Synopsis
Provide your professional expertise in a net marketplace. These days, you are able to do more than simply sell your old books thru Amazon and your older purses thru eBay—now you are able to sell your professional capabilities in a market. No more are you limited to seeking a permanent or contract occupation on Web 1.0 occupation sites like Monster or CareerBuilder.
The fresh strain of freelancing and project-oriented sites let people needing help identify their projects. Then freelancers and little businesses provide bids or ideas or proposals from which those customers may pick out.
Use Your Talents
Not one freelancer is perfect — not me, not you, not even the finest of us. We all make errors, day in and day out, and if we’re bright, we learn from them.
A few errors, all the same, are more important than others, and if we may correct or avoid those errors, we’ll survive. We’ll still make other errors, but they won’t smart as much.
Let’s have a look at a few of the errors that freelancers, new and old, frequently make, and how to prevent them.
Your power to put out quality work and fulfill deadlines is what makes your reputation. And as a freelancer, your reputation is totally what you have. If you overlook deadlines too often, you'll soon see your customers going elsewhere.
How to prevent: Make deadlines among your top 2 priorities (along with investing great work), overestimate how long something will take, break the project into littler steps, and be accountable each step of the way.
New freelancers, particularly, undervalue themselves and charge less than they’re meriting. That’s all right if you’re just getting into the business, and don’t have any former work or reputation to point out. However once you’ve got some amazing work under your belt, don’t be frightened to ask what you’re worth, otherwise you're selling yourself short. And you’ll be working overmuch simply to pay the bills.
How to prevent: It’s great to discover what the market average is, and charge a bit more. This tells customers that you’re good. A great way to do the math is to work out how much you wish to make, and how many hours you honestly plan to work. Then bill based on those numbers.
Do research prior to making your pitch, not prior to completing the assignment. Frequently a freelancer will contact a likely customer and make a pitch, without truly understanding the customer or his needs, and without understanding how this project will add value to the customer. This plan of attack will get you very little business.
How to prevent: Research the customer thoroughly prior to making contact. The Net is a great way to do that, naturally. Know what the customer does, the customers market, and customer’s goals (in general), and work out how you may help the customer meet those goals. How will you increase value? Direct your pitch at those problems.
The client-freelancer relationship is a crucial one, and there are a lot of issues that may make a client the incorrect client, or the correct client, for you.
Those include the market they’re in, they’re working manner, how difficult they are, how likely they are to ante up your rate, how much work they need, their ability to pay promptly without trouble, and more. If you pick out the incorrect client, you'll make less revenue, be distressed, and work more.
How to prevent: pick out customers cautiously.
Again, research them, talk to additional freelancers who’ve worked for them. If contacting a customer, consider it as a two-party interview — they're trying to determine if you’re correct for them, but you ought to likewise be trying to determine if they're correct for you.
Carry out your first assignment or 3 on a test basis, to see how things work out. Occasionally, evaluate your customers to see if they’re worth the hassle.
It’s great to be friendly with a customer, however keep it professional. Don’t be best friends but don't be too formal, either. Either one is bad for business.
How to prevent: begin any correspondence on a conventional basis, and then get friendlier depending upon how the customer handles communication. Don’t be afraid to be friendly, but don’t go past business.
If there's an issue with a customer, some freelancers have a disposition to vent their frustration — at the customer. This is risky. It will hurt your professional reputation, both with this customer and with later customers. And it will lead to diminished business, if you continue this error.
How to prevent: If there's an issue with a customer, and you're mad or frustrated, don't communicate immediately. Let your steam off another way.
But don’t do it at your customer, or anybody else in your professional world. Then, once you’ve chilled out, communicate with your customer in a non-emotional, professional manner — in a favorable way, but clearly, so that future issues may be quashed.
Frequently a freelancer will finish an assignment, and then advance to an assignment with a different client. Maybe the freelancer trusts that the assignment that he finished was so astonishing, the customer will be pushing down his door the following day. Alas, that frequently doesn’t occur. If you don’t supply the basis of later business, you may not see it.
How to prevent: once you finish an assignment, suggest a follow-up theme for future work. If you don’t hear back, follow through.
Trusting in one or 2 clients is always a foul idea. If your primary client drops you, or cuts back his freelancer budget, or goes out of business, you’re done. And now you can’t afford your bills.
How to prevent: constantly have several income streams. You may begin with one freelance customer, but don’t trust in that as your chief source of revenue till you’ve added more customers. And if you are able to get additional sources of revenue streams, you ought to work hard to do so. It will make your revenue much more stable and dependable.
Let’s face it: a few days, we don’t feel like working. And that’s all right, if we design for that flexibility, and make up for it on other days. However too many days of goldbricking, and soon you aren’t acquiring any revenue. And you’re dropping deadlines. Not good.
How to prevent: It’s all right to provide yourself flexibility, so that you may work when you feel productive, but if you've deadlines to meet, don’t let yourself slack. Press yourself to meet the deadline.
Frequently we take work as we need the revenue, but it doesn’t line up with who we are. And we feel atrocious about it, and slowly we start to hate ourselves. Till we no longer wish to do the work.
How to prevent: Seek, from the outset, to find work that lines up with your moral values, that lets you be who you are. Being false and dishonest, to other people and to yourself, gets you nowhere. Constantly strive to get work you love.
