Billing Yourself as a Local Freelancer: What You Need to Know
A lot of freelancers get excited about international clients these days. But you can create a niche for yourself as someone local — a freelancer just down the street who is happy to meet in person with clients. For those prospective clients who want to make sure that they get a chance to get to know who they’re working with, working with a local freelancer can be worth a premium over working with someone who is only accessible online.
But if you’re going to promote yourself as the local solution, there are some facts that you need to know about.
The Always On Call Problem
Some clients are bad about considering you always on call — but when you’re in a different time zone, you at least get a reprieve when they have to go to bed. When you’re just around the corner, it can be easier for a client to be constantly asking for more. Of course, this isn’t just a problem for local freelancers, though it is certainly worse.
After all, if a client halfway around the planet has your address, it’s unlikely that he’ll just show up one day. I’ve had local clients who have wanted to see where I work, had a question and were ‘in the area’, and otherwise wind up on my front stoop.
For local freelancers, it’s even more important than usual to lay down boundaries with clients. That can include:
- Setting office hours when you’re available to your clients.
- Making it clear that you only meet in person at locations other than your home.
- Using a P.O. box as your mailing address.
It’s okay to act a little paranoid in terms of keeping your personal life and professional life separate. Even if your clients are all located within a few miles, you may not know all that much about them.
Word of Mouth and Gossip
If you’re looking for local clients, word of mouth is your most valuable marketing method. Sure, you’ve got more opportunities for networking, but the type of client that actively seeks out local freelancers often does it because he wants to know more about the reputation of the people he’s working with.
People will talk about how you approach specific issues, making at least some of them into opportunities to shine.
Your reputation is incredibly important and you have to take care of it. You need to make sure to deal with any problem that comes up — you can’t afford to just ignore issues. Even if the situation isn’t your fault, it’s your problem. People will talk about how you approach specific issues, making at least some of them into opportunities to shine.
You also need to pay attention to what you say about other companies in the area. I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with gossip: I try to only say nice things about the people in the freelancing community in my area, but I’ve been known to warn other freelancers off of prospective clients known for problems in the past. That sort of thing often gets back to such clients and you have to decide if a small firestorm is worth whatever you want to say. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s better to just keep your mouth shut.
Local Can Trump International
There are benefits to being local, but you have to sell them. With freelance marketplaces driving rates lower than a local freelancer can usually offer them, you have to step up your marketing. You need to make it clear to clients that paying $150 an hour, rather than $1.50 an hour, is actually a good deal. Here are a few of the points you can make with prospective clients:
- You can minimize communication issues, because you share both a language and a culture.
- You can actually come into the office, which can be useful in anything from getting to know product lines better for writing sales copy to checking the print quality for graphic design projects.
- You can offer references from companies and individuals that prospective clients recognize, if not actually know.
Dig deeper, though: find the unique qualities that make your local work stand out. With the right marketing, clients will understand the value of working with someone who is just down the street.
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by SimplyY.
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Targeting your local market as a freelancer in your expertise niche is the best practice. Dealing with local clients is much easier then always calling/mailing international client.
International clients pay better then the local ones
I loved what you wrote regarding local freelancing and reputation. I live in a city of 1.5 million that is more like a small town. Recently, I was hired by a client and it turns out she lives 3 houses down the block from me. Not only did I want to impress her with my writing skills, but also my ability to be neighborly. It’s true when they say, “Small world.”
I’ve only recently moved into freelancing as a web designer after 8 years working for agencies, so trying to generate the ‘word of mouth’ marketing you mentioned is exactly where I’ve been focussing my energy. Regardless of all the technology we all now have at our fingertips, I still believe people buy people, and you can only get to know someone so well over the phone and emails.
I live in Tucson, Arizona, one of the lowest paying job markets in the United States.
Guess what: The freelance pay isn’t so hot here either. Hence, I’ve never made “local” my primary focus. I have this funny thing about eating on a regular basis. Not to mention keeping a roof over my head.
I’ve not only had the problem of the “always on call” misconception, but also the “always available any time during business hours” problem. Meaning a client thinks that they should be able to get a hold of me at any moment throughout the day. As if I never do anything else, never take meetings or phone calls from anyone else, and I sit around waiting for their specific call all day.
I’ve ended client relationships before because of this. It can really get to a point with some people where they’re just not going to accept that they can’t always get me on the phone immediately every single time they need to talk. At those points it’s often better to just part ways.
A few mutually discordant points come to mind.
Niche focus: if your freelance services are targeted to a specific industry niche or vertical market, the local option is almost impossible to satisfy. There may simply not be enough of your kind of client of sufficient size in the immediate area to make a business out of.
Contempt through familiarity: I have witnessed local job candidates get shot down at companies because they were considered just another uneducated low quality local rube (ahem, like everyone else inside the hiring company). Whereas the candidate from outside the area is placed on a pedestal and is assumed to have special sauce simply because he or she is “good enough” to be hired cross country. Both assumptions are really stupid but hiring parties very often make them.
The cheapness and anonymity of the internet: this is the single greatest point in favor of local marketing. There is a tidal wave of cheap workers available over the internet in the form of Fiverr, programmer and freelancer project auction sites, etc. Their unifying attribute is that they are all just faceless nobodies in some other country or state. Face-to-face and locally, you have the opportunity to bond with local business owners and become much more than another internet mouth to feed.
Networking potential: networking online is another aspect of being a faceless online commodity. Networking locally is “real” networking where your actual story, reputation, talent set, etc are visible and understood by a circle of people.