Freelancing: Your first few steps
9 years ago, I decided I would rather struggle and starve than find a normal 9-5 hr (is there such this as 9-5? I wonder) JOB. I was just a greenhorn right out of high school at ripe age of 17. I had my shares of ups and downs. And boy, do I have few horror stories to share?
Today after putting together a successful business, I often wonder if I’d do things differently if I have to start again. Of course there are tons of things but I am going to highlight most important ones here. I know these are going to help you a lot.
I don’t know why you are starting out? may be you don’t like your boss or may be you think it’s better to work yourself and make all the money. Regardless of your reasons, you’ll find this list help.
1. Have More confidence in Your Skill : No matter who you meet, be it an expert businessman or an authority figure in your niche. Have more confidence. I cannot stress this enough. If you have worked hard to learn a skill then I can bet, there are only a few people better than you.
I was a programmer and I understood this unknowingly to the extent I was arrogant about it. I have met many highly paid programmers and knew their skills weren’t at my level. If I start again, I’d not mind crossing the arrogance line once again.
Why? If you are confident in your skill, that’ll come across in your communication and will help you land a client or two regardless of your experience. I had more than few HR managers of big firms looking to hire me.
2. No More Free Work : I’d do no work which doesn’t get me paid right now. Nope, never. I did this mistake to “build my portfolio”. And trust me not many people trust your skills if you are working for free.
If you like doing charity work, then I can show you tons of guys who’ll squeeze every drop of blood out of you before you say “Hi”.
3. Give discounts or Free for promise of more work: Now my first client was like “If you work for me, I’ll get you this guy, that guy and that guy’s account and more over you guys aren’t even experienced, nobody will pay you a single dime”.
If that happens to you. Find a better client. Trust me… This client was big pain in the arse. I had a bad hunch, but my partner told me to go ahead. He’d change his requirements of this project every day and then later cut down the deadline from 90 days to 50 days.
If you have been in programming, then you know it’s not easy at all. From coding, to testing and debugging. We worked our asses off for this… and what we got? Nothing, Nada, zippo.
Well the only good thing we got out of this client was understanding how to deal with people like him. That’s it. Never got paid for this project. My finger tips still hurt after working for him day in day out. I might talk more about dealing with guys like him in another post.
4. Learn to Sell Yourself: if you are anything of geek like I was 9 years ago. selling, negotiating and marketing might sound like an alien words. But trust me, if you learn how to sell yourself, you’ll make 10 times of money you are making right now… Again, I can’t give justice to a topic like this in small list so I’ll write another post on it.
So far Here’s my advice to you. Go to google and search for “Scientific advertising” by Claude Hopkins. Download this book(it’s free) and read it from cover to cover at least 10 times. It’s an old book, but it’s philosophy still applies.
5. Network with like minded people: I so regret not trying networking when I was starting out. Find people who are freelancers in your niche. Get to know them and ask them if you could help them.
There’s good chance of someone giving you small projects from their own.
6 No Work is Small: Don’t mind doing small work like “assembling someone’s computer or speeding up computers performances”. Its better than sitting and doing nothing.
7. Think Obvious: Now too many people try to think out of the box. Trying to think different. Its not bad thinking different. But also think about the obvious. Lets say you are a computer geek and want some work.. What’s the most obvious thing to do?
You know what? Find people who have computer and solve their problems.
What’s the next obvious thing to do? Find people who own a small business running on computers and solve their computer problems.
If you don’t get people like these what’s the next obvious thing to do? Well, leave your card with all the people you found above & giving them assurance of fixing their computer even if its 2 am.
Are you still trying to be different? You better not.
7. Be frugal : If you are just starting out as a freelancer. The only money you need to spend is on your business card. Everything else like office space, fax, copier etc etc are just expense you don’t need right now.
Don’t make the same mistakes I did. If you don’t mind doing some grunt work, you might see yourself working on good projects in no time. Now print this list out and paste with your mirror. So that you slam these points in your mind.
Varun Pratap
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