How to Become a Successful Freelancer

Freelancers are independent workers that are rapidly becoming standard in the modern economy. Being Freelancer you can lay off the staff job and work independently.
Going on your own seems little scary at first, but with little guidance you can launch and manage your freelance career. There are few questions that will come into your head when you start working as free-lancer like

• How to get clients
• How to act professionally
• How to grow network and maintain relationship
• How to handle your hard earned money

By the time we will done you will have the strong foundation for one of the most rewarding position working for you

In this tutorial we will learn,

Step 1) Where do clients come from?.

Step 2) Always Use a Contract.

Step 3) Developing Your Contract.

Step 4) Make them love you.

Step 5) Networking Strategies.

Step 6) Using Social Media to Maintain Your Network.

Step 7) Define your value.

Step 1) Where do clients come from?

If you are going to freelance, the first thing you going to need is atleast one client. Starting can seem little daunting but you can actually break it down into simple steps. You really want to mentally prepare yourself, get your materials ready and then get out there.

Prepare an updated resume which is impeccable. You really want to make sure that it looks clean and that there are absolutely no typos and for double check have somebody to read it over for you, may be by two or three peoples and make sure you absolutely had a minimum run the spell check. Your work sample is going to vary depending on what kind of industry you are actually in.

Once you have put-up all that together, you need to start putting the word out that “you are available”, that’s where the network comes in, you should get in touch with your A list. Your top list, let say, 3-5 or 10 contacts, let them know that you are looking for work asking them if they know any-body.

If they do get the contact information of those people, and those people who once can give you work are the once you want to reach out to. Let them know what you do and send them your resume, send them your sample, ask them if they can meet you face to face or minimum a phone call or even Skype session. The closer you are the better it is.

There are few tips that can help you to bring client’s attention on you apart from the above points

• You have to communicate to people that you are professionals
• Circulate the word out that “you are available”, through social sites and e-mails
• Build relationship- Don’t ask for work straightaway from clients unless they are looking for someone, instead you can say that you just want to set up an information for interviews
• It is really amazing what a handwritten thank you note a nice stationary can do for you especially in this digital age taking time and effort to a very neatly write out say I am so glad to meet you, please keep in touch message and keep message in mail.

Step 2) Always Use a Contract

If you don’t learn anything in this article learn this “You MUST have a Contract”.

I heard a lot of people say “I don’t want to work with a contract”, or “My clients won’t like me”, or “I feel awkward”- Get over it.

You are opening yourself up for a lot of headaches, if you work without a contract. If you sit down and whoever you want to work with says that “I don’t like to sign up a contracts”- it’s better to get up, shake their hands and run. Get out of there, don’t waste your time.

• Contract should be detailed. It must include
• Payment terms
• Contract information
• Scope of work
• Dispute resolution
• Sign a written contract document- including payment term and work duration
• Each side should have signed document to avoid any dispute or misunderstanding

Step 3) Developing Your Contract

If you signing a contract both client and you are on a safer side, and incase if there is any dispute over the working norms you can use those contract document to resolve the dispute or misunderstanding.

• Try resolve dispute by one-to-one conversation
• Use certified document to discuss over the project norms
• Hire a Lawyer if it fits in your budget
• Register with freelancer union contract creator
• Generate legal document that can be downloaded and get it signed by the Client’s
• Talk to client about issue before talking to Lawyer

One of my favorite tool is the freelancer union contract creator. On the freelancer site you click the contract creator’s link and it will bring you to the tool that will ask you for several bits of information. You can generate a contract and save it as you go along. It has a section for the scope of work, which you need to fill with detailed information about what will be done, when it will be done and so on and so forth, payment terms – what’s your fees will be, what your expenses are or you actually outlay any money and who is will pay for that.

Another site that I like is called Docracy, and Docracy actually allow you to find an existing document for example once you click on find documents. These resources are very useful if you are working for small businesses or individual. If you are working for a corporation which is been a case for me in most of my freelancing career, you are very likely going to be handed a contract from them and that contract is pretty much going to say these agreements overwrites everything else. So now that’s really putting you pretty much in David and Goliath situation, and essentially what their attitude will be very likely it’s taken or leave it. You should still read it very carefully, and you should not be afraid to go to whoever hands that you say “I am not comfortable with XYZ”. It is very likely that a team of lawyers sat around and thought about every possible scenario and trying to put in that contract, something that will cover everything.

Step 4) Make them love you

One thing that is important to realize for any freelancer, people who are paying you are not your employers they are your clients. So you actually a small business owner, and your primary goal is to really keep your clients or customers satisfied. To make this happen you have to

When I start first freelancing, people would asked me how you get all of your work. I was very successful in getting onsite projects and my strategy was very simple, I would show up, act like a grown up and do the work. So what does it mean, well show up means exactly that you would be very surprised to know that how many free-lancers are very un-dependable. So whether in person or in spirit, if you are there for them that is going to make them appreciate you immediately. Be a grown up that really just means act like a professional, it is surprisingly common for the people who are not on the Payroll to have a very casual attitude, especially if they are in the workplace.

One of the biggest mistakes that I often find is in our world of social media, lots of people have their client as Facebook friends or on their twitter feed and if I am sitting on the other-side of the wall, and my client who I am the facebook friends with gets the facebook updates from me and pictures of cats in various poses. Even if they are really good friend of yours, even if you are a great free lancers or worker that’s going to put something in their mind why I paying this person? when they are online messing around.

I am not saying you should not touch facebook at all but that’s really a Judgment call you would know based on the environment if you look around and don’t see people with their facebook page up or working on their e-mails. I would say save that for when you are on a break, ofcourse we are free-lancers so we have to actually build up our personal brands and we have to communicate with our clients. But use your discretions and you really want to keep those things to few minutes or an hour or when work is piling up, even if you are not working on a site that’s important.

If you are working on big project for somebody and may be they calling you and e-mailing you and if they have a deadline that day, do you really want them to see you doing other things when they are waiting for your deliverables. The other part of that is that you might want to consider not having a client on facebook friends and not let them see all your post, change your privacy settings. Bring your “A” game with that really means that you want to do the best job that you can especially it’s a new project with new client , you want to make that solid first impression, so come to the table with all your skills ready to go because you want to live that project.

Starting the relationship with them thinking this is the person that is going on to be on the top of the list this is who I want to call back this is who I want to give more work to especially if your industry is very competitive as mine is. You going to have to establish yourself from the rest of the pack.

Step 5) Networking Strategies

You still have to maintain that reputation and maintain that image that you living with. This really comes down to networking, network-network-network, it’s a tool not only for freelancer but also for anyone who is in workforce.

• Consider networking skill as assets working as freelancer
• Exchange contact information (Business Cards) with the people you meet
• Use every medium for contacting people or clients ( e-mail, website, social media, etc.)
• Always ask before using the third person contact for your work or business
• Exchange job information to each other through social networking sites or e-mails
• Make sure people helping you, you are also helping them

For free-lancer there is a particular strength in networking really your only strong is networking, You want the words out on the street that you are dependable, you are reliable, you got good skills and you are the person that they should hire.

First step exchange contact information with the people you meet, have a business cards, you have yours they have theirs and you want to make sure you swap even if it is not a physical card even if you just e-mailing this is my contact information, my phone number, my e-mail, my website, my social media contact. You want to make sure that you have it and its updo date, put it in your address book, put it in your smart phone make sure while you have an opportunity that you get it.

Step 6) Using Social Media to Maintain Your Network

Once you have people in your network, you want to make sure that you keep in touch with them. And this is when social media comes in. It’s a key part of maintaining your network that you work so hard to build.

• Face-book
• Linkedin
• Twitter
• Personal Blog Page
• Use HootSuite for scheduling and sending tweets

You can also use service like HootSuite using this service you can actually schedule tweets in advance, so you can spend an afternoon writing tweets and schedule them, so you don’t have to be at your computer or using you smartphones every few hours for each day. Because that’s probably not the most effective use of your time.

Even for twitter and LinkedIn, you want to keep in mind that what you are posting is really going to convince people to hire you and to keep hiring you.

So three features LinkedIn, twitter and the Facebook page combines with other can make much easier to stay in touch with your network.

Step 7) Define your value

Successfully marketing yourself as a freelancer really boils down to understand the concept. You are a brand just like any brand of a physical product, you have to protect that brand and maintain its identity.

One of the ways that I think it’s easy to get started to do that is to answer the question, hire me because___ everything should fill in the blanks of this phrase.

• Define yourself, your goal and about your skill clearly
• Demonstrate some positive feedback from client’s
• Use every medium electronic or hard copy to showcase your talent
• Identify the key element that client is most interested in you
• Communicate with the potential client in the market

And once you clear to yourself, you can take a step further and communicate the people out there potential client in the market. Show them or demonstrate a reason, why they should hire you? Once you know what you could do for someone, you can create what is often referred to as your 32 commercial this may be a phrase that you might be familiar with and what it really means is you should have rehearse little speech that you can use when you have the opportunity to pitch your goods and services to somebody.