5 Really Simple Steps To Generate Funds With Your Skills When You Are Desperately In Need Of Cash

Have you found yourself in a situation where you are really short on cash? Or you just need extra cash urgently. Not having a means to get all the money that you need can be very uncomfortable and painful, especially when you're self-employed and have a skill you should be able to leverage on.

Here are few steps you can take to get yourself out of such tricky situation.

1. Be aware of your product/service

Know what need you are providing a solution to. When You know with clarity what you have to offer, it will be easier for you to communicate it to other people the things you can help them with

2. Create a Spreadsheet of your contacts

As a creative professional, it is important to place yourself at the Top of your potential client's minds. You need to go back to the fundamentals of connecting with people one on one. If you haven't been getting opportunities, it's an indication that you haven't been connecting with enough of the right kind of people.

From your contacts spreadsheet, the following are the groups of people you should start connecting with:

Your 'Power Base': 

This group comprises of Family, Friends and Acquaintances, generally people you already know and have rapport with. You can also include people that might have provided you with a job or may know people to recommend for you. You don't really need to pitch to them at that point, just get in touch and say hi.

Past Clients: 

This group of people have shown interest in your product/service before and are likely to do so again. Also get in touch with them, say hi, but no pitching yet. If you must pitch at this point, try to be as subtle as possible.

Few people from this group may immediately have a job for you, others may not.
   
NB: On your spreadsheet, record the date of the interaction and how you did it for future reference.

3. Take advantage of social media

Social media as we all know is a very powerful tool for publicity, so you need to take full advantage of it.

First, you need to put yourself out there a lot more, share updates about yourself, make people aware of you and your product/service.

Next, you have to follow up any leads generated. Anyone that shows some kind of interest or responds to your update, follow up, get into a conversation with them, then eventually pitch your product/service. Remember to be very subtle with this, and try not to sound needy. The longer  you wait to pitch, the less likely you are to scare away that potential client/referral.

4. Job posting sites

If you don't get your desired result from the above steps, then its time to take a more aggressive approach. Try Job Posting websites like Upwork(elance), Behance e.t.c Start applying for as many as possible until you get one.

5. Advanced Search

You can take advantage of social media 'Advanced search' feature.
For example on Twitter you can search for people that are looking for your skills using keywords like this: "need" "graphics designer" "Nigeria".

These are just few thing you can do, there are so many others. These ones have proved to work, they've worked for me too.

With a little persistence and hard work you'll soon be out of that situation and be in abundance.

Based on Red Lemon Club's Video, How To Generate Funds With Your Skills When You Are Desperately In Need Of Cash