Five Easy Ways To Market Your Blogging Services

You’ve decided you’re now a blogger for hire.

Congratulations. Now it’s time to plan your marketing strategy. Planning is vital, because marketing can be both frustrating and boring if you don’t turn it into a process.

With a process, you can breeze along, happily ticking tasks off your To Do list and getting a sense of accomplishment, even before your marketing starts to kick in. Most marketing, both online and offline, takes around three months to show consistent results.

If you’re thinking THREE MONTHS?! Settle down. This is a good thing. Trust me, you do NOT want 100 people trying to hire you at once. You want slow and sure results.

Marketing your blogging services needs to become a pleasant daily activity, just something you tick off your To Do list. If you persist with this snail’s pace marketing, it will become a habit – and once you have a marketing habit, you’ll be a both capable small business person and a capable blogger.

So here are six easy ways to market your blogging services. Choose one method a month, or a method a week, whatever suits you.

1. Online: Internet job boards

Try the massive career boards, as well as the smaller “blog job” boards.

Your aim here is market intelligence, as well as finding prospective clients.

2. Offline: the Yellow Pages

The big benefit of contacting companies which advertise in the Yellow Pages is that these are established businesses. They’ve paid for a Yellow Pages ad, so they’re willing to spend money on promotion.

They may also be willing to hire a blogger. Which companies should you contact? Start by contacting agencies: graphic design, multimedia, marketing, and advertising. Introduce yourself to the creative director.

Then go on to contacting large companies that you feel could use your blogging services, ones which do a lot of advertising, like real estate agencies, gardening companies (wholesale and retail), financial services companies, etc.

Many, many companies do a lot of promotion and advertising: check out the junk mail in your mailbox, and contact these companies.

3. Online: Blog!

You don’t need any encouragement here, do you? Blog, and put a little “blogger for hire” notice in your sidebar.

4. Online: Find businesses which need your blogging services online

We’ve all got favorite companies. I adore many companies with whom I shop online. I’m sure you do too.

Look at these companies in a new way: as prospective clients. Check out their Web sites. Do they have a blog?

Contact the sites with a personal message. Tell your story, offer your blogging services. Keep your email message short, and don’t be upset if you get no response. I’ve been contacted by people three years after I made an initial approach.

5. Online: The out-sourcing sites online

I’m a fan of the out-sourcing sites. Many copywriters and writers aren’t. The key to these sites is to realize that they operate as auctions. If you’ve been to auctions, you know that there’s one rule: don’t get carried away. When you see something you want, set a price above which you won’t go. Then bid to your limit, never beyond.

Treat the out-sourcing sites in a similar way. No matter how low (abysmally low in many cases) others are bidding, set your own fees and stick to them. If you do this, you will be on winner on these sites.

There you have it. Five easy ways to market your blogging services. Remember – turn your marketing into a process. You will see results.

Find more on marketing your blogging services in my Blogging for Dollars ebook.

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