You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince or princess. Fortunately, it's not quite as difficult to find a good freelance opportunity. But there are still frogs out there.

Good freelance opportunities come from good clients with whom you have a good partnership. This is because you know what to expect from them, they know what to expect from you, and your experience with each other enables you to communicate at a deeper level of understanding. It's like twins who share their own special language.

Then there are clients with whom you've already worked and had a difficult and/or unrewarding experience. If you've had a bad experience with a client, don't expect a better experience the next time around. You might get lucky, but more likely you'll get another reminder of why you don't want to work for that client. We usually give clients like this a second chance, and we usually kick ourselves for having done so. After 2 strikes, they're out.

The challenge is learning how to tell whether a new client will be a good opportunity or a bad one before you start the first assignment. Here are some of the characteristics we look for to identify a potentially bad freelance opportunity and steer away from it.  

• The voice on the other end of the phone says, "You don't know me, but you were referred to me and I have a quick project with a crazy deadline and no budget."
• The introductory call or email comes at the end of the business day, at the end of the business week, just before a holiday weekend. Nothing wreaks more of desperation and poor planning, which are hallmarks of a bad client.
• Early on in the relationship, the new client shows no respect for your personal time by calling you or expecting you to attend teleconferences at night or on the weekend.
• The client can't tell you much about the project, and thinks that's enough for you to get started.
• "I know it's a small budget project, but we can give you a lot of them."
• Although the client doesn't know you or your work, and you don't know them or what it will be like working with them, they beat you up on your estimate.

It's better to misread a good freelance opportunity as a bad one and miss out, than to misread a bad freelance opportunity as a good one and wish you had. Best of all is to read every opportunity properly and realistically. Trust your instinct. If it looks like a frog, hops like a frog, and croaks like a frog, it's a frog.

DOLLARS & SENSE

Email is Stealing Your Money             

No surprise, we all spend a lot of time on email. Sending emails. Receiving emails. Reading emails. Writing emails. Responding to emails. Thinking about responding to emails. Acknowledging receipt of emails. Filing emails. Deleting emails. Undeleting emails. Searching for lost emails. The list goes on and on.

In many ways, email is more efficient than phone calls, teleconferences, and face-to-face meetings. But if you took the time to track the time you spend on email, you would likely be surprised at how much time it really takes out of your day. And freelances know better than anyone that time is money.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Sue Shellenbarger was shocking in the amount of time people waste on email. This is a good lesson for us freelances--whether we're the ones reading the emails or generating them. One study revealed an executive whose emails consumed more the 400 hours a week of colleagues' time. Can you imagine? Ten people working full-time, 40 hours a week, just to deal with one person's emails! Another study found a middle manager who spent so many hours on emails, he had only about 11 hours of productive time left each week to work on his core tasks. How profitable would you be if you were only clocking about 2 hours a day on paying work?

The message is clear: even smart and successful people waste a tremendous amount of their time--or other people's time--on email. For freelances, this can be a real killer, both productively and financially. So what can you do about it?

When we feel like we're not working as efficiently as we should be, email is one of the culprits we examine. It's easy to get lured into the trap, so a reality check every now and then can be a good thing. There are a few fancy programs out there that can track your email time, like VoloMetrix, but we seriously doubt any freelance can afford such as service. Instead, take note for a day or two of the time you spend on emails, even if only a few seconds at a time. Yes, it will take a few extra seconds each time to keep the record, but we think you'll be surprised when you discover how much of your time you allow email to consume.

We've been busy this year, but there's always room for more!

At the AMWA-DVC (Delaware Valley Chapter) Annual Freelance Workshop, Brian presented on a panel on the topic of Freelancing and Beyond: Panel Discussion With Veteran Writers. He also debuted a roundtable on Illuminating the Impact of the Sunshine Act on Medical Communicators.

Brian and Cyndy jointly presented a company webinar to staff medical writers around the world on Writing a Manuscript from a CSR (Clinical Study Report), which reprised a popular open session they introduced in 2013 at the AMWA 73rd Annual Conference in Columbus, OH.  

At the AMWA 74th Annual Conference earlier this month in Memphis, TN, Brian and Cyndy presented an open session on How to Use a SWOT Analysis to Rejuvenate Your Career and Better Market Your Business, and another open session for freelances on What Should I Charge?. Cyndy presented an excellent roundtable on Novel--and Low Cost--Ways to Market Your Business. 

We would love to present at your next upcoming meeting or event, so invite us!

Time to Revise Your Annual Marketing Calendar  

If you've been following us for a while or you've heard us speak, you've likely heard our marketing mantra: The time to market your business is NOT when you need the work. You need to market yourself constantly so that you have a constant flow of projects and income.  

When we were starting out we found it extremely useful to take a very organized approach to marketing. It was not something we did on the spur of the moment. We put together a plan. We identified the clients to target, the tools we were going to use (direct mail, email, etc), and most importantly, we created monthly marketing goals we wanted to achieve. Every tactic we identified had an implementation date, with no exceptions. In essence, we created a calendar filled with the marketing activities we planned to accomplish throughout the year. It was a great way to keep us focused and it was easy to see whether or not we were meeting our goals.  

We can't emphasize enough how important it is to keep yourself accountable, and we understand that for freelances and other entrepreneurs, accountability can be a challenge. You've got the demands of trying to run a business, coupled with the demands of your family and personal life. It's a lot. We know. But that doesn't get you off the hook. If you don't hold yourself accountable for implementing marketing strategies, your business will suffer.   

So right now, grab a paper and pencil, open an Excel spreadsheet, or create an old-fashioned tickler file. Go month by month and identify all of the marketing tactics you want to implement in 2015 along with implementation dates. Be realistic about what you can accomplish and by when. Now, treat these dates as deadlines, just as you would a deadline for a client.      

And don't forgot about the resource we shared in last month's issue.  The Mighty Marketer: Your Guide to Making More Money as a Freelance Medical Writer, written by our colleague Lori De Milto, is chock-full of proven marketing strategies to kick your freelance business into high gear.