Meaningful relationships create effortless rewards. So effortless you forget how miraculous they seem to others.

In your freelance blogging business — in any business — a seemingly insignificant effort may blossom into something grand, much like the growth of a garden. I’m going to show you how to step up a level in your freelancing business using complementary skills and relationship-building.

Here’s how one guest blog post landed me $1,500 per year. 

Three months and 17 e-mails.

That’s how much effort it took to get my first blogging client. I know it sounds a smidge ridiculous, but it was a worthy and important lesson in patience and persistence.

You know what the waiting’s like. Some days you can’t get it off your mind. Others, you forget about it and move on. It’s just like the wait after you send out a traditional job application: hearing little or nothing is the torturous part.

Here’s how it went down, and the lessons I learned along the way.