Early this year, a writer friend referred me to one of her clients who was looking for writers and I did a few posts for them. I got good feedback and the work was well-paying in an hourly rate, but the work was pretty sporadic – one blog post every few weeks. Then COVID hit and they went dark. 

All I needed was patience (and following up) 

I reached out to the client every few weeks, even to the point when I wondered if I had crossed the fine line into stalking. Sometimes I would hear back, sometimes it was just crickets. He said work was coming, but nothing came. While I didn’t obsess or count on the work, I did keep reaching out to the client. And then three weeks ago, he offered me a steady gig consisting of four posts a month for the long term with three posts a week for the next month or two. 

I worked hard on these pieces and got positive feedback. Then late last week, I got an email that the company really loved my writing and they had a lot more work for in the next three weeks. Within two hours, I had booked about $6K of work with the client for the next three weeks. 

4 tips for turning clients into anchor clients

I wrote a post several years ago about how I don’t think that you ‘land’ anchor clients, but instead you turn existing clients into anchor clients. Check out that post here. And I think that this is even more true right now during the pandemic. Clients are not going to assign a bunch of work to a writer they don’t know, so you need to land a client and then evaluate if you want the client to become an anchor client. And if you do, then you need to proactively work to turn the client into an anchor client. 

So if you are struggling to keep your assignment calendar full or just worried about next month (aren’t we all?), then look at your current and past client list for possible anchor clients hiding in your occasional client list.

1. Stay in touch and form a relationship. I am 100% convinced that if I had not followed up and kept in touch, then the client would have faded away. He was super busy with reacting to COVID and I’m sure I wasn’t at the top of his mind. But because I kept following up and checking in, then he turned to me when he had work. I honestly think that, as long as you are professional and not bugging them every two hours, clients don’t mind. In this case, I asked when to check back with him, put the date on my calendar and then showed back up in his inbox. 
2. Suggest new projects. During my follow ups, I wasn’t just bugging him for work. I proposed a few topics and sent over a podcast related to a project we had talked about. Sure, we didn’t wind up doing any of the ideas, but I think it showed my value and it also showed him one of my strengths – coming up with topics. 
3. Nail the tone. One of the biggest reasons clients hire writers for lots of projects is because they do a great job of writing in the brand voice. For some clients, that isn’t an easy feat and writers who get it right really stand out. For this client, I spent a lot of time trying to get the brand voice right. When we started working together, he told me that he wanted the blog to be more conversational and a bit more interesting that it currently was so I worked hard to write following his guidelines. And I’m fully convinced that this was the biggest reason that I got more work. 
4. Be easy to work with. So many clients tell me that so many writers are challenging to work with – they don’t meet deadlines, don’t answer emails in a timely manner and are very rigid to work with. My goal is to make my clients’ lives as easy as possible so they will hire me for future work. This means I communicate how they want to stay in touch and I write in whatever they want me to write in (Word, Google Docs, CMS). Of course, you need to have terms in place but I get a lot of clients because I try to be flexible and easy to work with. 

It’s tempting to think we need to go out and find anchor clients. I heard myself saying the same thing a few weeks ago. But as I wrote a few years ago and believe even more now after recently turning two clients into anchor clients, you don’t ‘find’ an anchor client. You turn clients into anchor clients. If you want to increase your income, start by looking at your existing clients and thinking about how you can get more assignments from clients you already like.

Have you turned an occasional client into an anchor client? Share your experience and tips.