Want to earn more money? How to find your first 3 paying clients

35 comments — written on January 21st, 2010

Maybe it’s uncouth to say, but most of the advice on earning money via freelancing is terrible.

That’s because when it comes to finding clients, typical advice goes something like this:

“YEAH! Just start blogging! Create great content and someone’s bound to come along someday!”
“Make a website and do some SEO on it so you always get free traffic!”
“Do something unique and eye-catching, like creating a viral video to get lots of viewers and show off your viral video-making skillz!”
“Go on some forums and you know, be helpful… answer questions… establish your presence and see what happens!”

Wow, I’ll just do a little SEO. It’s so easy! Then a simple viral video. Ugh, get the hell out of here.

Problem 1. Stop building complex marketing strategies for clients you don’t have. Your first goal is to get 3 clients. Do you really need a blog to do that? And notice I said 3 clients, not just 1 — that could be a fluke. Get 3. Once you have 3 clients, you’ve proven that you have a reliable base of people who’ll pay you for your services. You can test service offerings and prices on them. And now you can start with more complex marketing strategies. Remember: Skip all the fanciness and get 3 people to pay you first.

Problem 2. It makes complex marketing strategies like SEO, blogging, and viral marketing appear both easy and discrete, when in reality they’re often an excuse for you to avoid the hard work of finding actual people who will pay you for your services. Do you know how long “SEO” takes to work? Do you just start a blog, and then check it off your to-do list 5 minutes later? If you say yes to anything I just asked, I will kill you.

Generic freelancing advice tells you to do high-level – and in reality, highly complex – work that actually encompasses dozens of subtasks. Where will you be after Subtask 11? In all likelihood, you’ll have given up. Honestly, are you defaulting to high-level, almost impossible-to-finish strategies as a way of avoiding getting down to the real work?

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Getting your first client is a 2-step process that I call Locate and Communicate.

1. Locate.

Who is your exact client, and where do they go to look for a solution to their problems? Do they read magazines? Go to the grocery store? Ask their priest?
Where are people already looking for solutions to problems, and how can you make a match between them and your service?

(By the way, the 2nd option is something that anybody can do by posting and responding to ads on sites like Craigslist. Just last week, after I recommended Vin give niche guitar lessons, he posted an ad on Craigslist and got immediate responses.)

The 1st option, though, is my favorite: Identify very specific leads in your very specific target market, and figure out where they go to look for a solution to their needs.

Look, most people don’t want to buy your services. Most people think you’re ugly! But a few people might be into paying for your services. When you’re starting out, your job is to find those few people and turn them into long-lasting customers.

Here’s how you find them:

First step is to niche down your market. Do not try to find every person who uses a computer between the ages of 18-34, lives in the USA, and likes pictures of naked girls. NICHE IT DOWN. By age, location, interest, income level, and so many more options (that we will explore in detail at Earn1k.com).

Then, find out where they go to find solutions. Get in their heads:

Want to pitch to moms that blog about children? Go to The Mom Blogs and start with the ones under “Popular Blogs.”
Looking for physical or massage therapists within 50 miles of your house? Yelp should get you started easily.
What about tech startups with over $1 million in funding, with more than 10 employees, but less than 50? Here’s 100 of them.
If you want to do… large dog grooming and sitting, well there’s probably a local pet store or dog park near you where owners are all congregating just waiting for you to offer them a solution.

Listen closely. Over the last few weeks, people have been coming to my weekly video office hours saying things like, “But Ramit! I have this idea and have NO IDEA where to find customers!” My response is always calm, yet you know that anger boils closely below. “What have you done to research your audience?” Have they emailed a few people? Taken them out to lunch? Asked complementary service providers if this is a good idea? The answer is almost ...

Want to earn more money? How to find your first 3 paying clients