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Seriously, I've landed projects from referrals, from answering online ads, even from participating in a focus group. That's right. A few years ago, when business was slow, I attended a focus group for people who had recently bought a new TV online (I qualified thanks to my then boyfriend prodding me to upgrade on Black Friday). If I remember correctly, we were paid with $25 cash and a nice spread of snacks.
They showed us their new electronics website and asked our opinion on colors, logos, fonts, and other features. I, of course, honed in on the copy. Why didn't their tagline express what they were really about? How about something more like ______? As soon as I'd blurted out a new tagline, I realized I shouldn't have given it away so cheaply. So the next day, I emailed my contact at the company saying how much I enjoyed the focus group and "oh, by the way, in case you need any more copy for your website, I happen to be a freelance copywriter." He hired me to write a few blog posts. Not a huge project, but it just goes to show that you can find clients virtually anywhere.
What is your most unusual "how I landed a client" story? Or how did you find your favorite project?
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Comments
06.02.10
When I was a little kid, I did karate. My family moved away, and 15 years later I moved back to where we'd lived when I was young. I got a job at a bar, and randomly one day my old karate instructor came in for lunch. He recognized me immediately and told me to come by the old school, where he offered me a job as a karate instructor. I declined, because I don't want to work nights. So he asked what I would want to do, and when I said "well, I'm a writer now" he responded that he'd recently become the head of a professional association for martial arts instructors, and that they had two internal and one external publication that they needed a writer for. And that's how I became the news writer for Martial Arts Professional Magazine. :)
06.03.10
I applied for a job as a writer a year or so after I'd started blogging. They asked for more samples, I sent more. They asked for more, I sent more. I told them I could do this all day, that thanks to the blog I had basically unlimited samples I could send in.
I was hired a week later.
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