The local bait shop offers an outdoor vending machine so fishermen in a pinch for worms after hours can drop a few quarters and swagger off with a cup full of nightcrawlers. As disgusting as this may sound to those of you who don’t spend a great deal of time in waders before dawn, it’s a damn fine idea. Last time I was in the shop, I asked the owner how much business his vending machine does. He said he only gets a few hundred bucks in change out of the machine each month, which is less than it costs him to run the power that goes to it, but that the machine draws in new customers and gets them joshing around about how tacky it is once they’re inside. Warm customers make for better sales, he says. And Bubba is right.

The best way to lure a customer is with live bait.

For freelancers, this concept translates into things we hermits may not like: being personable when we’d rather remain in isolation camp, being willing to take risks that could make us look foolish, being available after hours in some form or another when we’d rather be vegging out with a good book.

There are surely some exceptions, but I’ve never met a truly successful freelancer who hasn’t spent time going the extra mile for his or her clients, who hasn’t worked hard and taken risks, who hasn’t gone out there and gotten dirty in the process. Most of the folks I’ve met who have tried freelancing but soon dubbed themselves failures and gave up were ones who went into this thing expecting it would always be easy and on their terms — short workdays, simple gigs, constant flow of perfect jobs, no marketing, no talking to people, no sacrifice.

Successful freelancers are like good fisherman: willing to get up god awful early, put on ugly clothes, sit on a cold lonely boat, touch worms, cast and wait, and some days still never catch anything. When the fish are biting, all is good. But what about when they’re not? Successful fishermen switch ponds, or they switch baits, and so do successful freelancers.

A serious fisherman knows where to go to get the fish. He might have sought out the advice of a more experience fisherman, or maybe he tried and failed enough times to learn on his own. Either way, he’s probably seen more than one body of water, stood on land and on boats, tried his hand at various kinds of fishing. He’s learned which type of fish taste best, and he’s figured out which kind of bait those fish are biting.

My father used to fish with Wheaties (the cereal). He’d take an old t-shirt, pour a box of Wheaties into it, crunch up the cereal and mix it with just enough water that the cereal would ball up and hang on the hook. As kids, this was our bait. We always caught tiny, nasty carp — the kind any real fisherman would laugh at and throw back. We were in it for fun, not for supper. My father always said that if we wanted to catch something good, we would have to use live bait. But we never bothered. Daddy had a real job.

Some freelancers are only in it for fun. Others do this for a living. I write for fun, but I also write as my means of putting supper on the table. I’ve had to learn how to sell my services for a price that will keep me from starving. The best way is with live bait.

I talk to people. I network live, with real people, where ever I go. I network a bit online too. I take the time to answer people’s questions, chat with folks, visit their blogs and interact with them.

I lure them in with a message: this is what I can do for you. I extend my hand, show them my bait. This is what I’ve done for your colleagues and for your competition. This is how I could do the same for you. This is why I could do it in a way no one else could. This is why you should pay me a professional rate to do it this way, because what I do is worth it. Here, talk to these folks. They’ll tell you how great I am.

I could spend my time on a half-assed job hunt, pecking away at the job boards and sending boilerplate resumes and cover letters out on a blind quest to maybe one day land the perfect gig. But I choose to focus, to spend my time going after only the really tasty fish, because in the end I know I would be unhappy with the other way. I’ve tried it, and I’m not one for standing on the bank of shallow rivers tossing back carp.

Once I have them on the hook, I prove myself. I work hard, remain available, get them the results they want. But that’s a whole other metaphor…

What kind of fish are you after? How do you lure them in?