25 Easy Ways to Fine Tune Your Freelancing Business
Posted April 18, 2011 in How-To
One of the things about freelancing that’s both helpful and harmful, is that once you get the business going, it pretty much runs itself. Once you’ve gone over that first hump of finding those first few clients, if you provide great service and work, you often don’t even need to advertise or look for clients much.
While this is great and allows you to focus on working instead of doing the boring business stuff, it can also be harmful if you continue to let the business run itself for a long length of time. You could end up working on projects you hate, with clients you despise, twenty four hours and seven days a week.
How to Improve Your Freelancing Business
Now I may not know you personally, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t start freelancing so you could hate yourself and everything you do, did you? Just like a car, your business needs a bit of maintenance and fine tuning every once in awhile to keep it running smoothly and going in the direction you’re aiming for.
Here are 25 ways you can fine-tune your business, most of which don’t take much extra work at all!
- Raise your rates to match your experience. If you know you’re doing great work, charge for it. Aim for three digits.
- Move away from trouble clients. Stop taking their work, even if you “need” them to survive. There are other clients out there that will treat you better and pay you more for it too.
- Take a business day. Assess where your freelance business is going and where it should be going. Take steps to correct your course if you’re off.
- Decide on a niche. I started making a lot more money and got a ton of clients after I decided to put myself into two niches: working with freelancers and agencies only and only doing HTML, CSS and WordPress work. Find out what part of the process you really enjoy and only do that kind of work.
- Partner with others. After you’ve niched yourself, you’ll still have some clients that don’t understand that you only design and don’t code, or you only code and don’t design. Partner with some freelancers so you guys can pass each other the work you don’t do.
- Check the moolah. Every couple of months you should stop working and check out how much money you’ve made in the year so far. It can be a great motivator – either you’ve made more money than you thought you would and you keep on working, or you’re making less than you wanted so you work harder. Better to find out now than to wait till the end of the year when you can’t do anything about it.
- Get out. Watch someone else run their business. Are there things they do better that you? Are there new things you can teach them?
- Keep it zen. I have to listen to music to concentrate properly when coding. But above that, I can’t have the TV, talk radio, kids, friends or any other distraction around. If you work in a hectic area, remove yourself to someplace quieter.
- Find a vantage point. What makes you different from the other millions of freelancers out there? Everyone promises to have great communication skills and to turn in work on time, but do they actually do that? You won’t believe how many clients are ecstatic with me just because I answer my emails within 24 hours!
- Read, read, read! A lot of the successful ideas I’ve come up with were due to me reading a ton of business books and listening to podcasts.
- Make the first move. When was the last time you asked that favorite client of yours how their kids were doing? Make the first communication with the client you haven’t spoken to in awhile.
- Consider co-working. If you work better with people around you, consider renting a co-working office space in the city. The rent you spend might actually make you more money.
- Open source it. Start an open source project or something fun that’s related to what you do work-wise. It gives you more experience and shows you’re willing to spend time in the community.
- Go over your wording. When was the last time you checked, or even read, the wording in your contracts and estimates? Go over them to make sure there’s nothing that needs to be changed or updated.
- Learn from your mistakes. Was a client able to get one over on you? How could you have prevented that? Make sure you update policies or the way you work to make sure you never make the same mistakes twice.
Easy Fine Tuning Tips from the Community
When I shared this article idea on Twitter and Facebook, I got a lot of helpful tips from everyone, so I’d thought I’d share their knowledge:
- @lbregister Make Set Hours for yourself and track that time.
- @rob_e_bowen Listen to your critics, not just your fans. Their input = invaluable, even if you have to sift through it to find the good.
- @ThomasDesign Evaluate how each task can be done more efficiently. Then, repeat until twice the amount is being completed in a day.
- @hellodeibu Have a solid contract and a full understanding of the value of your own work. Those two will lead you to higher quality clients.
- @rarescosma Basically: maximize the exposure, minimize the niche, stay up to date with the tech & tools + push the envelope projects.
- @nathanielks Know when to farm work out.
- @qraftsdesign Tip: In the end, work is not everything. People (social life) are always more important and that’s also the place to stay connected to the world and to get fresh energy for new projects.
- @AFDIT Use free SASs – like Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn for networking/marketing. Also, smile when meeting people.
- @JasonAGross Keep the paperwork straight. Scope, cost, deadlines, and goals should all be defined before a project starts.
- @LadyCarni Great tip for fine tuning your business–never stop learning. Continuing to refine your skills is key.
Your Tips
What are your tips for easily improving your business?
Image by philentropist
Related posts:
- Five Easy Ways to Improve Yourself and Your Business
- 5 Easy Ways to Start a Productive Day
- 5 Easy Ways to Finish Your Day With A Bang
- 6 Easy Ways Freelancers Can Save Money
- 28 Quick and Easy Ways to Get Your Marketing Message Across
About the author: Amber is a freelancer with over 10 years of experience and specializes in clean, semantic and valid HTML5, CSS3 and Wordpress development. She also writes a web development blog at www.amberweinberg.com and just launched a web app for developers at www.codesnipp.it.
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20 Comments
Rachel Small
April 18th, 2011 at 8:52 amReally useful post – thanks Amber! I have a notebook with montly goals. At the end of every month, I assess them – which ones need to be tweaked, which ones did I meet, what steps can I take to meet the more difficult ones, and where do I want my business to go next. It really helps keep me on track and gives me a solid picture of where my business is at every month.
Gold
April 18th, 2011 at 9:38 amWhat is a Ton of clients? Is that their total weight?
Raise your rates to match your experience… I like that one but then I read a lot of books and there I came across the Peter principle. If that is true, we have an enigma…
Frontline
April 18th, 2011 at 12:39 pmMove away from trouble clients is a defo, unfortunately you may not know if they are trouble untill you have already done business. Make it clear you no longer want their custom but dont be rude.
Decide on a niche, im guessing this doesnt nessesarilly mean worldwide alsong as its a niche in your geographic trading area, just think if its not unique you only have a 50% of a customer coming to you.
raport is far to important to neglect, and i dont mean a false rapport in the hope they will understand you but actual rapport, it can be healthy to have a friendship with a client aslong as “business” ends up the topic of convo, otherwise you could end up losing money by doing favours, so just be honest.
Learn from your mistakes and as Richard Branson once said “you can also learn from other peoples mistakes”
Just thought id give you my input :)
crawpdx
April 18th, 2011 at 3:53 pmThe best advice I have received so far is “own your prices”
Great article!
Valerie
April 18th, 2011 at 4:33 pmThanks for this Amber. I’m always looking forward to your articles!
Mizan
April 18th, 2011 at 9:39 pmGreat post as always, Amber. well, move away of trouble clients. you may not know which one can cause some trouble. but, as you gain experience, you will see some symptoms. trust me , may sound rude, avoiding them is a crucial career advice. you will never be able to make them happy whatever your skill is. great work should be rewarded with better prices.
TLC
April 18th, 2011 at 10:50 pm1) stand up to bullies. Had to do that today with a former partner who tried to overcharge my client, and attacked me via email when he didn’t get away with it. I could have given in to keep the peace, but then I would have just invited more trouble. Instead, I ended the partnership but still kept working for another client we share by asking if I could work for him directly instead of subcontracting through the partner.
2) don’t be afraid to learn something new. For years I swore I wouldn’t become a programmer. After a bad experience with a bad programmer, I decided to learn WordPress. I also took PHP and CSS classes. When I launch my new Web site in May, I’ll have a new source of revenue and several new skills. And I can earn both the design and programming fees on future Web sites!
Ensemble
April 19th, 2011 at 2:13 amgreat post Amber…well compiled 15 points…though we know all of it but its always nice to re-read and get mind going in a direction
Brenda Marie
April 19th, 2011 at 6:42 amThe biggest thing I am learning this year is to branch out. By this I mean taking on my own projects. It’s difficult to make time for them sometimes but I’m committed to doing it and think it will make a difference in my bottom line.
LadyCarni
April 19th, 2011 at 9:49 amThanks for the mention, Amber! Great article, once again! I think one great overall point to make is network network network. There is so much to be said for bouncing ideas off of other freelancers and even Corporate Joes. This goes hand-in-hand with your ‘read’, ‘partner’ and ‘get out’ tips.
I find networking not only fantastic for keeping abreast of updates, new trends and ideas, but it’s also great for staying sane! Just knowing that other freelancers out there are going through the same things you are, or have been where you are, is empowering and inspiring.
Use your network, and contribute to your network, and it will reward you!
Kayla Knight
April 21st, 2011 at 12:34 amAll great things one can do to improve a freelance business. The best advice is to get out of work-mode every once in a while and work on your business, not just in it. This is the only way to ensure growth, and to also stop you from getting bored. Working on it can apply to many of the things you’ve already stated as well, as well as a number of other things.
Jamie Fairbairn
April 28th, 2011 at 11:57 amThere are some really good tips listed here already. I would add it’s a good idea to always charge a deposit to keep your cash flow healthy and don’t be afraid to be different – it can be hard to stand out among all the other freelancers.
Shela Slape
May 13th, 2011 at 5:34 pmEvery time I see a really great article I do three things:1.Share it with my relevant friends.2.keep it in all my popular sharing websites.3.Make sure to visit the site where I first read the post.After reading this article I am seriously thinking of doing all three.
Bronson
May 17th, 2011 at 2:46 amGreat advice that I’m pretty certain will save me hours in the future.
I also found a cool little systray app for Windows called Chrometa which is great for tracking time in the background and reconning it later.
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