Just back from holiday and found this excellent advice in my inbox, so I'm passing it on to you word for word. The Wealthy Freelancer is an excellent ezine - if you're interested, you can find all the details at the end of the piece, or click on the title to go direct to their website.

The Wealthy Freelancer
How Much Time Should You Spend Marketing Your Freelance Business?
Posted: 01 Oct 2009 03:00 AM PDT
It’s one of those timeless freelancer dilemmas. When you’re busy, you don’t have the time to market. Which means that when the work dries up, you have nothing in your pipeline.
So you work feverishly to find work. But prospects and clients sense the desperation in your voice (you think you’re hiding it, but they can still sense it). That only works to repel clients. Which makes you even more anxious. And so the vicious cycle goes.
What’s the solution to conundrum? Spend 10% of your work time every week on a high-impact marketing activity. Schedule that time as if it was for a client project. Schedule it every week without fail. And you’ll rarely encounter dry patches in your business.
Why 10%
Because I’ve never seen anyone else give freelancers a straight answer on this issue. And because 10% is sensible enough that anyone can do it.
If you have more time, do more. And if you have zero work and a pile of bills coming up, spend ALL of your time marketing your business. Treat prospecting as your full-time job until you get some work coming in.
But if you’re very busy and you freelance full time (say, 40 hours or so a week), then four hours a week is still doable.
Heck, even if you were absolutely slammed, you can still squeeze in four hours a week just by waking up an hour earlier Monday through Friday. Not a morning person? Then put in one more hour every evening.
And don’t just do whatever marketing activity feels right at the time. Have a plan so you don’t have to make decisions on the fly. Finally, focus your efforts on marketing activities that yield results — not just the activities you love to do.
The benefits of this “10% rule” compound very quickly. Steady effort yields steady results. This evens out your workload, eliminating much of the peaks and valleys we often experience as freelancers. And even when you’re slammed, getting leads you can’t pursue is good for your self-confidence, which helps you keep your fees where they should be (and even raise them in some cases).
What do you think: Is 10% a reasonable effort level? How do you make the time to market your business? Have you found it hard to develop such a habit? Why or why not?
——————
Ed Gandia is co-founder of The Wealthy Freelancer and author of the popular e-book Stop Wishing and Start Earning: A Low-Risk Plan to Escape 9-5 and Launch a Profitable Copywriting Business.
Tweet This Post
You are subscribed to email updates from The Wealthy Freelancer To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.
Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610