As a Freelancer Ultimate Freelancing Tips

Freelancing online today is harder than it use to be. The field is saturated with freelancers whose only goal is to rape and pillage their customers for every dollar they can squeeze while providing low quality services and virtually no support on their work. It’s hard for webmasters and customers to distinguish a good freelancer from a freelancer who just wants to take them on their money.
Following this list of tips and using these tools can help you become more successful; earn repeat and referral business, as well as great reviews and a good customer base. I have been freelancing for years but just recently started making it a full time stay at home job, and let me tell you what: I love it. Freelancing allows me to be at home with the family, spend more time with my finance and less time driving to and from work. It allows me to work when I want to, rather than what hours I am given.
Now I thought that when I would start doing this from home full time that there would be a lot of distractions and that I wouldn’t be able to put full focus into it but I was wrong. When you live with a big family this can be hard, especially when they don’t understand that you aren’t sitting at your computer all day browsing the web and reading funny jokes, but you’re actually sitting there making money, talking to clients, and getting things accomplished.
If however, you do live with a large family, be sure to have your own office in the house if at all possible. This will certainly help with the distractions of the family being around you all the time while you are working. If it’s just you and your finance for instance, then this should not be a problem.
All right, let’s get down to the nitty gritty. What do we do and how do we do it.
Create a portfolio website

·         This is great for showing your customers work that you have done. Some freelancers think that they have to build a portfolio site that is way better than anything else they have worked on. This is not the case! Be simple, be relevant, and be suttle.

·         Have a home page that displays some information about you, and what you do and offer. It might be a good idea to include a blog and talk about some work that you are doing or have done.

·         Have a portfolio page that shows off some of the work you’ve done. I try to include everything that I have done in my portfolio, but sometimes when you are very busy working on multiple projects its hard to update your portfolio with every single project. Make sure to include a testimonial from that customer, if you don’t have one from them: Ask for one.

·         Have a resume page setup just like a Word resume. Explain your skills, education, references, prior experience, etc. This helps show qualification and professionalism. Allowing the prospect to see that your are serious enough to get things accomplished.

·         Have a support portal for your current clients. I use my support portal for clients to let me know about bugs in something I have developed for them so that I might be able to fix the issue for them. Showing that I provide quality service and I care about the quality of my development. This also helps me bring in repeat business, as most of my customers also submit new projects to me via my ticketing system.

·         Have a contact form for prospective customers to send a service inquiry to you to have some work done. This is important because not all of the customers you receive will be from referrals and the like, but once you get known and start to create a buzz around your services you will get direct clients out of thin air.

·         And remember: Don’t put advertisements on your portfolio site. Sure if you get large enough you may start to get some good traffic, especially if you are blogging. But your prospects don’t want to see you trying to make revenue off them visiting your website. Save the advertisements for other personal project websites if you have any.

Have a good project management system

·         This is very important when managing multiple projects at one time. If you are as busy with stuff as I am then you should know that this is very important. Managing projects in the freelance business can make or break you. If you don’t manage your time and projects correctly you can easily become overwhelmed very fast and get burnt out on the work you are doing because you are always busy taking care of something.

·         Things always go a lot smoother when you have everything organized in an easy to manage project system. I have found that MyIntervals works very well for time and project management. Using this system allow me to manage my projects and where I am at with each of them. It also allows me to generate time reports and send them to my clients as I am working on their projects. This helps my client understand where I am at and the timeline base for completion of their project.

Take care of your clients

·         And they will take good care of you. I can’t stress this enough! Keeping my clients happy overall is my key goal when working with them. My clients bring me more business than anything else. If I create a website for a client and he loves it, he is most likely going to recommend me to anyone else he encounters than needs something done. In one of my previous posts I wrote about how Referral business is the best type of business. I wasn’t lying when I said that.

·         Every now and then there will be a client who just expects you to over achieve, or do more than what the project outline says and will get upset when you request more money for more features or services. It’s extremely hard to make these clients happy when they expect the world from you. Don’t give in to their wants because they want you to do more than you’re suppose to. Just tell them how it is. Some people will get upset, and some of them will agree and pay more for the extra functionality. Thus far I have run into 1 client that expected more from me than I could deliver within his budget, after a little bit of bickering I told this client to find someone else who can complete it within his budget. Time is valuable, and if the client expects quality results, they should be willing to pay for that quality in my opinion.

Don’t over extend or overwhelm yourself

·   Being one person freelancing and managing multiple projects at one time can be very time consuming. If you feel that you have enough projects lying around, don’t agree to take on more than you can chew. Let the potential client know that you would love to help them with their project, and as you try and give every client the best quality of service, it would be hard for you to start their project right away. If they still feel you are the best candidate to complete their work, they will wait for you to finish your current projects and then start theirs.

·   Sometimes the client just can’t wait. And if it’s an easy project and would only take a day or two, go ahead and do it, but charge an emergency fee. If they want it done quickly and want you to do it, they won’t mind paying this emergency fee. If the project isn’t easy, and they can’t wait, then don’t take on the project. Refer them to another freelancer you know that could take care of their needs. You don’t want to be stressed trying to handle 20-30 projects at one time, so just let them know you can’t do it.

 Well, if you follow this guide, I’m sure that you could do well in your online freelancing business. Starting off in this business and building a customer base and exposure is always the hard part. But if you follow this guide you should be able to build that customer base in no time at all.