Even if you’ve been freelancing for years, there are always going to be times when business hits a lull. Nothing to do with the quality of your work or the satisfaction of your clients—for some reason, be it the economy or the phases of the moon, clients come and go, often with no explanation. When you start to see a decrease in your workload and you start feeling like you have too much time on your hands and not enough cash to buy a burrito, it may be time to look in to new avenues of client-finding—or maybe just try and remember some of the tricks you might have forgotten over the years.

It’s All in Who You Know

That’s right—it may be time to mine the invaluable resource that is your Address Book. Now, I’m not saying you should hit up your Aunt Ellen and charge her to write this year’s Christmas letter, but there might be a business colleague or old high school acquaintance in need of a press release or some Web site content. Don’t just assume that everyone you know understands what you do for a living, because unless you’ve written for them before, most of them probably don’t. For example, maybe you worked with John at the bank before embarking on your freelance career—and maybe now John is trying to start his own Web design business. A quick email to catch up can lead to a collaboration that will benefit you both. Take full advantage of all the social media that’s out there now and reconnect with all those possible clients you’ve lost touch with over the years.

It’s Also All in Where You Look

If you’re a freelancer, you know all about sites like Guru and Elance, Web sites where you search through Project Descriptions, bid on jobs, and maintain a profile and quality score. Sites like this have their good side and bad side—it’s great to be able to find job listings specifically tailored to your skills, and the ability to evaluate a possible client based on Feedback from other professionals is invaluable, but there are a lot of employers looking to pay ridiculously paltry sums for your work, and there are a lot of professionals willing to underbid you and work for those sums. Also, these job marketplace sites may offer payment security in the form of escrow, but they also charge transaction fees for any money earned through their sites, as well as membership fees. If you’re on the search to bulk up your client roster, however, sites like these are a pretty simple solution, and if you haven’t visited them in a while, you should go take a look around.

It’s ALSO All in … Your Freebies?

You may have done the cold calling thing when you first started, but even if you did, you’ve learned a lot since then. You’ve probably written sales copy for dozens of businesses, Web copy for sites all over the country, even helped clients get the word out via Twitter, Facebook, and press releases. Well, it’s time to make yourself your client. Pretend you just got the job of marketing YOU. Write up brochures about your business, make some business cards—you can even order some pens or magnets with your contact information. Sending some packets out to some well-researched potential clients can open up avenues of communication that have been heretofore untapped, and might just reap benefits immediately or in the future. Sure, you have to invest some time and some funds, but procuring even one client makes up for the postage and materials cost.

Again, if you’ve been in this freelance world for a while, you already know this stuff, and you’ve probably utilized one of, if not all of, these techniques at some point. Sometimes, though, familiarity can bog us down in a rut, and we just need to be reminded that there are all kinds of clients and projects out there, and more importantly, lots of ways to get them.