Welcome to Outright.com join us to jump into the discussion or ask a question and subscribe here to follow the community
For most freelancers, the period from Thanksgiving to the start of the new year is a slow period – clients are often too busy with the holidays to worry about marketing, publishers tend to close up as employees go on holidays, budgets are often dried up until the new fiscal year starts in January, and everyone's just sort of holding their breath until the business world reboots after New Year's Day.
But just because you have no work doesn't mean you can't – or shouldn't – be working. There's plenty a freelancer can do when work slows down, from building up new clients to starting to develop a new skill set to focusing on valuable projects that the regular rush of day-to-day business doesn't leave much time for.
1. Market yourself in new niches
While 65% of US businesses (and I assume comparable numbers abroad) end their fiscal year in December, there are several niches where that's actually quite uncommon. If you've ever wanted to work for clients in education, government, or the non-profit sector, now's a good time to start approaching them – almost all educational institutions budget from July-to-June, and many government agencies and non-profit organizations do as well. Which means they're all in the middle of their budget year and may be looking for someone to pick up some projects.
2. Go local
You may have potential clients right next door. Figure out how to find them by developing a local marketing plan. With advances in local search, it is becoming more and more practical for businesses to find freelancers that live and work nearby – and despite the online revolution of the last decade, many business people, even in big corporations, still prefer to work with people they can meet face-to-face.
One important and easy step is to register yourself on the local business listings of the major search engines: Google Local Business Center, Bing Local Listing Center, and Yahoo! Local. All of them offer free listings that tie into their mapping services, so when someone searches for nearby businesses from, say, Google Maps, you'll come up as a search result. Each performs some sort of verification (for example, Google will mail you a postcard with a code that you have to return to the site to enter, thus proving your business resides at the address given) so give yourself a couple weeks to complete the process.
3. Work for yourself
Now's the time to work on your own projects. Write a book, design a poster series, develop new promotional materials – anything that could help advance your career but that nobody is likely to commission. You'd be surprised how little time it can take to write a book, if you don't need to do any research; write two thousand words a day for a month and you've got a pretty decent-sized manuscript. Designers can show off their skills by doing a set of website themes, prototyping "gadgets of tomorrow", or creating humorous ads. I absolutely love Simon Page's International Year of Astronomy posters, which he created just to have something retro-futuristic to add to his portfolio but which ended up being adopted by the IYA committee as an official promotion.
4. Clean out your workspace
Take advantage of your downtime to clear out your dead files, replace all the books you've piled up all year back on their shelves, reorganize your supply closet, and generally get ready for a fresh start when things pick up again. You know there are things about your workspace that you've been grumbling about for months, maybe years; now's the time to roll up your sleeves and give your office the makeover it needs. For example, I just reoriented my entire office so that I wouldn't get the afternoon sun in my eyes when I was working.
5. Build your social networking presence
All those clients on vacation finally have time to pay attention to their Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts – make sure they're seeing your tweets, status updates, and LinkedIn questions and answers when they log in. Take a few minutes to scan your email address book again to see who among your contacts has joined Facebook and LinkedIn recently and send them friend/connection requests. (Make sure to fashion a short but personal message to go with each invite. The default "I'd like to add you to my network" doesn't do much to distinguish you from the crowd!) Pick at least one social network to be heavily involved in, and make sure you're feeding it good, valuable content. Nobody cares what you had for lunch (unless you're a food writer), but they may well care about your ideas of how the restaurant you ate at could make themselves more visible online.
6. Teach yourself something
Developing a new skill while buried in client work can be a daunting proposition. To take some of your "quiet time" to expand your skill set by learning a new programming language (or how to program if you don't already know how), learning the ins and outs of a new software program or latest version of an industry standard, try out a new type of writing (e.g. resumes, business plans, white papers), dig into a new artistic medium, or take marketing classes. Make sure you update your "services offered" page to reflect your newfound expertise.
7. Create a class
Teaching a course can be a great way to deepen your understanding of a topic, beef up your professional resume, network, and even find clients. While university instructors generally need advanced degrees, community colleges very often hire adjuncts to teach a course or two based on real-world experience. And university adult extensions, city recreation departments, library districts, chambers of commerce, and private instructional companies like The Learning Annex are always looking for people to lead courses or workshops ranging from one-off presentations to 6-week, 8-week, and semester-length classes. Imagine giving a presentation on local business promotion to a room full of local business people – if you do a good job, they'll all be looking for someone to help them take the next step…
8. Recharge your batteries
Freelancers don't get paid time off, so if you know things are going to be slow for a couple of weeks, it might be time to put up the "Gone fishing" sign and, well, go fishing. Or go hiking, or drive old Route 66, or hit the library to max out your library card on trashy novels. Whatever it takes to clear your mind of your workaday life and give your creative self some space to grow. After all, that was the promise of freelancing, wasn't it?
Slow for your whole network? Tweet this post!
What about you? What do you do when you hit your industry's slow period? Share your ideas in the comments!
