eyes on a better future when the present doesn’t look so good. It enables you to keep going while others give up. Freelancers with mental toughness know that their career won’t all be plain sailing. They know they’ll have some unlucky breaks. They know that life isn’t fair.

But they keep marching forward.

This matters because we are all of us deluged with messages that suggest freelancing is somehow easy. If we follow a proven path, or take these three simple steps, somehow success will fall at our feet.

But it’s not like that. Having a freelance business is no different from owning any other kind of small business. You have to work hard. You have to take some knocks. When you fall down, you have to stand back up. If this week’s marketing approach doesn’t work, then you need to tweak it and try again. And so on.

Does this sound a little daunting? Depressing even?

I hope not. Because I don’t see it that way at all.

To succeed in any kind of business you have to tackle challenges with energy and a positive mindset. You have to push through the barriers and obstacles.

To me, this is what being truly entrepreneurial is all about. You face a challenge with your eyes wide open and you push. This means being focused and being stubborn.

It also means knowing where you are going, and being determined to get there.

And yes, it calls for a certain amount of mental toughness, because you are going to take some knocks along the way.

That toughness is your friend because its absence will knock out a lot of your competitors. Plenty of freelancers give up after a while, unwilling to accept that the path to success isn’t always easy.

So how about you? Do you have mental toughness?

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Build your confidence to succeed with my ebook, Affirmations for Freelancers...

Find out about my coaching service for freelancers...

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In many ways challenges and goals are similar.

Both are about achieving something important at some point in the future. Both can give us a sense of purpose and direction in our lives, and in our work. Both set the bar a little higher and drive us to perform at our best.

But I think there is an important difference in how we perceive challenges and goals.

First, let’s look at goals.

A goal often takes the form of a written description, with a deadline. “I will publish my first ebook by the end of this year.”

There is nothing wrong with setting a goal like that. Apply a little self-discipline, set a schedule and you’ll get that ebook written and published.

But there is something a little impersonal about a goal. Also, it’s at a distance. The moment of achievement is months or years in the future. It’s that thing in the future we are striving for. But we don’t really get the reward until we get there.

A challenge feels different to me. It is very personal, internal and something we feel and live with every day.

Set a challenge, especially if it is a little scary, and that’s something with a heartbeat, pumping a little adrenaline into our system every day.

Maybe it’s just me who sees and feels a distinction between goals and challenges. For me, one of the best ways to get me moving is to hear someone tell me I can’t do something. As soon as someone tells me I can’t, I take it on as a personal challenge, just to prove them wrong. (Assuming it is something I would like to do.) But I also set challenges for myself, privately.

If this distinction resonates with you at all, you may want to take a look at your own goals and reframe them in your mind as personal challenges.

Live the challenge every day, instead of peering into the future at a distant goal.

Get that adrenaline flowing!

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Build your confidence to succeed with my ebook, Affirmations for Freelancers...

Find out about my coaching service for freelancers...

Social media marketing is, thankfully, coming out of its trendy phase and moving into its business phase.

For those of us who have been online for a while, the trendiness of social media has been somewhat irritating. The web was social before the web even existed. In other words, the Internet was social before the first web browsers appeared. Back then we connected with one another through Listservs and the like. It was 100% social.

Services like MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook didn’t invent social media. They simply made it more popular and improved its functionality.

One of the outcomes of the trendy phase of social media is that well over 90% of North American companies now have a presence on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Those companies jumped in because they felt pressured to be on those sites. If that’s where their customers and prospect were spending their time, they needed to be there too.

But most of them jumped in without any kind of strategy. And they didn’t bother integrating social media with their other online marketing activities.

Hence the next step forward, which is to integrate social media with a company’s online marketing activities.

There is a huge opportunity here for online writers and copywriters.

The geeks have taken care of the technology side of social media. The gurus have done the big sales job and moved companies into social media. And now it’s down to savvy online writers and copywriters to integrate social media.

Here’s what I mean by integration…

Most companies have online marketing calendars. They have a schedule and know on which dates they are going to be promoting their various products and services. Smart companies have an integrated content calendar that tells them which kinds of content they are going to be publishing in support of their marketing campaigns.

But very few companies have taken the next step…which is to integrate a social media calendar, in support of both their content and their marketing campaigns.

There is a big gap here.

And every gap represents an opportunity.

Here are 3 examples of ways in which online writers and copywriters can profit from the coming integration of social media.

1. If you are an online copywriter, working on some sales pages, you can expand the scope of your work simply by asking, “Shouldn’t we be planning some activity on social media to drive traffic to these new pages?” The answer is yes, you should. And this gives you the opportunity to not only write the sales pages, but also all the social media entries that can be used to support them.

2. If you are an online content writer, creating new site pages, blog posts, product reviews etc, simply ask, “Would you like me to optimize this content for social media? And would you like me to write some social media entries to support this new content?”

3. Or, if you want to help more broadly with your clients’ social media marketing, you can ask, “Would you like some help in integrating your social media with your content and marketing calendars?”

This is an easy opportunity. Most companies already have their social media pages up there. What they are missing is someone who can help them work up a social media calendar that is integrated with their content calendar and marketing calendar.

And the people best positioned to help them do this are the online writers and copywriters who are already writing their content and sales pages.

I smell opportunity here, and hope you do too.

NOTE: I have created a social media training program specifically for freelance writers and copywriters. It is published by AWAI, and you can find their information and sales page on the program here…

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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We just returned from a resort vacation in Jamaica.

Only for a week, but we had a great time.

The resort was divided by a fairly busy road, and the lady in the photo was one of a team who used their stop signs to help visitors get safely from one side of the resort to the other.

The process was fun to watch, because drivers clearly considered stopping to be optional.

Anyway, after a few days I walked to the side of the road, and found that the ladies with their stop signs weren’t there.

Just for a moment I wondered how on earth I was going to cross the road without them.

It was a ridiculous thought, because I have lived in several large cities during my lifetime, and I am perfectly capable of crossing a busy road.

The experience reminded me of how easily we can succumb to learned helplessness.

The ladies with their signs, and their instructions on when to wait and when to cross, had quickly disabled my own ability to cross the road on my own.

This disabling of our own ability to get things done applies to our lives as freelancers as much as it does to crossing busy roads, or anything else.

For example, if you are used to getting ongoing projects from a particular company, and then that source of work suddenly dries up, you might feel a moment of panic, believing you are not capable of picking up new work on your own.

But you are. You got that first client on your own.

Or you might have a mentor who always looks over your work before you submit it. If the mentor suddenly becomes unavailable, you might think you are no longer able to confidently submit your work.

The same goes for when you are part of a support group or mastermind group.

In other words, whenever we enjoy the support of others in acquiring new work and getting it done, we are likely to feel some anxiety when that support is no longer available.

The trick is to make sure you snap out of that place of learned helplessness.

Because, in fact, you CAN do it on your own.

You can cross the road, get that new client and submit great work.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Build your confidence to succeed with my ebook, Affirmations for Freelancers...

Find out about my coaching service for freelancers...

I wonder how many hours, days, months and years you have devoted to your search for the secrets of success.

All those ebook, talks, programs, and more.

Well, here is some good news for you.

Now you can learn the secrets of success in 3 minutes, thanks to this TED talk by author, Richard St.John.

Inspired by a question from a high school student on a flight, he decided to roll up his sleeves and really find out what successful people had in common.

In fact, he spent 10 years on this project and interviewed 500 extraordinary people. He then distilled everything into a talk he could give at high schools. In other words, after 10 years he found himself able to answer the question he was asked on that flight.

His next challenge was to distil that talk into 3 minutes. As you’ll see in the video below, he has to talk fast and go through his slides at lightning speed.

And yes, it would be understandable to dismiss “success in 3 minutes” as a gimmick.

But not so fast.

First, I believe he is right in his identification of the 8 key success factors.

Secondly, it makes sense sometimes to pay attention to the “executive summary” of a topic. When you read an entire book or watch a 60-minute video, it’s easy for the core learning points to drown in all the details.

Look at the bare bones of a lesson and you may see it more clearly.

Enjoy the video.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Find out about my coaching service for freelancers...

Way back when I wrote copy offline, I was pretty much a one-trick pony.

I wrote direct mail. That was my thing. I have never written a radio spot. I have never written a TV commercial.

Back then, it was fine to focus on a single copywriting skill, because there was no connection between what I wrote for a client as a direct response writer, and what their agency copywriter wrote for TV.

Sure, we all worked to the same brief, keeping within the same campaign idea.

But the key point to understand is that the quality of my direct mail piece didn’t depend on my knowing anything about writing for TV, radio or any other medium. Why? Because each medium was separate from the other.

All that changed with the arrival of the web.

Online, everything is connected. (Think hyperlink.) Every page on a website is connected to other pages. Emails and e-newsletters are linked to site pages. Site pages are linked to social media sites. Social media tweets, updates and posts are linked back to websites.

This is a game changer for copywriters.

As online copywriters we can no longer do our best work in one area without at least a clear understanding of the bigger picture, and how everything is connected.

For example, if I were asked to write an online sales page for a company, I would do well to think about more than just the page itself. I would certainly ask about how the company planned to drive traffic to this page.

Just through internal links on the site itself? Or by email? Or through PPC ads? Or through social media? Or through all of these channels, and maybe more?

To put it another way, to write a great sales page I need to know my audience. And part of the challenge of knowing my audience is to understand where they are coming from.

Are these warm and trusting prospects from an in-house email list? Are they fans coming in through social media? Are they complete strangers who have come in through PPC ads? And so on.

Once I ask my client these questions we are going to get into a conversation about email, social media and PPC.

Or, just as likely, the conversation will be initiated by the client as part of the briefing.

It’s at this point that my client will learn whether I can hold an intelligent conversation not only about sales pages, but also about email marketing, social media and PPC.

If I can’t, he or she will experience a moment of disappointment, and the perception of my value in his or her mind will fall.

Not good.

If I can, the opposite occurs. The perception of my value rises. Suddenly I’m not just a copywriter for hire, but am also acting like a consultant, exploring the larger marketing picture.

This is why it makes sense for online copywriters to understand all aspects of writing for the web, through multiple channels. No, you don’t have to master ever channel, but you do need to know enough to hold an intelligent conversation with your client, and to do your work with a clear understanding of how it fits in with everything else.

The bigger your toolbox, the greater the opportunity.

Several years ago I was approached by a prospective client and asked to rewrite their homepage. This was a fair sized company in the insurance industry. Certainly I was qualified to do what they asked. But I wanted to know more. I asked about the major category pages one level down from the homepage. Were they going to be rewritten too? If not, then it would limit the changes I could make to the homepage.(Remember, everything is connected.)

We talked about that, and in the end decided I should rework the homepage and those second level pages.

Then I asked about all the other pages on the site. If I were to significantly adjust the tone and approach of the top level pages, this would have implications for many other pages.

No, I didn’t get to write all those pages as well. Nor did I want to. But I did get paid to fly in and talk to their in-house web team about what I was trying to do with the new pages, so they could adjust the lower level pages accordingly.

On another occasion I was asked to write a landing page. After talking about it for a while I learned they were going to drive traffic to the page through an email campaign. I suggested that I write those emails as well. Having the same person write the emails and the landing page would ensure a clean and powerful transition from email to web page.

I took the same approach with every client, and significantly increased my earnings as a result. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I didn’t have a firm grasp on multiple aspects of writing for the web.

If, like in my offline days, I had been a one-trick pony, and focused just on sales page, or just on homepages, or just on email, I would have limited my opportunities and would also have diminished my value in the eyes of my clients.

Where can you get professional grade training in multiple areas of online copywriting?

This is where we are going to transition gently into a soft sales pitch.

After working with corporate clients online for about 10 years, and after training many of their in-house teams in online copywriting across different channels, I decided to create a program based on everything I have learned and taught.

That program is called Copywriting 2.0.

As far as I know it is the only professional-grade training program that is focused on teaching copywriters multiple aspects of writing for the web. Once you have worked through hundreds of pages of printed materials, watched the 16 embedded videos and sat through numerous bonus webinar presentations, you’ll have online copywriting skills that are both broad and deep.

Like I said…if you want to maximize your value and your earnings, you want to approach your clients with a big, fat toolbox, stuffed with online copywriting skills.

Copywriting 2.0 is published by AWAI, and you can find their information and sales page for the program here…

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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As freelancers we work alone, and sometimes we have bad days, weeks and even months.

When things aren’t going well, we sit at our desks, our heads in our hands, and wonder how we are going to make things better.

We are at a fork in the road here…we can lead our thoughts in one of two directions.

The first direction takes us to a place where we feel powerless and want someone to rescue us. Maybe an old client can give us a project to help fill the coffers this month. Maybe a mentor can miraculously introduce us to a new client. Maybe that new e-book by this month’s hot guru can instantly result in a flood of new prospects.

We are passive. We feel we are the victim of circumstances. We want to be rescued.

This is not a good path to follow.

Now for the other direction we can choose to take. (And it is your choice.)

We can rescue ourselves.

To do this you need to push back from your desk, take some deep breaths and take a long hard look at the challenge of finding new clients, preferably great clients.

Take an audit of the last 12 months. Who were your best clients? Make a list of them, even if there are just one or two. Then ask yourself how you managed to get those clients.

If finding those clients was the result of a particular action or sequence of actions you took, do more of the same. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

If those clients came out of the blue, and there is no series of steps to replicate, it’s time to rethink your approach to marketing. You can’t build a freelance business based on crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

Every successful freelancer has developed a marketing process by which they bring prospective customers to their door. You need to do the same.

If you sit there waiting to be rescued you are condemning yourself to a future of freelance misery.

If you get in the driver’s seat, and take personal responsibility for attracting a stream of great new clients, you’re on the path to success.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Find out about my coaching service for freelancers...

If you wanted to open a coffee shop it would likely cost you somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000.

If you wanted to buy into a franchise fast food chain, it would cost you six figures or more.

And if you want to begin a freelance copywriting business, and are aiming to make six figures a year…how much would you be willing to invest?

What, you thought starting your own business would be free?

It can be free, if you want to freelance as a hobby.

But it’s not free if you want to build a freelance business that will earn you a big, fat income.

And it’s not just about the training…

Time and time again I find freelancers who are perfectly happy to invest in learning their craft…as a writer, a copywriter, a designer, coder or anything else. They are willing to pay thousands of dollars to acquire the skills they need.

And then, for some odd reason, their wallets and purses snap shut. They don’t want to invest another penny.

So they sign up for a free site-building service from their hosting company. They grab a tired and cheap-looking template for their website. They get their uncle’s cousin’s nephew to design a logo. They write a 500-word home page about how good they are at their craft. And then they sit back and wait for prospective clients to start knocking on their door.

Well, good luck with that.

Back to the coffee shop and the bare naked truth of being in business.

Once you have invested in the rent, equipment and salaries of a real-life business like a coffee shop, you then have to invest in making the place look great, and in marketing.

That means working with an interior decorator and hiring a designer for your signage and promotional materials. You’ll also have to invest in letting coffee lovers in your community know why they should come and try your coffee.

First, the infrastructure and backend of the business. Then the front end – the marketing.

While freelancers can skip most of the infrastructure and backend, because we can work at the kitchen table, we can’t or shouldn’t skip the marketing end.

Setting up as a freelancer is free only until shortly before you open your door for business.

What this means…

It means you forget about putting up a so-so website.

Instead, you hire a good designer to create a great logo for your business, and a website with a professional look and feel. (If you don’t know any designers, try a service like 99Designs.com)

Next, you are going to pay a web developer to put your site together and make it look great and have all the plugins and functionality you need. (For freelancers, I can’t think why anyone would use anything other than WordPress for their website. Check out ProFramework.com)

Then you are going to ask your logo designer to put together your business stationary – your business card, your letterhead etc.

Now for the lesson I want to share…

Way back when I was starting out as a freelancer in the UK, in the early 80s, I knew a designer who started freelancing at about the same time. There was no web back then, so she decided to create a brochure featuring some of her best work.

She designed the brochure herself, but to get it written she turned to one of the top copywriters in London. I imagine he gave her a friends-and-family rate, but I know she paid quite a chunk of change for that copy. She also paid a tidy sum for four-color printing for the brochure.

Did she succeed? She sure did. Her brochure was fantastic and was featured in various industry magazines. She got in front of all of her best prospects within a few weeks…simply by having the front of her brochure, and her story, featured in those magazines.

Here is the lesson: She made herself look irresistibly good from the very first moment. She made herself look serious, professional and valuable before even doing her first freelance job.

Now imagine what she could have done. She could have written the brochure herself. That’s what most designers would have done.

But she was smarter than that.

Now it’s time for you to be smart.

If you are just starting out, spend that $1,000 on making yourself look great. If you are freelancing already and have a website that makes you look anything less than amazing, get it redone. Spend the money.

(If you’re freaking out about the cost, you can probably get everything I have described here for more like $750 or even $500. The point is, you have to spend money in order to look good.)

And once you have launched or re-launched your business, and are impressing everyone who comes to your website or looks at your business card, it’s time to put aside a monthly budget to promote your services.

But that’s a topic for another post.

Stay tuned.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

If you found this post helpful, sign up for my e-newsletter and get a free copy of my 35-page guide...

Writing For The Web #1 -- 7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

Sign up and I'll send you the link for the download, and then you'll receive my most recent post as part of my e-newsletter every Tuesday morning.

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