While sitting in my office on my Mac, suddenly a notification comes in my phone. And comes a smile on my face. From last month I have almost doubled my freelance income. I was just thinking about all the things that I did in the past few months that made all the difference. I th0ught ” wish I knew all this before and not waste my time in the wrong efforts that wouldn’t be very fruitful during my initial 2 years. It’s been almost 6 years since I have been doing freelance.”
You must be a freelancer or a designer who want to feel the freedom when you receive that payment from clients. Trust me it is the best feeling a designer can have, a sustainable income that will come every month and you do not need to work under anyone else forcefully just because you need to pay your bills.
I am not afraid that I could lose my job and I can take stand for myself whenever someone is trying to take advantage of me, because I know I would be fine even if I lose this job. Technically, I am making more money from freelance than I get from my job in advertising, I am only working in advertising to learn more and have a bigger exposure from the people who are like gold mines with all the knowledge they possess. I do not work here because I need it.
Today, I want to help all those people who are starting out their journey because it is not at all easy when you are beginning with your freelance journey and you do not know the right way to do it, I have been there myself and there was no one who could help me. I will help you to clear out as many things as I could to make the path to your freelance journey less bumpy and more joyful.
Here are the steps to make money as a freelancer-
Get Clarity on what you want to do
Find your Niche
Make your service packages and price them correctly
Define your target clients
Build an attractive website
Showcase your best work
Build Social media pages to gain an online presence
Find more ways
Market and advertise intelligently
Learn to pitch
Choose your clients wisely
I am going to give my whole blueprint through which I have helped myself make more money and get more freelance clients. The only thing you need is your computer, your design tools and a box full of coffee. The final outcome will be your liberated self who is never worried about your bills and money. It won’t be easy I warn you, it is even going to cost you some sleepless nights as well, but believe me, it is going to totally worth it when you would see yourself making some real progress.
I have broken down this blueprint into step by step guide that you can follow up very easily which will help you earn freelance money within two months. You need to make sure that you are doing everything correctly and if in case you fuck up at some point just wash, rinse and repeat. Mistakes are bound to happen but what’s important you working out to correct your mistakes and move past them.
If you follow this schedule your next two months are going to be hectic, to be honest, I personally love to work really hard on my goals and I do like to immerse myself in my task list to attain my goals. It doesn’t matter to me when I am not going out with friends on a regular basis. Going to parties, messing around and doing some random isn’t that joyful for me personally, I feel more joyful seeing my shit done and completing my checklist of stuff that I put myself up for.
You might be someone who loves to enjoy on your Saturday and just loosing up a little bit, but you need to put out some time to get these things done as well, in the long run, it will be a much more happy life for you if you follow through. But If this 8-week schedule seems like a bit too overwhelming worry not, you can pick up your own pace to do things and make sure you follow everything correctly to reach that sustainable income goal.
Let’s dive into it, you better be ready with a pen and paper because this stuff here is important you need to write things that you need to do.
Your Next 2 Month Blueprint breakdown
Week 1-
You do not need to sit on your computer during this process unless you want to do some research on the subject to take better decisions. Week 1 will be comprised extensively of a lot of thinking and pondering to make your further steps much clearer. This is the most crucial step so I suggest you do not hurry at all, but think wisely and visualize what might be the result of your decisions and whether you will be fine with it?
Get clarity
The very first step will be just stepping back for a moment. Just think what are the exact services that you would want to provide to those future clients of yours. It can be anything you are good at or you are passionate about, you might be a writer, Graphic designer, Voice-Over artist, Web-developer, or anything that exists.
Just write things like that you can do. You should choose something that does exist in the market and it is not something that clients are not even searching for it. Otherwise, it is going to be super hard to get it to earn a substantial amount of money.
I was a graphic designer when I got interested in finding some freelance jobs to make some extra bucks during my free time. I never thought that this will add a huge chunk of money into my income. As a graphic designer, I thought of what are the services that I can provide to people, designing logos was on top of that list after that came banner ads than with time and experience I learn more things and decided to be a branding expert.
I work in advertising and I do know how to design ad banners, EDM, social media posts, etc but I still wanted to design brand identities and shape up the brands I come across. This gives me more joy.
So, better choose something which gives you more joy and is not just another task for you to complete. That way it will be a lot easier to follow through. You don’t want this to be stressful your day job is enough for you to give you pressure and stress at some times.
Find your Niche
This part is very important if you want to be successful in a short period of time. This will really give you speed and make your way much more smooth in that initial phase of business when the going is a little tough.
Rather than choosing a stream of services that you are capable of, you need to find the services or type of work that you can specialize in. In the eyes of the client when you are doing just one type of work they see you as someone who is more authoritative in that domain of work, it makes you seem more of an expert.
For instance, when you hear about a restaurant which doesn’t have any specialty of its own and they claim to have everything to be delicious and there is a restaurant which only serves steak and claims to make best with their secret ingredients. I can bet that people would try and experiment more in the case of the second restaurant. They would right away feel that their steaks must be more special than a good restaurant which they have been going to from all this time. They are more open to trying that second restaurant whenever they want to eat a steak.
What do you think the reason is behind the success of the second restaurant? It is that since they only serve one product. People will think that they specialize in that recipe and they are more authoritative in that particular recipe than other restaurants serving a variety of stuff.
To find your niche you might need to do a little bit of research to find out that profitable niche that can help you earn good money.
More often people make a mistake of choosing a niche that is not very profitable or it is even seasonal. You need to think of it with a perspective of getting work on a regular basis.
You need to ask yourself before making up your mind to that niche whether the service that you are about, to begin with, is in demand or not?
Making Packages and Pricing them correctly
After deciding onto the niche services that you want to provide, you need to make the packages for the client to choose from. That way it will be easier for the client to get clear with what handover will they get as deliverables when they work with you. And it will also help you to justify the price of your services and make you seem more professional.
Also through this, you can help clients with different budgets to work with you. All you need to do is define the deliverables associated with a different cost.
To make a different amount of packages you need to make a clear distinction so that they can clearly see the difference in the type of deliverables or the services with different costs.
To make packages you need there can be several details that you can use within your services
– Details regarding the project
– Timelines
– Cost
– Number of Revisions
– Type of files
– Number of concepts
and so on that, you think is fit for your services and might be helpful to add in the package.
You need to make things as clear as possible with the least amount of crisp information that you can give to the client so that it won’t be too much to go through your packages. Also, try to make things as easy to read and understand. Otherwise, it might affect your conversion rate.
They will trust you a lot more after knowing what all they are going to get after they work with you.
Define your target clients
Rather than waiting for your client to come, you need to set up ways by which you can get noticed by your potential clients. And to do that, it is important to understand who your target client is.
You need to define your target clients as clearly as possible for yourself. This will make it much easier for you to attract those specific type of client.
When I started with freelancing I never knew this. It kind of happened on its own and after that, I found out how effective it is to go for the right type of clients. Not every client will be compatible with you.
I use to take a shotgun approach to land my clients never spent much time doing the funnelling and choosing a specific type of clients but because of that, I have been through a lot of friction, stress, and most importantly time. So, I want to save you from all that stress.
For this process, you need to define clearly what his habits are like, how he thinks, where does he go online more often, what are his pain points where you can help him, macro and micro level details. Get a deeper level of understanding. This will help you land only those clients for whom you want to work for and it will be a lot easier for you to reach them.
Week 2-
Build an attractive website
This is the starting point of claiming your authority over the subject that you are in. You need to make sure that your website does relate to the feel of the kind of work you are doing. Otherwise, your website might feel a little awkward to the client.
Your website is going to be the very first thing through which you will get trusted. Yes, they are going to judge you by the website.
The final decision of giving their order to you rarely happens just because of the amazing work, showcasing it and presenting it in the best way is the key. A great website does add up into the overall experience of the client which will help him decide whether or not they want to work with you.
You need to understand the purpose of the website. Understand in what ways it will help you to close that client of yours who is visiting your website and scrolling through pages.
And do not make it look like you are trying to sell your services, just help the client get the clarity of you and your work. Once they trust you and are more comfortable they will themselves get in touch with you. You need to understand that people do not get themselves get into something that they do not know about. You are more likely to try something new if you are already comfortable and know enough.
So just help the client to make that decision of working with you.
As you are developing your portfolio website, find some other people within your space to get inspired form. And it will also help you uncover how they are positioning themselves. Seeing other people who have already made it will give them a clear idea to you on how you should go about it.
To make this step less painstaking I would rather suggest you finding someone professional who can help you develop your website. If a professional is working, it will take a lot less time and it will look much more professional without any errors or glitches that might cause the bad experience to the client, which might hamper the chances of you landing your freelance project.
Follow these to make a perfect and effective website.
1. Design it to be relatable to your product and services.
2. Be too clear and organize the information properly.
3. Include a direct call to action for your clients.
4. Include testimonials if you have of any little work.
5. Make them know you better through about page.
6. Define your services properly.
7. Avoid very long pages.
Showcase your best work
After your website is ready you need to get ready with the best quality of work to showcase on your website. Keep in mind that by this data your clients are going to measure your skills and expertise.
If your work looks amateur or you are uploading the work that you did when you were learning, then the client won’t have trust on you that you can deliver good quality work and might not ever come back again. Put up some work that you are really proud of and you know that the work is very high quality.
If you do not have any great work that you have done for your client yet even then do not worry. Just do some test projects which is not going to be for any client but just showcase your skill set and to represent that you can do amazing work.
Before starting to begin what the best people in your domain are doing, you will find out what you should do if you are confused, of how you can do the best test projects.
This work is there to show the client the style of your work and to let him know that you are capable of handling the kind of work that the client wants to get done.
Build Social media pages to gain some presence
After you have added your best work to your website for your potential clients to see. You need to build some presence on your social media, you can convert a lot of people to your clients on social media. While building a good social media page you need to make sure that your social media is in sync with the look and feel of your website. No, I am not talking about changing the interface of the app, all you need to do is the social media posts will be designed in a way to have consistency with your website.
Make sure that the content you are uploading will be catchy for your target clients. The purpose of those posts is to get the right eyes to visit your profile and through a good intro and CTA, you will have your chance to provide service to those people who are looking for services that you are providing. You just need to make sure that it is very obvious for them to know who you are? What do you do? And What you stand for?
Social media can help you generate a lot of traffic which will be very useful to get that initial traffic when you have just built your website. Otherwise, for Google to send some traffic it takes a couple of months until they do the indexing of your site into their data to show to the people.
To be successful in social media you need to be very consistent with uploading new posts almost every day, the more the frequency the better will be the results.
This phase is really crucial to get the clients in the initial phase of starting up your own website.
Week 3-
Find more ways
With this, you will go onto all those platforms where people in your space getting regular freelance work. The secret to success with this is you need to find all those people who are doing really good, and you need to see how they are portraying themselves differently from all those people who aren’t doing that well.
The first and foremost difference that you will notice will be all the positive reviews that they are getting which is helping them the most to land more clients, that is pure social proofing is in action. Most of the clients choose people who are already working with a lot of other clients. They feel that it is much safer. You cannot do much about reviews right now. It will happen with time and you will get reviewed according to the quality of work you are doing. And make sure to treat every client well and deliver your best.
The other differences you will see is their introduction of themselves and how they are pitching their services. Now, this is something that you can take inspiration from and how you should do it for yourself. With time they have made corrections and improved everything on their profile which will save you a lot of time to write a killer introduction for yourself and your services. when you will couple a killer profile with your website you will seem much more credible as compared to other freelancers over there. Link your introduction to your website clearly in a way so that it won’t be very hard for your client to find the link and visit it.
The moment you will start getting one or two clients, your ship will sail smoothly from there, and you won’t need to push that much. Waves will be there to take you.
Don’t go bonkers with all of the platforms that you can find. Only focus on Two or Three platforms at a time. Don’t go by the shotgun approach here. Decide which platform you will choose to invest your time into.
Market & Advertise Intelligently to get in front
Marketing and advertising to get the reach the right people is a very powerful tool to get to the successful more quickly. We all overlook it and do not focus on it that much but trust me this will help you scale your design business to the limits that you have never imagined.
Put your ads to different places like google ads, run social media campaigns and whatever way you think is effective. The sole purpose of this is to put yourself in front as many people as you can and communicate well.
Rather than making a normal and like everyone else I would suggest you be the face of your ads and talk to them and present yourself. This will be the initial pitching that is much more effective than a static ad full of words. This feels much more real and clients respond to this more.
I know for most of you it is a little horrifying to get in front of the camera. It makes you shiver, you feel like throwing up but get out of your comfort zone. It will feel more natural once you have tried it a couple of times and even failing is totally fine. You will get the hang of it.
Do you remember the uncomfortable feeling that you always have before putting yourself in a strange situation to learn something new like dancing or even driving might feel overwhelming when you are doing it for some time? But when you learn it finally you say to yourself “It wasn’t that hard, why was I scared!”. This is a similar situation where you need to push yourself when you are starting up but everything will be fine with time and you will be much more comfortable in front of the camera.
Week 4-
Learn to Pitch
To pitch your client in the most effective way you need to understand your clients, their problems, their motivations, what drives them, etc. The best pitch is not using the lines that work always but to get a deep understanding of the client and tailor-made pitch for that client.
For a perfect pitch, the first pre-requisite is to understand everything there is about the client needs and setbacks that he/she is facing. Only then you can provide the best solutions. Ask questions smartly, and talk less about things that you think matters just wait till you understand everything about the work that your client wants, the reason they want it, what outcomes do they want to achieve.
Come forward with a genuine approach to help and solve the problems, sometimes there might be a chance that the problem that the client needs to solve needs a different solution and not what the client thinks it needs.
For instance, I had a client who wanted me to redesign their logo to have better conversion rates. But what they needed is a better campaign that can be more effective with their sales. If I would have just been listening to what they want I would have just done it, but what I did was suggest him a solution that was needed which also helped him. That way he gained more trust in me and he was a lot happy with the way I work.
He had more trust in my expertise and skill set after my genuine interest in helping and solving his problem.
Choose your Clients Wisely
After you get a lot of clients you need to figure out which clients are good for you and which clients are bad. You need to filter through the people that you are going to work with. Don’t give too much importance to the money. I can understand since you feel like you are in scarcity you want to jump on and work with every client who shows interest in you. But trust me it is not about the money here, you need to think of it in a way that every client you work with is going to take you a step forward in your career. Think of it like whether the client you are working with is helping you to reach where you want to get or not, then make the final decision of working with that client if the answer is yes.
Before I work with any client I think how it can help me build myself, or whether it will be good for my portfolio and couple of other thoughts through which I figure whether it is beneficial for my goal or not. If you are excited to dive into that kind of work that you client have to bring then you would be more passionate to do it, rather than cribbing about the changes that he is constantly bringing with each feedback.
