Everyone can use a bit of luck in finding the ideal client or discovering a well-paying freelancing opportunity.
What happens after that is up to you. Are you ready to carve your own success story?
There are 30 tips to help you by. The first 10 are presented in this series. The rest will be published in the coming days. Enjoy and feel free to add to the list.
- Open your mind. Be aware of the cold truth to hot online jobs. Like many other industries, the world of freelancing is home to both the legit players and the con artists.
- Learn as much as you can about freelancing and being a freelancer. Blogs, e-books and forums contain first-hand information and helpful tips to prepare you for the world you're about to enter.
- Do ample research about your potential clients' reputation. Online visibility is a good indication that the company won't vanish into thin air when it's time to collect your dues.
- Study the job before giving a price quote, placing a bid or submitting a project proposal. You might end up getting a project that pays too low or requires a different skill set.
- Acknowledge the competition. Many clients make it obvious that they favor low ballers or prefer a particular provider. Increase your success rate by competing for the job on equal footing with other freelancers.
- Target your pitch to the kind of clients whom you really want to work for. There is no point in sending out machine-gun applications to companies that you're not really keen in working with.
- Know the market rates for your skill set to avoid overcharging the client or short-selling yourself. Bidding sites give you a general idea of how high and how low freelancers are willing to work for on a given project.
- Calculate the risks versus the rewards. Big projects come with higher price tags. Find out if the deal is really worth it, with careful consideration of the time and effort needed on your end to come up with the output.
- Be ready to justify your asking price. As your skill set improves and your freelancing experience accumulates over time, the value that you bring to a business also increases. Be sure that the quality of your work speaks for your claim.
- Create a brand for yourself and your services and work at it consistently. Ask yourself what image you want to project to potential businesses. Do you want to be known as the desperate low baller, the high-end professional, the timid amateur or the authority of your chosen niche?*
