About that time I lost 70% of my clients

Save this in a special folder for when it happens to you...

Author

Diana Kelly Levey
November 25, 2024

Hi Freelancer,

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Two years ago, I lost the bulk of my clients that made up my income.

Why?

Budget cuts.

The implosion of the media industry and tons of tech layoffs. (Kind of joking.)

And changes in leadership that trickled down to the freelance budget and day-to-day operations.

Ya know what? It’s kinda happening again.

I just lost one anchor client and had another pause in their freelance budget.

So what did I do after this happened the first time in 2022?

Threw myself a 5-minute pity party of course. 🥳

Then, I got to work.

I cranked the volume up on my marketing efforts and found over 30 new clients.💥

A few of those lasted a few months and others are ones I'm still working with.

Some work was for one-off projects—app launches, white papers, editorial projects that changed scope when leadership pivoted, and similar projects.

And yes, a few of my new clients used up their freelance budgets by the end of the summer, or the editor got laid off, or some other money issue happened. 🤷‍♀️

(As far as I know, I didn't lose any clients due to AI but you never know...there's still time left in the year😆.)


How did I find more clients and ongoing work? 🔦

✓I stayed in touch with previous clients. (Read: Follow up! This led to projects at clients' new companies.)

✓I sent messages on LinkedIn. (Led to several clients and over $6,000 worth of work)

✓I kept posting (particularly on LinkedIn, Twitter/X and Instagram). Clients noticed and mentioned it when reaching out.

✓I attended events and followed up with contacts. (This gave me an excuse to reach out to editors and freelancers' names I saw there. It added up to over $4,000 worth of assignments.)

✓I went to specialty stores and contacted brands I found there. (It's a fun content marketing brainstorming exercise.)

✓I applied to government organizations looking for women-owned businesses.

This is all to say…

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I’ve been a professional in the freelance industry for nearly 20 years, in media for 20+.

What you might see and think a long-term career looks like is this… 📈

In actuality, it’s this…➿ 

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Gif by PortAventuraWorld on Giphy

It takes work.

We all have up and down months and years.

(And if you track the months, you might notice a pattern. For me it’s slow mid-December to February, July through mid-August).


You can do it. Be creative and innovative when finding freelance clients.

Thanks for reading!

Diana

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