What
Don’t rely upon just one client, or one avenue to find work.
Continue to explore new sources of business, including different communities, platforms, recruiters, and direct client engagement.
Why
It’s important to continually review your sources of work - you might have been relying upon a single source of new business (perhaps one community has a fantastic jobs board you’re relying upon, or maybe professional referrals are working really well for you), but there’s no guarantee that’ll be fruitful for you in the long term.
Spend some time exporing new sources of work, to see if other channels and approaches are effective for you too.
It’s always useful to have a diversity of sources of new business, should one dry up.
How
1/ Make a list of the current ways you’re looking for work - perhaps identify how many projects have come via each source, what types of work you’re getting, and whether certain sources seem more valuable than others.
2/ Explore and identify a handful of new sources of work which you’ve yet to try - consider reaching into your communities to ask where others find work. This might be via a new recruiter, a new jobs board, a different freelancing platform, or adding your own outreach and sales calls.
3/ Pick just one new source of work, and give it a go for six months - see whether it provides you with some interesting opportunities, whether if fits the sort of work you’re looking for, and whether you feel it’s worth continuing to invest in that channel. Do you think it’s more or less valuable than one from your current list?
4/ Don’t try and add too many new sources at once, as you’ll struggle to keep up with checking all of them frequently - as they can often require a fair amount of time keeping on top of feeds, briefs and messages.
