Why Freelance Writers Need to Look for Partnership Clients
Partnership and having your clients refer to your work together as a partnership are the gold medal of green light clients. But how do you find these partnership clients and how do you know if they're the right fit for your business?
This week's livestream will go over why freelance writers need to seek partnership clients, attributes of partnership clients, questions to ask potential clients to figure out if they're the right partnership, how to create long-term work from partnerships, and how these types of relationships help your business in the long term.
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Why Freelance Writers Need to Look for Partnership Clients
Partnership clients. This is a really important thing when it comes to freelance writing. So that's what we're talking about today is how to figure out why you need these, these partnership clients, what that means, how to find them, how to distinguish partnership clients from like regular clients.
That's what we're talking about. And here we go. We're going to do a little pup date first, but I'm going to pull some notes so that we know exactly what we're talking about. Alright, boop. Welcoming to everybody. All right, let's do a quick pup date. Oh, as usual. Hey vez. No, welcome in. It's like I don't, I don't know why I can't get both of you on the thing at the same time.
All right. Ready buddy. Good job, Charlie. Can you show up on your skills? Good job. Good job.
Hi, Charlotte, you all. One more
good job. All right, here we go. Oop. All right. So here's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about partnership clients and we're going to, first thing we're going to talk about is why we need partnership clients. Hey Marie. Welcome in. Um, so when we're talking about partnership clients, what does that actually mean?
1) Why Freelance Writers Should Seek Long-Term Partnership Clients
So here's what that means. A partnership. Is someone who's looking for a long-term partnership. They start the conversation with you either in email or through the call that you have with them, where they say, I'm looking for a writer to partner with long-term or I were looking for the right writer for long-term help.
They say the words long-term partnership work together. Long-term some sort of combination of those things because that's really. It means that they're thinking ahead and they're using their budget in the right way. Right. It means that they're using their budget to pay for someone who they're going to, um, over a long period of time, whether that's six months or a year or multiple years to create a bunch of content that they see a ton of value in.
So they want to find the right person for that. Um, it's very different than someone who, what are you doing over there? You just being grumpy. You should try to show everybody your head wound that you got. Um, it's very different than someone who tries to interview you as if you were a full-time employee or they treat you like you're going to work under them.
Someone who's a partnership client sees value in you and talks about that value. They say like, yeah, we're looking for a writer to do X, Y, and Z. Um, and we want that writer to be able to communicate with our team. And we want you to do all these things, right? That, that those things could be brainstorming.
Those things could be consulting. Those things could be bringing ideas. They're interested in your feedback and they're interested in what you actually think. That's really important. There's a lot of times where you get clients, where they're, they only want you to be a robot to execute tasks, right. They only want you, uh, To end up, just do the type on the keyboard.
They just want you to execute. But when you find a partnership client, they're really interested in you actually using your brain, they want you to use your brain and your niche expertise and your experience as a writer and all of those different things, right? Like the, the content you've written in the past.
How did that work out? What formats. Uh, what word lengths makes sense? What types of content makes sense? How have other clients performed in this niche? Uh, what ideas do you have? Um, let's kind of brainstorm about these things. And then they also mentioned like, Hey, we want to work with you for like, we're looking for someone to work with.
Long-term like, we don't know. You know, goof around. We're not trying to, you know, test a thousand writers and like, you know, pick the cheapest one. They're looking for someone who they get along with who has the same vision and value in the content and sees like why they're doing what they're doing. Um, and they really put a lot of importance on that relationship.
They want to build a relationship with someone that's super important. So. When you're kind of looking around for partnership clients, make sure that you kind of look through, you know, their emails or you listen to them on the call. Are they talking about working together? Long-term are they talking about a partnership?
Are they, um, speaking respectfully about the content and you, they're not treating you like an underlay, like an underlying employee? Um, I feel like partnership clients sometimes. Like, it seems very mysterious, like when I was kinda coming up. Um, and I'm still coming up. Like I know sometimes I say like when I was coming up, what I mean is like my early years of freelance writing, like I'm still coming up.
I'm still there. I will forever be coming up. I will forever be working and fixing things. So in my early years of freelance writing, I remember thinking, Hey Getty, welcome it. Um, I remember thinking that like these partnership clients were so elusive, like they're just like these magic unicorns that you never find and you never figure out how to get them or where they're coming from.
Um, and the deal is that really it's about being choosy about who you get on calls with and what they actually say in their, in their emails or what they say about the project and how they talk on the call. It's really learning about reading people. And this was something that took me years to figure.
Um, and it's, it's the ability also to say no to things? Oh, no, I forgot to put my one-up. Oh, shoot. Okay. Let's put our one up. Let's put our one so we know where we are. So, um, the deal is that they say they give off all these clues as they talk to you. And there's also this piece where you have to say no to things.
Um, when you're kind of going through these things, you have to learn to say no to certain opportunities so that you can say yes to other things. And of course there is always the caveat and I've had to do this many, many times, but you have to sometimes say yes to things for the money, because you still have to pay for kibbles.
You still have to pay for these guys. You still have to deal with all their stuff. Right. You still have to put food on the table. So there's some times where you have to do. But you also have to be smart as you kind of get the work train going about what you kind of add onto the work train. Like as long as you have work coming in and your schedule is full, then you can be pickier about what you take on next.
And that's when you need to kind of look for more of these long-term partnership clients. Where's the whiteboard. I, you know, I broke out the whiteboard for my students the other day to give them a warm. Diatribe about content strategy. Uh, so maybe I'll bring the whiteboard out for, um, something else in here, but I do have the whiteboard, the whiteboard is here, here it is.
2) Attributes of Freelance Partnership Clients
I just, um, you know, I use it for diagrams. Uh, okay, cool. So let's move on to number two. And of course, if you always have questions or if you have any questions, always feel free to pop them in the chat. And, uh, I'm happy to answer them. If you're watching this later on, you can always put a comment below. I answer all the.
Um, so if you have something that you've noticed in partnership, clients like an attribute or something that you look for, make sure to pop it below, I'm always learning and interested. If you feel like this has been helpful, or you want to learn more about becoming a high-earning freelance writer, give it a thumbs up and subscribe.
All right. So two, let's talk about. Number two is attributes of these partnership clients. So one of the things that I think is super important that I haven't like that I mentioned, right. They talk about long-term goals. Um, long-term partnerships working together as a team, wanting your ideas, wanting your feedback, understanding that you have niche expertise and content expertise to bring to them.
That's the first thing I already chatted about that. Hi Shera. Welcome in share a pizza. Yeah, so, okay. Let's talk about attributes of partnership clients. So that was the first part, right? All the things I mentioned, the second part is they can clearly and specifically tell you their goals. Okay. This is really important.
Someone that you're going to form a long-term partnership with needs to be able to detail the goals that they have for the content and not just the goals like we want to get on the first page of Google like that. That's like, you know, that's a whole other can of worms, but they should be able to detail goals.
Like we would like to increase our audience. We would like to add more subscribers. Like they should be able to detail their goals. The second phase of. Is that they should already be thinking about how to do that. They should already say, well, our audience responds to this, or we've noticed for our competitors, this works for them.
They should be able to follow up those goals. Not only are they realistic goals, but they can explain why they have those goals. Right? Why do I have these goals? Why do I want to do this? Why does this make sense for our brand? Why does this make sense for our. They should have a very deep understanding of where they're going and why.
And they are looking for a partner to add to the team, to like add to the gold starness of the team. They're not looking for someone to just compute and they are able to explain that to you. So when you get on a call with them, and I know that this is kind of a thing that I harp on a bit, but for me, I used to be very scared of client calls, but after doing hundreds of them over the years, You end up learning a lot more about people from calls than you do from emails.
And now it's just zoom, right? We all get on zoom. You can read people better. You can see their tone, you can see how they talk about the project. Uh, you can see sometimes if they have a painting behind them, which has like a glass cover, if they're doing other things on their computer. That's my favorite is when I get on a client call and I see some.
Fuddy duddy going around on their computer, typing other, doing other things while we're on a zoom call. And I'm like, obvious, like this is not going to work. Um, but they can explain why, right? Like they can tell you why, what they've tried in the past. They can give you a, a very, um, detailed analysis of what's kind of going on.
There is someone who is actually trying to make a plan and figure it out. They're curious and interested. That's really important. There's a lot of times where people think their goals, like I said, like the goal is just first page of Google. Um, and that's not it like that's, that's not that's the robot function.
Okay. There's the robot function, but the goals of actual partnership clients care about the human function. They care about building an audience who will eventually buy from them. And they know that they have to earn trust and loyalty. They, they know that, um, in order, like it's not just about getting on the first page of Google because the deal is that getting on the first page of Google is fragile.
Because if, even if you get a lot of clicks, right, eventually people are gonna figure out that if your content is tracking, No, one's going to click on that anymore. So it doesn't matter what the robots are doing because people aren't going to click on content that they then realize is garbage. Like it's like a, it's like a self-fulfilling type thing.
Like even if you get on the front page, it doesn't last. The stuff that that lasts on the first page of Google is like quality stuff that people that delivers for people. So the human aspect is a really important piece. So the why goals of your partnership clients are also focused on the human parts.
Like is this content helping my audience? Is this content helping them understand our product? Is this content helping them? See the, how the, why the, what of our company understanding our brand, why we're solving their problems, how we solve their problems. And, oh yeah, it would be nice if that content moved them down the funnel, right?
The top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel called tofu, MOFU, BOFU. Top of funnel T O F O Mo. Middle of funnel. Yeah. So that's the, the next part, right? So eventually you get to the sales, but really what the focus is that they know the sales come from building trust and focusing on the humans, building the audience and creating a bunch of things that actually matter to their audience.
That's really what. So they're looking like when you're looking for attributes of these long-term clients of these partnership clients, you have to have them be able to explain these things. They have to be able to explain in depth how these things are going. And yeah, sometimes they're kind of crushing it along and you're like, oh, okay, let me see if I can fill in the gaps and like spackle some stuff here.
And then you guys kind of make a plan, but most of the time. They're coming in with a reason, like multiple reasons why they're creating certain types of content and why they need help. And what the goals are and why those goals make sense. And they can detail a lot of information to you when you kind of get these red light clients, they can actually give you much information.
That's a big problem. They kind of give you surface level garbage that doesn't actually matter. Like they're more concerned about their brand than they are about the audience. Who's going to give them the money. The brand, isn't the thing, right? It's the audience, the audience is the one who brings in the sales and subscribers and spreads the word about their great product and gives them testimonials.
Right? They're the ones who you need to cater to. Of course there is always SEO and metrics and all the other robotic things. But when you talk to a red light client, they care about only surface level stuff. Like, oh, I heard that, um, you know, we need more keywords or we need to do this. Or like now that's part of the other phase, like.
The long-term clients that really matter in an attribute is like they understand their goals and they can give you, uh, uh, uh, beautifully painted picture of what's kind of going on. So that's really important. Another attribute that I think is really important to look for in partnership clients is that you actually get along with them.
If you're going to be in a long-term partnership with someone which you should read as long-term relationship, you need to be able to have a discussion, right. You need to be able to give them feedback. You need to be able to converse with them on the same level. You need to talk on the same wavelength.
There needs to be a connection there. And you guys can, um, you know, feed off of each other in terms of creating ideas or having a conversation and you speak the same way. There's a lot of times where people sign long contracts with people that, from the very beginning, it's like this stop start uncomfortable.
Like, oh my God, like you're, you know, you're like driving on you're in a Jeep on like a Rocky hill. And you're like, what is happening? So it's kind of like that. Right. And they're, um, they, they don't take that as a sign that like, Hey, maybe this isn't gonna work. Sounds good. Let's move forward. Your, um, your relationship, your speaking and communication with this long-term client should be something like driving on a freshly paved road.
You guys should be able to understand each other and speak the same language you need to have similar kind of personalities. And even if it's, you know, the opposites may attract, you need to be at least able to be on the same wavelength about content and be on the same wavelength. How to create things, how to make things better, um, understanding of the niche, because if they come to you and say, we've noticed that our restaurant owners want to do this or like this, and you're like, huh, that's weird.
I've interviewed thousands of restaurant owners. And I haven't heard any of them talk like that. And then you mentioned that to them and they're like, no, it's this you're like, okay, well, you don't want my feed that back. This isn't good. So, this is a really important thing. Like you need to be able to communicate on the same level and real estate agents actually talk about this all the time with clients is like, you have to, you know, be on the same wavelength.
Um, and this is how you keep a relationship. Long-term right. You're on the same wavelength. You kind of, you guys like feed off each other. You can, oh. When someone throws the ball, you can catch it. If you can't catch it, you figure out a solution of how to. There's this nice back and forth that happens, but you have to be on the same kind of communication level.
This is why I harp on calls. And if anything, I feel like zoom has made that even better because now that we're on zoom, we can actually read people like reading people's body. Language is really important. This is something that I think. Um, I don't know if you kind of just like learn it over time or you can also read about it.
Of course. But for me, I read people a lot on my calls. Like I see how they sit at their computer and what they're doing and how they speak to me and how they speak about the project. And when you're on a phone call, that's different. Like when you're on a phone, You know, you can't see them, but on zoom, like I said, like I've had people where I'm on a call with them and they have like a framed picture behind them.
Right. Like they're in their house or wherever, and it has like a glass front. And so you see like a direct reflection of their whole computer screen and you see. Clicking around or answering messages, half listening to you. Like they're not taking notes, right? Like they're not on the computer and you see them have one document open where they're taking notes, like paying attention.
Right. They're clicking around. They're like one of those tabs was like Nike shoes. One of those tabs was like, um, you know, slack, one of those tabs was like email, like they're fluffing around. And that's really important. So I think for me, uh, just, you know, seeing the excitement in my clients and how they speak about it, or if someone's like leaning forward being like, oh God, when are we going to get off those meeting?
Like, you know, it's just, it's not fun. So I think for me, those client calls are really important attribute of seeing like how people communicate, how they feel about their job, how they feel about the work they're doing. How they feel about working with you or their interest in working with you? Do they perk up?
Do they get excited? Um, are they passionate about their project? There's a lot of things that I think zoom actually really helps with. And I know that freelance writers are scared to be on the phone and scared to be on zoom. And I was for the longest time, like I was so scared of every client call, I would get such bad dry mouth.
I would like cough on my calls because I had had such bad drivers. But you have to keep doing that because that's one of the best ways that you can figure out, like, is this person, are we vibing? Like, are we on the same level? Are you doing a thousand other things? Are you actually paying attention? Like, are we kind of, and these meetings aren't long, right?
They're 15 minutes. They could, they could be up to 30 minutes, but if they can't pay attention for 15 minutes, like that's a big problem. So, um, I feel like zoom is a really nice kind of thing. And yes, sometimes, like, as you get started, it's really nervous. But it's really the best way to like figure it out.
And the way that when you get on these calls to not be nervous is to focus on the other person, ask them questions, be curious and interested in what's going on with them. Don't focus on being like, oh my God, I have to have the right answer. And they're asking me all this stuff and I don't know what to do.
Don't focus on that. Be curious and interested in what they're in, in what's going on. Pretend like they're a friend over coffee and you're just chatting. That's what I kind of did to kind of help me get over, being nervous of having to be a know it all or whatever. And if they ask you something you don't know, just say, Hey, I'm not sure off the top of my head, but I'm happy to go look that up for you.
That's the way to do it. Like it's, it's I feel like a lot of times, and the writers, you know, the freelance writer, well, five students I have in the coaching students I have in, in my own experience, it's this fear of like, what are they gonna think of me? And I'm doing something wrong and they're going to know I'm nervous, or they're gonna think I'm dumb.
And it's, it's all of these things that we're worried about ourselves. But if we just get interested in our clients, it makes the zoom call really easy. And that zoom call really tells you a lot about. How this relationship is going to go. So your attributes of these clients are really important to pay attention to.
They're also positive and excited. The last thing I wanna mention is that your long-term partnerships, these people, these attributes of these long-term partnership, they should be positive and excited about working with you. They should be looking forward to the future. They should. If it's negative and hard to get them to be excited about this, like a board, it's going to be a terrible.
Um, but if you have someone who's like upbeat and looking forward and like really excited about getting started and excited to see the results and see how things work out, that's really important. So I think when you're looking for a longterm partnership clients, all of those attributes are really, really critical to kind of key in on.
3) Questions to Ask Potential Long-Term Partnership Clients as a Freelance Writer
All right. Let's do pup date. So before we go to number three, let's do a quick update on how many it looks at working out. So, um, oh Barry, you look, you too. So many decided just as like a short aside here, I've had many just to hunt bugs outside. So Charlotte likes to hunt bugs outside. So you'll see Charlotte has this.
Um, she probably has this scratch on the top of her head, um, right here. I don't know if they'll let me touch it, but like right here, she has a scratch. Um, she scrapped ourselves on our. And she's out there hunting bugs, you know, trying to get stuff. So don't worry. She's healing up just nicely. And she's doing, she's doing fine, but she's a rough and tumble.
She's a rough tumble snuggle. And she likes to go outside and jump around near the, and, and be wild. And sometimes she got, it comes in and she's got a bloody head because she's a wild animal. So we did go out there and fix it. So nobody worry. But yes, she does have a scratch on her head. Good girl. Um, and she's rough and tumble.
Like there's not, you know, we try to, we try to reel her in, but she's, she's a wild child sometimes. No buddy. Good job. Good job. Good job. All right. All right. Maria says sticky. All right, let me go back to this one. So Marie says in circle, in our wealth lab. Um, I gave them a list of questions to ask on calls and then they just showed down the list and engaged from there and it really easy.
Yeah. So this is something too, um, it's actually an expanded list, but I have a list. Um, oops, hold on. I have a list that I share here. Actually. I think I have a video that goes over. Um, to ask on client calls. So I'll link that below, but I have like an expanded list that I give my students, um, of questions to ask on calls.
And then once you kind of like get in the flow of asking those questions, the calls become more natural and it's this really nice flow of conversation where you're getting data and information and not getting lost in who thinks what have you, or if you're doing a good job or a bad job, or all those things.
So number three here. Um, I'm going to combine a couple of things, I think, right. 1, 2, 3. Yeah. So let's talk about, um, questions so that we can ask our potential clients to figure out if they're right for our business, right. This kind of goes into what Marie was saying. So I have a list of questions that we should ask just potential clients in general.
But I think when you're kind of working on longer term clients and partnership clients, you need to ask them like, what does this engagement look like to you? What is going on. So when, like, when they say long-term partnership, does that mean three months to them? Does that mean a year? Does that mean for the foreseeable future?
You need to know what that is. Hold on one second.
We need to know what that looks like. So when you're asking about that, um, you need to know, like, what does this actually look like? What does long-term mean to you? What does a partnership look like to you? How much do you expect me to contribute? Are you looking for someone to consult and brainstorm, or are you looking for someone to do something else?
Um, what does a long-term partnership mean in terms of creating content? Are you looking to create stuff every month or are you looking to create. In bulk and see how that goes. There's a lot of different ways that this can kind of turn out. So when you're asking these questions to figure out what they're kind of looking for, you kind of want details in, what does this mean to you?
Because everybody has a different definition of long-term partnership or they have a different definition of what does it mean, um, to work together in this capacity for this period of time. I think when you're kind of going into it, kind of suss it out. What are your goals? What do you want to accomplish?
How do you see us working together? Like, do you see. I don't know why you wagged for that buddy. You know, I don't know why that got away. Okay. Um, w how do you see us working together? What types of things will we work on? Um, what's kind of our process. Are we going to have meetings where we brainstorm together, or are we going to brainstorm in a Google doc?
Are we going to just execute a bunch of content and then look up and do research and see how that's going? There's a lot of different ways that we can kind of suss out what they think and what they mean. You can also ask them like, well, if you had long-term partnerships with freelancers in the past, and how did that go?
Right. And they might say something like, oh yeah, we tried Upwork and it didn't work. And you're like, oh, okay. That's why. And, um, or they can say something like, yeah, we had a long time freelancer that we worked with, but they went on to another project or they couldn't complete the work anymore. We're looking for someone else.
We worked with them for two years and then you're like, thumbs up. That sounds. Um, there's a lot of things that we want to know about past, like how did things go in the past? How are they going to go in the future? How do you see us working together? Uh, the other thing that I think is important to talk about is like, how did you find me?
Like what, what was interesting about my work or about my website or about my LinkedIn that was attractive about a long-term partnership. For me when I get on these calls, they're like, yeah, we saw you had a ton of clips in our niche of the exact things we wanted to talk about. So we knew that since you had all these things that we wanted to partner with you longterm, or you've worked with a bunch of our competitors, and we know that from your content, you know, we really like it.
Let's do this thing. Um, there's all these things that they can say to you about a partner. That are based on the things that you have online. So that's why that's another reason why with my students, right. Or even here on life, like with, with y'all is like talking about. You have to sharpen those websites.
You got to sharpen those LinkedIn. And even if you don't have a website sharpen your LinkedIn profile, because that can attract long-term partnerships. And you can say that on there, I'm looking for longterm partnerships when we work together on long-term projects. That's another thing that people can say right there.
Like I noticed that you are looking for long-term projects, uh there's people who start getting freelancers and they have no idea what that is. Um, they don't know that some freely, like they, they assume that a lot of freelancers work on short-term projects. Don't sit on her. So, so now don't sit on, um, go back to your Hobbit holes.
She was being a good girl, lay down. Good girl mini. So there's a lot of times where people assume that freelancers work on a lot of short-term basis. They don't work on long-term projects. Like they think that that's. A really tough ass because they think that by being a freelancer, you're not looking for long-term engagements like that.
You're looking for short term stuff because long-term stuff is to employee like or something. There's been weird stuff that I've been told by people think. Freelancers don't work long-term so it's okay to educate them on your LinkedIn and your website about what you're looking for and what that means.
That's totally cool. Um, and the other part is that when you get on a call with them, you can educate them about that as well. Like what longterm means, what you're looking for. Um, what types of things, you know, that, that you can talk about project wise, but I think it's important that when you're kind of going through these questions with them, that you're focusing on.
Was there something that stood out about me that I can now highlight to somebody else to get more long-term projects. So when you ask them, like, what was, you know, what did you find? Like, what was it clips? Was it, my website was in my LinkedIn. Was it how I spoke about the niche? Um, was it, what was it then you can start highlighting that stuff elsewhere so you can get more clients like them.
Let's say you ended up working with this client and they're a great client for like a year. Right. And then they're like, oh, you know, we're reassessing the. We need to pause or whatever, while you've worked with this client for a year. And since they've told you how they found you, you could have had that whole time to have all your stuff updated and have other clients come in.
Just like them. That's kind of the long-term thing too about, sorry. I keep doing that. My hair's drying and it's just like getting in my eyes. So, um, that's the other thing about long-term too, is that freelancers forget that these long-term engagements can go up to a year. But if you updated all your stuff at the beginning of your relationship, when someone immediately told you why they liked you now you have a whole year of time to capture other people just like that client that you really love.
That's really important. So when you're asking these questions, you kind of got to figure out like the route, like what's the route, how did you get here? Right? Like how did you find me? How did you get here? Um, how are we going to move forward? How do you see the goals working out? How is the content. Um, I think that there's a lot of things to just suss out as you go along, besides the basic questions of like what's the project and like w who gets a byline or is it ghostwritten?
Um, I think that this is kind of like a nice way to suss out all of these little pieces that go into a relationship with a long-term client. Um, in a partnership, these partnerships are really important. They're really important for our businesses. Um, and think about it this way. When you have these partnerships.
You end up getting a lot of other referrals to other people who operate in that circle, right? Someone else is looking for a long-term partnership. And, um, they refer, they're like, Hey, you know, um, we've loved working with you and we wanted to refer you to our colleague because they need help. And you want to swim in the circle of long-term partnerships.
You don't want to swim in the circle of like constantly having these small projects. So the more you can kind of. Change your LinkedIn and website operate in the field of long-term partnerships and make friends and buddies and relationships with these people that pays off that builds this seeds and the flowers of your business.
So that's really important. Um, let me think about if there's one other, I think there's one other question I had in mind to ask, um,
Um, oh, the business future. Okay. So when you're, um, when you're, this is the last question that I'm going to put in here. So the last question is, um, when you're thinking about your business, future, is this client aligned with your business future? So when you ask them about their goals and how they plan to put the content out and, um, what they want to do and how they want to execute, does that align with your business future?
That's a question you kind of gotta ask your. After you kind of suss out all this information from them. So like, let's say they're coming to you and saying, no, don't start that. Don't start making noise. Let's say they come to you and say like, yeah, we want to do a ton of blog posts plus this other stuff.
And you're like, oh man, I don't want to do any more blog posts. I'm so over it, like, I don't want to do anymore. It was dark. You could be evicted Charlotte. You could be evicted from this room. You want to think about whether or not you actually want to do that work, right? Like it's really important to select the projects that make sense for you.
Long-term like, if you don't want to do any more blog posts, you promised yourself you weren't going to do any more projects with blog posts. Maybe this project isn't for you. You have to align, especially if it's a long-term partnership of a year, like let's say they sign a six month agreement and then sign another six month.
Um, you want to make sure that you're both, you know, your businesses are going in the way that you planned, right? So you need to know if they're the content they're creating is going in the same direction as the business you want to create. That's really important for long-term partnerships, because if you spend a year creating stuff, that's not, what's going to help you in the future.
That's a problem. Yeah. You might've made a bunch of money, but now you're kind of stuck with, without clips that help you get to the next level. And that's kind of a problem and there's nothing wrong with making. There's nothing wrong with taking a partnership for the money and, and working on something to have your first long-term partnership and figure it out.
But you do need to have that in the back of your mind of like, is this putting me to the next level in this business? Is it taking me to a place I want to be? Is it putting me in, um, all of these areas that I want to take my business? Like maybe you're trying to move from blog posts to content strategy.
Are you actually moving there? Yes. Charlotte, would you like to share your staffs with the world? Would you like to, uh, you like to be sassy over there? You want a little on how you doing, buddy? Good job. Good girl. Good job.
Well, Charlotte. Oh, Charlotte I 5 0 1. The job you look like a small Panda today. You look like very small Panda ish right now, Charlotte. Very, we can only see half your face because in order to get Charlotte on there, it's really hard to get both of you on at the same time. Cause you guys just loved to sit so far apart that I can't, there's like plenty of room, but you guys just and rake all the blankets everywhere.
4) How to Create Relationships and Plenty of Freelance Work With a Long-Term Strategy
All right. Let's move on the last point. Last point. Um, number four, let's move on to number four. And if you feel like this has been helpful so far, given it that. If you feel like you want to learn more about building a high-earning freelance writing business subscribe, last thing, how do we actually create this long-term partnership work?
Like how do we end up propping up our businesses with this while you have to seek it out? This is something that I feel like, um, I've talked to freelance writers where they're just like, it should just arrive. Where is it? No. Now you have to plant it, water it garden, it taste like tea, you know, take care of it.
And then it grows. So that means that you're doing a bunch of things, right? Like I said, website, LinkedIn, all the places that people will find you, you're talking about. Long-term partnerships, you're talking about opportunities to work together on complicated projects for long periods of time. You're talking about changing goals over several years, you're talking about things that are relating the fact that you work with people in a long timeline.
That's really important. The other thing is that you're in the circles, you're in the circles of people who work with long-term partnerships. You see that there are other freelance writers or excuse me, other people who have worked with, excuse me, worked with them for you. Or you've seen that there's other things going on that have been percolating in their LinkedIn page or other people that they've been connected with for years, or you check their blog posts or their content it's been written by the same set of freelancers for awhile.
Like you want to be in these circles. So connect with them on LinkedIn comment on their. Um, be part of following their page, a, B, B, someone who hops in their messages and says, Hey, congratulations, I saw you got funding, or I really love this blog post, but you, someone who is in their sphere, um, that's someone like there's times when you can even follow up with someone where you're like, man, you know, like we've talked a bunch of times and you keep following up with them and then they refer you to other people and you're in the same circle.
So you want to kind of like build these relationships over time. And for me, the long-term partnerships piece takes awhile. Like it's not something that, um, you just kinda like get off the bat, you kind of want to not want to, but I've found that, um, it takes a while to kind of like, get everybody on the same bus and to fix your stuff enough, right?
Fix your website, fix your LinkedIn, to align with the people who want to have good long-term partnerships with. So I always kind of recommend that this piece of, of building relationships over time, continuing to follow up with people who have gotten back to your LOI is because I followed up with plenty of people with my LOI and they have not hired me, but they have recommended me to other people.
Cause they're like, she's persistent. Like we haven't worked with her, but she's persistent. I like her clips, blah, blah, blah. That's really, it. Uh, you want to be swimming in the sea of long-term relationships and you want to be selective about your projects. You don't want to just take on everything.
You'll get to a point in your career. And this is if you're just starting out, if you're just doing. Every freelancer, almost every freelancer I know, gets to a point in their career where they have enough work. They have work coming in. They're not making a huge pile of money, but they have enough work coming in that they can plan further ahead.
That's when you can kind of start building on these long-term partnerships and say no to certain projects because you have enough work and money. That then you can hold out for a long-term partnership project. Then once you get the long-term partnership project, now you have even more space to get another one.
And then another one. And they, they all the dominoes kind of fall together. Um, and sometimes people get lucky and they get long-term partnerships from the beginning. You know, they get a client who lasts for, you know, who works with them for the last two years. Um, or something like that. But I think that for me, what I've seen a lot of times is like you get enough work that you can actually think ahead, you start fixing all these things.
You start making it clear that you want long-term partnerships. And that you're not just like a writer for hire, like please desperately hire me now. You're like, no, I'm looking for the right people to work with. Long-term like, I'm interested in building a relationship with someone over content, right.
That stuff kind of builds on itself over time. That's really the. And those things are take long-term vision. You have to kind of see further ahead. And I've noticed that, um, and I used to do this all the time. It was like, I would only look like a few weeks, a few weeks ahead, or a month ahead. I wouldn't look three to six months ahead and say, what does my work look like?
What does my schedule look like? What does my money situation look like? That's kind of the phase you need to be in, in order to get long-term partnerships that actually make sense. You have to think further ahead, because these partnerships can last for years. Um, and the people that you're aligning with think that way.
So you need to think that way instead of being like, oh, I hope a longterm, sorry. Um, I hope a longterm partnership like lands on my desk and then I have six months of work. If your brain and your mindset, aren't thinking that way. That's not going to land on your desk. It's not going to pop in your inbox, the alignment and relationships and thought process of these longterm.
Is that you have to be in the same park. You have to be playing the same sport. And what ends up happening is if you're playing the short game and they're playing the long game, even if you get on a call with them, it can be this very uncomfortable mismatch. And then they don't, you know, they're just like, ah, you know, you're not the right fit.
You have to be thinking the same way they are and not just about the content, but about the relationship, how you run your business, how you're thinking about things moving forward. Those are all really. Yeah, small Panda. I see, you've been asking me, you making grumbled noises over there and you have a really good job.
Good job. Alright, one more. Bless you. Good job. These are nice and gentle today. Good job. Good job. All right. So as you're kind of going along here, and as you're thinking about this, think about your mindset. Think about how you're presenting yourself on the internets. Think about how you're connecting with other clients.
Because like I said, you have to have that meshing that nice relationship, that communication. And if you're on the level of like, oh my God, I need work and we need to hurry up and get this thing like that doesn't mesh with them. They are S they are slow and methodical and maybe not snail slow, but they are.
Um, analytical and methodical about what they're moving forward with. They want to move forward with the right person who is right to create this content and who is right to work with them. They're not just like hiring anybody. And if you're in this frantic mindset of like, I need to hire, please hire me.
Um, it comes off like, it's this weird mismatch that happens. And I know that's happened to me. I know I've gotten on client calls where I've been like, please, please hire me. And they're just like, no, like you have to be in alignment with. Bo Bo gets his tail wag when he gets a good idea. Yeah. Well that's when he's like rusty marbles working, we Bose at the age now that we kind of think that he's operating here, he's down here, areas high Bobo.
Bose at the age now where basically he, um, he's almost, he's 15 and a half. So we talk about his, he has like one rusty marble rolling around, like running the whole show now. Um, cause sometimes he has like a little doggie dementia situation. Um, but yeah, so anyways, um, make sure that your mindset and how you go into these relationships matches how these high-quality clients.
That was one of the biggest changes that I made when I flipped, like when I redid my website and read it by LinkedIn to match these high quality clients and how they spoke about things and how they talked about stuff that attracted more high quality clients. If you go in there and you write all these things that are just like quick turnaround, or like, I want to like hurry up and deliver for you at all these that doesn't attract them.
You have to be on the same wavelength. And they are not looking for someone to just like, you know, um, push out a ton of content. They're looking for someone to think and use their noodle and use their experience. That's really important to remember. All right. What do you think Charlotte? Oh one. So that's all the info I have on this particular topic, but.
Cool things. I did update the pricing guide. Their pricing guide has had a massive update. So if you go to mandela.com/pricing guide, and now includes not only more items for pricing, but a whole bunch of stuff on content strategy on how to talk about it, how to organize the projects. So if you go to Mandy ellis.com/pricing guide, you can get it.
You will also get weekly emails. So I send out a weekly email every week with tips and tricks. In addition to these live streams. And everybody who's a subscriber. So if you already subscribe and you already got the pricing guide from a long time ago, you're going to get the new one on Monday. It's going out in Monday's email.
Um, so that would be really exciting. I've already gotten a ton of good feedback about it. I'm very excited about it. Um, it took me a long time to actually put all these updates together and, um, I think it's really important to share, excuse me, this type of information with everybody for free is like, so we can all price our projects better.
And we can see like how the industry is changing or how things are going. And I think if I remember right, I used to have on my old pricing guide that the minimum for a blog post was a hundred bucks. I bumped that up to 200, I think, on this one, uh, because I just have been seeing more and more new writers.
Like their minimum is kind of $200 for a fit 500 or 800, 500 to 800 ish word blog posts. Um, I think that's kind of good. So anyways, uh, if you go to Mandy als.com/pricing, You can get it. And if you are already subscribed, then you will get the brand new one on Monday and it will blow your freaking mind.
I'm already says pricing guide is great. Yeah. So the other thing is my students have already gotten it. So like my students, my freelance writer, wealth lab students, my core students and my one-on-one students, a lot of them have already gotten it cause they always get stuff first. Um, and they love it and they're excited about it.
So you're going to either get it, like when you subscribe, if you haven't subscribed or you're going to get the pricing guide on Monday. Um, and, uh, yeah, I'm very excited about that. So let's see. I think that's kind of it. What do you think, Barry? You over there digging around? Oh, Larry, how are you doing?
Sad. Panda. All right. Let's do one more tree though. And then we're going to hop off. So if you feel like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about building a hiring a freelance writing business, subscribe. If you have any comments or suggestions or things, while you're watching this later on, where you're like.
You know what I ha what about this? Or have you thought about that? Always feel free to put a comment below. I always answer them. All right, buddy. Can you catch it? Alright, can you catch it? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh, no, buddy. All right. Ready? High five high five. Good job. All right. Now we've got to find the missing treadle.
Hold on. Where to go, bud.
Last.
All right, Mary, we're going to have to find it later. It's gone. It's disappeared. Well, we're going to have to find a later buddy. We'll have to dig around and see if we can find it or you've probably already ate it and maybe you forgot. All right. Ooh. Jenny's here. Hey, Jenny. Welcome in Jedi says yes. I love the new guide.
Yeah, Jenny was one of the first. Jenny asked me a question about pricing. So I answered her back and then I was like, Hey, you should have this new guy. So Jenny, um, Jenny got, got the new guide pretty was one of the first people to get it. Um, Jenny, I'm glad you're here. Thanks for hanging out. Um, okay, cool.
I think we're kind of, we're, we're ready to hop off, but um, I hope everybody has a good weekend and good luck with all your writing stuff. I hope the pricing guide helps you and I will see you next Friday, bye.
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