Cold Pitching for Freelance Writers (Complete Guide)

Cold Pitching helps you get clients – fast.

Indeed – back in 2014, I started with Cold pitching. In less than a week, I got my first client.

In this resource, I’ve put together my recipe – how I do cold pitching for clients.

To this date, I’ve sent thousands of cold pitches.

Here is why you should listen to my advice.

• I work as a living Freelance Writer. I’ve been writing for 13 years now.
• I didn’t use other procedures for hunting writing assignments. Always, I’ve been using cold pitching. I have secrets to tell you.
• I’ve learned how to do cold pitching the right way possible, improve the procedure, and explore more opportunities to close writing deals.
• Needless to say, I’ve made $100K cold pitching prospective clients. If, cold pitching works for me, it can help you explore opportunities – no doubt.

Let’s proceed further.

Today, I want to share my experience. In simple words, you’re going to learn – how cold pitching works.

Cold Pitching

What is Cold Pitching?

Cold pitching involves service-based emails. In this case, reaching out to potential prospects, by sending introductory, service-based emails – is what refers to cold pitching.

Details

Freelance writers use various procedures for clients. Here is why, you should consider cold pitching.

Here – I’d like to share my experience.

Back in 2014, I started using cold pitching for clients. And, guess what – I was able to have a client in less than a week. Perfect. It works.

Let’s proceed.

Let’s address why cold pitching is the best approach.

• Busy prospects use emails. If you send professional emails, they can consider and initiate a discussion.
• In cold pitching, you have a direct communication with a prospect. There is no competition, as compared to bidding platforms – where, other people bid on the same project you do. In this case, communicating directly to a prospect helps you convert better, as compared to bidding platforms.
• Other platforms, such as Bidding sources – implement certain rules for communication. In cold pitching, you own everything – communicate freely, define conditions, talk about payments, and close deals confidently – there are no complication.
• You can keep following a cold prospect, until specifically made a mutual decision. In most cases, following up a cold prospect yields positive results.
• Cold pitching is a number game. The more pitches you send, the more possibility is to get a client. Normally, you can expect a reply each 50, 100 emails.
• In most scenarios, you can increase response rate in cold pitching. The more you send pitches to relevant prospects, the more you’re able to hear.
• And, most importantly – you can scale cold pitching. There is no problem.
• The contacts you find for cold pitching is an asset. You can reach out to the contacts, follow up, or decide to send pitches later.

Let’s discuss, if you need some requirements to start cold pitching.

Note: Cold pitching costs some money. Even, if you’re an absolute beginner, you’ll need to invest money.

Let’s discuss further.

Before starting cold pitching, let’s assume you’ve decided on the following nudges.

• You’ve decided your writing niche, industry, or subject.
• Portfolio website – you need one for cold pitching.
• You should have earned credibility as a freelance writer, such as publishing posts on relevant platforms.

Let’s proceed.

Requirements for Cold Pitching

Buy a Domain name

Buying a domain name costs $12 per year. It refers to the address of a website.

Web Hosting plan

The server space, used to store site’s files online – refers to a web hosting plan. It costs around $25 per year.

Note: The point is, you should have bought a domain and web hosting plan to proceed. To create a portfolio website, you need to have the two assets. Period.

Once you’ve bought the assets, you need to learn how to create a portfolio website.

Building a website is a technical process, remember. If you don’t know how to proceed, stop. Instead, you’ll need to ask for developers’ assistance.

It can hurt in the start. Developers cost money. If you’ve no option, let me know. I can help you build a portfolio website – personally.

Once you’ve built a site, you need to create a professional email address, the one at your domain, such as name@domain.com. Also, you need to craft an email template.

Once created, a new email address can send and receive emails. However, here is what you should consider.

Spam filters consider new email addresses suspicious. If you start sending cold pitching emails from a new address, you may sound suspicious. It can hurt domain’s reputation.

In return, your emails are not delivered to prospects’ inboxes. The emails you send are landed in spam. Problem.

Here is what you should do.

You need to perform email warm-up – a process that ensures, you can gradually increase sending emails from a new email address. It helps you gain positive reputation, in the eyes of email spam filters.

So, here is what you should do.

• Once created a new email address for cold pitching, send 1-5 emails to people you know, per day. Keep sending emails daily – 1-2 week.
• Next, you should gradually increase the number of emails you send. Let’s say, send 10-20 emails per day for the coming 3-4 weeks.
• After a month, you can start sending cold emails, not more than 20-50 per day.

Typically, warp-up process takes 3 months to build a sender’s reputation. Keep in mind.

There are automated tools for warp-up processes. If you can afford, you can spend around $30 per month for automated warm-ups.

Let’s move forward.

Process: Cold Pitching

To this line, you should have accomplished the following assets. It helps you proceed further.

• You should’ve built your portfolio website.
• Also, you should have created a professional email address. You can find an option to create an email in web hosting cPanel. Unlike free email ID, such as the one you have on Gmail, a professional, webmail address is created at domain name.
• And third – you should have an email template for cold pitching.

Let’s roll over to the next steps. Pay attention.

Step 1: Compile a list of Prospective Clients

A list of prospective clients consists of proposed or ideal clients. In this case, based on your writing niche – you should have a list of relevant prospects. Pay attention.

Compiling a relevant list is extremely important. It can help you increase response rate. The more responses you receive, the more deals you can close. So, once you’ve entered a search query in Google, collecting domains with niche keyword embedded, is the way to ensure domains’ relevancy. In the same manner, you can collect prospects’ companies in specific areas, regions, or countries. It depends – if your target prospects are based in a specific region or country.

An example of a list includes website addresses of prospective clients.

Here is how you can compile a list of prospective clients.

Google

In this case, Google SERPs can help you collect relevant prospects.

Here is what happens.

Based on your writing niche, search for a relevant topic on Google.

So, the Google SERPs should display relevant results. Perfect.

Here, the sites ranking for the topic are relevant prospects. You get the idea.

Repeat the process and collect 100, 200, or 500 site URLs. In this case, you need to have collected clean URLs – domain names.

Once you’ve collected prospects, you can proceed to the next step.

Remember, collecting sites URLs on Google SERPs, manually – is a tedious routine. Collecting 100 sites shouldn’t take more time, 30-40 minutes is normal.

In this case, here is what you can do, instead.

Scrapping Tools can help you automate collecting prospects’ sites from Google. An example of scrapping tools is Octoparse. It can help you automate collecting sites’ URLs from Google SERPs. You could also use Google Related Operator – helping you find similar companies on Google. I think – the operator has stopped working.

Keep in mind – if considering more options distract you, you should stick to the basics, manual routines.

Similar Sites Finding Tools

For example, you’d like to use a new approach, here is what you can do instead.

Specific tools help you compile a prospective list. In this scenario, Google can help you search for a source.

Once entered a URL in tool, you can see a list of relevant, similar sites. Here – collect URLs to compile a list of prospective clients. In this manner, you can enter more URLs to expand your list.

SEO Tools, Find competitors

You can compile a list of prospective clients using SEO tools.

In this case, SEO tools help you find competitors.

So, proceed and enter a relevant site – one of the sites of proposed clients. You should proceed if you’ve access to an SEO tool. In this case, Semrush can help you better find relevant prospects.

So – repeat the process and compile a list of proposed clients.

Here, the philosophy is to ask Semrush for competitor sites. You get the idea.

Note: If you don’t know how to use Tools, use Google. In this case, repeat entering relevant topics on Google, and compile a list of ideal prospects.

Company Database portals

On the Internet, you can find sites database platforms – containing data on thousands of companies online.

Examples of company databases include Beta List and Product Hunt.

In case you’re compiling a list, company database sites can help.

Log on the platforms – one by one, and search for a seed keyword, niche based. The next page can list potential companies, along with information on people working at companies.

In this case, the company database platforms can help you quickly compile a list of relevant prospects. Perfect.

Step 2: Find the Contact Information

Now, you need to find the contact information of prospective clients.

Here is what you’ll need to do.

• Pick domains one by one from the list.
• Research and find the email(s) of people working at companies, such as CEO or Marketing Director.

Here is how to proceed.

Step 1: Pick sites from the List

Pick a site from the list of prospective clients. Visit the site in Google Chrome.

Step 2: Search for information on Company Pages

Now, you need to search for the following pages – one by one.

• About us
• Team
• Contact

Visit the pages one by one and see, if you can find the contact of relevant people, such as Founder, CEO, Marketing Director, or the person responsible for content management.

Here, you can face two scenarios.

1. If you find the email address, save the data in a document. Proceed to pick the next site from the list.
2. If you find the name only, note the data and proceed further.

Tip: If possible, don’t prefer to pick emails not associated with real humans. Such emails are called generic contacts and are created for specific purposes, such as sales@domain.com. The point of impact is, sending cold pitches to irrelevant emails affects response rates. You don’t reach out to relevant people, you don’t hear a response. It can also increase email bounce rates. Also, it can increase the number of follow-up emails you’ll need to send. Perfect.

However, startups prefer to use generic emails in the start. If, for example – you’ve picked sites from company database portals, such as Product Hunt or Beta List – you can consider using generic emails. In this case, if a company is a startup, you can hear replies from generic emails.

Now – let’s suppose, you have a Founder’s name, here is what you can do.

Step 3: Use an Email Finding Tool

Create an account on Voila Norbert – an email finding tool used by professionals.

Once logged into Voila Norbert, enter the name and company address of a prospect. You can find the email address by clicking the Submit button.

Instead of Voila Norbert, you can use Hunter – one the best email finding tools online. In this case, Hunter helps you find prospects by keyword, industry, or company size. So, entering a relevant keyword in Hunter can help you list hundreds of prospective clients. Next, pick the ones you prefer, and let Hunter find the contact information. Perfect. Of course, Hunter costs money. You can also use the trial versions of Voila Norbert and Hunter. It also supports bulk search – a feature to search for multiple domains for email leads.

Note: To this line, you should’ve learned how to find prospects’ contact information. If you don’t find information on About us, Team, or Contact pages – you can skip and pick a new company URL from the list. Repeat the process for every prospect’s domain name. Period.

Tip: If – for example, you don’t find information on company pages, here is how you can leverage LinkedIn to find prospects’ names. Once you’ve found the name(s), you can proceed and use the email finding tool. Perfect.

Step 4: Use LinkedIn for Leads

First – you should’ve created a LinkedIn profile. Make sure, you’ve expanded your network.

According to LinkedIn algorithm, new accounts can’t surf LinkedIn pages freely. For new profiles, LinkedIn limits pages’ visibility.

Once you’re good to proceed, here is what you should do.

Search for the prospect’s company on LinkedIn. Here, if you find the company page, click on Team to find relevant people.

In this case, you should note and save the name(s) of relevant people.

Conversely, if you can’t see a company page on LinkedIn, search for individual profiles.

Individual profiles on LinkedIn, can help you find CEOs, Marketing Directors, or Founders.

Once you’ve found a relevant profile, note and save the name(s).

Next – you’ll need to use the email finding tool to find email IDs. Period.

In some cases, individual profiles on LinkedIn displays a prospect’s email address. Visit a prospect’s LinkedIn profile and see if you can find email.

Step 3: Start sending Cold Pitches

To this line, you should’ve found the contact information of the prospects.

Next – in this step, you can start sending cold pitching emails.

Remember, we’ve discussed to create a webmail address, a professional email address at domain. You should’ve created one. In this case, web hosting companies offer private email hosting plans, such as Namecheap – helping users host email inboxes, if the portfolio site is built on a different platform. If you don’t know what to do, consider the following points.

• Ask from the Hosting support channel, make sure you’ve learned the basics of emails.
• It would be good if you’ve built a portfolio website on the same Hosting account. In this scenario, you don’t need separate server space or private plans for email hosting.

Here is what needs attention.

Important Tip: Configure minor settings in the email inbox, such as inbox interface, font, and settings for composing new emails. Here, make sure you’ve set a name for emails – the name you’d like clients to see. It helps receivers understand who has sent an email. Also, sending a test email helps you assess email settings.

Next, you’ll need to craft an email template for cold pitches.

Here is why you should consider using a specific template.

• An email template helps you strategically convey message. It helps you better convert prospects.
• Cold pitching emails are customized. It helps prospects feel, you’ve done your home work.
• Cold pitching templates include specific sections, sections to address, why you’ve reached out, introduction, credibility, services, and a Call to Action (CTA) section at the end. In this case, the order of sections plays a key role, remember. If you make changes, you can harm the response rate.

Next, here is the sample template for cold pitching. You can make changes accordingly. However, keep in mind – if you don’t know how to craft persuasive custom emails, don’t change the emails. It can affect response rates – keep in mind.

Hi [Prospect’s Name],

I’m contacting to see if you’d like to consider a freelance writer for content creation.

I’m [name]. I’ve worked for companies similar to yours. [List some relevant companies you’ve worked for in past.]

I can help you create blog posts, resources, email content, white papers, and newsletter content.

I’d love to have a chat or appreciate if you reply.

Best regards,

[Name]

Note: If you don’t have companies you’ve worked for in past, mention the platforms you’ve published your samples on, such as LinkedIn and Medium. Also, the brackets in the email indicate, you should edit the data. Perfect.

What to do next?

To start sending cold pitches, here are the steps you’ll need to carry out for each prospect.

Log into webmail inbox. Normally, the webmail inbox is accessible at /webmail on a domain name. Ask from hosting support agents if you fail to find login URL. It happens.

• Pick prospects’ emails from the list – one by one.
• Create a new email. Use the Compose option, of course.
• Fill data in the email fields, such as To, Subject, and Email Body.
• Review the fields’ data and click the Send button.

To help you send cold pitches, much faster – automation can help you. In this case, specific tools help users send automated cold pitching campaigns, follow up emails, too. In this scenario, Wood Pecker is an example of cold emailing tools.

Also – consider using Google Sheets for relevant stats, such as dates on which you sent cold pitches. Keeping track of dates helps you send follow-up emails on time, perfect.

To this line, you should’ve learned how to send cold pitching emails.

Points to consider

There are specific benchmarks regarding cold pitching. You can’t send more emails per hour.

In this case, the email sending limits depend on a web hosting plan.

For example, depending on hosting plan, you can’t send more than 50 emails per hour.

So – here, you should have figure out, how many emails you can send from a domain-based email. Simple.

In the Hosting cPanel, you can find limits for sending emails per hour. If you couldn’t find the information, ask from hosting support channel.

Exceeding limits cause bounce emails. You will see an error, stating the mail sending limit has reached its quota. If you can’t find the stats, talk to the hosting support agents.

Second – as you send cold pitches, you can see if a prospect reply. In this case, you should remove or mark the address in the list.

It helps you stop sending emails to prospects, if you hear a reply.

In such scenarios, you can see the bounce emails – too. Bounce emails occur if an address doesn’t exist. Make changes in the list, accordingly.

Step 4: Follow up emails

If you don’t hear from the prospects, you need to send follow up emails.

What is a Follow-up email?

Follow up conversations are normal emails. If a prospect is busy, a follow up email helps to resume abandoned conversations.

In this situation, a follow up email helps you refresh conversation. If a prospect is busy, a follow up email helps a prospect remind, if they need to proceed further. Perfect.

Here is why you should send follow up emails.

• Follow up conversations help close deals. In most cases, the prospects are busy people. Even, if they need to create content, they forget to response to emails. It happens.
• To help you figure out, what’s the final status of a prospect is, you need to send follow-up emails. It helps you clarify, if a prospect is interested, busy, or inactive. It also helps to understand, if a prospect has trust issues or doesn’t like your pricing structure.

Let’s learn how to send follow up emails.

Let’s assume, you’ve sent 50 cold pitches. Now, you need to send follow-up emails to prospects who never responded.

In this case, using a specific schedule to send follow up emails is fruitful. It is called the 3-3-7 formula.

In this scenario, the digits represent days.

Here is how you should proceed.

You need to send the first follow up email, if you don’t hear a reply after 3 days of sending the opening cold pitch email. In the same manner, you’ll need to send a second follow up, if a prospect doesn’t respond after another 3 days. And, finally – you will need to follow a prospect, the last time if heard no response from him. Here, the last follow up email is sent after 7 days of hearing no response. So, for example – if a prospect is still silent, you should stop sending more follow up emails.

To this line, you should’ve understood how 3-3-7 formula to send follow up emails – works. Perfect.

Here is why you should follow 3-3-7 formula.

• The 3-3-7 formula ensures, you remind to resume abandoned conversations, without sounding spam.
• The formula helps naturally, helping you give more space to prospects if schedules are busy.
• It helps you avoid blacklisting your email. For example, some prospects may flag your emails, if you repeatedly send emails – everyday.

Next, log into email inbox – identify cold prospects who never replied, and start sending cold pitching follow-ups.

In this case, here is the email template you can use.

Hi [Name],

I’m contacting to see if you had a chance to see my previous email.

Looking to hear your thoughts.

Regards,

[Name]

Note: If you can quote the previous email at the end, it helps prospects remind and read previous conversations. The email settings can help you quote previous conversations.

Step 5: Improve the process and Repeat

To this stage, you should have learned how to send cold pitching emails. You should’ve also learned how to send follow up emails to cold prospects.

After you’ve gone through the process, here is how you should proceed further.

• You can repeat the process to reach out to more prospects. The more you repeat, the more opportunities you can unlock.
• You can learn from failures and improve the entire workflow. It helps you increase your success rate, response rate, and exposure.
• To help you save time, you can scale the process of cold pitching. For example, you can hire virtual assistance to help you compile a relevant list, find contact information, and send cold pitching emails, plus follow up contacts. Similarly, you can use premium tools to help you save time, such as Octoparse for data scraping from Google pages and Hunter for email finding. Of course, using premium tools costs money.

Conclusion

As a Freelance Writer, you should have learned how cold pitching works.

Here is what you should have understood.

• Cold pitching costs money; however, it helps you get clients fast.
• In cold pitching, manual routines cost time, such as compiling a list of prospective clients, finding their contact information, sending cold pitching emails, and finally – sending follow up emails to cold prospects.
• As described earlier, cold pitching is a number game. The success rate depends on how many emails you send. In normal scenarios, you can expect a reply after sending 50 emails. Keep in mind, a reply from a prospect doesn’t mean a “closed deal”. The more cold pitching emails you send, the more you can unlock opportunities. Perfect.

In the start, let yourself do mistakes and learn how to improve various procedures. It helps – seriously.