Getting Better at the Freelancing Thing

In this hang­out we heard from some free­lancers and busi­ness own­ers on how they tack­le net­work­ing, client acqui­si­tion, and bal­ance that with onboard­ing automa­tion and per­son­al development.

Net­work­ing #

Net­work­ing is not just about who you know, but who knows you – and how to get your­self known by the peo­ple that mat­ter. Going to a tech con­fer­ence like Peers can be great, but if you only net­work with the peo­ple that do what you do, you’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly expand­ing your net­work to peo­ple you can do busi­ness with. Try going to events that have noth­ing to do with devel­op­ment to meet poten­tial clients.

Incen­tives to refer you #

Con­sid­er giv­ing out dis­count cards for say, 20%, and giv­ing out anoth­er one for that per­son to give to some­one else too. Selvin used to cus­tomise the busi­ness cards he gave out to go to a land­ing page spe­cif­ic to the event he was at.

Remem­ber to say no #

Whether it’s because you’ve got too much work on, or because the client isn’t right, or there are red flags, remem­ber to say no to projects that aren’t right. If the project is too small and you’ve been want­i­ng to do more work in a spe­cif­ic area, con­sid­er turn­ing down the project and spend that time instead learn­ing a new tech­nol­o­gy or some way to improve your­self (pro­vid­ed that you couldn’t learn that new tech on the project being offered).

Pre­sent­ing your­self as a free­lancer or a busi­ness #

We heard both sides of the argu­ment for pre­sent­ing your­self as a free­lancer or as a busi­ness enti­ty. Some pre­fer to sell them­selves and their per­son­al­i­ty, as the client hires them rather than a busi­ness, but we also dis­cussed how ​‘free­lancer’ can be seen as unre­li­able or a poten­tial weak point. Whichev­er stance you take, be sure to own it and be cer­tain about how you present yourself.

Reli­able income #

When it comes to income that isn’t project based, some alter­na­tive ideas to just exchang­ing time for dollars:

• Trad­ing work for equi­ty in the com­pa­ny (par­tic­u­lar­ly for startups)
• Side projects
• Sub­scrip­tion based services
• Com­mer­cial plu­g­in development

Improv­ing your busi­ness #

Gui talked about how he reached out to peo­ple that were doing things well in brand­ing, pre­sen­ta­tion, web­sites etc and met with them to dis­cuss how they ran their busi­ness­es. This not only helps to gain knowl­edge in how suc­cess­ful busi­ness are run, but also makes a lot of connections.

✏️ Notes by Daryl Knight