Today I was perusing my DanaPrinceWriting.com traffic stats for my business website and found out that someone is trying to find out what I'm doing to get my traffic.
There was a link to some keyword spy tools which I queried and could see someone wanted to know what I'm doing for PPC campaigns. Should I be flattered or threatened about this? I'm going to take it as flattery that someone might want to emulate what I'm doing to get writing work and clients. Here is what I've done to get a handful of repeat clients and how I'm getting new clients as well.
Referrals
When I got my start, two friends that were already established writers gave me loads of advice about building a portfolio and I took it. They also gave me job leads which I also took and that's how I got my start. I did a lot of networking with other writers to get leads and information and offered help and advice to them too. (Still do!) Networking with other writers was essential in helping me get my start and because of my networking I continue to grow my WAH writing business.
Job Searching
I searched forums and online job boards and subscribed to job listing blogs and applied to a lot of jobs. I still apply for the occasional writing job online but many of my gigs now come to me through people finding me and through repeat business or referrals.
SEO
I optimise myself. I am my own brand so I work to do continuous SEO on my brand so I blog, I do article directory submissions, I network and use social marketing tools and I optimise my websites for organic search engine results. It's a lot of work but is working great!
Building A Foundation
Building my business has been 2.5 years in the making and to keep momentum and continue to increase my profile and rates I need to keep doing what I'm doing. Part of being a freelance writer, blogger and internet marketing dabbler (soon to be guru as that's one of my goals) you need to continuously set goals, learn and evolve.
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4 comments:
Hi Dana,
That sounds weird. Doesn't sound like another writer though -- that's a little too advanced for most. Besides, we all know the keywords anyway... or at least can figure them out other ways more easily.
Sounds to me more like some sort of spammers looking for marketing keywords. (I don't know for sure, but I think something along those lines is more likely.)
But hey, take flattery from wherever you get it!
~Graham
Hmmmm, good points, Graham. Whatever the case, I've revealed all my "secrets" here anyway.
Dana, you should be flattered. You have a well written blog that provides some very helpful advice to emerging writers like myself. You did the best thing - you revealed your "secrets." This type of sneaky behavior is what we can expect when working virtually,unfortunately.hkn
Thanks so much for the compliment, Kimberly! That's why I do this. It's due to my finding blogs similar to what I'm doing that helped me get my start and I believe in paying it forward!
Dana
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