Freelancing is the largest area of job growth in recent years. Notwithstanding, to make money as a freelancer, one needs hard work and strategic positioning.
Freelancing doesn’t provide overnight success. The following tips will guide you, as a beginner, on how to earn more and grow as a freelancer.
You can try your hand at either part-time freelancing or full-time freelancing, depending on your work status or lifestyle. The options available to you are unlimited.
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In order to provide quality content to your client base, you need to brand yourself as a professional within your field. There’s a learning curve that accompanies freelancing. You steadily build a solid portfolio for yourself, constantly nurturing & growing your skill base, gaining credibility before clients.
The following tips would help you make more money as a freelancer:
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Choose A Niche
Assume you’re a client looking for an expert to hire for transcription jobs, would you rather a jack of all trades or a pro in this domain? I bet you’ll go for a pro any day! Most clients would prefer a specialist over a generalist.
It’s important to choose the right niche that suits you, specialize in it, and brand yourself properly.
Your Service Offering
This is a vital decision that should be made at the start of your freelance career. Once you’ve chosen your niche, it’s important to be specific about your service offerings. This will help you grow your portfolio in the long run and build credibility before your clients.
It’s quite tempting to want to take on other tasks here and there to earn more money but this can easily distract you from your set goals and delay your overall progress in your field.
Set Your Payrate
This works in tandem with the quality of service you offer. If you want to make a sustainable income from freelancing, your pricing should be high enough, based on your perceived value. By so doing, you mount some pressure on yourself to consistently deliver highly valuable services to your clients.
Don’t worry about losing clients because of your high pay rates, especially when you’re confident about the quality of your service offerings and when you’ve received good ratings from previous services rendered.
Up Your Skills
To stand out in the freelance world, you need to constantly up your game. Competition is very high, therefore you should strive as best as you can, to exceed expectations. This will get you to make more money as a freelancer. Learn new skills, work on new projects, or tweak existing ones to lure clients in your direction.
This is a great way to justify the high pay rates you set.
Don’t Quit Your Regular Job Just Yet
Building a sustainable freelance career usually takes some time. It would be a bad idea to quickly quit your regular day job right at the start of your freelance journey.
I recommend you set up a solid portfolio for yourself, grow your freelance income to at least 60% of your main income, before quitting. We all have different risk tolerances, so this may vary.
This transition period is usually a good time for you to be picky about what you want to work on, as a freelancer, and eventually, stick to a specific niche as earlier mentioned. This is because, at this point, you’re not desperately in need of money since you have more than one stream of income.
Set Up A Great Portfolio Site
Boost your credibility by setting up an amazing portfolio website. Clients will take you more seriously when you do.
Usually, if you don’t have a lot of experience as a freelancer but you’re quite knowledgeable and skilled, this is a good medium to showcase and prove your expertise. Setting up an award-winning portfolio is worth the time investment, before searching for new projects to work on. It will enable you to make more money as a freelancer.
You can then link your portfolio site to your social profiles to increase client visibility.
Define Your Ideal Client(s)
Would your target audience, be small and medium-sized enterprises, high-venture companies, or start-ups? Would you want to work on long-term or short-term contracts?
You need to ask yourself these questions and more:
Can the clients I’m willing to work for, afford me?
What kind of problems can my services solve and what clients are facing these problems, requiring my services?
Polish Your Pitching
In addition to setting up and building up a freelancer profile, you need to invest time in researching the companies and clients you’ll be ready to work with. This will help you determine their needs ahead of time and improve the quality of your service delivery.
At this level, when you position your value propositions before the client, you’ll be perceived differently and the client will be willing to hire you.
Conclusively, client relationships and partnerships are highly paramount. There’s nothing worse than getting very poor reviews and ratings from clients you’ve worked for. This is why you need to invest a lot of time and resources in strengthening and forging robust connections within your network.
For more information, check out Genius Way to Make Money Online (on the Side) Today.
