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I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. There is no perfect freelance writing client, just a perfect freelance writing client for each writer. I might think that one client is awesome, but my writer buddy might have had a frustrating experience with the exact same brand. Yes, there are some things that make a client a crappy client for any writer–not paying, paying late, and indemnification clauses are a few that come to mind. And of course any client that asks you to do anything unethical should get an automatic trip to Dante’s Circles of Hell.

Beyond that, you will get a million different answers if you ask a million different writers to describe their perfect client. Yes, of course everyone wants a high-paying client. But even that means different things to different people. Some writers only work for $1 per word. Others (like myself) think that the hourly rate you earn on a project is the most important thing and aim for $100 per hour. This means that I can often make a project paying 50 cents a word work out to be $100 to $150 an hour. So honestly, a universal statement about pay is a terrible benchmark. The only benchmark related to money should be that the pay meets the individual writer’s financial goals and timeline. But I digress again…

It’s a two-way street

I once got a gig through a content agency for a print publication produced by a law firm. I loved this gig. It was high-paying, very interesting, gave long lead times, and gave me some great clips. And the editors were really nice as well. But they didn’t love me as much as I loved them. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t write in the snappy tone that they were looking for, and my work often got stuck in an endless revision loop. So even though I loved this client and the work, this client isn’t one that I would hold up as an ideal client because they didn’t feel the same about me.

It’s easy to focus on the type of clients that you enjoy, which is an important part of the equation. But it’s even more important to realize which types of clients you are most successful working with and turn them into long-term clients. That is really where you grow your business and your income because you spend less time marketing. The secret is your unique strengths and weaknesses matching up with what the client finds most important.

Knowing your strengths and weaknesses

I am the typo queen, and no matter how hard I try (including hiring a proofreader), a dropped word or typo will usually sneak through. But I am great with coming up with ideas, conducting interviews with technical people, and writing articles that translate geeky stuff into real people language. Clients that value these skills give me repeat work and tell me I am one of their favorite freelancers. And they see the trade-off of giving my stuff an extra glance despite my dropped words, because it’s worth the other skills and value I bring to the table.

Oh, and clients who often have short-term turnarounds really love me because I honestly don’t mind doing quick jobs and don’t typically charge extra (unless it’s same-day, and then there is a higher rate), and I have found the hassle to be well worth the repeat business that comes from these rush jobs. So I’ve also found that these emergency-prone clients turn into my biggest fans and longest clients. I regularly do 24- and 48-hour turnarounds for clients and have even done a same-day turnaround a few times. I write fast and enjoy the rush, so I find it a challenge.

On the other hand, clients that are extremely detail-oriented find my occasional typos annoying. This is especially true with clients that assign all the stories because I am not making their job easier with my abundance of topic ideas. And those that aren’t looking for geek-to-business translation don’t turn into long-term clients because I blend in with the other writers on other assignments.

More of the same

So, I have started using a tactic that I write about in my data analytics articles to help stores increase their revenue. The basic principle is that by using data, stores should figure out who their best customers are and then target their marketing to attract exactly these types of customers using sophisticated tech tools. The technical term is “look-alike modeling.”

This exact concept can help you figure out exactly what types of clients you should be targeting with your marketing because they are the most likely to hire you and turn into long-term clients, which is where you really make the higher hourly rates. And you don’t even need sophisticated data tools, although it does help if you have bookkeeping metrics to look back on for the past few years. But if you are like me and have a shambles of an invoicing system, then you can just eyeball it.

1. Start with a list. Go through your books and find clients that have hired you repeatedly for work over a long period of time and write down their names. And find clients that you know like your work and consider you one of their favorite freelancers.

2. Ask yourself if you enjoyed working with them. Think about each client and ask yourself if you enjoyed working for them and found the work fulfilling. Cross off any client that you hesitate to take a new project from.

3. Take the remaining clients and write down the following information about each one:

• Niches – What subjects do you write about for this client?
• Types of writing – Do you do blogging, white papers, infographics, strategy or a combination of all of them?
• Type of client – Is the client an agency, brand, hospital, nonprofit, association or university?
• Size of the company – Is the company a start-up, Fortune 500 or somewhere in between?
• Organization level – Does the client have a rigid process for working with freelancers, no process at all or somewhere in between?
• Detail-oriented – Do they expect completely clean copy or do they understand that typos happen?
• Lead time – How long does the client give you to turn around a story?
• Method of assigning – Do they ask you to pitch ideas, always assign stories or do a mixture of both?
• Involvement with client – Do you get a chance to ask questions? Are you invited to team conference calls? I do best with clients where I am part of the team and highly involved, but other writers prefer not to spend time in this way.
• Personality – Does the client have a very professional demeanor? Or are they casual and did you become friends?

4. Go through the list and find the similarities. This is your ideal client both for your needs and the type of client that values your particular mix of strengths and weaknesses.

5. Start looking for more of the same. When you market yourself, search out clients with these characteristics. Yes, some of these you won’t know right away, but you figure out a lot of them during a phone call.

What does your perfect client look like? Have you had the same experience about being more successful with specific types of clients?