As a freelancer, you always want to win more work and here are some tips to earn more work and some tips for how much work you should accept. The Internet is your best source for getting about 80% of the resources to get the work.

An Updated Profile:

As you are on your own and you are a brand by yourself, an updated profile is a must! We are not talking about a new DP on Facebook all the time, but on all social networks and mainly on freelance websites your profile need to be frequently updated. Adding new projects, new websites based on your nature of work will help to show you care for your brand.

You can also have your personal site with a nice template and can showcase all your work. It is a very good idea if you are into photography or video creation business. The developers can paste links to the websites they have recently developed or to a free open source tool they have made available. For App developers, it is easy to point the users to the App for download.

New Skills:

Learning is important, and it is important at any age. Internet-based businesses and Information Technology related tasks always force you to acquire new skills. If you don’t acquire new skills, you are likely to go off the track and young and enthusiastic learners will bypass you!

Work in Niche Skills:

Working with rare/niche skills is a good idea if you want to spend limited time on freelancing activities and still, earn some good money. You will have to do some research for skills with less number of freelancers. It is not easy to find such skills and everyone want to get into niche skills area and it no longer remains a niche skill. You can try new programming languages and always changing methods of SEO.

Project Hunting:

The project/task hunt never stops. You have to spend some time each day exploring new opportunities and new tasks. You can also look at a post on this blog ‘Top 7 Freelance Websites to Find Jobs’. Registering on these sites or some of them as per your skill set and experience will give some leads. Though it is the primary source of getting online freelance jobs, you also have to supplement your efforts by other methods listed here. Make sure you accept only that much work, which you can deliver on-time!

Resume/CV:

You will always come across the sites and clients who insist on your CV/Resume. You may wonder of a requirement of CV for a small job, but you never know, a small job today, can turn into a long time work for you tomorrow.

Anytime you are asked to introduce yourself or send your profile by email, though there are places on the internet where you have your profile, you can also send a Word CV. For freelance gigs, there are hundreds of applications, and you can have higher chances of getting the job with a proper CV.

Article/Blog Publishing:

Well, this is not only for content writers, who should have their blog (updated at least once a week) but for any freelance work, writing a blog/article on your topic is showcasing you know the subject. Of course, the blogs are for promotion, so it works as a promotion tool for you as well.

Case Studies:

The case studies are not applicable for everyone, but they could be good for specific freelancers. If you are into turnkey solutions (physical work involved), internet based marketing or Search Engine Optimisation type of work, a case study is a good idea which becomes a convincing story for the client. The case studies are mainly to show the progress made over time, and it applies to any such tasks and skills.

Small Testimonials are also good as they quickly show some quotes from your customers giving confidence to customers. Clients can always differentiate between the Real testimonials and the fake ones, so request your clients to write a line related to your services and then use it for posting.

Get into a Contract:

Freelancers have no backing of any companies, and it is good to have a contract with the employer. The freelancing websites take care of these contracts in their workflow tools but for any work accepted outside the aggregator websites can have a separate contract.

Group Work:

Freelance work is not a one-person show. You need a team (most of the time a virtual team) to find the work for you or to provide additional services required by the client. For example, a client may ask for hosting service to a developer, and he can be a virtual team member expert on hosting. The two of them can provide a small package of service and client satisfaction will be high. It also means you have to hire freelancers and it is for good for the freelancing community. Managing group commitments for delivery timelines is a task on its own!

Word of Mouth:

The age old marketing technique is related to word of mouth. If you do good work for one client, that client may give you a reference, and you can get your next work. We have seen examples of small businesses, who get their major chunk of work only through references. So, don’t ignore this and having a good repo with existing clients will help.

Work Samples:

Sometimes, you have to do work samples for the client. You may not like to work free of cost, as there are chances of getting cheated, but sometimes you can have a contract, as if the work is accepted, you get paid. Having some work samples ready is also good but most of the time clients will ask a sample on a specific topic or specific code snippet, and you have to generate the same quickly.

Summary:

You can get into the freelancing work and start hunting new tasks, new jobs and register yourself on various sites. Performing at your best and keeping commitments is very important. In the end, there is no substitute for hard work!

 

Kitty Gupta
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