[M;cha31]

Jana,

Funny you should mention “Detroit” and “LA” specifically. I live in Detroit, and at one point one of my largest clients was in LA. The industries I work in (graphic design & web development) lend themselves to working remotely more than video editing or compositing might due to file size alone, but I have seen individuals run successful businesses in those areas remotely as well (i believe mk12 even started out in rural Kansas and just kept sending reels out to prospects).

Most of my clients are spread across the country from CA to NY, FL, KA and few misc others. And personally, I prefer it that way. I’d rather not spend time driving around town, going to meetings and such when I could be designing 🙂

3 things to get you started (because people love lists 🙂

(1) Network, Network, Network – Even if your area isn’t large enough to support work in your industry (what city do you live in, near?) There are tons of online forums (though none greater than the COW of course 🙂 in every field where peers and prospective clients alike lurk. In fact, your competition/peers are often a great source for work. It’s been my experience that freelancers tend to feast or famine, and when you’re swamped, it’s great to have a network of reliable, quality peers that you trust to farm work out to. Never be without your business cards, and never post in a forum without your website/portfolio contact in your sig (unless you prefer anonymity regarding anyone who might be googling you).

(2) Target Your Market – When marketing, aspire towards finding the sweet spot between being an arrow to a bulls eye and a grenade in an ocean. Persistant direct mail campaigns to a well researched short list (agencies, potential clients, past clients, leads – say 50-100 tops) has a greater potential of producing outstanding results than a more generally targeted list of 1000. It also pays to mail to less prospects more often (quarterly or more) than mailing to more prospects less often. So if you’re thinking of advertising to 1000 or more prospects once, don’t bother, it’s a waste. Mail to 50-100, 10 times instead. This, in conjunction with a useful monthly newsletter, will help maintain a presence in your current client’s mind as well as introduce you to new clients.

(3) Craigs List – know it, love it, use it at least weekly for both posting your services to and responding to ads from. Your milage will vary regarding the quality of client you garner from there. Many people are looking for handouts, or cheap work. However, there ARE definitely big name companies that post anonomously from time to time and even small ones that are well worth the time. The key here is sending out basic boilerplate emails (customizing them slightly or extremely depending on the potential of the post your responding to). I send out anywhere from 700-1000 emails a month responding to posts looking for work across the whole country in my downtime. Even when I’m busy, I still try to do it. That might sound overwhelming, but once you automate the system a bit (macros, templated emails, multiple email accounts to accomodate CL’s limit) you can typically get through it in about 1-2 long days of emailing. My success to date is about a 3-5% response rate, of which about 10% turn into actual paying clients.

So that’s my .02 (or .50 as it may be). Hope it helps.

– m;cha31
“persist @ something & the world revolves towards you”