How I didn’t make 10k in 1 month
Cold DM is the new cold email for client acquisition
The beginning stages of freelancing are tough. You feel like the person who willingly writes spam messages. Constantly sending the same message to your ideal clients — hoping someone replies with “sure dude here’s £2k to write my stuff. Actually what the hell, here’s £10k you deserve it dude!”
When in reality 90% of people will just ignore your message altogether. And those that do reply, either already have a marketing team or don’t understand what you do. Before you know it you’re questioning yourself:
Do I even know what I do?
I’m no magic guru, this ain’t a success story. I just started freelancing last month. Before I worked inside the comfortable world of an ad agency. Sure the hours were endless, but I got paid every month and all I had to worry about was writing.
Sadly, being a social media agency, they like to keep up with the trends. So they decided to hop on the current business trend:
#UseCovidAsAnExcuss2FireStaff.
Now I’m here at the copywriting crossroads. Take on another full-time position or go freelance? As you can guess I decided the latter.
I can’t say it’s Dog’s Bollocks though.
Here are my daily tasks:
Overcome the existential dread of failure: lying in bed until your bladder can’t take it anymore.
Eat breakfast with my girlfriend: Usually, cereal cause I’m old-fashioned
Brush teeth in the shower: Why waste water, right?
Start hunting for prospects: Mostly using google like this:
site:instagram.com “my ideal client search term”
Investigating the prospect: I only ask myself two questions, do they have money & will they hire me?
Writing a cold DM to them: yo [name] blar blar I do X to help Y grow blar blar I’ll do X for free for 1 week blar blar you interested?
Then repeating the last 3 steps until someone replies.
I’ve been doing this for just under a month. Two people have taken the free content and then ghosted me.
Another person topped that, by randomly ghosting me after saying he wants to hire me. Strange world.
The nice ones just say no.
All I can say is, you’ve got to have a sturdy backbone to go freelance. I’m still hoping someone will hire me, but my wallet is disagreeing with my current life choices and I think a part-time job is needed to pay rent etc.
I’m staying optimistic — after seeing my fair share of YouTubepreneur videos, I know I gotta keep grinding to get success. The type of grind that makes your nails snap off, leaving you looking like the girl in The Ringu movie.
Let me know your experiences going freelance, I’d love to hear any tips.
