Seven Days of Freelancing Tips
How quickly can you improve your freelancing business?
As freelancers, we tend to think that improving our business is a huge effort that will eat up tons of time that we could be using to work on paid projects for clients. As a result, a lot of things that we should do to help ourselves and improve our freelancing business never get done.
It’s true that if you set out to do every single thing (or even most things) that you could possibly do to improve your business at once it could take quite a long time. But, I’m a big believer in breaking things down into small, manageable chunks.
So, how quickly can you improve your freelancing business?
Can you spend a few minutes to an hour on improvements every day for a week? In this post, I’ll list seven simple tips to help you improve your freelancing business. These tasks will be manageable because you can do one task each day.
A Week’s Worth of Freelancing Tips
The best way to use these tips is to spread them out over a week. (Of course, if you’re really in a hurry you can try to do all of this at once–but, I don’t recommend it.)
Here are the tips:
- Day One: Look at your website/blog/portfolio through your client’s eyes. Like most freelancers, you probably maintain a web presence. At a minimum, you probably have a blog or a portfolio. Good for you! As we get busy, it’s really easy to ignore our website, even though it’s the first contact many clients have with us. Take time today to review your web presence. Does your portfolio still represent your best work? Is the contact information on your site current? Are there broken links? Take the time today to update your site(s).
- Day Two: Contact old clients.Repeat business is one of the most common ways for freelancers to get new projects. However, many freelancers are hesitant to contact former clients. As long as you don’t overdo it and aren’t too pushy, most clients are okay with you checking in with them several times a year. Contacting old clients reminds them of your services and may also result in additional work for you. Send a friendly email to your inactive clients today.
- Day Three: Invest in yourself. What do you need to improve your skills? Is it a course? An e-book such as Freelance Folder’s Unlimited Freelancer? Part of being a freelancer is spending the time and money to keep your skills current. Take the time today to evaluate the best resources (free and otherwise) for your needs and select one for yourself.
- Day Four: Ask your current client for a referral or testimonial. Chances are that you’re in the middle of project right now, or have just completed one. Is your client satisfied with your work? If you’re pretty sure that you’ve done a good job, why not close out the project by asking your client for a referral and/or a testimonial that you can include on your website?
- Day Five: Write up some standard letters. Freelancers often receive the same kinds of email inquiries over and over again. If you’re taking the time to write email responses from scratch each time that you receive one of these inquiries you may be wasting time. Today, create one or more boilerplate letters that you can customize according to the circumstances.
- Day Six: Catch up on your bookkeeping tasks. Are you up to date on your bookkeeping tasks? For many freelancers bookkeeping tends to fall by the wayside when they are busy. However, the further behind you get on your bookkeeping the harder it will be for you to catch up when you finally do get the time to work on it. Take some time today to bring your bookkeeping up to date.
- Day Seven: Update your social media presence. Are you putting your best face forward in social media, or do your social media accounts reflect an earlier you? Many freelancers have legacy social media accounts that predate their freelancing business. Take the time today to review all social media accounts that your clients could possibly be able to access. Remove anything that might be misinterpreted. Update your contact information and your gravatar, if needed.
- Bonus tip: Start that dream project for yourself today. Have you been putting off a personal project that has long-term income potential to focus on client work? If you have, you’re not alone. Most freelancers have dream projects that they never start. Today, arrange your schedule so that you spend a half hour to an hour every day on your dream project until it is complete.
Laura Spencer
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