7 Crucial Things To Know Before You Start Full-Time Freelancing
Social media’s image of a ‘successful freelancer’ shows them earning six figures as a digital nomad travelling the world and working from a beach in Bali. The one we don’t see is the struggling freelancer, barely able to earn enough to pay the bills as they fall victim to the ‘feast-or-famine’ cycle at the mercy of finances and working on unwanted projects. What’s most common, is somewhere in between.
Are you considering starting freelancing full-time? There’s no denying the attractions of freelance life. You can choose your own projects, work your own hours, and enjoy a sense of freedom beyond anything you’d experience in most ordinary careers. But in order to succeed as a freelancer, you need proper planning & strategy.
Here are the 7 most important tips to help you to become a full-time freelancer.
1. Save For At least 3 months of runway
Before you start your full-time freelance career, cut your expenses and pad your savings account. Try to save up at least three months of living expenses before striking out on your own. It’s super important because when you don’t have any work you can pay yourself and also if you have a financial safety net then you can say NO to many projects without any hesitation or fear.
This is what your freelance cycle will look like in the first year
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Worst case freelance scenario
Let’s just assume you need £2000 for your monthly expenses. You started your freelance journey in January and you got two clients who pay you £3,000. So for the first month, you’re happy with £1,000 profit and no loss. In the next month, you didn’t get any projects, you still have expenses worth £2,000. In the next month, you got one project which is worth £1,500 whilst you still have £2,000 in expenses. Maybe next month, you get 3 big projects which are worth £3,500.
But in order to move forward with these dry months, you need safety. Most people quit freelancing in their initial months or take low-paying clients because they don’t have any clients and talk about how hard freelancing is so if you are serious about profitable full-time freelancing, start by saving money at least for 3 months.
2. Not having the perfect process of getting clients
Why 50% of freelancers fail in their first year and 95% fail within 5 years? It’s because they don’t know how to get clients and make enough money to survive in the business. Now, do you want to know WHY most new freelancers don’t get clients? It’s because they focus on the wrong things, like a fancy logo, the perfect website, or creating unintentional content on social media, which is an inefficient use of time and energy when the focus should be to bring in more business your way.
It’s so important that you figure out the optimal way of finding work using inbound and outbound methods. If you are struggling to find work and if you don’t have any specific process for getting work join the free webinar here to learn about getting freelance work.
3. Market yourself daily
Whether you’re just starting out, or looking to grow your freelance business, you have to get the word out about your services. Marketing is essential for the success of any business. But for freelancers, it’s even more crucial.
Freelance marketing mistake:
When freelancers don’t have any work they start desperately marketing their services. When they get the project, they stop marketing. When they complete the project they start looking for new projects, again desperately marketing their services. The moral of this story is — don’t stop marketing when you have projects otherwise, you will find yourself in this feast and famine cycle or worse — dead broke. If you want to learn more about how to market yourself as a freelancer click here and read this article which can help you to learn everything about marketing your services.
4. Start building relationships
Succeeding as a freelancer isn’t all about your skills — in fact, I know incredibly talented freelancers that struggle to get regular work because they haven’t focused on building relationships. Sometimes what it really takes is a little human touch (who got the Bruce Springsteen reference here?). In my opinion, freelancing is a relationship-based business, you never know who can bring you your next big project so always focus on connecting with people on a daily basis.
When was the last time you checked in with your existing clients to find out if they could use your services this week? While freelancers obviously need to seek out ongoing work, it’s equally important to reach out and be generous. Building a strong reputation as someone who’s reliable, kind, and consistent is a valuable asset to any business. Get in the habit of asking how you can help, and then make sure you follow through. You’ll be surprised by how quickly your network will grow.
Freelancers often make the mistake of networking only to ‘win clients’. But networking is your chance to get to know your industry — on a human level. Find out what’s important in your professional community and develop a genuine interest in their lives.
ultimately, building relationships or networking is all about being genuine with people without any specific agenda. Focus on building genuine relationships and you’ll create your own good fortune.
5. Get a retainer client
A retainer client is a client who pays you each month, usually for a set amount of hours or deliverables. It’s like having a part-time job. Let’s say you need £2,000 for a month to cover your overheads and you have two clients who already signed a contract with you for 6 months, that will pay you £2,000 each month — then you are on track for running a successful freelance business. Everything after this is profit for you.
In your early stage, I highly recommend you to find a retainer client and book them for at least 3 to 4 months, this will remove financial stress. Learn how to find and retain your freelance clients.
6. Learn about business language
Some video freelancers have really great creative skills but they make less money whereas some freelancers with average skills make a huge amount of profits & always get high-paying clients. Why is this? It’s because they don’t sell the service, they sell solutions to the client. They know how to talk the language of business. They know how to deal with high-paying clients, how to price the projects, and how to negotiate. If your business skills are lacking, then no matter how much of a wizard in After Effects you are, you won’t attract high-paying clients. learn more about the business side of freelancing here.
Some freelancers really don’t like to deal with sales, negotiations and pricing, if that is the case you need to partner up with someone who is a natural at these skills otherwise it will always be a barrier between you and high-paying clients.
7. Invest in yourself
Learning to invest in yourself may be the most profitable investment you have ever made. The years of training in the creative skills and coaching courses have hands-down been the best investment I’ve ever made.
The returns aren’t always just in the long-term, they can pay off as well the moment you apply them in your business. The surest way to achieve a better quality of life, and be successful, productive, and satisfied is to prioritise investing in both personal and professional growth. The effort you put into consistently investing in yourself plays a huge role in determining the quality of your life now and in the future.
Here’s the truth, you can’t make 6 figures in 6 months as a freelancer because I believe that you can’t skip the necessary steps but, you can fast forward your freelance journey by learning from the mentors and experts in that field. This is the purpose of my course. To help you to do what you love and have high-paying clients in the process. This is everything I’ve learned over the years of success and failure to fast-track your freelance journey. Now I work with big brands like Adidas, Spotify, Google, and YouTube but that’s not how it is when I started.
14 years ago I was lost, I was struggling to find clients, didn’t know how to price my projects, how to write proposals or how to regular paid projects. It took me 14 years of hard work to refine my process of finding success in freelancing. And my goal now is to help as many freelancers as possible so that you don’t have to go through the pain I went through, by teaching you everything from finding your first client to building your 6 figure video business. Click here to join today.
