View engaging conference lectures, interesting how to discussions, and high quality freelance advice via video here on FreelanceSwitch.

This week we look at Paul Boag: Get Clients to say ‘Yes!’ by Paul Boag. This weekend we’re sharing a great talk from Carsonified. In this talk at FOWD NYC, Paul Boag covers strategies for working better with design clients. Continue Reading

Here’s the scenario: you give up your job to take up freelancing full time. First, you work in grinding drudgery for a while, until you land a sweet client who not only loves your work, but wants you to do more and more, until you find yourself dedicating 40 hours a week to just that one client. It feels great: stability, steady income, the same work week-after-week, all the things you left your job for…. or was it?

If you’re in this position, or see your schedule starting to line up with one major client, then it’s time to assess the pros and cons of dedicated freelance work. Continue Reading

View engaging conference lectures, interesting how to discussions, and high quality freelance advice via video here on FreelanceSwitch.

This week we look at Dealing with Clients Who Want Discounts by leifalable. In this humorous video see how a freelancer handles a customer looking for low pricing. It’s funny to see a conversation take place that in for most freelancers happens via email. Continue Reading

Freelancing is all about building relationships, and the holidays are a perfect time to nurture those relationships.

Sending a holiday greeting adds a human touch to your cyber business, and keeps your name fresh in people’s minds. It’s also a great way to thank those who have contributed to your success.

Here are five ways – from  the simplest to more time consuming – to spread some seasonal cheer. Continue Reading

If someone came up to your clients and asked them, “What is that freelancer doing for you?” what do you think your client will say? Will they sing your praises or scratch their heads and wonder why they hired you in the first place?

While your clients can check your invoices for a list of accomplished tasks, invoices weren’t designed to explain why these tasks are important, nor do they justify the cost. A project proposal may contain these details, but this is written at the beginning of the project. Clients need to know what you’ve done for them lately – and they need a recurring reminder.

For your client to understand your value, you need to assert it yourself. You can do this by creating a “Monthly Value Report”. This document shows them how much you’re contributing to their business.

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Finding customers is hard.

It’s hard for everyone, but especially for freelancers – they’ve got too much to do, not enough time in which to do it, and they’d much rather be doing what they do best than networking and prospecting for new business.

Which is why, once you’ve found a good customer, you can’t afford to lose them.

And yet, freelancers do – all the time.

Here’s why – and what you can do about it… Continue Reading

If you want to be a successful freelancer, then there is one thing that you need to get down pat.

Let me share a personal story that illustrates my point.

“That’s What I’m Looking For…”

I used to do some web design work as a freelancer. One time, I was working with a client that ran a small business.

We spent some time talking through the options and looking at his current site. Things were going fine, but it wasn’t like we were really hitting it off and I didn’t get the impression that I was blowing him away with what I was saying.

Then I looked at a particular section of the site and said,

Now, I don’t want to say you’re wasting the web pages that you’re using here, but you’re definitely not using them to their full potential.

He jumped up and said, “Now, that’s what I’m looking for out of you!”

From that moment on, everything I said was like gold and we struck up a nice little deal. Continue Reading

A few times a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of FreelanceSwitch. This article by Shaun Crowley was first published August 5th, 2007, yet is just as relevant and full of interesting information today.

Your design can only be as good as the brief you worked from. The best projects are borne from creative briefs that are open enough to inspire ideas, while being specific enough to feel workable. Learn how you can elicit these kinds of briefs by providing clients with briefing templates.

Picture the scene. You’ve just landed a new client, who hurries a brief to you for a marketing brochure. There are a few holes in the brief, but instead of asking for constant clarification, you get to work. Later you’re told the design “isn’t quite right”. Before you know it, the client is refusing to pay.

Familiar story? All too familiar for most freelance designers I know. Ambiguous design briefs are infuriating. What’s worse, clients who set you up to fail often go away thinking you stuffed up.

So what can you do to avoid this? Continue Reading

Credit: Lucas Cobb on Flickr

Recently I parted ways with a long time client.  It was an agonizing decision: my contact person had always been wonderful to work with.  The projects I worked on were always right up my alley.  So why did I ditch this seemingly perfect client?  Their payment came from a third party, and typically took up to a year to arrive. And if I didn’t put pressure on them, I’d probably never get paid at all.

I had prepped myself for this for months.  I told myself that before taking another project, I’ll explain the problem and suggest better payment terms. If no improvement could be made, I’ll pass on the job. However, I accepted ‘just one more’ assignment a few too many times before I finally bit the bullet.

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Credit: disorderly on Photodune

There is an old adage in the business world that “employees don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.” The idea is rather basic and reminds us that it is most often the people and not the actual job that generates turnover.

I think this philosophy holds true to running a freelance based business. But consider it this way: “clients don’t quit projects, they quit freelancers.” Heck, a client might be using a freelancer to begin with because they quit an agency that was driving them nuts.

What I want to talk about here are some ways to develop a business based on clients that don’t want to quit. After all, if we effectively retain our clients we will spend less time searching for new ones. Not to mention that extremely happy clients will most often refer new business.

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Credit: Yuri Arcurs on Photodune

Creatives need a detailed brief. Without it we are feeling in the dark, with little clue of our destination.

We need targeted information from our clients to deliver high quality finished work that meets the client’s expectations. We want to deliver polished work and we need the right information to do that.

As freelancers, it’s up to us to direct our clients on how to deliver an informed and detailed brief. Often this means putting together a questionnaire that clients fill out. This could be a website form, PDF, or text document, whichever you and your client are comfortable using. Ultimately, you need to collect the information needed for the project brief.

Only experienced clients will be familiar with compiling creative briefs and most clients will need some hand holding through the process. Whether you use a formal questionnaire, or ask questions over the phone, will depend on you and your clients. However, don’t discount the need to collect this project brief information, it’s how every one of your projects should get started.

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Credit: Nik Muhd Faris Fathi on Flickr

A topic that affects freelancers, especially those new to the freelance world, is separating your personal life and ‘me time’ from work. After all, if you’re sitting at home in your underwear working on a design for a client – it doesn’t really feel much like work.

To better understand why freelancers have this problem, let’s look at why workers of the typical 9-5 office job don’t have to deal with this as much as us work-at-home types. When you take on a typical job, you’re given: your hours to be at work, a work email, and typically a phone number (or extension number), which your boss, and depending on the type of work, possibly your clients know this.

If you work for a small marketing agency and a client needs to get in touch with you at the end of the day, a quick glance at the watch to see that it’s 4:30pm means that the client needs to ring you quickly, as you’ll soon be getting ready to leave. If it’s after your 5pm finish, or an out of hours time such as the weekend, then the contact mediums are obvious; send an email or leave a voicemail. Since your hours are 9-5 on Monday-Friday, it’s easy to work out approximately when you’ll get the all important message.

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