This is a Guest Post by David Edwards. David is the founder of www.asittingduck.com and is also the SEO Director at www.webfactore.co.uk. In this post he talks about how to build your client base and your options as a freelancer.
I was talking the other day to a freelance graphic designer in Cardiff, I’ve known him for a while and he was saying how he’s “climbing the walls” in his house as he only has a handful of clients and the cash-flow is really tight, it’s gone to the point where buying a chocolate dessert from the supermarket is the highlight of his week.
It got me thinking that there must be thousands of people in this situation, maybe even millions and there doesn’t seem like a solution. From my experience you have two options:
- Find employment with a company
- Build more clients and increase your revenue to a stage where you could launch a company
Option one will feel like failure to most freelancers, but it may be the break you need from the financial stress of balancing the books. As there are fewer job prospects out there, it may be an idea to work for free within a company just to get back interacting face to face rather than just on Twitter & Facebook.
Option two could be that you stream line what you offer and find more clients that could promote you to their customers. For instance, you could go to a designer for Facebook HTML pages and target businesses that want to have a better presence on Facebook. To increase your annual income you should up-sell within your list throughout the year. Let’s say you have 50 clients and they have all paid you £300, why not call them up in October and offer a Christmas themed page for £200 that could be an extra £10,000 on your bottom line.
Once your clients understand what you offer and are happy with the previous work, they are more likely to sell what you do to others. When a freelancer has no time and no money, it’s very difficult sometimes to think clearly. Be confident in what you offer and create a sales funnel for yourself. Your clients will not be aware of your up-sells but you can over time make them familiar with purchasing extra services from you.
If you’re stubborn in your ways and refuse to work for a company, then make sure you’re good to yourself and charge more for a more structured product or service.
For more insightful guest posts like this from experts like David, you can subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also receive updates via email.
Do join us on Facebook:
For more insightful guest posts like this from experts like David, you can subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also receive updates via email.
Do join us on Facebook:
Super advice, I'm now a subscriber to e-junkie.
Great
Thanks for publishing guys & girls!...
All thanks to David for such an informative article. :)