In my previous article, I discussed some useful tips for being a successful freelancer. Now I’d like to offer some useful points on getting repeat work from clients, marketing yourself and managing your cash flow.
Getting Repeat Work
As a freelancer, the best way to keep life from getting financially stressed is to build up a set of reliable, well-paying, repeat customers. These type of customers continually come back to you for work, while also recommending you to friends.
Once you get a customer to sign a contract for a project, you need to immediately start thinking about how you can encourage them to come back to you for their future projects. Here are some tips:
- Answer their emails and calls within one hour—When your client has a question, get back to them right away. Even if you don’t have the answer, they like to know that you’re there for them
- Give them a fair price—If you want customers to come back, don’t rip them off
- Be friendly and easy to work with—If you’re pleasant and helpful, you’ll instantly be ahead of 90% of your competition. We’ve had to work freelancers who dig their heels in at every opportunity. I don’t have to tell you we never called them again, or recommended them to friends
- Be professional—It’s important to be friendly, but don’t get too buddy-buddy with your clients. They don’t want a friend, they want a professional who will do the job correctly
- Be well-read—When you discuss ideas with your clients, it’s important that they know that you are an expert in your field. Subscribe to several industry blogs and read them every day. This knowledge will come across in your conversations with clients
- Be proactive—The best thing about a good freelancer is that they’re thinking for you. They’re always looking ahead and seeing how they can help you beat the competition. If you can do this for your clients, I guarantee they’ll come back.
Marketing Yourself
Another very important part of freelancing is marketing yourself. You may be the world’s best web designer or developer, but if no one knows about it, you’re in big trouble.
With that in mind, here are some useful tips for getting your name and skills out there:
- Keep in touch with people—Whenever you add something new to your skill set, send a quick email to your friends and let them know. There’s a good chance they’ll know someone who needs help in that area
- Update your site/blog every week—If a client comes across your site, it’s important that it looks fresh. If your site looks stale and out-of-date, they’ll think you’re the same way
- Make sure your site looks great—It’s really worth the effort when it comes to building your site or blog. There’s a great web designer named Veerle that has just redesigned her blog. It’s gorgeous and I know it will bring in tons of work for her
- Get those incoming links coming in—Your Google rank seems to be highly correlated with how many websites are linking to you (I can’t promise this, because their search equations are secret). Therefore, a great way to increase your rank is by getting people to link to your site. If you redesign your site or blog, make sure people know about it, so they’ll have a chance to blog about it. It’s a great way to increase those incoming links.
Cash Flow: How to Stay in Business
One of the most important things you can do, financially, is to maintain a good cash flow spreadsheet. (SEE FIG. 01)
If you’ve never heard of a “cash flow spreadsheet”, here is a basic description: It’s a spreadsheet (usually in Excel) that you enter your income and your expenses. You try to predict these figures for at least three months into the future (you can download an example cash flow spreadsheet
here).
What’s so important about keeping an up-to-date cash flow spreadsheet? To make sure you know if cash is going to be tight
long before it actually becomes a problem. This will allow you to make adjustments and bring in extra cash before you go broke.
- Cut any expenses you can—Do you really need to subscribe to eight different magazines? Have a look at all your expenses and shop around for the cheapest supplier. Are you paying too much for web stats?
- Update it every week—Once you have a few months under your belt, you will realise that some of your predictions about income and expenses were wrong. Update the future months with this new data. This will give you a more realistic picture of cash flow situation
- Be realistic—It’s important to always underestimate your income and overestimate your expenses. This way you’ll always be safe.
- Spend as little as possible—This is probably the most important piece of advice I can give. Every time you’re tempted to buy something (software, equipment, sales tools, etc) ask yourself “Is this going to help us make more money?” If not, don’t buy it.
Conclusion
Armed with tips on getting repeat clients, marketing and maintaining a healthy cash flow, you’re ready to go out and tackle the freelancing market. You can do it!
source:
here
