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Regardless of your freelancer background, you must be willing to add the roles of businessperson, marketing guru, salesperson, and financial whiz to your list of skills if you want to survive and thrive. Unfortunately, the majority of freelancers do not see themselves as businesspeople but rather as Web designers, writers, or programmers. They hit a brick wall when trying to secure projects because they have no plan for securing work other than applying. They struggle with the need to sell themselves and develop a plan of attack that will make the best use of their non-freelancing time.

This article will help you to think about your plan of attack but is, in no way, a comprehensive guide to landing freelance work. Reading this article will not guarantee you work anymore than reading a book on Mother Theresa will guarantee you the ability for infinite compassion. However, it will steer you in the right direction and give you the tools to begin revamping your approach to freelancing.

1. Create a detailed profile, resume, and portfolio that highlight your skills. Working as an independent contractor means selling yourself. For the majority of people, this is the most difficult aspect of the freelance marketplace. However, without the ability to sell yourself as a product - the best product - you won't gain any ground in this industry.

When creating your portfolio and resume, remember that you don't have to give someone your life story and detail every job you had starting with the ice cream parlor attendant position you held in 10th grade. Since you are selling yourself, take the time to create a resume and portfolio that highlight your skills and accomplishments while, at the same time, being brief. Employers are busy people and generally spend five seconds on a resume or proposal before tossing it to the side. If something doesn't catch their eye within those five seconds, it's a safe bet you won't have another chance.

2. Spend the time and personalize each proposal to the employer's needs. Employers are not only looking for someone with the skill set they asked for, they are looking for someone who is in sync with their thoughts about the project. If you send a canned response that does not speak about their project or organization, you are sending the message that you don't care or have the time to communicate with them. This lack of time or caring issue will carry over to their impression of how you will handle the project. If you can't take the time to write a personal response, how will you manage the time to complete the project?

3. Avoid communicating in the first person. Your resume and proposals are not meant to serve as an autobiography. Ultimately, employers are not interested in John Smith; they are interested in a PHP programmer with experience relative to their industry and a talent for communication across various groups. When writing any document for an audience other than yourself, avoid using the first person (I, me) and rephrase your accomplishments to reflect what you did to help XYZ company succeed in the Y2K challenge or how you managed to lower the IT budget by migrating from an outdated legacy system to Linux.

4. Focus on quality over quantity. Though it is tempting to spam employers as you feel there may be nothing to lose, spamming not only takes it toll on you by making you work hard to send out proposal after proposal, it affects your approach as well. No one can proposal-spam successfully. Eventually, all spammers resort to dry, canned responses that are, invariably, ignored by employers. This creates a lose-lose situation for both parties as you become frustrated from sending out hundreds of proposals and the employers become annoyed by receiving numerous bids that do not relate to their project. Focus on the positions that interest you the most and fit in with your skill set the best and hone your proposal to snap up those projects.

5. Develop a thick skin against rejections or the lack thereof. Securing work of any kind is a tough business. For every twenty or more proposals you send out, you may receive one response. Dealing with that type of rejection takes resilience and the more you have of it, the better off you will be in the independent contractor world.

6. Re-evaluate your approach often. Ask a friend or colleague to review your documents and your approach and give their honest opinion. Would they hire you? Though your resume and proposal text may have worked wonders last year, this year and its economy are a whole new ballgame. You need to take into consideration the changes in the marketplace and modify your attack plan to suit these changes. With the downturn in the economy resulting in fewer jobs and more applicants per job, the old "I'm your man/woman" approach likely won't work like it did in the past.

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