The Business of Freelancing

Hosted by Brennan Dunn and Eric Davis Show Notes Ways we have marketed our consulting services in our past. Blogging, forum posting, content marketing, and social networks. Technical blogging, business blogging, random thoughts blogging. Investing into marketing activities Products can drive consulting sales Marketing sales funnel Ask "how did you hear about me?" Difficult to track every single person from marketing source to sale Easier to track in teh aggerate based on source (e.g. Hacker News) How to determine when to focus exclusively on one channel or avenue. Know, Like, Trust Multi-touch marketing across different channels Increase your trust factor, e.g. Open Source, blogging Referrals transfer trust Diverse marketing sources are needed in case something changes to your primary marketing source. Have at least one backup source that compliments your primary one, if not two backups. Expensive conferences can be a good filter for clients who can afford your services. Asking for referrals Repeat clients Reaching out to existing clients 1-on-1 to follow up with past projects. Offering incentives or finders fees for referrals. Well timed out autoresponders for new leads Next Week Pricing methods Resources Eric - Why are you trying to save time? and the question "What is it that we want?" to ask clients. Brennan - RescueTime and MailChimp Action steps Look at where you've gotten clients in the past. What did you do to increase the trust from a potential client? What kind of investment you made and what kind of return did you get from it? Was that a good ROI? Transcript We're hoping to get a transcript later.

Hosted by Brennan Dunn and Eric Davis Show Notes Double Your Freelancing Rate Planscope Little Stream Software Eric's 3 ebooks: Refactoring Redmine, Redmine Tips, Authoring Ebooks Listening to podcasts as a focused way to get content Distraction free time Bettering your business Actionable information to apply to your business today Translate ideas from people and books into actionable tasks Future show ideas Marketing ROI, how to track the return of a marketing activity. Pricing Methods, the different ways to price. Content Marketing, writing and creating content like blogs, articles, and videos to generate leads. Webpage design and conversion optimization. How do you talk to a client, business-speak vs developer-speak vs designer-speak. Open for more ideas. Want to interview experts, listeners, and people who hire freelancers. "Feel free to volunteer other people" Kalzumeus podcast Next Week Marketing ROI. Resources Eric - WooThemes. Premium Wordpress themes. Canvas and Whitelight. Brennan - Ramit Sethi on the Kalzumeus Podcast Getting Your First Consulting Client and Why Your Customers Would Be Happier If You Charged More Action steps Just like what we are doing here, this week try something new that you've wanted to. Either start a blog (or bring to back to life), email a high end lead you've been afraid of, get out of your comfort zone, try raising your rates, etc. Transcript We're hoping to get a transcript later.