By now, you must have your freelance business up and running on a freelance website. In the last post, I shared the top ten freelancing platforms where you can offer your skills to make money during this pandemic and afterward. You can go back to check it out or just click here for quick access. Now, we will be going forward by looking at the strategies that can be applied by a neophyte freelancer to get more jobs and make more money.

You have to be tactical in this business. Don’t forget that the whole world is experiencing the Covid-19 lockdown, and lots of people have lost their jobs and deeply in-search for alternatives to make ends meet. Therefore, you have to be more strategic in your doings to have the upper hand and get to the top of your career. These tactics are strictly meant for newbies, every professional in the business must have tried and tested them. You can check later for the article on how to upgrade your freelancing job from the starter to a professional level.

1. Create a nice profile

Your digital profile can be likened to a résumé, a document that contains a summary of your job experience and education. It’s one of the things that a client checks out before hiring a freelancer for their jobs. Therefore, it must be well-seasoned to draw them to your side. While writing one, try as much as possible to give them a summary of what you offer with a clear title. Also show your expertise by including your years of work, previous jobs, and projects you have worked on. Integrating your specialty to the profile is very sensible, and must be done to communicate your adequacy, and the ability to impact their business positively beyond their imagination. Moreover, you can be more captivating by stating a problem and give a solution to it in a few words using their niche terminologies.

Qualifications and certificates are some other things that give a better freelance profile. Big companies and enterprises will be more confident to work with you when provided with a profile that contains your education history. A nice profile becomes more professional with a professional photo. It’s not that kind of selfies you take for your social media profile, but a headshot of your smiling face. Meanwhile, you can add a video of what your job entails, and the benefits of your services to their business. Don’t be too anxious to leave your profile unprofessional and unattractive. A good first impression can make wonders- JK Rowlings

2. Create a converting gig

Be thankful, if you happened to find yourself on a freelancing platform that allows sellers to create gigs or services. These gigs will enable you to get more clients when fully optimized. Creating a gig is similar to profile creation, but in this case, you will be strictly limited to give information about the skills you want to render. The first step in crafting a high-converting gig is to search for a top seller that offers the same service as yours. Go through their services, highlight the unique features, and use theirs to draft a better one for yourself.

Another working strategy in the composition of your gigs is to be specific when choosing the niche. Let’s say you are a graphic designer and specialized in the production of gaming logos. Make sure that you mention gaming logos in your service title, and use tags that are closely related to the service. By doing this, the system will direct clients looking for the service straight to you increasing your success chances than other graphic designers in the niche.

Images talk more than a thousand words they say, therefore, you must use unique, high-quality, and relevant pictures for your gig to stand out among freelancers offering the same services. These images are extremely hard to get on Google because most of them have been used and belongs to a blogger or website. However, there are websites like Jumpstory (special offer at end of article) that sells unique and high-converting stock images at a cheap subscription rate, all you just have to do is to select one from their library and edit to your taste. Adding videos to your gig also works great, it’s a sign that you are excellent in your profession.

I believe creating a converting gig shouldn’t be a problem now, moreover, there are freelancing sites like Fiverr that provides new sellers with a tutorial on how to do it. So, do well to watch the videos, and adhere to all their instructions. Skills are a great asset, but they are nothing without branding. Therefore, enhance your gigs description to the best of your ability to advertise your skills to all demanding clients, and you will never run out of jobs.

3. Maintain good communication with your clients

Success in freelancing is mostly determined by how much you can relate to your clients. This habit will give you the chance to know them better, and get more jobs from them. The impact of communication is very obvious to the extent that most freelance platforms are creating apps for freelancers to receive and reply to messages faster. Communication in the business can come to play in different manners.

One of them is to keep your customers posted with the progress of their work. It’s not just about telling them but adding proof of work to gain their confidence. You can even notify them of late delivery before work’s due date with reasonable excuse and apology, although late delivery is not a good way to commence your career. However, it’s way better than leaving them in the dark for trusting you with their work.

There is nothing bad in checking up on them even after the work is completed. Try to understand their style of communication, don’t be reluctant to know how well their business is fairing, and always look for a way or something that can add value to their life and business. They will always be grateful, and lots of them will return the favor by consulting you more for their jobs. And you will be really surprised to get more customers through their recommendation.

Communication is the only way by which you can inform them about your bonuses and new services. Let your customers be the first to know of your bonus program, and always message them regularly for them not to miss out. Maybe you’ve just learned a new skill, and have created the gig already. You can get your first buyer quickly by messaging all your customers. Unknowing to you, they might be seriously in need of that service for their business. And since you have been working for them before, convincing and getting their trust will be much easy.
Have you thought of the reason for customer services in a company? I guess Scott Cook answers that in one of his quotes by saying “Instead of focusing on the competition, focus on the customer.” And there is no better way to relate with your buyers than to maintain good communication with them.

4. Manage your time efficiently

Time management is more than a habit that must be developed by a freelancer, it’s also one of the winning strategies of the business. You must know how to work with the time and set your priorities. Clients don’t joke with the time of delivery, and they would love it if you can speed it up. For this reason, people with shorter time of delivery usually get jobs often. Even on some freelancing sites like Fiverr, there are some gigs referred to fastest services and they are usually delivered within 24 hours. People offering this kind of gigs get jobs faster at higher prices.

However, it’s better to stay within your limit so that you won’t keep disappointing clients. When setting delivery time for services, do add time for miscellaneous and unforeseen circumstances. Because, there are times you will get multiple orders on the same day from different clients. Having enough time to work will enable you to meet up with the delivery date and also provide high-quality services. Meanwhile, there are times you might feel weak, and there will be a need for relaxation to regain the strength to continue.

Freelancers need to be time-conscious, most especially at the early stage of their career when they might not be financially buoyant to hire another person to work with them.

5. Be dynamic and ready to adapt to all conditions

There are different companies, businesses, and clients to work for, and it’s impossible to satisfy all the same way. The job liked by one might be rejected by others, unlike working for a single boss that you have already understood the way things work with him or her. Therefore, you must be ready to bend to work for all and adapt to whatever system you find yourself. This is where freelancers feel like quitting because at some stage they might get discouraged. However, it goes with the saying “what doesn’t kill makes one stronger.”

The situation can be easily dealt with when the freelancer is flexible and is ready to make corrections until the client is satisfied. Experience gathered over time will teach a freelancer the method of dealing with all kinds of customers, and the importance of getting enough information from a client before proceeding with the job. By doing this, you will get to know your customers better and the kind of services they want.

Adaptation to unfavorable conditions is the driving force of a business, and human survival depends on it too. Charles Darwin once said “It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change” Therefore, a freelancer must always be ready to embrace all kinds of changes.

6. Going the extra mile for clients

The success of your customers will bring about yours too, so make sure you are always free to advise and motivate them towards achieving their goals. Freelancing is not a kind of job where you only offer your knowledge to get paid sometimes you share your experience with clients for free. For instance, a freelance writer should be able to advise a customer on the number of words that an eBook must contain. An SEO manager can also help clients by giving tips on how to make their website pages load faster to rank higher on SERPs.

Doing this meritorious service won’t underrate your value, but will develop a kind of intimate freelancer-client relationship. Moreover, they would consider you for more jobs if the advice works out great for their business. The success of the business comes by being able to keep your customers around you forever.

7. Know your worth

The way you handle your financial issues also matter in freelancing. It’s not always about the number of people you work for, the income generated for working hard all by yourself also counts. Meanwhile, it’s not like other jobs in which there is a regulating body that decides on promotion requirements and salary scale. Therefore, you must know your worth, and the right time to increase the prices of your services. Setting financial goals also helps a lot in the business. Always ensure that you have visions and goals to work towards, and make sure you handle your financial management professionally.

Conclusion;
These are just some of the strategies you can implement as a new freelancer to get your first job and win more customers to your side. Besides, you should have a folder on your laptop or smartphone where you will save all your past projects. A larger percentage of clients do ask for the previous jobs before assigning their work to a freelancer. The overall tip is that a freelancer must always be innovative to have new tactics at all times.

I believe you know what to do now, and making money during the pandemic won’t be a problem. Feel free to ask questions, or tell me the problem you are encountering in the comment section below. I look forward to your success.

 

P.S. Special offer from Jumpstory as mentioned in #2:

“JumpStory – www.jumpstory.com, is an AI-powered visual marketing platform based in Denmark that includes over 25,000,000 images, videos and other visual content, a professional editing tool, a 1-click background remover, and so much more. How we are different?

  • Our images have impact, they show 80% better results compared with traditional stock photos!
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We currently have happy customers in more than 100 countries, and JumpStory wants to offer you a voucher code – FREE3 that will grant you 3 free months to the platform. Click on this link to sign up https://universe.jumpstory.com/get-started/ and fill in all of the required fields, don’t forget to include your code FREE3. During the first three months of your trial you will not be charged anything, afterwards your subscription continues at 25 USD unless you cancel before that, which you can simply do in your account. Enjoy JumpStory!”