This is a guest post by Hasan of WP Gurus.
Freelancing is one of the best ways to make money online.
You can set your own hours, work from anywhere you want and have the freedom to live life on your own terms.
However, as an ever increasing number of people are pursuing it, it’s becoming an ever more competitive field to work in.
Despite the increased competitiveness, the good news is that there are some simple and easy steps you can take to jump start your freelance career and rise above the competition.
Here are the top four of these steps:
1. Brand Yourself In Your Field
As a freelancer you are going to face competition.
It is a simple fact of life.
One of the best and most effective ways to overcome this is to brand yourself in your field, so you’re known as an expert. When you become recognized as an expert, clients are naturally attracted to your service and are willing to pay a premium. You become the “go to” person in your niche and suddenly become flooded with more clients than you can handle.
Here’s how to brand yourself as an expert in your field -:
- Start a Blog where you share your expertise on your subject
- Write a Book on your topic and publish it on the Kindle
- Conduct interviews with other gurus in your field
- Start a podcast and release it on iTunes
- Speak at Conferences and Seminars related to your niche
Take it one step at a time in branding yourself and you’ll quickly find your earnings skyrocketing. Not only that, but you’ll be able to pick only the best clients to work with.
2. Gather Testimonials And Other Social Proof
People are skeptical in today’s modern world, and especially online where things are less tangible as compared to the offline world.
As a result, you really need to go out of your way to prove your trustworthiness to your potential clients.
One of the most effective ways to do this is to show them testimonials and social proof like case studies and earning figures from previous clients.
If clients have the expectation that they’ll have a smooth and successful experience working with you, they’re going to naturally gravitate towards working with you.
Copyright: deviantart.net
It doesn’t matter if you’re a copywriter, freelance wordpress developer, transcriptionist, virtual assistant or fall into any one of the myriad of other freelance positions.
The scenario remains the same.
On your website and on any other Jobs Boards, you must put your best foot forward and show clients your best work and testimonials from other clients to convince them to hire you.
3. Keep In Touch With Your Existing Client Base
One of the most overlooked yet powerful strategies for being a successful freelancer is to keep in touch with your previous clients.
You need to make sure you’re in their minds when they next come to hire someone.
A great tactic for doing this is to:
build an email list with all of your previous clients and send them newsletters sharing your tips and informing them of openings in your schedule.
It is easier to get a previous client to hire you again and again than to find a new one. Therefore, you must invest time in nurturing your client relationships and keeping in contact with previous clients.
4. Always Over-deliver
If you want to be successful as a freelancer then you can’t afford to provide average service.
In today’s Internet world with unlimited choice you need to stand out from the crowd.
Doing more than what is expected of you is one of the best ways to do this. It builds your reputation and creates an enormous amount of good will for you.
All in all, freelancing is a tremendous opportunity and if you apply the 4 key tips in this article then you will give yourself a powerful advantage over your competitors and increase your earnings exponentially!
Over to you
Have a question?
We’re all ears… just drop a line in the comments.
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About the guest author: Hasan is a freelance web developer and designer. He also writes for several blogs and websites including WP Gurus.
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This post was written by a guest contributor. You can see their details towards the end of the post above. If you'd like to guest post for Writers Blog, please check out our Guest Posting page for details about how YOU can share your tips with our community.
6 Responses to The “4 Quickest Ways” To Become A High-Earning Freelancer
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Hi there,
I was very interested to read this post because I’ve heard it’s extremely difficult to make money from freelancing – it’s not something I’ve tried yet, but I might give it a go at some stage.
These are great tips, but a question for me is how you actually find good clients in the first place – or do you just hope they’ll find you? I’ve heard it said that the big freelancing sites aren’t a particularly good place to start. Do you have any advice about that?
Sue
Sue Neal recently posted..Writing Tips: How to Turn Your Draft into a Masterpiece
Hello Sue,
Well this question has been answered quite a few times but let me put all the options on table.
That’s right, bidding sites/content mills really suck. There are thousands of workers chasing the same jobs and willing to work for peanuts, so you’re forced to place ridiculously low bids (I’ve been there myself).
No, it’s not “extremely difficult”. I’ve tried quite a few things to find clients but my favorite ways to land gigs have been direct emails to the clients and inquiring if they’ve have any writing job, optimizing my blog to attract clients, social networking, and last but not the least, some good quality job boards e.g. problogger’s job board.
For more explicit info, check out these posts:
How to make money writing
market yourself as a writer
Hope this helps
Ali recently posted..Why You Write Lame Headlines And How Newspaper Ads Can Help
Thanks for that comprehensive response to my question, Ali – appreciated,
Sue
Sue Neal recently posted..Proofreading Tips: How to Stop Your Blog Post Making You Blush
Yes, keeping in touch with existing clients is often overlooked. And since it’s an established fact that it’s easier and more cost effective to retain a customer than to attract a new one, this should be a number 1 priority.
Ann Druce recently posted..How to build instant brand recall using one simple truth
You got it absolutely right, Ann. But to retain clients, you must first find them (so you’ve to do #1 and #2) and clients will run away if your writing is less-than-perfect (i.e. #4).
Ali recently posted..5 Little-Known Reasons Why Writers Should Use Gmail
This post is right on spot. Just do these 4 things repeatedly and you won’t run short of clients. But I agee wth with Ann, #3 is the most powerful tip.