Here’s a question you’ve probably asked at some point:

Can Twitter really help me find more work, or is it just a waste of time and energy?

The truth is, Twitter can help you fill your plate with awesome freelance jobs and put more money in the bank… but maybe not the way you’re thinking.

Sure, you can seek out freelance gigs on Twitter. You can search hashtags and watch your lists like a hawk and hope that you’ll be sitting in front of your computer, staring at your Twitter feed, when your dream employer tweets, “We want to hire a freelance blogger.”

But the chances of that happening are pretty small. The chances of you noticing that a company’s hiring someone with your skills and then actually landing that gig are small not because you won’t discover those opportunities, but because a thousand other people will discover them at the same time.

That’s why rather than using Twitter as an outbound marketing tool, where you reach out to others, you should use it for inbound marketing instead, helping potential clients find you. [You like that? Tweet it!]

So how do you help people find you on Twitter, and how do you turn those potentials into paying clients? Here are a few tips: 

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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. 

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