Make Money Freelancing, How to Make More Money Freelancing

Make Money Freelancing

Make Money Freelancing

Make Money Freelancing, How to Make More Money Freelancing (Even If You’re a Complete Beginner)

Tried and True Tips for Making More Money Freelancing.

Since I started freelancing just over a year ago, I’ve had the opportunity to work with about a dozen high-growth startups and world-class experts. And since I’ve never had to negotiate the premium prices I charge for my content marketing services, I wanted to share some tips with you on how to get started freelancing and make money, even if you’re a complete beginner.

Since I’ve done a great job defining my value propositions, branding myself as an expert in my field, and getting my freelance writing content in front of a new target audience, I now have a 3-6 month waiting list for new freelance clients and freelance jobs.

However, it certainly didn’t happen overnight. My rapid success in the freelancing world is a result of a lot of strategic positioning, hard work, and good timing.

If you’re ready to get serious about freelancing and increase your self-employed income, here are my top twelve tips for making more money while working freelance in your first year.

Table of Contents

1. Scale Up Your Topic

2. Get Your Service Offering Clear

3. Determine What Your Ideal Client Looks Like

4. Create a High-Quality Portfolio Site

5. Start Freelancing Before You Quit Your Day Job

6. Level Up Your Skills

7. Build Your Credibility

8. Define Your Value Proposition

9. Leverage Your Network for Introductions

10. Perfect Your Pitch

11. Blog Often

12. Guest Post on Relevant Industry Blogs and Publications

1. Scale Up Your Topic

Make Money Freelancing, If your goal is to start freelancing, you might feel ready to take on any job on Fiverr or Upwork for any amount of money. But as you get deeper into your freelancing career, you’ll need to be more strategic about the type of work you do and the clients you take on.

You might be wondering: Will being more selective about freelance work help me make more money?

When you specialize in a skill, you become an expert in a specific field, and experts can charge more for their specialized services (Upwork and Fiverr have specialist and professional categories).

In my opinion, the age-old debate about whether you should be a specialist or a generalist (opens in a new tab) is not worth thinking twice about when starting your freelance career.

If you were a potential client and needed someone to fix your email marketing so that people actually sign up, write ads that make people buy, or just update your old website, would you hire someone who was a jack of all trades, or a one-person? Who did one job and did it well? I would choose the specialist every time.

When it comes to my own experience, choosing to specialize as a content marketing consultant — as opposed to being a general digital marketer for hire — was the single best decision I’ve made with my freelance business.

Because I’ve built my reputation with clients as a talented content marketer over the past few years and often engage with content marketing content on various social media channels, I’ve been able to rise to the top of my niche in a relatively short period of time.

Aside from my blog and existing client referrals over time, the next most consistent source of new clients is from business owners seeking help from specific experts through both Google and social search.

To extend this example to other areas, imagine you’re just starting out as a web developer – you could go into a niche like migrating blogs to WordPress. This means that when someone searches for “help migrate a blog to WordPress,” they can find you. This also works for graphic designers: you could design graphics specifically for WordPress.

If you choose the right niche, deciding to specialize and putting some effort into branding yourself as an expert within your niche can really pay off for years to come.

2. Clarify your service offering

One of the biggest decisions you’ll have to make early in your freelance career is what you will and won’t do.

The more specific you can be about what services you offer, the better. Not only will this help you brand yourself, it will also give you control over how potential clients perceive you and allow you to continue building your portfolio in the direction you want to go.

If you want to focus on becoming a sought-after, high-paying Ruby on Rails developer, you shouldn’t even consider contract offers to customize WordPress themes or design user experiences for upcoming apps.

While the short-term benefits of steady work are tempting (and sometimes necessary), taking on projects that won’t get you closer to the ultimate goal of becoming the best in your field will only distract you and delay meaningful progress.

3. Define what your ideal client looks like

Before you go out and start looking for clients, you need to have a clear picture of who you’re going to work with best. Do you want to build websites for small business owners, make a name for yourself blogging as a professional blogger, work as a copywriter, develop new features for high-growth tech startups, or sign long-term contracts with enterprise-sized companies? Or maybe you specifically want to work for brands and clients whose values ​​align with yours, etc.

Making this clear distinction between who and what type of business you’re targeting will be essential to effectively pitching your services.

To determine who your ideal freelance client should be (and how to start finding them), ask yourself these questions:

What types of business problems am I solving with my services?

Are the businesses I want to work with likely to hire me?

What demographic trends can I identify about the decision-makers in the types of businesses I’m targeting? Think: age, gender, geographic location, the websites they frequent, and their personal interests.

Since I know I’ll be more engaged and work most effectively with smaller startup teams that are working on projects that are personally relevant to me, I’ve chosen to proactively narrow my scope of potential clients. By working with similar startup teams, new potential clients who I target in my niche are able to connect with me immediately, and I feel confident that I’ll be able to replicate my results for their businesses as well.

Is technology right for you? Take our 3-minute quiz!

You’ll learn:

If a career in technology is right for you

Which tech careers suit your strengths

What skills do you need to reach your goals

4. Create a high-quality portfolio site.

Make Money Freelancing, It goes without saying that one of the best ways to showcase your tech skills is to have your own amazing portfolio site (opens in a new tab). If you want to be taken seriously as a new freelancer, you need a website that:

Showcases your skills.

Highlight relevant past experience.

It shows who you are.

Include your contact information so potential clients can easily find you.

A stellar portfolio can really help you if you don’t have a ton of work experience or testimonials that show you know your stuff. (Read more about this: 11 High-Paying Jobs in Tech—No Experience Required.)

The purpose of your portfolio is to educate, generate interest, and convince potential clients that they’ll want to choose you for their tech needs. That’s why it’s worth spending time figuring out what features your portfolio will have and how it will appear — before you start looking for new projects.

Once your portfolio site is up and running, start including a link to the site in your email signature and on your social profiles.

5. Start Freelancing Before You Quit Your Day Job

I’m a huge fan of starting a freelance business while you’re still at your day job (or part-time job), as opposed to immediately pursuing self-employment.

In addition to the fact that it naturally takes a lot of time to build a high-quality portfolio website, build your personal brand, and add to your portfolio, it’s a good idea to have some steady freelance clients on your roster to generate income.

I recommend increasing your side income to at least 50-75% of your total current income before you quit your full-time job, depending on your risk tolerance.

Managing a tight schedule, a heavy workload (including demanding freelance projects), and being responsible for client deliverables with limited time resources will quickly teach you what it’s like to run your own business.

Another big advantage of choosing freelance clients while you’re still working full-time is that you can be selective. You probably don’t need the money. This puts you in the position of turning down a job that either doesn’t pay enough to justify your time investment, or that you’re not actually interested in.

If you want to be happy after freelancing full-time, you need to be a stickler for both.

6. Level Up Your Skills

The best way to justify a high hourly rate? Make sure you have impressive skills that are in high demand.

Practice using your new skills by creating projects that you’d eventually want to get paid to work on. Whether it’s WordPress websites, mobile apps, or something else entirely, like graphic design, copywriting, etc., the more you can set yourself apart in a sea of ​​competition with great side projects and examples that will attract potential clients, the better.

And remember that while highly trained freelancers can charge a lot more for their work, you don’t have to go back to school for a BS in computer science to get on the train. Taking online classes like Skillcrush’s Front End Development course can get you on the right track and put you in charge of your education.

PS - If you’re looking to start or pursue a career in tech, Skillcrush can help you get there! Our Break Into Tech course is a comprehensive program designed to help complete tech beginners start a new and fulfilling career.

(Back to top.)

Is tech right for you? Take our 3-minute quiz!

You’ll learn:

If a career in tech is right for you

Which tech career suits your strengths

What skills you need to reach your goals

7. Build your credibility

Make Money Freelancing, There are many ways to build your credibility within your industry.

In addition to creating high-quality blog content and collaborating with notable influencers in your industry, you can write an ebook, create an online course, and line up speaking engagements to increase your visibility within your niche.

You can start by working on freelance platforms and freelance gig websites for relatively low hourly rates and increase it as you gain more experience.

These credibility-boosters can help you add to your list of accomplishments that you can highlight in your portfolio and at the same time demonstrate your knowledge for more potential clients to see. The more you can broadcast your message, the more impact you will make within your niche.

8. Set Your Price

When determining how much to charge for your freelance services is a major step towards setting your perceived value, you need to make sure you are charging enough to make a sustainable, comfortable living.

Most clients will not hesitate to pay a higher rate for a freelancer who gives them an incredible first impression and sells them on their ability to deliver high-quality results.

As long as I continue to provide consistent value to my clients (beyond their expectations), as long as I have no problem setting and maintaining high prices for the services I provide, I will be happy to do so.

Before setting a minimum price, consider what you need to charge to meet your financial needs, consider the actual value you will create for your potential clients, and make sure you are not leaving money on the table.

You can always increase your rates in the future and hope your clients stay on board, but if you start at a price point that you are already excited about, you are much more likely to overdeliver and your prices will continue to increase going forward.

9. Leverage your network for connections

One of the most effective ways to find high-quality and better-paying freelance work is by leveraging your existing networks. Whether it’s pitching your actual friends and former colleagues for freelance help or using their connections to give you warm introductions to companies you’d like to work with, this is a great option for cold-connecting with potential clients.

Whenever I discover a freelance opportunity I want to pursue on Angel.co (opens in a new tab), CloudPips (opens in a new tab), or elsewhere, I give myself 10-15 minutes to research the company, find my ideal point of contact, and do a little homework on whether I have a mutual connection on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook before reaching out with a cold email.

If I have a mutual connection, I’ll reach out to my friend (only if I’m actually friends with them) and ask if they’d mind sending an email introduction on my behalf.

This approach, where my first impression is backed up by a recommendation from someone my potential client already knows, has consistently given me higher response and close rates.

10. Perfect Your Pitch

There’s an art and science to pitching your freelance services to new clients.

Landing new clients isn’t just about crafting a great freelance proposal. Your success depends on how you select new jobs, how you position your value proposition, and how much research you do ahead of time.

I won new gigs because I put more time and effort into thoroughly researching companies, determining their needs, and providing immense up-front value in the form of insightful recommendations before negotiating payment. In the world of freelancing, your success (and ability to make money online) will depend on the strength of your client relationships and how well you can build meaningful partnerships.

11. Blog Often

The goal of having a website that showcases your skills is to attract and convert new clients. What better way to increase the number of potential new clients on your website than by creating high-quality blog content that positions you as a prominent expert in your field?

To start, aim to create one or two in-depth blog posts per month that are geared toward providing the truly helpful solutions your potential clients are looking for. Note: This means you’re writing for your clients’ audience, not for other people in your field.

Once they’ve discovered your content and gotten some free value from you, you’ll naturally be top of mind if they’re ready to hire you for more in-depth help.

I started most of the freelance deals I did last year by mentioning a company in a successful blog post on my website. After publishing my in-depth post chronicling the best side business ideas (opens in a new tab), I spent a lot of time reaching out to a carefully selected person at each brand or online tool I mentioned, asking if I would properly cite them in the post.

Most of them confirmed or wrote back with a suggestion, which prompted me to do a guest post, share my content with their audience on social media, or open the door to a potential marketing deal.

My blog is by far my highest-returning marketing channel for my freelance business.

12. Guest Post on Relevant Industry Blogs and Publications

Once you have a website that highlights your capabilities and clearly communicates that you offer freelance services, one of the most effective ways to increase your online visibility is to publish content on blogs and publications where your potential clients spend the most time.

Marketing guru and consultant Neil Patel often shares about the huge deals he makes for his business by publishing over 100 guest posts (opens in a new tab) each year.

When you’re starting out on a much smaller scale, don’t underestimate the immediate benefit of having your content featured on blogs and publications that can drive hundreds or even thousands of new visitors to your website.

In less than a year, I was able to produce extremely high-quality content and leverage my pitching skills to get my posts published in Entrepreneur, Inc., Business Insider, HubSpot, and dozens of other publications. This increased visibility has had a direct, positive impact on my business.