Getting More Editing Business

One of the perennial challenges freelance editors face is the need to fill their schedules with client work. No client work? No bills are getting paid – and that’s a road to financial disaster. But you don’t need me to tell you that.

How to Get More Editing Business

The best way to keep your schedule filled is to keep your current clients happy. That means doing good work and responding promptly to questions and concerns. Not doing so doesn’t just risk losing a current client, but any clients that current client might have referred to you.

For example, a while back I took a class where the instructor promised feedback on our work as part of the class fee. But he never gave me feedback on my sample even after I checked in a few times over the course of several months.

That doesn’t make him evil or bad. Maybe he got overwhelmed, maybe he lost his major client and had to scramble to get a new one, maybe he was in an accident and wound up in the hospital for two months. I don’t know because he never responded. What I do know is that I would never recommend his class to anyone else.

And that’s what I’m talking about: it’s not just that I won’t take another class of his. It’s also that I’m not doing anything to spread the word about his work. And word-of-mouth is crucial for freelancers.

So: Do your work well, be transparent when you encounter a problem, and don’t ghost your clients.

Of course, just because you do all of the above doesn’t mean that you don’t need to find new clients, too. Current clients may decide to go in a different direction, close/leave the business, cut their budgets, etc. There are lots of reasons a current client may not give you more work, reasons that don’t have anything to do with you or your performance.

Because of that, you need to be on the lookout for new clients, and that means you’ll probably be trying new things from time to time.

Using Thirty-Day Tests

When I’m trying to coax new clients into the fold, I’m not always sure of the best thing to do. For example, I’ve never gotten work from a directory listing in my freelance life. Yet other people report that they have good success from directory listings.

So, what I do is give worthwhile marketing ideas a thirty-day test. That way I’m not wasting my time on efforts that won’t ever go anywhere. Even if I’m only spending thirty minutes a week on an effort that doesn’t go anywhere, that’s thirty minutes I could spend on something more productive – even just having a cup of coffee with a friend.

Here’s an example of some things I’ve tested with a thirty-day test:

• Pinterest as social media marketing. This went nowhere.
• Facebook as social media marketing. This also went nowhere.
• LinkedIn is the only social media marketing that has worked for Club Ed, so I tested how often to post. I tried five times a week, once a week, and twice a week. Once a week doesn’t get as much engagement as twice a week. Twice a week gets just as much engagement and the same number of views as five times a week, so I save myself some time and effort and just post twice a week.
• Posting on the Club Ed blog. I know from Google Analytics that organic search drives a lot of people to the Club Ed website, but I didn’t know how often to post. Originally I posted once a week. Then I tested posting twice a week. Posting twice a week gets a lot more views than once a week. Right now I’m in the middle of another test, seeing what happens if I post every weekday. At the end of the month, I’ll decide if it’s worth continuing.
• Affiliate marketing. Because word-of-mouth is one way I get a lot of students, I tested an affiliate program – actually, I tested it twice, about a year apart. Neither test was a success. Nothing happened. No one clicked through affiliate links.
• Autoresponder for newsletter subscriptions. A common marketing recommendation is that you should have an onboarding series with your newsletter subscription, so you set up an autoresponder telling the new subscriber all about your business and what they should do next, etc. This was an absolutely disaster for Club Ed. People kept unsubscribing no matter how many or how few autoresponders I sent out and no matter what they said. They wanted the weekly newsletter and that was it. I have far fewer unsubscribes now that I just send out a weekly newsletter.
• Newsletter frequency. When I started Club Ed, the newsletter went out once a month. This wasn’t enough because people would forget Club Ed existed. I tested and settled on once a week. That keeps people aware of what’s going on. More than once a week and people tend to unsubscribe.

Please note that I’m not saying you’ll get the same results I do so therefore you should post on LinkedIn twice a week. I’m saying that you should test your marketing because unless and until you do, you won’t know what’s really working and where you should focus your efforts.