Elm Content

As part of my longer-term plan to stop being reliant on freelancing platforms, I've set up a website to showcase my work and hopefully start bringing in clients that way. As with accounting, I knew absolutely nothing about setting up websites or any of that stuff, so it took a lot longer than it needed to. It's all done now though, and I'm looking forward to building out a bit of a content library around writing and content marketing.

I am officially the director of my own limited company! I set it up to prevent the taxes getting complicated between my freelance and my day job. I spoke to a few friends who are accountants, then found a local one who offers relatively low monthly fees and who I clicked with on calls. I know nothing about accounting so it's hugely useful to have someone I can call with questions while I get my head around it all.

I've been working with my first customer for a little while now, so I proposed adding a few additional services and charging a little more and they went for it! I've never had to sell anything as part of any jobs, so this was a major personal hurdle for me, but I'm so pleased I went for it!

I took a few weeks after winning my first customer to make sure everything was up and running smoothly, then began pitching on Upwork again. In total, I've sent 8 proposals on Upwork and won 2 clients. I've found it helps to be selective about who you pitch - I only pitch where they want expert-level help (less price-sensitive + more willing to listen to advice) and where I have demonstrable experience in their area of expertise. I also only pitch people who are looking for a long-term working relationship.

I think I'm going to have to try and move away from Upwork in the longer term. It's great for finding people to pitch but the fees are absolutely crazy. I didn't pay too much attention initially because I was focused on getting customer feedback and validating my sales pitch, but now that I'm up and running it's really starting to bite.

I followed the approach laid out in the book 'Traction' and identified three initial approaches to experiment with: search ads, cold outreach and existing freelance platforms.

The search ads got plenty of clicks but didn't convert (I suppose I didn't know my customer well enough yet. I might revisit later), the cold outreach led to some promising conversations, but was slow going. The freelance platforms, however, took off really quickly! I sent 4 pitches for open jobs on Upwork and one converted! First distribution channel identified!

I've done some ghostwriting in the past, and in my old day job I worked a lot on in-depth reports and analysis, so why complicate things? I've decided to set up a freelance business doing ghostwriting, whitepapers and content strategy for businesses.