I’m going to start off by actively apologizing to Eric. I was a doubting mustafa and I was wrong.
In my 10 steps to generating new business, I stated the number one key to success was to get out of your house. What ensued was a calm debate between Eric and I on whether or not you can network and build a viable client base without leaving your house through the medium of communities on the web.
My (old) stance: All REAL project deals happen offline.
Eric’s stance: Online networks are a viable source of projects.
Fast forward a few months. One of the goals of our blog was to create a place where people (including ourselves) could learn about the journey from independent contractor to entrepreneur and meet other peers in our industry. I’m surprised by how successful it’s been so far. I mean, there are 400 hundred subscribers who actually read what we have to say (thanks for coming – it means a lot to us). To top it all off, we’ve found three great contractors from our blog in the last few months.
Being the single minded dope that I am, it never occurred to me that if we are finding good people we’ve never met before through comments on our own blog, then for Tea, Eric & Naomi, the fact of the matter is that you can network online and find clients. Heck, we turn away a fair bit of projects, so maybe getting to know our crew is not a bad connection to score.
A Personal Challenge
That makes me wonder, how many of you out there have gotten good paying gigs from leaving comments on someone’s blog?
Has anyone tried that as a specific strategy? Like finding the blog for the head of user interface for Coca Cola and making friends? I’m going to think about this and give it a shot. I will report back in a few months with my experience and some tips on how I made it work, if it did. I though I was being all innovative until my Dad mentioned that people have been joining country clubs and the like for generations to meet specific people and close a sale. New space, old paradigm.
I decided to start with a bit of research and saw that Darren over at Problogger had a great post on getting your comments noticed on a popular blog. First, I need to identify my key prospects. Target for 2008, we want a gig with Adobe & a gig with Apple. I’m off to search. BTW – if you work for either of these, drop me a note and suggest some good blogs.
So, what do you all think? Is it a legitimate strategy? Success stories? What is the most you have made this way? Anyone made any significant dough – like landing a project or relationship worth over $50k?