Starting Your Own Writing Business, Part 4: Finding Clients

You may have started your business because you had people lined up to write for. Or you may have started out from nothing, as I did when I started my business. In either case, your success will depend on how well you find and cultivate clients. Each genre of writing has a different clientele and therefore a different method for finding work. I'll start out with some generalities and then more onto specifics.

When you're ready to look for clients, you should have already completed a market analysis, given yourself a self assessment and written down a business plan. These formal-sounding documents are the tools that you need to target the right customers with the best you have to offer. You now know how your skills, the market, and your business direction intersect.
You then do research online and in the library to find the people who make hiring decisions for your target. You may have already noted some organizations or individuals who will serve as good contacts or clients for your work - contact them right away!

By networking with other businesses in your local Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club, you'll develop good contacts and business skills. Connect with other writers and ask them where they find their clients - since the writing field is so wide, chances are pretty good that you won't be competition for each other.

If you look at your market and business plan and don't have a specific client base defined, brainstorm about the types of businesses you can help on both a local and global basis. For example, if I wanted work as a technical writer, I would contact local corporations such as Grainger or Abbott to see if they're looking for freelance writers. I'd also contact smaller businesses such as machine shops, call centers, and factories to see if they need someone to write things like technical manuals, employee procedures, or product information. On a global basis, I'd do some internet searches to look for job postings - on sites like Monster.com, Elance.com, Sologig.com, Craigslist, and free-form searches.

If I wanted to help people connect to their faith (which I do) I would contact local churches (which I have). Churches are often begging volunteers to help them put out a newsletter, create bulletins, write information for their websites, and put together reports. You could suggest to a church that you will do all that work for them (or provide X number of hours a month) for a set fee. On a larger scale, you can contact the overall church organization, such as Catholic Charities or the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Or whatever charities or faith-based organizations you feel passionate about.

If you're writing fiction or poetry, you'll likely spend less time in assessment and business planning, and more time in writing at the beginning. Fiction authors and some types of non-fiction authors write first and then find someone to buy what they write; other types of freelancers find clients first and then write what the organization needs.

A lot of good material has been written about how to publish your work in magazines or newspapers, so I'm not going to re-invent the wheel in this article. I regularly read the blogs on my blogroll, and all of the writers there teach me something new. The basic process is to target a publication with a unique, interesting idea that fits perfectly with their demographic and style, find the right editor to contact, and contact them with the idea or story in exactly the way they want to be contacted. If you're writing fiction or poetry, you write it first, and then find the best market for the completed work. Fantastic resources for finding markets include the annual Writer's Market, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, Writer's Digest, and Absolute Write.

When you're working with small or local organizations, they may not have the perspective to understand what a writer can do for them. Your job is to imagine the problems they might face (poor communication, outdated procedures, lack of expansion due to old marketing materials or an uninformative website) and then dazzle them with solutions to their problems.

Lastly, I want to urge you to go for it today. You never know what opportunities might pass you by if you wait. An example? I've been meaning to send out a query to my local paper on a travel article. Last weekend my article idea was published in that paper - by someone else. You know what really kills me? I know I could have written it better.