Contact information of clients is of vast importance as it is the only thing that glues two entities even if they are not together. Therefore, losing it is like losing the client himself. And it can really be one of the worst fears that can come true. It also means you are losing substantial business opportunity as well. Sometimes, may be you have the contact information but you may lose valuable documents related to projects, such as description or outline of what has to be done. All these can make you crazy in no time if you happen to land in this kind of unfortunate situation.

The way to get out of this trouble is to deploy "Customer Relation Management (CRM)" software into your disposal. This article will discuss some points relating this kind of systems.

A CRM is a software system that allows you to store all your information regarding current and previous clients as well as prospective ones. This kind of system can be quite complicated but they come in varying flavour allowing you to choose from a wide range of options and functionality. Despite its initial complexity, it can be hugely beneficial to every freelancer. Below is a description of some common and most useful types of CRMs:

1. Operational CRM: For people involved in Sales and marketing. This system will record the interactions with customer such as phone conversations and other communicational follow-ups. This way you can have a detailed record of day-to-day progress and plan changes.

2. Analytical CRM: This system offers various tools and practices that can be used to analyze a certain market condition and effectively design a successful marketing campaign. It also helps to determine how profitable a customer can be based on the information that it records regarding the customer’s involvement to the project.

3. Collaborative CRM: When a client has multiple contacts within a company, it is important to keep track of that, so this system can track multiple contacts at a time within an organization and also helps to analyze how the information can beneficially be used.

4. Sales Intelligent CRM: This is an advance type of CRM which produces reports of customer trends along with market progression. Based on these data it is able to predict the future movement of both market and client responses.

5. Contact Management: Most simple type of CRM. There are systems completely dedicated only to this functionality. But with time, it has become an integral part for other types of CRMs as well.

CRMs can be of great use if reliably deployed and maintained. Client’s information is one of the most important segments of a freelance business, and thus every freelancer should take steps to secure it.

In this series article, I would like to share a way to generate USD180 / MYR 630 per year. As per discussed in Using WordPress To Create Mini Sites, I will have a discussion on the concept of “MINI SITES” in this part.

Mini Sites - It is a form of website, developed in a very short time and contains only 5-20 pages (or may be more) of original contents. Most of the times the designing are done by putting up custom design templates and other free plug-ins.

There are different types of Mini Sites, such as:

Product Related

This kind of web portal will be directed at some specific product or a range of products targeting a specific consumer market. For example may be you target the healthcare market and write reviews of different healthcare products, as well as how to obtain those or order online.

Informational

This kind of sites solely targets on different kinds of informative issues, such as travelling destinations, political issues or small-scale sports and recreational portals. You can place different affiliated links and if the user clicks on them, a certain percentage will be earned by you.

Tools and Tips sites

This type of site is more on knowledgebase market, such as useful tactics in graphics design or Computer Programming. Or it may be freelance business or even engineering issues as well. The users of this class of sites are mostly technical and engineering professionals.

Promoting you side should be easy as you can use different Google Adwords or some per-pay-click services. This will help you to bring traffic to your site. The best part about these mini sites is that once you spend around 8/10 hours to build a mini site, you do not have to go back regularly and update it in a rapid fashion every time.

Just create it, place its link to some other websites and surely you will end up getting at least some traffic, thereby making some cash. Let’s say you generate USD0.50 per day from each mini-sites, you will simply make over USD180 per year. (** We will discuss the ways to generate the minimum USD 0.50 / day in our part 2 of this series posts.)

When there is multiple mini sites are created, you can have some substantial income collectively. However, in that case you also should go back once in a while to those sites and check the user-status or do some upgrade work. Therefore, mini sites can be a great source of some useful side income with very little one-time effort.

With this we end our first part of the series and in the next part we will see the ways to generate the USD0.50/day via Mini Sites. Just Sign up with our Auto-Feed Manager to deliver the next part to your Inbox automatically.

The earning potential in freelance business is pretty good and as such many freelancers enjoy a handsome amount on regular basis. And when you consider the fact that you do not have to work for others, and you are your own boss, the earning then seems more worthy. However, what if you want to extend your income beyond the “Pretty Satisfactory” to some higher level? Though it may not be easy, but certainly is possible, and some freelancers already have reached that level of greater satisfaction.

This article will illustrate few of the ways to achieve this success:

Charge Higher

This is certainly one of the ways, but many freelancers avoid this route due to the fear of insecurity and loss of projects. However, if you can do everything regarding the projects with perfection, do not give the clients any room to complain, then you certainly can have an attempt to spike your price up, and there will be a greater chance that clients will eventually accept it.

Expanding the Business

It has always been the case that freelance business owners are earning a lot more than the average individual earning. Though it is true that expanding a business is a laborious and complicated task, but the end result is good enough that will easily offset for the initial hard work. You can expand your business by hiring other freelancers to outsource your projects and do other outside but related activities, or you may want to develop more skills to take up different kinds of projects.

Selling Rare Information

This aspect of freelancing is often overlooked due to various reasons, but the essence is, if you can develop skills in some area that have high demand in the market but very few people are actually having a working knowledge that can be used to gain profit, you will be in some serious business as you can charge even triple your normal rate to distribute that knowledge, because in that case, clients will not mind about spending some extra cash if you can truly guide them into the right path.

Physical Product

Freelancing is not limited into intellectual products. If you can design and develop a physical object that may be really useful, you will find a great demand for it, may be the drudgery are quite problematic in this arena, but the reward is high as well for a truly remarkable physical product.

Passive Income Stream

It is hard to find anything that will consistently generate good earning with no or little work from your part. But if you really can find, then it will make your life a lot easier.

Thus, if you can adopt any of the above options, you will have a way to earn that extra to fly your overall freelance experience to a greater degree of satisfaction.

This is the last part of this series which goes on discussing the Sins that many freelancers commit which often result in a complete loss of their freelance business. This part will deal with the importance of not sacrificing ones integrity.

Many freelancers start out as part timers, for various reasons, such as they may be tired in their regular 9-5 job, working for someone else, making the company owner rich and not getting to have enough time for their own activities, or may be they were told to do something illicit which they felt they shouldn’t do. Or may be the company was imposing impossible condition such as installing Servers at the middle of the night and not compensating this extra hard work later on. Any case many regular 9-5 guy has turned to freelance business because they couldn’t sacrifice their integrity. So why is integrity so important to a freelancer?

Self-Gratification

You will always feel better when you know that you did not swindle anyone out of anything. You have worked hard, and you hard work helped someone in someone, howsoever small or big it may be. So treating your freelance projects with integrity will feel you with wonderful gratification which will only bring peace and satisfaction to you.

Self-Image to Others

Off course you have to compete with other freelancers, even in some cases the competitions will be intense if the client is a big gun. So, if you employ any bleak method to consistently make other freelancers bereft of good projects, sooner or later the word will spread out to the community of freelancers and your image will suffer a drastic blows. You will be probably chucked out of the community border, which might have been so helpful to you before.

Reputation to Clients

Without doubt, if you work with integrity and care, clients will obviously notice you and word about your sincerity will run faster than you could imagine, in the end bringing to you more and more projects.

Remember one thing, sincere hard work always pays off. It is the law of nature. Sacrificing integrity and ethics may bring some short term profit, but at the long run it will be the sole cause of bulldozing your business.

With this we end our last part of the series. If we can avoid these seven sins, our freelance business can thrive in no time.

This is the sixth part of this series which goes on discussing the Sins that many freelancers commit which often jeopardizes their freelance business. This part will deal with the importance diversification of your work.

There are some accounting and other kind of stuffs are always related to each of the clients that you will ever deal. You have to perform these tasks each time for each and every client, regardless of the project size. So, when there is a lot of customer, you tend to be in an uneasy position with all these tasks that don’t incite you at all. Therefore, when a big client signs up for your project, you tend to work only for him, ignoring other projects or you stop taking other projects. You fully concentrate of the few big clients. However, this can lead to some dreadful scenarios. Here we will discuss the repercussion of what can happen if thing run wild.

The biggest danger of this approach is that, in any case a big client decides to stop you, that is, he decides to go for other freelancers or he is not interested anymore to carry out the project. Then you will be in blue water as you have already declined other clients. Thus you will face trouble having enough work. So, what is the best way out of this situation? The answer is it Diversify your work by following the below mentioned practices:

Continue Sales & Marketing

Do not become over consumed with the work for big clients, also keep note about the marketing of your brand. Later on if you go too much into shell, then you may fall behind in this competitive business. Thus in any case, you have to keep you marketing and sales functionality on proper track and speed.

Outsourcing

If the client is really big, and able to pay a lot, then you can hire some contract to do some part of the project, instead of dropping other clients off. But make sure that the quality of the work that the subcontractors do is top-notch.

Be Professional

Even if you have decided to drop off the other clients, do not simply leave out any running projects. This actually will create a huge negative impression. Finish whatever projects you have in hand, and then approach the big gig. Also inform the other clients in a professional manner that at that time you will not be available for any other projects.

With this we end our sixth part of the series. In the last part of the series we will discuss about the danger of sacrificing integrity. Just Sign up with our Auto-Feed Manager to deliver the next part to your Inbox automatically.