In many occasions, the freelancers, especially the newbie freelancers are under the cloud of a false impression that basically all of their earnings will make to their bank accounts. However, this is not true at all. We are showing some of the avenues that will end up having a share in your income.

Freelance Job Sites

To be a successful bidder, you have to register with some freelance websites (e.g. GoFreelance.com, IamFreelancer.com, etc)  that let you ask for projects. In many of them you can register yourself as a free member. But the problem is, if you are a free member, your profiles will be buried down under thousands of other people.

The only way to consistently be on top range of the list is to be a paid member. Thus, the clients can have an easy access to your profile. In this case, not only you have to pay a membership every year, but for every successful bid, the broker may charge you a percentage of the deal. The incurring more cost from your part.

Workable Hours and Billable Hours

The natural trend is to charge the client only for the hours that is put into operation in carrying out the project work only but not the long negotiating hours communicating with the clients or keeping him abreast about the latest development. This extra tasks when provided to multiple clients, can add up to some significant extra job. The logical way out should be to charge the client for these communication and negotiation sittings. Many individual in other profession do that already as trend.

Accessories Charges

To do a successful business, you have to spend some extra bucks on various other helpful entities, though this shouldn’t be considered as “Hidden Cost”, but many freelancers often forget this. Thee extras probably will be Software, Educational eBooks, faster international connection, backup medias etc.

Outsourcing

You have to outsource some part of your job at some point or another, which again entails an extra cost. Outsourcing actually can benefit you more but in any case, you can not evade the charges.

As you can see from the above, not all of your income will go under your credit, as there are many other side-expenses.

This article is the second part of 25 tips showing how to maximize your freelance opportunities.

6. Be Dedicated

If you are taking up a project, you are certainly putting yourself into a commitment with the client and you should do your best (But be logical about your own life as well) to produce optimum result.

7. Keep a Record

It is best to keep a record of every expenses that you have to incur. If you have a dedicated room designated as office in your home premises, then you should have separate record keeping books for home and official expenses.

8. Do not Under-Sell Yourself

It is important to understand that at the initial stage you may not be so successful with high prices per project, but, it is also a fact that if you sell yourself too cheap. It will affect your name in a negative way as well. Thus be logical and use the following formula to go about setting project rates:

• Rate = RM R / H hrs
• R is the desired salary that you expect in a year
• H is the total hour in a year that you think is possible for you to work on projects.

The general trend is to have 15 workable days in a month with 8 hours of work, thus it gives you a total of 1440 hours in a year. The rest of the time will be spent upon other purposes such as administrative tasks, marketing, enhancing skills, having some breaks, etc. Once you know you hourly rate, apply to that in each project to determine the final rate. Besides, you should also increase your rate with time as you grow more experienced and professional.

Working in freelance mode can generate a good turn over in terms of income and freedom of work. However, to make this trend consistent, you have to ride out some rough issues such as being overworked at times and boredom. Therefore, you must apply some techniques to tackle these factors and gain maximum profit.

This article is introducing the 25 freelance tips in a five series article. Below is the initial first five workarounds:

1. Be Selective

Be choosy about which work you should accept and which you should leave out. Because, some clients will have projects that are either way too spread out or they will offer low rate for their projects. In that case it is just a time waste to engage as the project will bring too little of a profit for an extended amount of work.

2. Improve Reusability

When you work for multiple clients at the same time, in many cases you will have two or more clients dealing with similar kind of project. In that case you should do your research in such a way that you can use the information for both of the projects, thus not having to undertake multiple research attempts. Your clients will not be bothered about this at all, in fact they will be happy that you have completed the task faster than they expected.

Marketing is one of the key aspects in freelance business. You really have to spend some good amount of time on thinking and planning about how to market your work and skill set. However, many freelancers actually spend their valuable amount of time on marketing in a view to get new clients, and completely overlooking the existing client base.

This article will shed lights on 3 Steps that will lead you to get more work from your existing client base instead of looking for new clients all the time:

Ask for 10/15 minutes of Consultation

The general trend is, most of the time freelancers get clients though referrals. It is the clients who contact the freelancers with a specific job in mind and hands that off to the freelancer. Once the freelancers finish the project, it is handed over to the client and in most cases we will never hear anything from that client until he is faced with a similar kind of projects to be done.

To prevent this from happening, instead just letting the client go, try to discuss about his business and functional mechanism of his business. Just ask politely for 10/15 minutes. Most of them will be more than happy to have a discussion. The main objective is to find out where, and what kind of bottleneck that the client is having and trying to solve them. This can lead to a long term satisfactory relation being develop and you may end up having a continuous steam of work.

Prepare a Questionnaire for The Client

It is the best advice to have an open-ended question for the client during the 10/15 minutes discussion. Questions such as “Is there any service that they used to offer but not offering now because of staff shortage”, can really open up opportunities for you.

Submitting a Proposal

Once you have finished the discussions and though about it, you will be able to figure out which way you can help them, if any. Then it is time to prepare a proposal where you specifically ask for the work. You put forward your idea and method in a simple plain word so that it sounds both lucrative and beneficial to the client; and it really soars up you chances of finally getting the work.

Thus, if we can concentrate a bit on our existing client base, then with a little plan and patience, great benefit can be derived. Take these advice seriously and gain your client base.

This post is summarized from How to Get More Work from Existing Clients?. Photo by NWSD.

Maintaining a steady income-flow is of utmost necessity for a freelancer. And the only way to achieve this to always have clients in hand. Therefore many freelancers spent their valuable work time looking for clients here and there and some just hopes for the best. Instead of looking everywhere in a blunt way will not read any advantage.

This articles discusses few tips using which this attempt of referral business can be made a success:

Provide Quality Work

If you can furnish the client with supreme work of topmost quality, then they will be so pleased that they won’t hesitate to share their pleasant experience with you to their other friends and families, who, might be looking for a same kind of quality service. So they themselves will find you out. Without quality in product, it is nearly impossible to get referrals.

Customer Handling

The freelancers must be professional with the customer, he should communicate clearly and in a timely manner. Also it should be noted that he must take customer’s priority as his own and should be fully focused to see if the customer is having any kind of difficulty to go through the process.

Promise According to The Reality

Never over-promise to customer that is out of control or reach from your part. In this way if you later can’t meet the expectation, the client will be disappointed.

Ask for Referrals

After you satisfy the customer, ask them for anyone who is looking for the service you provide. Remind them that getting referrals is a big part of your own stability.

Business Card

It is vitally important that you have a business card clearly outlining your contact information and what kind of service you provide. And whenever you get a chance, don’t hesitate to distribute it also. In fact it shows more professionalism.

Clearly State The Services You Provide

May be you provide service in multiple areas, of which not all the clients are aware of. So, you make them informed about your other areas and they may see someone into their contact list looking for service that may fall into your areas of expertise.

Ask for Feedback

Ask for feedback after you have finished the project, questions such as how the work was, will the client will refer you or if anything in your area needs to be improved.

Thank Them

When someone sends you a referral, take the time to thank him at the earliest instance possible.

Develop a Professional Network

It is also extremely important that you develop a network with other freelancers, cause they might have clients looking for expertise in your area of knowledge, which your fellow freelancer might not have or they may find themselves busy at that time, therefore they can redirect the client to you.

Do Not Forget the Ex-Clients

When the job is done, and it is agreed that no more work of this sort is needed in near future, just don’t forget that client as they will remember you for you good service and in return if you can keep in touch with them, they will send referrals to you once they have any.

Following these tips can maximize the work result of referral business and in return can churn out great benefits to every freelance.

This post is summarized from The Freelancer’s Guide to Increasing Referral Business. Photo by GameRandy.com.