One of the new readers here at Avenue Z is an entrepreneur himself. After he perused this blog, he wrote a thoughtful note with some very good advice for me and other new business owners.

I asked his permission to post his note here. Please keep an eye on John Leach’s new website. I’m looking forward to how his ideas develop.

1. Don’t post
about how cheap your services are even though you need work…in fact I recommend you double whatever you
currently charge. Believe it or not, business owners like to spend a lot of
money for high quality work, and your work is high quality. You need to position yourself as the best
freelance writer available on a limited basis. I read a lot more than I write, and in a book by Michael Port called
"Booked Solid" and another book by Harry Beckwith called "You
Inc." they discuss that offering low cost services is not the way to go
and build business.

2. Join a
networking group such as BNI or LeTip. These are groups of small business owners and professionals who meet
with the sole purpose of building each other’s business. You can also look to set up your own group
without having to pay for the expense…an interesting site is meetup.com. 

3. Write some
e-books that you can give away for free…something like "How Putting Your
Business Into The Correct Words Will Bring You More Qualified Clients Than You
Can Handle" (that’s off the top of my head so don’t laugh…just something
along those lines). Show your potential
clients the benefits of using you. Maybe
you and 5-10 other writers collaborate on the book where each of you contribute.

However you do it, I think it could really help to build
an email list of potential clients.

4. Look for some
other niche markets to get you by…Real Estate agents and Mortgage Brokers are
a great target audience for personal brochures and website content, but I would
also recommend partnering with a graphic design person (they like pictures),
but to warn you…this niche is "cheap" and many agents are going
broke but if you create something great for an agent in a large office, word
will spread and you will get referrals.

5. Set up
workshops for other writers…"How To Start Your Own Copywriting
Business", or e-training classes on this topic…this is a booming
area…there are thousands who want to do what you do.