How availability emails can increase your income
If you're not sending them, now's the time to get started
Hi Friend,
As freelancers, we’re great at making assumptions about our clients. One of the main assumptions is that if we don’t hear from them, they must not want to work with us. Like an insecure person after a first date, we take silence as rejection.
If they don’t respond to our quote, we assume they hate our price.
If they don’t get back to us after we submit our work, we assume they hate what we produced.
If they don’t come back to us with more work after that project, we assume they hate us, our price, our work, our face, and everything we’ve ever done, and they’ll tell the world how much they hate us so no one will work with us ever again and our world will come crashing down on us so we’d better just stay away and let that sleeping dragon lie. Forever.
Just a little bit of disaster thinking in there, no?
And then the self-blaming comes in, because why would rejection appear anywhere without self-blame? The should list is as long and exhausting to get through as a reading of Moby Dick in a language you don’t know.
I should have charged less.
I should have promised more.
I should have gotten it done faster.
I should have taken more time with it.
I should have been friendlier in the meeting.
I should have communicated more.
I should have communicated less.
I should have learned mind-reading so I could anticipate all their needs and objections and do something to address them before they could reject me.
I should have accepted that pile of puppies as a client.
And so we write off non-responsive clients and potential clients as not wanting to work with us and we cut off all communication, depriving ourselves of potential future income.
Clients are people, too
Whether we like to believe it or not, clients are, in many ways, just like us. The main similarity is that they’re human, unless your client is a pile of puppies (and if that’s the case, good luck getting any cash out of them because they don’t have opposable thumbs and also don’t understand currency).
Humans get busy, overwhelmed, forgetful, and chaotic. We procrastinate. We have shifting priorities. We get distracted thinking about how fun it would be to play in a pile of puppies. We read an email, tell ourselves we’ll get back to the person, then completely forget until five years later when we clean out the 10,000 emails in our inbox and realize there’s a long list of people awaiting our go-ahead on a project.
We pre-nope ourselves
Freelancers are often so afraid of hearing “no” from a client, we tell it to ourselves on their behalf. We pre-emptively “nope” ourselves so we don’t have to face the client. We let the silence speak for them.
We tell ourselves the thing we’re afraid of hearing to prevent ourselves from actually hearing it from another person, which would confirm the thing we’re afraid of hearing. And we definitely don’t want to have that fear confirmed.
Which is kind of bananas, because aside from silence, we rarely have any evidence that the client hated us or our work. Silence is only evidence the client hasn’t reached out. Unless the client has previously said “take my silence as a no,” or they’re standing directly in front of you so you can read their body language, silence means very little.
The thing is, by assuming a “no” on their behalf, you’re walking away from potential income. Because until they’ve said “no” they’re still a potential source of income.
That’s why I send availability emails even to clients I haven’t heard from in a while.
Be okay with hearing no
If you want to successfully freelance, you’re going to have to get comfortable with hearing “no,” “no thanks,” and “not right now.” More importantly, you have to be okay with putting yourself in a position where you might hear those things, otherwise you’ll never find opportunities to earn money.
Instead, focus on making the client say no. I don’t mean harrassing them until they can’t stand you any more. That’s a terrible business model and they almost certainly will out you on social media for it. I just mean, don’t accept the first instance where they don’t respond as a definite no.
You can follow up without being pushy or aggressive. A couple of emails where you reach out doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you someone who is following up, which you need to do to be a successful business owner.
You might even be helping your clients out
Earlier this month, I sent out an email to active clients (those I am currently working with or have worked with in the past 6 months) and inactive clients (those I haven’t worked with in the past 6 months). The email was to let them know about my December availability. I let them know when I will and won’t be around for December. I also encouraged them to reach out if they have any projects they want to get started before then.
That email resulted in $3,000 worth of work from clients who had projects on the backburner but decided now is the time to get going. It also resulted in work from clients who had other content projects going but needed a bit of support. They just hadn’t taken the time to find that support—my email was the push they needed.
In one case, the client was desperate for writing support but hadn’t thought to reach out to me because the project involved a different niche than I typically write in. In response to my email, the client wrote, “Hey, I know you usually write about finance, but would you be willing to take on anything else? We have some projects we need support for in the renovation industry.”
Clients don’t necessarily think of me for all their writing projects, despite my greatest wishes. They may be used to thinking of me only in terms of case studies, or in terms of financial documents. By sending that email, I gave them a reason to consider me for projects they otherwise wouldn’t have.
That one project alone was worth around $2,000. That’s $2,000 I wouldn’t have made if I hadn’t let sent that email.
Of course, there is a “but” to this
This only works if you have people to reach out to. You can send availability emails to
Active clients
Inactive clients
Potential clients who haven’t said no to working with you (that is, they’ve been silent or let you know they’ve put the project to the side for a bit)
It won’t work to earn you money quickly if you don’t already have a bit of a client or potential client list.
Don’t send them to people who have said they don’t want to work with you (or work with you again) and those who repeatedly haven’t responded (I’d say three unanswered emails is about the maximum).
You can also post a note about your availability on social media.
Tomorrow, I’ll share my availability email templates and the situations in which I use them.
Here’s to your freelance success,
Heidi
Listen here for my (mostly word-for-word) reading of the article
A good reminder! I usually get a surge in editing clients at the start of the new year and hear from repeat ones I enjoyed working with so reaching out now is good timing.