The Secret Source of Never-Ending Customers for Freelancers
Nine out of ten freelancers will tell you that their biggest challenge is finding new customers.
And not just any customers – we’re talking about the good customers, the ones that really want to work with you, trust you to do a good job, listen to you, accept your guidance, and have a budget to pay for it all!
But finding customers like this isn’t easy, and that’s why so many freelancers find themselves pounding the pavement from networking event to networking event looking for their next lead.
And so they turn to the internet and blogosphere.
The promise seems to be that if you build a thriving online audience or community, you’ll have a never-ending stream of customers. So freelancers bite the bullet, add blogs to their websites, and work hard to update those blogs on a regular basis.
Except that most of those blogs have no readers, generate no business, and are nothing more than a giant, frustrating time-suck.
What are they missing? Continue Reading
Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 3, March
Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.
Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in Front-End Development, WordPress Theme Development, Programming and more!
To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!
How to Extract the Facts with a Web Design Client Questionnaire
The phone calls usually go like this:
Caller: “I want a website for my business.”
You: “What kind of business do you have?”
Caller states the nature of the business, launches into a list of pages that he or she wants on the site, and then asks you for a price quote.
Not a very satisfying encounter, is it?
The caller seems most interested in price, and you? Well, you’re interested in a relationship. As in, the kind that lasts for years.
It might not be possible to have a meaningful relationship with price shoppers, but it’s worth taking the time to learn what your potential clients want in a website. This article will help you create a prospect qualification questionnaire that can be used via telephone or Internet or in face-to-face meetings. Continue Reading
Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 1, March
Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.
Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in Interactive Design, Java Development, WordPress and more!
To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!
Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 4, February
Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.
Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in Website Programmer, jQuery/JSON Developer, Blogger/Community Moderator and more!
To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!
6 Tips for Designing a Promotion Worthy Business Card
You might not always know when an opportunity for networking or the chance to expand your client base will present itself. Incorporating personalized business cards into your professional and personal marketing efforts is a positive way to ensure opportunities will not be missed.
But before you can promote, you need a well-designed business card.
There are many options when considering what information should be included on your business card. The choices you select should clearly represent your brand or business, but there are many different techniques available. Continue Reading
10 Places to Find Potential Clients that You can Engage with Online
Do you have a collection of potential and past clients on your social media networks that you gain work from? One of the main things freelancers and small businesses can get out of social networks like Google+ is the ability to develop relationships with prospects on them and maintain contact with past clients.
One of the main things freelancers and small businesses can get out of social networks like Google+ is the ability to develop relationships with prospects on them and maintain contact with past clients.
This won’t be easy if you haven’t already begun to build up an online network of people who you could potentially work with. So where can you find the kinds of great clients that you want in front of you and your brand, so that you might have a chance of working with them at some point?
To save you time looking everywhere, I’ve put together a list of great places where you can look for prospects in your target market, before adding them somewhere like LinkedIn or Google+.
1. Web Directories
Web directories like Wefollow.com and Group.as, which contain databases of people categorized into various groups. They allow you to configure the way search results and people are ordered, this way so you can find people at the top of their game to add to your network.
2. Forums
Online forums can be some of the best places to find potential clients. Many freelancers use them to find freelancers and/or find out more about the industry they are involved with. As an example, if you are a wedding photographer looking for a potential client, you might want to have a look through who is contributing to a ‘wedding planning’ forum. These is a way to find clients on their web turf. From there you’d add them via Google+, for example, to a ‘client’ circle, and engage from there.
Google search is a good way of finding forums, by simply searching the key word in question followed by ‘forum.‘ Big-boards and Boardreader are sites specifically tailored to searching for forums. Continue Reading
5 Ways to Spread the Freelance Love
Valentine’s Day is probably not a holiday that brings your fellow freelancers to mind.
You may have made a point to recognize your clients during the December holiday season, so why not make February the time to applaud your fellow independents?
Spreading good karma always pays off in some manner, whether it be a new contact, lead, or networking opportunity. Here are some ways to get started. Continue Reading
Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 1, February
Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.
Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in WordPress Design, Web Development, PHP/Facebook Development and more!
To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!
Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 3, January
Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.
Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in Web Design, Salesforce Development, WordPress and IOS Development and more!
To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!
Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 1, January
Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.
Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in Print Design, Marketing Copywriting, Magento Development and more!
To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!
The Lazy Freelancer’s Guide to Market Research
Do freelancers really need market research? After all, some freelancers – and even some businesses – manage to get paying customers without putting a bit of thought into how to acquire those customers. Maybe you could be as lucky as they are, your inbox always full of messages from potential clients, without ever spending even a minute researching them.
But it’s doubtful everyone’s that lucky. Odds are, you need to do even the most basic type of market research to keep your freelance practice going. Your research doesn’t have to include complex graphs and lengthy questionnaires. Market research simply means gathering and analyzing information about your target clients. This information can range from basic demographic information, such as their location, to more abstract information such as what makes your potential clients “tick”.
The good news is you don’t need to hire a pricey marketing firm to learn these things, nor do you need to sign up for Market Research 101 classes. You can start with the following simple tasks…
