Set It and Forget It Three Small Tweaks That Can Make a Big Difference in Your Bottom Line

Set It and Forget It Three Small Tweaks That Can Make a Big Difference in Your Bottom Line In business, people outsource. In business, people use technology to solve their problems and make their lives easier. Writers? Not so much. We like to find that hardest, longest, most frustrating way of doing things and hold onto it as if our very existence depends on it. Right? Or perhaps you’re a writer who feels there’s nothing in your business that could even be automated, certainly not the process of finding clients or generating assignments. And that’s where I come in. Because I’m a big believer in making life easy when it can be made easy. I don’t skimp on research, I certainly don’t skimp on the time I spend perfecting my writing and my work, but if there’s a way in which I could automate the business end of my work, I’m all for it. Here then are three things I do routinely in the set it and forget it category that could help free up some time and generate a bit more income for you. Your Website I like to think of assignments that come to me through my website as â€Å"found money.† It’s not work I go looking for and it usually pays pretty well, because clients who’re searching on Google for freelancers in India just haven’t found the right ones yet and are willing to pay good rates for someone they think might make their life easy. I built my website once, and, while I update it frequently, it doesn’t actually require work or effort on my part to find these clients. A presence on Google is enough. My website works for me because of location, but you may have another specific skill set. You may, for instance, be a writer who does a lot of copywriting work for waste management companies. You want to make sure that when someone searches for that niche, your name pops up. That’s going to bring you business constantly and if you’re not popping up on some niche on some Google search, you’re losing money. Your Reprints I don’t believe there’s a lot of found money in reprints anymore but if you automate the process and make it simple, a few resulting sales may be worth the time investment you make in setting up the system. My trick is simple: When you get a contract for your piece, make a note of how soon after the piece is published you’re allowed to have it reprinted and set that date on your calendar. On that date, spend an hour or two looking for markets for that reprint (you can usually find about 20-30 markets) and do an e-mail blast. If the market is good, the timing is perfect, and you’re lucky, you’ll make a sale - or three - and if not, you haven’t spent hours wasting your time on trying to market a reprint that’s not going anywhere. If it sells, great. If not, move on. The next time you have something published, do this again. Your Letter of Introduction I’ve just rewritten my Letter of Introduction because I wanted it to have an even greater impact, but my last LOI brought in tens of thousands of dollars worth of revenue for me. I did a blast every couple of months when I felt that work was drying up. Without fail, it managed to either drum up some business or help me connect with a new editor or client. A good Letter of Introduction takes work, though, so don’t expect to just bang one out in ten minutes and expect to see the money rolling in. I try to personalize my LOIs each time I send them out, even though the basic format remains the same. And I also take great care to write it well the first time so that it’s a template I can build off. Spend a few hours perfecting your LOI like you would a brochure or any other marketing material. But once you’ve done it, it’s an easy income generator that can bring in clients quickly without much more than an email blast every few months. When you set it and forget it, you create time for yourself to do the things that are important to you, like writing. What part of your freelancing business will you automate today?