What do you all think is the better approach to seeking new business? I have a few well-established clients that, on average, keep me working about 2-3 hours per day. However, some days I have more time to work and some days I just don't have anything from these clients and need to find new work. In terms of finding work that can be negotiated, contracted, and finished in about a 24 hour span (so we're talking about projects of no more than 7,500 words, probably more like 5,000), what do you think is the best approach? Scour DP and other sites for work that someone has already advertised a need for, or advertise yourself by saying you can do x number of words in the next x number of hours and seeing who contacts you? What is your quick approach when you've got no work to do but plenty of time to do work?
Do both. Place free ads around the net and look for work on some sites. This way you have people contact you and you find work at same time. You can do the work you have already and then do work people contact you about. Just make sure to tell people a time frame for when work will be done.
If you find yourself with nothing to do, write some article packs. Pick a topic and write 5-10 articles about it. Take the packs and sell them on the forums and/or your Web site.
Do you have any problem to do both? I think you can advertise yourself and meanwhile you're waiting for the orders, you can find some works that are needed by someone. The important thing is, when you have taken some orders, tell it to the queueing people, so they can decide whether to wait for you or pass it to other writers.