I landed a $10,000 gig as a 6-figure freelance writer thanks to this cold email — but the real secret sauce was following up with the client

Jen A. Miller, freelance writer and author

Jen A. Miller is a freelance writer and author of "Notes from a Hired Pen: How I Made $135,000 in One Year of Freelancing."
In her whitepaper, she talks about how she gets clients — including one that made her $10,050 in 2019.
This excerpt from "Notes from a Hired Pen" offers tactics on finding clients, such as looking on job boards, sending a letter of introduction, asking for more work, being patient, and following up.
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When I started freelancing full time, I did it because my paycheck at my "regular" job bounced. I'd been freelancing on the side since college, writing stories for a college wire service, and kept it up because I thought it was fun. I was 24 years old. If I tried to do it full time and it didn't work out, I figured I could always go back to a desk job again.

That hasn't happened. For the last 15 years, I've paid my bills as a freelance writer. I've treated it like the business that it is, and I've made it work — and then some.

In 2019, I made over $135,000. A big chunk of that success came from four major clients. Here's how I found one of them to nab a gig that paid me $10,000 in one year.

How I landed client 'B2B Publisher B'

To find work in the beginning, I checked job boards on sites like Mediabistro and Craigslist on a regular basis.

This is a dicey strategy. If a freelance gig is posted on a job board, it means you're one of many applying, and a lot of these "opportunities" are for bad work at low pay.

I've stopped looking, except for in one place: JournalismJobs.com. I rarely apply for jobs, though. Instead, I'll scan through who's posting to learn about media companies I wouldn't have known about otherwise.

I still don't have a good handle on the entire B2B world, but for good reason. It's huge! The key is finding publications that match your skills. If you can write to a specific audience, you've got a heck of a lot less competition for good paying gigs than you would trying to write music reviews for your favorite national magazine.

I found B2B Publisher B (not their real name) that way: a job listing. They were looking for a full-time editor. I took the name of the publication, found the name of the parent company, and sent a letter of introduction (LOI) to the editor of their construction magazine — another area where I'd written before.

An LOI is like the email version of a cold call. Instead of pitching a specific story idea, you're pitching yourself, your skills, and your experience.

Here's that letter, which I sent on December 6, 2017:

My name is Jen A. Miller, and I'm reaching out to see if you are looking for writers for B2B Publisher B. I've been writing about construction since 2002 — in-house at L.F. Driscoll Co. in Pennsylvania to start and then with ENR and Builder after. I also have extensive experience writing for B2B publications, so I thought I may be a good fit for B2B Publisher B.

In addition to my engineering writing, I also write regularly for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Runner's World, and have a regular column for CIO.com. (I've been kicking around as a freelancer for some time!)

Below are a few samples of my relevant work:

[link 1]

[link 2]

[link 3]

[link 4]

[link 5]

[link 6]

You can also read more of my work at jenamiller.com.

Thanks for taking a look at my samples and I hope to work with you soon!

I still haven't written for the construction magazine, but that editor passed my name over to the editor who ran their channel for CIOs. That happened more than a year after I sent that initial letter of introduction. I followed up in between to make sure I stayed on that editor's radar, and when they needed someone who could write about technology, they turned to me.

I got my first assignment in March 2018. Things went well. I enjoyed the writing, which worked out to be about $200 per hour. A few months later, I brought up that I also had experience writing about supply chain because I knew they had a supply chain publication, so then I started writing for that channel. Their per-story rate is a little lower than I'm used to, but, again: no pitching required, easy revisions, and they typically pay within two weeks of invoice submission. That's a big help when it comes to maintaining cash flow. Plus, they gave writers a (cash) Christmas bonus. How nice!

Lessons learned

Job boards can be black holes, but they can also be places to learn about publications you didn't know existed. I also print out the list of American Society of Business Publication Editors' award nominees and look for new publications there, which is how I got a financial management client in 2019. So if you have an area you know well or you're interested in, I guarantee a niche magazine exists for it. These magazines are real: QSR for the quick service restaurant industry, Trainer Magazine for horse trainers, and Weighted Blanket Guides Magazine for, well, users of weighted blankets (I know this one because the editor found me on LinkedIn). Are these magazines hiring writers? Send them an LOI to find out.
LOIs are a powerful tool. A lot of B2B publications don't take pitches, but they do need skilled and proven writers. In many cases, a simple email with clips is enough.
Follow up. It took more than a year for me to go from sending that LOI to an assignment. Just because someone doesn't respond to your email right away doesn't mean they won't hire you. I've gotten work more than two years after sending an LOI. I consider sending LOIs like planting seeds. Following up is giving those seeds water.