When we talk about freelancing, the first name that comes to our mind is an Upwork, a platform for freelancers from all across the globe. As per the recent study of an Upwork, there are 55 million freelancers are from the United States only and these Upworkers have earned over one trillion dollars through 2016.
Instead of a typical schedule of a 9-5 job, freelancers are not too worried about the location or working hours. Moreover, they are also provided with tax breaks on their business expenses in ways that are not available for regular workers.
But the truth is building a Successful freelancer business is not an easy task. In your regular job, you only focus on your core skills but the freelancers are expected to be perfect in not only what they do, also in other areas of business like sales, marketing, customer relationships, and finance.
In this article, I’ll talk about 4 major steps for building a Successful freelancing business. Here we go:
1- Choose your Pricing method:
The first step in setting up a successful freelancing business is to select the right price method for your services. Most of the freelancers choose the hourly rate for their services. The main reason behind this is because it is convenient for freelance workers who know their standard income and charge an hourly fee accordingly.
But charging an hourly fee is becomes risky for some reasons. Firstly, freelancers have to spend some extra expenses in terms of hardware devices, electricity and other administrative expenses and on the other hand, the regular 9-5 worker doesn’t have. So, it is important to know your costs and pick an hourly fee that will easily compensate for all these expenses.
A fixed per-project cost works better than hourly plan. Check out the gains and losses of these two different pricing methods and select the best one that suits your business requirements.
Also Read: 5 Lifestyle Changes to become a Successful Entrepreneur.
2 – Build up a Sales Pipeline:
As a freelancer, you are the only one who is responsible for finding new clients for your business. Outbound marketing strategies for generating new business like cold calling/sales calls and advertisements are effective in a traditional business setup. But, when we talked about generating business for the freelancer, the inbound marketing methods like SEO, Blogging, social media marketing and email marketing are better options.
You can set up an effective sales pipeline by using these inbound marketing tools that will provide the regular flow of new customers into your business. And, you have to agree with this statement also, It takes a lot of time to establish an effective sales pipeline system.
3- Team up with established freelancers & agencies:
As a freelancer, you are the competitor of those established agencies and businesses that have a huge budget to spend on customer satisfaction. One way to overcome the challenges faced by you as a one-person business is by partnering with other freelancers and agencies which offer similar products or services.
Let’s take a simple example if a freelancer web developer may partner with a web designer, this will help both of them to grow their business by referring clients to each other. Most of the clients hire freelancer or agency who can take care of all their needs. By offering multiple services under the same roof, these freelancers have a better chance to increase the customer satisfaction ratio and business.
Also Read: 5 easiest ways of launching a successful startup
4- Hire third-party vendors:
As a one-person business, you have lots of administrative tasks which need to be done on a regular basis, but these tasks take you away from your money making projects. Hiring third-party vendors to perform these tasks are the cost-effective solution and this will also help you grow your business.
The only way to succeed in freelancing business is, you must spend as much time as possible on marketing and offering your services to clients. Other tasks like managing your accounts, tasks reports may be taught to a third party who can do these jobs for you.