Finding Freelance Work
As someone who recently moved to Spain from the US, I’m part of a few expat groups online, and people are constantly posting warnings such as, “Watch out! My friend didn’t get her visa renewed because she didn’t keep her private health insurance!”
The backstory: For some types of visas, you have to have private health insurance. That’s the deal. It’s clearly specified in the requirements for the visa, and you have to document it both when you apply for the visa and when you go to renew it.
If you break the rules, there are consequences. This should not be a surprise to anyone but it sure seems to shock a lot of these expats. They break the rules, they experience consequences, they complain about the consequences.
The rule about having private health insurance isn’t a suggestion. It’s a requirement of the visa.
The Marketing Requirement
What on earth does this have to do with freelance editing? Because I see this same situation play out with freelance editors.
Freelance editors, as a whole, hate marketing. (I get it; I hate marketing, too.) So they don’t market. They don’t get clients. Then they complain about not having clients.
Marketing is not a suggestion when it comes to freelancing. It’s a requirement. Sometimes people start off strong and don’t have to do much more than tell their friends they’re in business. Other people have to struggle for weeks, even months, to land their first client. But no matter how you start, at some point you’re going to be staring at an empty schedule and no clients to fill it – unless you market.
How to Find Freelance Jobs
By marketing I don’t mean taking out ads on Facebook. I mean making potential clients aware that you exist. Sometimes editors want to take shortcuts, so they sign up for a platform like Reedsy or Upwork, assuming that the work will flow into their inboxes with no further effort on their part.
That’s about as likely to happen as me winning the lottery.
There really isn’t any way to get around the fact that you actually have to interact with potential clients in order to get work as a freelancer. If you’re interested in editing for publishers, you have to interact with people at publishing companies who hire freelance editors. If you’re interested in editing for a website, a corporation, or a small business in your town – that’s right, you have to interact with the people who hire editors. If you want to edit for indie authors, you have to find out where indie authors hang out and talk to them there.
None of this is particularly hard, in the sense of figuring out how to identify who might hire you. What’s hard is actually doing it – reaching out, figuring out what to say, trying not to sound like a smarmy used-car salesperson. Urgh. I understand why you’d much rather write a profile for an editor directory and cross your fingers.
But hope is not a marketing strategy. Getting out there and letting people know you exist is.
