Ed's Expert Q+A

Describe your favorite self-promotion. Did it work?
It's a technique I call "warm email prospecting." It involves sending a very short (125 words or less), relevant and highly personalized note to a prospect. Think of it as "cold calling" with email, except you're not shooting in the dark with some generic script. You're crafting a very powerful and intriguing message based on what you know about the prospect. The idea is not to get hired from the email, but to get the prospect to reply to learn more about what you do. I've used this technique many times over the last 10 years to land profitable clients and fun projects. I've also used it to help me dig up potential project opportunities with current, past and dormant clients.

Can you tell us a little more about your Conference topic? What personal or professional experiences led you to this topic?
Many freelancers avoid marketing not because they don't see value in that activity, but because they dislike the process. And in many cases the reason they dislike the process is that they're overwhelmed with marketing advice and information. They're not sure what to do, how much to do or where to start. So they put it off... until the well dries up. But then it becomes a struggle. Anxiety sets in. And they end up taking the first things that comes down the pike—which is usually a bad project for a bad client and for too low a fee. I'm going to share some practical ideas about how to get out of this dangerous cycle. Specifically, how to simplify the marketing process, pick strategies and tactics that resonate with you and find easy to ways to motivate yourself to get your marketing done on a more consistent basis. Much of what I'll be discussing will be based on discoveries I've made and new approaches I've developed and experimented with over the last 10 years. These are ideas that enabled me to go from zero to a six-figure freelance business in 27 months.