Identifying High-Paying Freelance Writing Clients
Having a hard time figuring out who your best-paying potential clients are? Struggling to create a prospect list and don't know where to start? Or trying to move up to better clients, but can't seem to find where they live? We're covering all the high-paying freelance writing client goodies today.
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Identifying High-Paying Freelance Writing Clients
Well hey there. Welcome to my second live stream where we're going to talk about high paying freelance clients. So we're going to go over some of the steps and techniques that I've used in the past. And I've seen other freelance writers use to get their, you know, high paying clients. I think there's this thing sometimes where a lot of times freelance writers are confused about high paying clients. They don't really know where they are. They don't really know how to figure out where to find them. They don't really understand, you know, basically where they're hiding out. And I think that there's this thing sometimes with freelance writers where they think that the high paying clients either come to them, or there's some sort of secret that they're missing to finding these high paying clients where, you know, it's, it's some sort of mystery. So I'm hoping that I'm going to break that down for you today and walk you through a few steps. And I've got my buddies with me today. So I've got my do a quick pup day for y'all. So I've got Bo on the left and Charlotte on the right. She's kind of being grumpy.
Charlie, can you wag for them? Good girl. Good girl.
There you go. Okay, cool. So there we go. We've got a little pup day for you guys.
Okay.
1) Where do you find freelance writing clients?
And now we're going to go a little bit into breaking things down. So one of the first things that I've seen with freelance writer, clients, where people are trying to figure out where they are,uis that there, there is a way to search for clients that I think people just don't normally do. So there's something where you have freelance writer, clients, where it's,uyou're looking for top companies of this thing. So let's say that your niche is,uyou know, top like FinTech companies or your niche is travel or your niche is finance or, you know, food. You're going to go into Google and you're going to make sure that you are searching for, you know, top X companies. Then you're going to find those companies and you're going to look for their revenue. So right now, what we're looking for, I think with all of the things that are going on with,uyou know, all this pandemic stuff and everything else,uyeah, I think we want to stick to that 5 million to $50 million range.
So what we want here is to make sure that they have enough money to pay a freelance writer. Well, so usually when a client has between 5 million and 50 million, like when you look up their company name and you search for the revenue, I like to do that on tech crunch or Crunchbase glass door works really well too, or LinkedIn. What we're looking for here is companies that can afford us. So usually I bump it down to 1 million, but with everything going on 5 million to 50 million is kind of that revenue range. I think that works really well for finding, you know, really well paying clients. So once we've kind of done that, we've collected our list, right? So we've, we've done a bunch of searches. You can do top your niche companies. So if your niche is like I said, travel or FinTech or something, you just Google those companies and create a list of those and verify their info.
So you can check on LinkedIn glass door or not Crunchbase, or, you know, you can even Google sometimes like you can Google company name, revenue. So like, if I was going to Google like glass door revenue, or LinkedIn revenue, or I could Google a company name like McDonald's revenue, it'll pop up in there and it'll tell you how much money they're making and if they can afford to pay a freelance writer or not. So once you kind of verify that they have enough revenue to pay you, and you've created a list of 50 to a hundred of those companies, those are kind of giving you details of like qualification. So I think one of the secrets that people miss a lot of the time is that these high paying clients are ones with potential, right? So one of the things that people think is like, Oh, they're just high paying.
Like, how would you know that you don't, you don't know that, but you have enough qualifying data to give them potential. So that basically means that they have the right revenue they're going in the right direction, which means they're creating a lot of content. That means that their company is growing. They're not doing a bunch of layoffs. That means that they're going in kind of maybe sometimes if it's a startup, they're really doing something innovative in their field. So that means that they're doing a lot of really creative stuff. They're getting funding, they're going in all the directions that give us all the good green flags, right. We talk about red flags. So these are all the green lights based. Let's call them green lights that are giving us the potential for them to be a well-paid client. So we don't know until they're well-paid until we kind of talk to them.
Right. So we have our list, we know. Okay, cool. They're meeting all the things that are kind of innovative. They're creating a bunch of content. They have the revenue to support paying for freelance writer.
2) Sending your LOIs (Letters of Introduction) as your freelance writer marketing
We reach out to them and ask them, like, do, do you need help with your content that comes with your letter of introduction? That's your LOI. I have templates for those that are linked below if you guys are interested, but basically it's just like, hi, do you like, I basically, the LOI is basically like hi congrats on something. I do you need help with your content. I'm a freelance writer in these niches. Here's some clients I've worked for. And let me know. I'd love to chat about your content. You send that off. And when you talk to that client, they either tell you the rates that they're already paying other freelance writers, or they are basically going to ask you for pricing.
So you're going to, you're going to price, awesome rates. So you can get the free pricing guide, go below if you don't have already. But those are kinds of the things that you're going to do the steps to kind of figure out if they're high paying. A lot of times that potential means a lot. If you don't know what revenue they have, and you don't know the direction that they're going, like you haven't checked out their website, you haven't seen what kind of content they're creating on their social channels or on LinkedIn. You, haven't kind of done your research. You're missing a bunch of those potential things. So that potential, when we're connecting with them, they're like, Oh yeah, like we normally pay a thousand dollars, you know, for a thousand word article. That's how we know they're high pain. We've already sent our LOI.
They've gotten back to us, told us the rate that they normally pay. Second option is that you go to them and they say, Hey, can you give us a proposal? You can, you, you know, quote this project for us. And you say, sure, and you quote them professional rates. And basically if your rates are a match for them, like you're quoting high paying clients then, or high paying rates, they become a high paying client of yours. So I think one of the things that people kind of forget when they're trying to get these retainer clients, is that it's not really about trying to force something on someone. It's not that you're coming into the situation where you're trying to get people to sign on for a retainer agreement. It's not where you're trying to like, say, well, you need to do this retainer or you can't work with me.
What you want to do is you want to, you want to qualify these people from step to step to step to step goes back to the same thing of potential. They have the revenue they're going in the right direction. You quoted them a good rate and they liked it. Or they normally pay really well. And then when you get on a call with them, kind of work out the details. That's when you start asking about ongoing work, you can tell them things like, Hey, I normally work on a 90 day contract. So for me, that's how I do a lot of my work is that I just don't feel like a one-off project really builds a relationship. And it also doesn't actually get us to know each other. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it's really easy to find out if you're a fit from one thing, but rarely do I find that one thing really helps you kind of figure it out.
So a lot of times I go into my first client meeting, talking to them about what it's like to work together. And I say, yeah, what, when they ask what it's like to work with me, I say, yeah, I normally do an initial 90 day contracts so that we can figure out whether or not we're a fit for each other. I found, you know, from my own experience and other writers that a lot of that three month period, the first month is kind of figuring out how to work the second month as we're finding in the third month is like, okay, now that we've kind of refined, we've figured it out. Is this actually working? And if it's not no big deal, we go our separate ways, but there's a lot of big pieces in there. It's it's really about fit. But then it comes back to like, this is kind of a retainer agreement, right?
We started our 90 day contract. We've got three months, you know, that we've agreed to between us and the client of income, but we've also got, you know, work and time to figure out if we can add more clients, if this kind of actually a fit for us for longterm and it's, you know, pushing us on the way to a retainer agreement. So if you're going into that client meeting and you're telling them, you know, my initial contract is 90 days to figure out if we work together, which I feel like is just a really great period of time. It's also short enough that, you know, most people feel comfortable with that. And if not, you know, in the contract you have something where you know, you or them can get out. It's not forever 90 days, but there's that the other piece that you want to ask is, do you have long-term project goals or do you have ongoing work?
This is kind of going back to my favorite question that emailed you about the, maybe it was last week is how do we build this relationship together? This is a creative way of asking. What do you, what do you plan to do in the future with your content? Do you guys just want to kind of do this like short blog, post engagement to see if it's going to work or do you guys want to basically, you know, kind of do a longer-term project. So when you're going in there, you're asking them upfront before you sign anything before you kind of do anything, what their goals are. And a lot of times these high paying clients can lead into retainer agreements because they're focused. They have a brief, they have a quarterly schedule, they have a lot going on, but you don't know that until you ask.
So this was back to potential. They have the potential in the beginning to have these ongoing projects, because you checked out that they're creating a bunch of content. So when you talk to them and ask them, okay, cool. And they're like, yeah, you know what? We do have ongoing projects. Like we would love to do this kind of 90 day trial with you and see if it works out. But we're also thinking about next quarter, dropping three white papers. We're also thinking about doing more video scripts or webinars in the future. We're also trying to do X, Y, and Z, but you got to kind of suss this information out because those high paying clients, you know, they're, they're looking for someone who asks the right questions and meets all the things that they're looking forward to. So when you're thinking about moving on into retainer category, after you've kind of sussed out the high paying part, that's another piece that adds to them being a high paying client.
So if you can get a retainer agreement with them and it's working out, you do your 90 day period, they can become a high paying client because they're long-term right. High paying. Doesn't always mean like you get the best rate, a dollar word for everything. Sometimes high paying clients mean I have longterm consistent work with someone I really enjoy working with that means, instead of it being a thousand dollar gig, it turns into a $10,000 gig, which then adds into your high paying client list. And then maybe down the road, you renegotiate your fees. Maybe you talk about, you know, more complex projects that could potentially, you would pitch a higher price for those, but those retainers, the high paying part and the potential, they kind of all fit together as one thing. So when you're talking about this ongoing work, that makes a big difference, like knowing their goals and knowing what direction they're headed and trying to figure out basically, you know, what, they're, what they're headed for.
Right? We're trying to give them get a lot of information from them to make sure that they can actually turn out to be high paying. They can be worthwhile for the investment and that they're actually a fit for us. So I know a lot of times I get these questions about, well, then, then what do you do? Right? What happens if you do this agreement and you have it for three months and it's just not working out well, the cool thing is here that since you've already worked with this client, it turns out it's not a fit. Or let's just say they're going in a different direction because that client paid you well, because that client is someone that, you know, might be in certain circles, they can refer other people your way. Like, let's say that it's not working out. They're like, Hey, I don't think it's, you know, we're changing direction, but I know that bill over at X company could actually use your help kids.
It okay. If I refer you, but the cool thing here is that we've already gotten in the big pool of high paid referrals, right? So let's say we actually work with that company.
3) Swimming in the right high-paying freelance client pools
Here's another, here's another situation. Let's say that we actually ended up working with that company for a much longer period of time, right? Let's say we're working with Cheryl. Cheryl is that ABC company. And we've worked with Cheryl for a year. We love Cheryl Cheryl rocks. And then Cheryl comes back and she's like, Oh my gosh. You know, Sam over at this company said that they are really struggling to find the right writer. Is it okay if I refer you over to them to see if you can help them? You're like, yes. Awesome. Cheryl, thank you. And Cheryl is in that circle. Cheryl's in that circle circle of referrals to get you more high-paid clients.
So this is going to give you a big piece where you're, you're going to have a pool of opportunity here again, potential. We're going back to this potential when you have those high paid clients. Oh, we got an, we got an action dog. Where are you going there? Let's see. He's just readjusting. You came back from the dog ophthalmologists the other day. Good boy, buddy. Okay. So right. So what you're doing is you're going to get on those pool of referrals, that potential for other high paying clients, that potential for really great referrals. And a lot of times people get stuck. Well, not people, but freelance writers, oftentimes freelance writers get stuck when they're trying to find these high-paid clients, because they're trying to, they're trying to get referrals from people who are never going to pay them better rates, right? If you're in the pool of 30 cents, a word or 20 cents a word, or you're in a content mill, they're operating most likely in the same circles, not every time, but much, much of the time that you're going to be working with them.
Their circle is a very different than, than a billion dollar company or a hundred million dollar company. So you want to kind of get in those circles where they can give you referrals. They have the potential to give you more work. They have the potential to grow and make more money and say like, Hey, we're, we're dedicating more to our content department. And we would love to give you more projects. So a lot of these things matter for ha for basically qualifying the potential of the high paying client. So there's a lot of things. I feel like freelance writers kind of skip along the way. It's like making that list, checking their revenue, finding companies that are creating content, doing creative things. They're moving forward, checking in with them, with an LOI, having a call to see if they actually have ongoing work, that they actually are not looking for a one-off thing, but they have a bunch of projects in plan for every quarter or they have something they're expanding into.
There is the potential for a retainer, whether that's 90 days or whether that's much longer, they have the potential to give you referrals to other people within your basically high paid pool. And then there's also the opportunity to make more money with them. Not only over the longterm, but rate raises. Like if you guys do annual rate raises, those are really, really great. And see if they'll keep working with you. Or if I know I had someone in a group the other day come back and say, Hey, they just, they wanted to raise the fee. They're paying me, wait me. I'm not really sure what I should do about that. I was like, celebrate. They're going to pay you more money. That's great. That, that means I really value work. So that's another thing that we can, we can add on there with our high paying clients. So I hope that that little piece was helpful. I'm going to hop into questions and see if there's anything in the chat. So I'm going to give you guys like a quick little pup date while I do that. So you can see where they are. Charlotte does not want to participate for some reason
Over in the corner, but while I look for
Comments and questions, I'll let you guys look at the little pup date. Very, I'm going to tell you a little story. So Barry went to the dog ophthalmologists the other day
And he well,
Hold on one second. We have a little issue. One second. Let's see if I can fix it on the fly. So Barry went to the dog ophthalmologists the other day and he has Horner's syndrome. So I learned that Horner's syndrome is basically where his eye muscle
Goals are. His
Nerve situation is messed up for his eye. So he it's really common older dogs. He is about to turn 14 and he he's about to turn 14. So it's really common basically. Like his eyeball gets a little messed up the third eyelid and some other things get droopy. But overall he's he's okay. So I've noticed that the chat is disabled. So that was my fault. I'm sorry, guys. I'm still trying to learn all this tech and software because obviously I have tech issues on my end.
4) Questions I get about high-paying freelance writing clients
So I'll fix that for next time, but I'm going to go over some of these questions that I normally have from people when it comes to identifying high paying freelance writing clients. So for the last few minutes, we'll do that. And if you guys have questions and of course like, because I disabled the chat because sometimes that happens to the best of us drop them in the, in the comments below and I will answer them.
So if you have questions from this that you couldn't answer, or couldn't ask while I'm on here, live, just drop them in the comments below and I will answer them. So for me, a lot of times when it comes to finding these potential clients, it comes down to that revenue piece. So remember it's 5 million to 50 million is kind of our butter zone right now. And that's kind of, if you're starting out, if you're someone who is a little bit more experienced and you're someone who can charge a lot more, you've been writing for a while, or you've been a freelancer for awhile, you kind of want a bump. So you want to bump to like 50 million to like maybe 500 million somewhere in there, maybe a hundred million, 200. What we want to do here is move up the chain as we go along. So if we're starting out five to 50 million is really great because they're probably doing stuff it's not so much a sole operation.
It's sometimes they have a marketing director or sometimes they have someone creating content who just needs help. But what if you, you know, if you have a lot more experience, you can move up to that, like fifth, like a hundred million, 200 million, 500 million. And that usually means they have a lot of ongoing projects, right? So let's think about some giant brand like Costco, right? They make tons and tons of money and they have a lot of different branches. They have a lot of different people working for them. They have a lot of different departments. They could be running. They have a coupon thing that comes in the mail. They have a magazine, they have emails. They have a lot of different content that goes out. And that's another option for high paying work. That means they have a lot of projects. They have a lot of options to maybe farm work out.
I know Costco magazine does because I've written for them. But there's a lot more potential there. And if you're starting out, we want to make sure that we at least are reaching out to people who have this amount. So that could be anyone really. I know that sometimes it's better to stay local when you're first starting out. But I still think that the better bet there is to actually make money, right? Like the point of us having our writing business is a bunch of different things. We're hoping to do our writing, help people with our content and make a living from it. So when you're looking at all of these different revenue, portals, basically all these different revenue, numbers, not portals, but numbers. These are going to give you a lot of different pieces to help you make decisions about who's the right fit for you.
So that's one thing is the revenue number really makes a difference. And then I'm asked a lot about like, how would you know, like how would you know that they pay, well, how would you know this, how you just don't sometimes in freelance writing, you have to deal with this uncertainty. You have to handle just not knowing, but we can put enough of a framework around these high paid clients to figure out whether or not they're actually a fit or whether or not they have the money or whether or not they have the potential to be something that we can invest our time and energy and writing and quality, you know, like stuff into. So these are just setting up the framework. So the revenue and researching the company about what they're doing, reaching out to them, having the phone call, talking them through like what they're thinking for ongoing work, having that piece.
That's the 90 day contract that matters a lot to them actually paying you longer over, over a longer period of time or higher rates, but we always have to ask. So that kind of leads me to my next kind of favorite thing for a high paying client. So I'm going to give you guys a little bit of a secret here that I've been doing for, I want to say like a few years this really changed my life a lot. So every time I get, like, I do this a lot with publications but once I learned that someone at a publication was making 50 cents and someone was making a dollar 25 at the same publication that really opened my eyes. So a lot of times when I get something back from a publication, I'll say, okay, you know, I asked about rate and they say like, Hey do you have any wiggle room in your budget to up the rate?
So this helps me, instead of starting as the 50 cents a word person, I might be starting at 70 cents a word. So when you ask them, if they have wiggle room in their budget, in their budget or wiggle room in their rate, that helps you start from a higher ground and helps you basically like negotiate higher and higher fee over time. And it also like gets you more money in the short term. So that's a little piece for publications and then businesses, same thing. So if I have a business and they say, Oh, no, we normally pay, you know, $400 for this type of work. And I'm like, man, you know, when I'm thinking about it, I think it's actually, you know, 700 or something. I go back to them and say, Hey, that's so generous. Thanks so much. I was just wondering if you had any wiggle room in your budget to up the rate on that, and it's the same thing, they can decide whether or not that works for them, they can decide whether or not they want to have the rate.
They can figure it out, you know, with other people in the finance department or whatever they gotta do, but it gives you an opportunity to ask for more money, especially if you think the work is worth more than that. Same thing when you're going into a client that you know, you feel like you've quoted them work. You've sent in a proposal and they're like, wow, you know, a thousand, there's a lot. Cause you do it for 800. Well then you kind of have to make the decision there. But if you make the decision to go to 800, remember that's cutting you down from the high paying client potential. Right? So instead of getting a thousand, which is what you may be quoted, what the work is worth, you're cutting $200. Every time you do a piece, you're cutting $200 every time this, that, or the other thing happens.
So that's a decision you'd have to make, but it does impact that high paying client potential. Maybe that's okay with you. Maybe it's a client that you really wanted to work with. Maybe it's someone that you feel like you could have a long-term relationship with. So you're okay. Cutting $200 because maybe it'll be, you know, six months worth of work or maybe a year. There's that piece, but it's always like evaluating kind of that high paying potential. Like, do they have the ability to pay professional rates? Do they have the ability to pay those long-term or are they going in a direction that's good for you working with them and their content creation. So a lot of different things there. Okay. I'm going to go back to a question I often get about high paying clients. It's also that sometimes you get these high paying clients that just aren't a fit for you.
Sometimes you really, you know, you like the work you feel like maybe you get along, but like th the there's some sort of disconnect, right? There's some sort of disconnect that you have. And sometimes it's, it's not always worth it to keep a high paying client if it's just not working out. Sometimes, you know, even if you have this high paying client and you're like, man, like I love this work, but it just seems like it's just not a fit. Like maybe my style is different than theirs, or maybe you know, there's a bunch of other things going on. Sometimes it's, it's worth it to move on. Sometimes not every high paying client or any client is going to work out for you. Just like any other job, you know, it's a lot about fit. It's a lot about feeling like you're giving value and, and that's matching what they're going for and meeting their goals.
And if you're not able to meet goals, if you're not able to kind of play in the same ballpark, well, even if they're paying you really well, sometimes that's just not a fit and it's better to, for both parties to kind of move on and find something that's a better fit. So that's another thing is that when you, even if you're getting paid well, I don't think you should ever put a high paying client or money over the fact that this isn't working. If it's a problem with it and it's just not happening and it's just not going to work out, I don't think you should ever take money and other things from that client and keep working with them. If it's just not something that's, they're not happy with and it's not going to meet their goals, I think it's better for everybody to move on and find something that's more natural gel than, than that. I'm going to give you guys one last pup day, cause I just realized that we're almost out of time. So we still have, we still have,ua bow over there. There he is. I'm going to see if I can get Charlotte in there. So you guys didn't see him.
So here you back up, can you back up so everybody can see your beautiful face? Oh, you don't want to, are you being a good girl?
She's like, I just don't want to be here right now. Please let me out. It's okay. Charlie.
Good girl. Good role. Nope. We're going to sit. Can you sit? Good girl. Good job. Good job. You're the cutest. Okay. Good girl, Charlie. All right.
I'm gonna switch back. Okay. So I know I disabled the chat on this, so I've got him flying without these questions, but so we have a couple more minutes. I'm going to give you one last little thing here so that you can use this to find high paying clients. Make sure that when you guys are doing your research for your client, that you'll, hi, Charlie. Make sure when you're doing your research to find these high paying clients that you are checking them at every step of the way, this shouldn't be a rush to make money. This shouldn't be a rush into the process where it becomes uncomfortable or it's this weird thing where,uyou're just not sure. Or like they're paying you a ton lower, but they've said they can pay you a ton lower for a long period of time. We want to match on goals.
So high paying clients doesn't just mean pricing at the beginning. Remember it means long term. So when you're talking to them, you're checking or before you ever get on the phone with them, you're checking their company. You're checking their revenue, your checking, what they're doing on LinkedIn. You're checking in how much content you're checking their website. You're checking in on all these different things. And then when you get on a call with them and talk to them, or when you have an email exchange with them, that's when you're doing your last check of like, where are you going? And what is what's happening at your company? Because you can't know, unless you talk to them, you can't figure out what they're doing, what they're thinking, how they envision the content to be what their projects even are for the future, unless you talked to them and ask them that question.
So for me, that's one of the most important things. It's not just setting yourself up for success with all the things that you can do, right? All the research, all the contracts, all of the pricing. It's not just that. It's also about figuring out their long-term goals and whether or not that's actually something for the long term for you to work with. And hopefully helps you get high paying, like them being high, paying for a retainer style agreement. So I hope this was really helpful for everybody. And uyeah. So if you guys, I'm sorry, I disabled the chat. I'm still trying to learn how all this stuff works. But if you guys have questions, feel free to pop them below in the,uin the comments and I will answer them. Unext week we have another live. It'll be at 12 central. So we'll, we'll meet back here. But,uI super appreciate everybody jumping on. I appreciate all the thumbs up. If you felt like this was helpful, make sure you like it. Make sure you subscribe. If you are confused about pricing drop below, I have the pricing guide link there, and I think you guys so much for showing up and I will talk to you next Friday. Bye.
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