Freelance Tips For Achieving Freelance Success
There are many benefits of freelancing. You can be your own boss and can work whenever you like. According to some stats, over 50 million people in the US are earning their bread and butter through freelancing. That is why it is safe to say that if you have the skills, you can sell it through the internet anywhere in the world by using the top freelancing websites.
However, you cannot expect freelance success overnight. There are still some freelancers who are not earning money according to their potential. They have more talent than most of the people who are earning more than them but still, they are hardly getting any clients even from the best freelancing websites. For such people, I am here to help.
In the next lines of this article, I am going to tell you those six freelance tips through which you can earn more money than other freelancers and can earn up to your potential.
1. Always demand some Down payment:
One of the vital freelance tips. One of the major reasons why many freelancers despite will and the ideal skills for the job fail to earn something substantial is not getting paid by the client or delayed payments. To save yourself from this next time, always demand some percentage of the down payment and full payment after showing the mockup of the work to the client. Through this method, you can ensure that you are getting paid on time. For this, you can also build any agreement or contract that you can ask your client to fill and sign before starting his work. In this contract, you can write the percentage of the total payment which you would take as the down payment before starting any work.
2. Build your reputation by saying No:
Most of the freelancing websites are all about the reviews of the freelancers. The client login to any website and hire only that person who has some good reputation. The reviews and the testimonials of the past clients matters a lot. No one would prefer to work with you if you have a majority of the bad reviews. That is why you have to focus on that part of the freelancing in order to get more clients and work.
The most important way of building your reputation is by saying ‘No’. Being a freelancer, you need to learn to say ‘No’. Even if you are professional in any industry for example graphic designing, there are some things that you cannot design. To those jobs, you have to say no in order to build your reputation. Through this, you will only get the chance to work on your strong point and will get positive reviews.
3. Focus only on your freelancing business:
This is crucial to any freelance success. I know many people who do freelancing as their side income. They do not concentrate on the freelancing much and then complain about getting underpaid through this medium. Always remember that freelancing is a convenient business, but it requires the same amount of concentration and focus, from the person.
Without focusing on that, you can never become a successful freelancer and will always struggle to find clients and some bucks from the freelancing. The freelancing is like building a company. The only difference is that in freelancing you are the company and you are the brand. You have to build your personality as a brand and if the client finds something missing in your brand personality and that you are not entirely committed to your services or not focused, then he is never going to work for you.
4. Be Open:
Those days are gone when people used to do buttering to their clients by using the kind words. But now after dealing with different people, the clients have also become educated and know when the person they are going to hire is transparent to them or just beating around the bush.
That is why it is better to be open to the client now. Do not set those expectations for him, which you cannot fulfill. If you are not able to provide the task at the time that your client needs, then do not say yes to him because even if you complete the job but failed to meet the deadline, you are not going to get a positive review from him, which will directly affect your reputation and earning.
5. Keep Working:
There is no shortcut to freelance success. One of the biggest mistakes that most of the freelancers do is to create pointless standards. They create a bar of the standard of the client and if any client doesn’t come under that standard then they do not work for them. This is something that you have to avoid even if you become a successful freelancer. You have to keep working despite the nature and the level of the job. If you are a designer, you should design even for those clients who cannot give you more than $10. However, you should also vary the quality of your work according to the price that you are getting.
6. Work for the Satisfaction:
We all know that money matters and it is also the biggest motivation for the people like me and you who do freelancing. In your early days when you haven’t worked much, you have to be smart and should build some of your reputation first instead of going for the cash. If you go for the cash, you may also start getting it but not for long. But if you choose your reputation over money, then you will keep getting work from the clients until you want.
The only way to build your rapport in the early days is to work to satisfy the client. It doesn’t matter how much the client paying you. Try to cut the deal to the minimum and then work your sweat out to get his thumbs up. So get a client, try to charge him the rates on which he or she is happy too, and then do whatever you can do to make him happy in a single attempt by providing impeccable work.
Conclusion
The freelance tips cited above will prove to be extremely useful if a freelancer consistently follows them in each of his jobs especially assigned by the freelance websites. Remember freelance success doesn’t come in a day, they require patients as well as discipline.