10 Ways to Become a More Successful Freelancer
1. Never write yourself off
When I started freelancing I would sometimes write myself off as not good enough for the job. It’s hard not to be sometimes, when the world is full of so many talented people and your work looks mediocre in comparison. Without self confidence in your own work and ability though, you’ll never be able to take off as a freelancer. Now I realize this is a much bigger problem for a designer than a coder, since designing is a much more creative field, but coders can have the same problem too.
In the end, work is hard to come by and the last thing you need is your mind telling you that you wouldn’t be able to achieve a job, and turning it down.
Ways to better your confidence in your ability
Practice until you believe you’re good enough
Rather than concentrating on problems as a whole, look at them individually and sort them out
Don’t compare your work with others. Instead, look at what they’ve done and draw inspiration from it.
Stay positive about your work and don’t degrade it.
2. Have Confidence with clients
Your client (even though temporary) is still your employer. They’ve employed you as you have skills that they don’t have and need your help in an area they are inexperienced with. The last thing they need is you being unsure of what to do.
When presenting yourself or talking with your clients, speak in a confident and polite manner. It’s best to be professional and never shorten or use acronyms when talking online. Try and be sure of what you’re going to do based on what your client has told you. If you’re a designer, explain how what you’ve designed will be beneficial to the user. Most importantly of all, accept the criticism of your client and add their critiques to your design. Never write your client off as not “in the know”. You’redesigning for them, remember.
Even if you’re not a naturally confident person, try and put it on. Your client probably has never met you before (most of the time anyway) and won’t know what you act like, so you can put on any persona you want.
3. Make a sweet Portfolio
This almost goes without saying. A good idea is to have a few selected pieces which you think best represent the best of your abilities, and archive the rest of your portfolio pieces. Again, a portfolio’s requirements vary depending on your field. If you’re a web designer, make sure your own design best represents your abilities. If a client sees your design is bad, they will be less likely to hire you.
For writers and coders this isn’t such a big deal, but it’s still good to have an eye catching design that will make you stand out. Testimonials are another important part of aportfolio. When you complete a job for a client, ask them to give a testimonial of your work if they were happy with it. You can have a separate page to house these testimonials, or perhaps a box on the front page showing them.
Other Resources
10 Steps to The Perfect Portfolio
90 Inspirational Portfolios
50 Creative and Inspirational Portfolios
4. Build a Reputation
A good reputation is something that happens over time. It’ll almost certainly help you to get clients more easily, and will overall help your business. This sort of links back to making an awesome portfolio. When clients see your portfolio, brimming with content and experience, they are more likely to hire you.
4.1 Keep your work to a high standard
Building a reputation is as easy as keeping your work to a high standard and employing higher class clients (big businesses for instance). Okay, so that’s not easy, but over time you’ll hopefully be hired by bigger clients, and keeping your work to a high standard is down to you and your ability. Never give up, and keep trying.
4.2 Socialize
Join twitter, facebook, and become friends with the big names in your niche. This is going to be great for your exposure and reputation. When people see that you’re friends with the biggest names, they’ll think that you’re associated with them, and therefore you must be pretty good.
5. Stay up to date with your niche.
This is very important. Imagine if you were a web designer in the 90s and never stayed up to date with what was happening. Your designs would be rather dated, to say the least.
It’s important that you keep up with what’s happening in your niche and community, as this will certainly affect how your client perceives the problem. If everyone else in your niche is using a good (new) technique, it’s not going to pay off for you. People like to fit in (most of the time) and your client will probably want what everyone else is getting (if not better).
REad Rest At: http://buildtutorial.blogspot.com/2009/12/10-ways-to-become-more-successful.html
Owner of Build Tutorials http://buildtutorial.blogspot.com/2009/12/10-ways-to-become-more-successful.html Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/10-ways-to-become-a-more-successful-freelancer-1548114.html
subscribe to comments RSS
Homer Talks!