Freelance Pitch Pacing

Ahh, Pitching. We are, most of us freelancers, doing jobs we enjoy. And when we have plenty of work, it’s tempting to just do the work and hope that more work will miraculously keep pouring in. I bet it does for A S Byatt and J K Rowling! But for me, and for so many writers and designers and artists, the work peters out. We have slacked off on our marketing campaign and it shows.

Marketing means different things for different industries. If you’re a writer or illustrator, it means emailing or calling acquaintances or strangers to pitch your brilliant ideas, and then waiting for nail-biting weeks or months in the hopes that you’ll hear back. The time it takes from pitching an idea, to hearing back from your contact, to completing and submitting the work, to being paid, can take a year or more! So it makes sense, while waiting for a response to those queries you sent out last month, to, yes, send more queries!

And when you’ve had a positive response and suddenly find you’re swamped with work? Oh yes, send more queries. Otherwise you’ll find yourself suffering from ‘Feast and Famine’ syndrome. Most artists and writers know EXACTLY what this is like! We have a tendency to ‘Go with the Flow’, it’s part of our creative makeup.

In order to succeed in business, it’s important to get your business hat on first thing.  So, if like me you are a writer:

• Pencil in the time at the start of your work period, and do some marketing.
• Pitch three ideas to a magazine, phone a friend in a likely area of business, update your facebook page…
• But most importantly, PITCH. It’s difficult, emailing a stranger to tell them they certainly need your stellar skills. When you don’t hear back, or worse yet, hear back that they won’t be needing you (Ugh, actually, I don’t know which is worse!) it’s a real blow. But take those same three ideas, polish them up if needed, and pitch another company.

I had exactly this crisis recently: I was mind-bogglingly busy from November to February, as a result of my pitching campaign in September. And then famine set in, in March. Sigh! I know better now! I never stop pitching these days, and now that the work is rolling in again I have to remember the famine, and keep the feast going.

So how do you keep the working coming in?  I’d love to know.

Nan

Last updated by Nan Sheppard.

Tagged freelancing, networking, Pitching