Cognition #17: Seven productive tips to counter Dry Spells as a freelancer

Welcome to Cognition's 17th edition!

Before we begin anything, I'm super happy and proud to announce Cognition has got its first sponsor!!

Eight months ago, I started Cognition with the aim of providing premium content for the readers and creating a monetizable funnel for my content business.

I believe I stood up to my word of premium content from edition one, and I'm glad we are now heading toward monetization too.

So here I make the big announcement!

I proudly present to you the sponsor of today's edition:

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Individuals use Fueler to create customized portfolios for various career needs like full-time, part-time, internship, or freelancing.

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Hola, readers!

If you are in your first year of freelancing, there is something you most probably face called 'Dry Spells.'

The uncertainty in freelancing is real, and dry spells are impactful enough to make you question your choice of pursuing freelancing as a full-time career.

Today's edition is all about handling such uncertainties productively.

We shall discuss: (Ugh, shall sounds veryyy formal)

1. What are dry spells?

2. 7 ways to counter dry spells

3. Non-technical aka fun segment.

What are Dry Spells?

Dry spells are the days you wait/search for projects and don't get any.

You don't have enough clients. You don't make enough money. Your family pressures you to get a 'real' job. You feel everybody around is doing well, and you question your self-worth. It breaks you.

So yeah, dry spells are horrible.

How do you counter it?

7 productive ways to counter dry spells

While your pursuit of clients continues despite the distress dry spells bring, there are a few activities you can take up to turn your time productive.

1. Create info products

You don't need to be an established freelancer to create info products.

In fact, you don't even need to create info products as a secondary source of income. It's unlikely that you make sizeable money with info products considering you're a beginner and have not built an audience yet.

But, you can document your learnings and convert them into a free info product. Or with a minimum price.

It helps you learn:

1. Product building

2. Selling

3. Marketing

It'll give you a great experience to sell and market info products once you build the audience.

Here is an example from my work:

I created a free contract template for freelancers in December 2021 when I was going through a dry spell.

I made 0$ from it, but I made 250+ freelancers download it, and at least 25 of them DMed me, mentioning how it has helped them.

The process made me understand the Dos and Don'ts of selling info products, and I'm sure these learnings will be of great value for the products I build in the future.

That's one way of productively using our free time during dry spells.

2. Be an uninvited guest, but a loveable one

I'm talking about collaborations.

Guest blogging, social media content collaborations, etc., are hyper-efficient ways to grow your audience and build your online presence in a short span.

If you're a writer, write a guest blog.

If you're a speaker, invite people to speak on live/recorded platforms.

If you're a singer, collaborate on a duet or with a band.

Be visible online. Opportunities will come to you.

3. Network like hell!

Don't want to do anything in public? Go stealth!

Focus on building strong relationships with people who you admire or find interesting.

It's not a complicated process. All you need to do is:

1. DM people, asking for a call and why you'd want to have a conversation with them.

2. Get them on a Gmeet/Zoom (Make sure the length is at least 45 minutes.)

3. And stay in touch after the call.

That's how I got to e-meet a few beautiful souls on the web:

(I should update this thread ASAP!!) 👇🏻

The best part about networking is One: You get to know sexy folks personally; and Two: Since they spoke to you, they'll have an idea of your expertise. So they might help you get out of your dry spells by referring your services to their network.

As a footnote, I'd say,

That'd be pretty badass.

4. Reassess your priorities

The reason I love free time is it allows me to reflect.

Dry spells are a phase that allows you to reflect on your career and reassess your priorities.

You can look at factors like:

1. Your working niches

2. Types of clients

3. Industries you've worked in

4. What kind of work you enjoyed the most

5. What brought you the most profits

6. Workload vs Your earnings

7. Working environment

List the aspects that are important to you, analyze the pros and cons of your journey, and then rearrange your priorities to focus on where you want to invest your energies.

5. Create Content

Most freelancers today churn out content and build their personal brands.

So if you're a freelancer who creates content, dry spells are a good time for content batching.

Create more content on how you've helped your clients, the results you brought, and the skills you developed so your content acts as a lead magnet for your freelance business.

It's always a good idea to increase client-centric posts' frequency when looking for more clients or, in this case, when going through dry spells.

6. Learn supportive skills

I don't think it's possible to survive in today's work environment by mastering your core skill.

Of course, you need to be a specialist at your core skill, but being good with supportive skills can take you places.

For freelancers,

One of the skills from content writing, copywriting, graphic designing, web development, marketing, etc., can be your core skill.

Supportive skills include communication, cold pitching, negotiation, time and task management, etc.

If you've got time, why not pick a supportive skill and improve on it?

Note: You don't always need to develop supportive skills. You can pick any skill that you're curious about—You never know, you might end up developing another core skill.

7. Diversify your portfolio

Ever wondered if you're having dry spells just because you're being monotonous in your choices?

Eventually, you'll narrow down and become a specialist in one domain. But until you find your niche, it's best to explore as many options as possible.

If you feel you are not exploring your niches, dry spells are the best time to diversify your portfolio.

Worked in SaaS? Try lifestyle.

Worked in B2B? Try B2C.

Worked in technical segments? Try non-technical.

Explore options. Increase opportunities.

The more you work in different domains, the better you understand where you belong. It makes it easier to realize where you should look for your next project.

Since you won't have clients during dry spells, you can do either mock projects or you pitch the firms you admire and offer them free work in exchange for portfolio diversification, testimonials, and experience.

I'd suggest you do free work over mock work any day.

I've explained why I push you to do free work on Cognition #7 in detail. You can read it here.

To give you a better idea, you can see how I've diversified my proof of work from different industries on My Fueler Profile.

One of my favourite things about Fueler is they have this feature called Custom Portfolio, where you can categorize your work into different segments.

For example:

Content writers can categorize their proof of work into buckets like social media posts, blogs, video scripts, newsletters, etc.

This is what a custom portfolio looks like: Click to view

Whereas the main profile looks like this: Click to view

The takeaway?

It helps you share only the relevant bucket with the prospects while pitching your services to them.

Plus, it impresses your leads as you've made a custom portfolio for them, especially without sending the same one you've sent to someone else.

Cool, isn't it?

Why don't you hop on fueler.io and explore more crazy features?

On that note, let's end the technical segment here. I hope it was full of value and insights.

Now, let's move on to our favourite part. (Idk why but the non-technical segment brings the vibe of games period in school, lol)

Non-Technical aka Fun Segment

Favourite quote from a book

Been realizing this lately. Especially with freelancing, two are things are very important: Discipline and having control over time. Money helps you get to the later.

Also, I finished reading Psychology of Money recently and like many others, I loved it too.

If you're someone who started earning recently, I'd absolutely recommend it to you. The case studies in the book are super sexy!

Movies/Shows I loved recently

Watched CBI: 5 last week. I'd say it's a one-time watch. The story is interesting, but it's a bit slow.

Originally made in Malayalam. Available on Netflix.

Here's the trailer 👇🏻

Tweets I loved

Song I’m listening to on a loop

IG reels make me listen to all kinds of songs! 😂❤️✨

This song isn't that bad, isn't it?

Reels are a blessing for the music industry. Songs from a half-decade ago are gaining views again on YouTube because most people are searching, "Oh I like the vibe of this song from the reel. Let me listen to the original."

On that note, we'll end the seventeenth edition here.

See ya next week!

Take care, stay safe, and use your dry spells productively!

Love,

Vikra Vardhan.

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