Have you read our article on ‘What You Should Know Before Going Freelance’? If you have decided to make the jump and are now starting out on your freelance journey, there is still much you need to consider as you advance your career. The below five tips will help you in such areas as communicating with clients and using the right digital resources to promote collaboration and trust.
Sharpen Your Communication Skills
However valuable your marketable skills may be, you won’t be able to use them if you don’t know how to properly communicate with prospective and current clients. The Startup’s Chad Wyatt breaks down business communication into three key areas: Pre-project, which involves the skills necessary to inquire about and respond to available assignments.
Communication throughout the project is key, which includes being amiable, as well as efficient, when finding solutions to client problems and concerns. And ongoing communication, which involves the proper way to follow up on payments, as well as maintain client relationships for future leads. In order to be a successful freelancer you need to be able to communicate well in all of these three areas, as you won’t have a team or department to do it for you. If you can’t, your competitor will.
Maintain Competitive Pricing
Don’t fall for the trap of charging the lowest possible rates just to rake in more projects. Do your homework, find out the average pricing for the skills you bring to the table, and charge around the average. Apart from ensuring that you’re getting paid right, maintaining competitive pricing for your skills also attracts the right clients — the type that will not only pay fairly but also treat you right. These are the clients with whom you can and should be building long-term working relationships with.
Familiarize Yourself With Accounting Software
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If you’re just starting out as a freelancer, the idea of being fully in charge of your finances can be daunting. Thankfully, there’s no shortage of cheap accounting and invoicing software that you can use to keep on top of your financial affairs. Affordable accounting software like FreshBooks, QuickBooks, Karbon, and Xero not only allows you to automate the more tedious aspects of accounting, but also comes with invoicing options.
Apart from making it easier to manage your finances yourself, this also shows clients that you’re a professional when it comes to matters related to money (something freelancers are stereotypically not known for).
Use Secure Collaborative Tools
In the age of remote work, freelancers are expected to already have access to collaborative tools that are not only convenient for the client, but are also assuredly secure. Box stresses how sending large files quickly and securely is essential for working with external partners, internal teams, or any type of client. Even if the nature of the projects you take on aren’t necessarily sensitive, all clients value confidentiality, and so should you.
Secure collaborative tools that offer permission levels, encryption, and extra password protection are increasingly becoming more crucial as designers are expected to be able to collaborate on projects wholly online. If you can offer your client these assurances, you will increase not only your reputation as a good designer, but also as a trusted collaborator.
Stick to Your Work Schedule
This is a point that needs to get reiterated a lot. Having full control of your time is a double-edged sword that tends to be more disadvantageous rather than helpful for beginner freelancers. You can prevent this by creating and sticking to a regular work schedule.
Devote certain hours of the day solely to work. You can adjust your work hours as you deem necessary, provided you always meet your deadlines. In this hard thing, a task management software could be very helpful. With a proper schedule, you’ll have better chances of achieving work-life balance rather than simply being unproductive because there’s no one to tell you what to do.
Freelancing isn’t easy, as you need to not only be talented but professional in your dealings. Hopefully, the above tips will help. For more advice on the web designing industry do check out our articles on Design Your Way.
