Freelancing has become a stable source of income for many. You can not only work from home but can be your own boss. Freelancing has become a full-time profession for many. The flexibility that freelancing is providing is attracting many professionals from various niche. As a freelancer, you have to define your values. Freelancers have to brand themselves as an expert in the field and getting their work noticed by a larger audience.
Some stats about Freelancing
Do you know that 63% of freelancers are choosing work from home over the traditional work?
36% of the US workers (57.3 million) are freelancers. Their contribution to the economy is $1.4 trillion per year.
61% of freelancers have specialization in 2 or 3 areas.
43% of the US workforce will be freelancing by 2020.
Freelancer coders earn up to $1000 per hour. Freelancer copywriters are earning over $250/hour.(Source)
But the freelancing success does not happen overnight. It requires a lot of hard work, patience, and persistence. We will also tell you how you can generate high income with the freelancing work.
1. Choose a Niche
When you are new to the freelancing world, you might accept all the work that comes your way without caring much about the amount you are paid. But as the times passes by, you have to be more choosy and practical about the work you are picking. You have thought that how to pick the work that can give you more money in less time. This is because when you specialize in any field, you can charge more from your clients.
There is a never-ending and age-old debate of whether you should be a specialist in one field or a generalist in different fields. From our perspective, this is not worth thinking about twice. If you were a client and wanted someone to fix email marketing so that people can sign up on the website, writing ads content, display ads to the people, whom would you hire? A jack of all trades or a professional who is specialist in one thing and doing it well. Definitely, you would like to choose a specialist every time for a different niche.
As a freelancer, you have to choose a niche for yourself and specialize in it. When you choose a single niche for yourself, you can rise and make money quickly in a short period of time. This is one of the most important things to keep in mind while starting a freelancing career. After choosing the right niche your yourself, you have to specialize in it and market yourself as an expert in the field.
2. Make your Service Offerings Clear
Before starting your freelancing career, you have to make it clear that what you do and what you don’t do. The more you are specific about your services and offering, the better. It will not only help you to brand yourself but will also regulate how the potential clients perceive you and give you the opportunity to move your profile in a specific direction. If you want to become a high-end Python developer, then you should never consider taking on the WordPress themes customization work no matter how tempting it may be. These short-term benefits can drive you away from being a specialist in the field. Accepting these work will distract you from reaching the ultimate goal of becoming a specialist of the field. It can also deviate you from the right path.
3. Define who is your Ideal Client
Before you enter the freelancing, you have to make sure, how does your ideal client look like. You should have a clear picture in mind of what type of client can be the best match for you. Do you like to build websites for small businesses or develop advanced websites? Would you like to handle short-term projects or the long-term projects? What is the type of business you would like to target? This will help in effectively pitching your clients. To understand your ideal freelancer client, you have to ask yourself the following questions:
What type of business problem can I solve with my services?
Will I get decently paid by the business I want to work with?
identify the demographic trends and the age gender, type of websites they are associated with and their personal interests.
4. Create High-Quality Portfolio
This is the best way to demonstrate your skills. If you want to get serious with the freelancing, you are going to need a website that is going to:
A. Advertise your skills
B. Highlight the past experience
C. Introduce you to the world
D. Showcase your previous work
A good portfolio can get you decent work if you do not have past experience. Your portfolio will tell the clients about your potential and your field of expertise. So, creating a website or a blog is worth investing time and money as it will help you in landing the new projects. You can also link your website with your social profiles.
5. Start Freelancing along with your Regular Job
While freelancing is a very tempting career, you have to start slowly by getting into the freelancing while you are working in your regular job. Because it is always good to have clients for your profile before you quit your regular source of income. It is recommended to grow your side income to 50-75 percent of your total regular income before stepping into the freelancing. Managing on tight schedules, picking up clients, and working with them will give you a clear idea about the freelancing.
Another benefit that you can have while working with the freelancer-client while you are still working is that you can be selective about your work. Also, you do not have the urgent need of money. So you can skip the lower paying freelancing jobs or the jobs in which you are not interested.
6. Enhance your Skills
Before you step into the freelancing, you have to make sure that you have the right skills that are in demand and which are highly paid. Whether you work for mobile development or artificial intelligence application development, or any other niche, you can stand out from the crowd and attract the clients. For enhancing your skills, you don’t have to go to college or universities. There is a lot of online sources available over the internet that can help you in enhancing your skillset. This will make you look more professional.
7. Determine Proper Pricing
Setting a price for your service is an important step towards determining your values. While charging, you have to make sure that you are charging enough to live a sustainable and comfortable living. Most of the clients do not hesitate in giving high values for the freelancers with a good reputation and the freelancers that are fetching good results for them. If a freelancer is delivering the work beyond the expectations of the client, he can charge clients high prices.
Before you set the lower limit for your work, make sure that you charge enough to fulfill your financial needs. You can keep the rates lower initially when you are prospecting your clients. You can increase the rates in the future and hope to stay the client with you.
8. Broaden your Network
One of the best methods to generate high income with the freelancing work is to regularly spread your existing network. You can pitch new clients through social media marketing, pitching online and offline companies to get the work. You can also approach the mutual contacts of your friends and ask them to recommend you for the work. You can return the favor by introducing the friends with your clients. The recommendation system is a good way to approach the prospecting clients.
Conclusion
Getting the right client is important in the freelancing. For this, you have to do pitching for the new clients. Pitching the new clients to your service is an art. Pitching is an important part of running a profitable business. There are a lot of things that make up a good pitching. It is dependent on how you are writing proposals, selecting new jobs and how good are you in the research work. Freelancers who are good at determining the needs and wants of the company can perform better pitching than others. The freelancing success will be dependent on how strong your bond is with the freelancer.
You have to showcase your skills frequently through blogging. You have to create in-depth blogs that are going to showcase your skills. You can create the blogs that are helping your clients to solve the problems. Once they gain knowledge from your blog and get the answers that they were looking for, you will be the person in mind when hiring a freelancer for their work. You can also improve your online visibility by guest posting in other blogs.
This will not only help you in showcasing your skills but also get high end leads. To earn a decent amount of money through freelancing is not difficult. You just need to have the right skills and persistence in achieving the goals. Choose the niche in which you are comfortable with. Also, there is no need to try a hand in different skills. Rather you should try to become an expert in one niche. This will help you in achieving the long-term goals and you can earn a high income with the freelancing work.
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