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Busy. Work.

October 6, 2013 //  by Terra Osterling

Working for myself as a freelancer means that I work a lot without getting paid, because I have to work to get work. And that keeps me rather busy.

I’m not complaining. I have prepared a quote every week for the last six weeks. That means I review a possible project, try to distill the project into a bullet list of deliverables, estimate what my costs would be to value the quote, and then compose all of this work into a 2 page quote document that doubles as my standard service and terms agreement.

I send it to the potential client, then cross my fingers.

Then, I turn back to the work that needs to be done, by deadline, for other quotes that have already been accepted and signed.

Getting work is very busy work, indeed.

And I haven’t even touched on how to first make the connection that results in a potential client asking for a project quote. That could mean weeks or months of relationship-building.

At the end of August I delivered the final work for a project that I had quoted at the beginning of June. I had reviewed the project with the potential client in mid-May, after calling at the end of April to follow up on a postcard I sent two weeks prior, after chatting with the potential client at a networking event in early April. A prospect that I had first met at another networking event in the fall/early winter of 2012.

When I first meet a person who becomes a client, I have no idea how we might eventually work together. I just introduce myself and start a casual business relationship that may or may not ever become a client relationship.

I find out their story, then keep in the back of my mind how I might be able to help them tell it.

Some of that is networking, which I blogged about here and here, and some of that is plain making friends.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like work. But I keep busy at it anyway.

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Category: Business of Freelance Writing, WritingTag: Business Relationships, Busy work, Change my life, Social Networking, Work quote, Writing

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