Abu Dhabi, UAE
Imagine a scenario.
Someone with serious freelancing skills, smart as a whip, begins their online career cold pitching potential clients.
Money flows in. Business is booming.
But when the money begins to trickle a few years down the road you realize something: you built nothing to drive business to you passively.
The only thing you created was a job based on pitching your business to untargeted strangers. The numbers game benefitted you up until the point fear creeps slowly but surely into the mind. The fear comes as money loss, depression, hopelessness and sometimes flat out rage.
Hey; you are really skilled. You are super smart. You even flash a work ethic envied by pack mules everywhere.
But years into your career of using your skills, intellect and work ethic to *ask people for work* as the *sole means of driving business* it appears that the jig is up.
15 Years of Blogging Reveals Patterns
I have seen this freelancer pattern repeat many times during my 15 year blogging career.
Talented, skilled, experienced freelancers in various niches make some dough before money dwindles, burnout sets in and quitting follows.
Why?
Creating a job means that all of your income depends on your:
- skills
- hard work
- talents
- experience
Re-read the prior sentence. Laser focus on the word “your”.
Unless you pitch potential clients your business dries up.
This is a job not a business. Businesses generate passive profits. Businesses net income while you sleep, vacation or run errands.
Freelancers Without Blogs Build Nothing
Did the freelancer who built their income on pitching build anything online?
Nope.
Even worse; did the freelancer who build their income on pitching build anything online that the person owned?
Hell no.
Who owns the pitch emails? Email owners. Gmail. Hotmail. Yahoo. Companies own emails used to pitch.
Who owns the freelancer’s work? Why the clients, of course. Exchange money for freelance work. Clients own the work and use what they please in whatever fashion desired.
If you build nothing they will not come and you will work a job 100% dependent on your efforts to get paid.
Blogging and Business
Imagine this scenario: a freelancer buys their domain and hosting, publishes detailed blog posts, engages in blogger outreach and potential clients visit their blog, enjoy their blog posts and hire them.
Every blog post is “forever” as long as you pay your domain and hosting bills.
Picture 100’s or even 1000’s of long-form, detailed posts populating the online realm with your freelancer name attached.
Does that sound like a job or business?
Of course you need to work intelligently, generously and intelligently during the growth phase to publish detailed content, to build strong relationships with bloggers and to trust this process during lean times.
But imagine clients flowing to you passively.
Does that line of thinking sound alien? Does it sound impossible? Do you “not have enough time for that”?
If you answer “yes” to any of these prior questions you will be like the 100’s of freelancers I’ve seen make this common error over the years.
Build a Blog to Build a Business
I own every blog post on Blogging From Paradise.
Every blog post points to my:
Whether I am flying to Thailand, sleeping, running errands offline or writing my next blog post those posts appear on:
- Medium
- Tumblr
- Scoop.it
- blogs via guest posts and blog comments
Do you see why this is a blogging business?
Business owners build something to step away from. Business owners build something that generates passive income.
Everyone else works a job for money because if you:
- stop getting paid when your work-effort stops
- own nothing online
you do not own a business.
You work a job that one claims is a business but if you do not own some online real estate it ain’t a business. It’s someone else’s business. Maybe it’s Twitter’s business, or Facebook’s business, or LinkedIn’s business or YouTube’s business. Maybe it’s Yahoo’s business, or Gmail’s-Google’s business or Hotmail’s business. Why? Each of those businesses own the web pages where you send cold pitch emails, publish sample work and engage in communication with clients. If they own it and you do not it is their business.
As for trading time for money, a freeing business is a passive income venture. Technically speaking, you can call it a business but if you cannot step away from it and make passive income what is it really? If growing the business requires your personal effort to pitch strangers to earn income and if you own none of the web pages through which you cold pitch, store your sample work and communicate with clients, does that sound like a business to you?
Ditch the freelance job, folks.
Begin a blogging business.
Well-stocked, trusted blogs send clients to you based on your:
- blog post quality
- skills
- credibility
Clients find your blog, trust your content and hire you through blog comments, email, social media and/or forums.
All you did was publish content patiently, build relationships with bloggers persistently and allow what you built to drive passive freelancing clients to you.
Imagine building something patiently and they eventually come?
Picture yourself having to turn down freelance work because you are too swamped to take on new clients?
This can and does happen folks.
Meanwhile, as you are earning exponentially increasing income years into your blogging career, the cold pitching freelancer who owns nothing and depends fully on their personal efforts to make a penny eventually earns 0 dollars, struggles, loses hope and quits, more times than you realize.
Well stocked blogs prevent freelancer burnout because instead of chasing and asking for business the clients come to you passively.
Conclusion
Everything in the online business world is mindset.
Think like an entrepreneur who builds passive business on their owned cyber real estate not an employee who trades time for money on free real estate owned by other people.
Build your blog now.
Be patient.
You will thank yourself later,
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