Comments on: How Much Time Should You Spend Marketing Your Freelance Business?

By: How Much Time Do We Need to Spend on Marketing? – The Calgary Marketing Blog

Sat, 22 May 2010 20:13:50 +0000

[...] http://thewealthyfreelancer.com/2009/10/how-much-time-should-you-spend-marketing-your-freelance-busi... [...]

By: Are You Spending Enough Time to Market Your Business?

Are You Spending Enough Time to Market Your Business? — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:27:09 +0000

[...] Gandia at The Wealthy Freelancer says 10% of your time when your business is up and running should be on marketing, but that [...]

By: Ed Martin

Ed Martin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:39:13 +0000

I would think you’d need to do a lot more than 10% when you are getting started. If you’re not doing more, then you are either really lucky, really good or have a lot of downtime. But I am including sales time in this as well. It’s just a subset of marketing.

By: Ed Gandia, Editor

Ed Gandia, Editor — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:25:40 +0000

Michael – That’s right. The 10% recommendation would be for time spent working your marketing plan. Qualifying incoming leads wouldn’t count against this time. I would consider that more of a sales function than marketing.

By: Michael Scully

Michael Scully — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:18:54 +0000

One hour of marketing per day: I presume that this means one of hour initiative project work per day, and does not include the time invested in working with the response to those initiatives. Yes?

By: Ed Gandia, Editor

Ed Gandia, Editor — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:15:59 +0000

That’s a great idea, Michael. I like the consistency of that approach. By committing to working on two tactics every month without fail, you quickly develop the habit. Plus, this keeps you focused. Without it, I find that it’s easy to get distracted and try to do too many things at once (or nothing at all because you get overwhelmed).

By: It’s important to diversify « Musings from an overworked translator

It’s important to diversify « Musings from an overworked translator — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:07:02 +0000

[...] a hurricane, etc. It’s important to continually market yourself. I read a recent blog post on The Wealthy Freelancer that advocated spending 10% of your time on marketing, even when you are busy. Corinne also wrote [...]

By: Michael Temple

Michael Temple — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:59:25 +0000

I would also suggest another tactic and that is to find one or two (preferably two) activities that you will do every single month without fail. Schedule it right in with your other work and simply do it as if it is a monthly to do item. I have used this technique for years and I have had very few slow periods in almost 6 years of freelancing. One of my activities is networking. I go to my networking meeting(s)every single week without fail. It is a standing appointment on my calendar. For others that activity may be different. Whatever you choose the secret is simply doing it every single month without fail.

I would then add the 4 hours a week on top that Ed is talking about to do something I wouldn’t normally do. In fact, I am going to try that starting this week to see how it turns out.

By: Avoiding feast or famine by marketing consistently « Thoughts On Translation

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:01:04 +0000

[...] The Wealthy Freelancer just ran an excellent post on this very topic, in which the author (Ed Gandia) stressed the importance of marketing consistently. Ed advises that every freelancer block out 10% of her or his time and spend it on marketing in order to even the work flow out. He makes the excellent point that “…even when you’re slammed, getting leads you can’t pursue is good for your self-confidence, which helps you keep your fees where they should be (and even raise them in some cases).” [...]

By: Ed Gandia, Editor

Ed Gandia, Editor — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:54:31 +0000

Thanks for your comments!

Mark – Good point. The rewards are so great, that if we keep reminding ourselves of the benefits of marketing, we may do it more frequently and consistently.

Thursday – I like your idea of dedicating one hour a day to marketing. That’s very doable. Easy to carve that out in your schedule every day. And that ensures it becomes a habit much faster than saying you’ll dedicate, say, one day a month.