6 Steps To Scaling Your Freelance Business
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Isn’t it about time you got a raise?
As freelancers, it can be difficult to make that happen. Sure, we might be making a comfortable living today, but what about tomorrow? If you’re supporting a growing family or if you’re looking to upgrade your lifestyle, you’d better start thinking beyond just your next project. You must begin thinking about how to scale your freelance business.
So how do you do that? Most freelancer’s incomes are tied directly to their time. Since there are only so many hours in the day, how do we break through our income ceiling? The answer boils down to this: Stop working alone.
In this article, I will outline six steps you can take to scale up your freelance business, and grow your income, without sacrificing your leisure time.
Tom Wujec: Build a tower, build a team
View engaging conference lectures, interesting how to discussions, and high quality freelance advice via video here on FreelanceSwitch.
This week we look at Build a tower, build a team by Tom Wujec. In this video he presents some surprisingly deep research into the “marshmallow problem” — a simple team-building exercise that involves dry spaghetti, one yard of tape and a marshmallow. Who can build the tallest tower with these ingredients? And why does a surprising group always beat the average?.
Video: Clay Shirky on institutions vs. collaboration
View engaging conference lectures, interesting how to discussions, and high quality freelance advice via video here on FreelanceSwitch.
This week we look at Clay Shirky on institutions vs. collaboration by Clay Shirky. In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning.
The Ultimate Partnership Guide for Freelancers
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“Should I work alone, or find a partner?”
There are some compelling reasons to find a partner: a complimentary skill-set, and an extra pair of eyes and hands, not to mention that it isn’t nearly as much fun to work alone.
On the other hand, there are some fairly compelling reasons NOT to find a partner: they get half of your business, you won’t always see eye to eye, and let’s face it, things can get messy.
So… what should you do? Is partnering a good idea?
I’ve been down both roads; I’ve started and run businesses on my own, and I’ve done it with partners. Of the businesses that did involve other people, some of those partnerships worked out, and some… well, not so much.
Let’s take a close look at the perils, pitfalls, and possibilities of partnering in this guide. We’ll extract from my experience and shed light on when to partner and when not to.
3 Reasons Why Copywriters and Translators Should Team Up
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Recently here on Freelance Switch, Thursday Bram discussed whether freelancers should be making use of the trend towards global outsourcing, to free up their writing and project management time by employing virtual assistants overseas to manage menial tasks.
Today, I’d like to expand upon that theme, and talk about how freelancers, especially copywriters, could be turning their personal cottage industry into an international enterprise, by teaming up with translators to go global.
The web is becoming an increasingly multilingual place. The growth in internet accessibility worldwide means that, in the near future, English will no longer be the ‘lingua franca’ of the web.
Web surfers prefer to browse the web in their native language – and this means that if you want to reach an international audience, you need to go multilingual.
Collaboration Marketing as a Freelance Web Designer
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Who Am I? I’m Allan, a designer who went from freelancer who was grinding out a meager living to co-founding a highly profitable web shop, now we build our own apps, we host conferences and workshops.
Here’s the skinny… Too many designers are sitting at home, talking about the elusive “portfolio” they plan on building or waiting for word of mouth to take them where they want to go. Here’s some tough love: what good is your portfolio if no one is talking about you or visiting your site?
Word of mouth can take you a long way if people truly are referring you to their friends, but instead of waiting around for others to do you favors, try putting the words in their mouths for them through collaboration marketing.
You need to get out there and network. Share your work, participate in communities, and look to collaborate. Get out of the house and shake some hands, add some real value online, and make things happen.
Find a Collaboration Partner That Fits Your Style
A good collaboration is like a good marriage. You want someone you feel that you can trust, and you especially want someone who compliments your style. When a client picks you, they pick you for your style, techniques, portfolio, and value. Likewise, you want someone that can match the clients requests as well as your own. You want a professional to work with, and you can’t afford to mix different styles for a client. You might end up re-doing the entire design or even lose the client completely. So how do you pick out your freelance back-up, your designing duo….and not a dud? Continue Reading
5 Keys to Forming a Successful Creative Partnership
Most creative partnerships begin in very organic ways. You meet at a conference or bump into each other at a local co-working space and hit it off. You realize your work styles align and that your skill sets are complimentary. It’s time to pick a name for your dream agency!
Or is it? Not every freelancer wants to own an agency. There are many reasons why freelancers decide to team up. Among them,
- Specialization – A creative partnership may enable those involved to spend more time doing what they love most and do best.
- A credibility boost – Working with other respected freelancers increases your credibility as an individual.
- Greater income – Combining forces makes bigger projects possible. With those bigger projects comes the potential for significantly bigger paychecks.
But how do you get that and everything else you’re hoping to get from your new creative partnership? Continue Reading
10 Reasons Why Your Last Collaboration Did Not Work
Whether you are fresh out of design school or a professional with twenty years of experience you have collaborated. And if you are anything like me, half of those endeavors failed miserably. The good ones produce the best work of your career, and the bad ones…oh, the bad ones. The bad ones make you age horribly, keep you up at night, and question your profession. Successful collaborations force us to learn from one another they make designers grow, and they test their limits. Collaborations are what being a designer is all about. Continue Reading
11 Tips To Get More Out Of Your Freelancing
We all know there are advantages of being a freelancer, especially if get have the luxury of working at home. Unfortunately, it’s hard to be creative every single day, especially if you’re worrying about payments, existing clients, finding new clients, feeling overworked, or whatever.
Don’t get overwhelmed. Here are some general tips to get the most out of your freelancing efforts.
Product Review: activeCollab
As freelancers we are often in our element working as hired guns. Being the single point of contact from pitch to project-end certainly has its advantages. There are occasions though, that need may arise to put together a collaborative group of designers and developers – a freelance posse if you will.
For those who have suddenly found themselves in the position of Project Coordinator, it can feel a lot like being pushed into the deep end of the pool. Without an effective collaboration structure in place, you will soon be drowning in emails and out-of-control task lists.
Fortunately, there are currently several programs and software available for working collaboratively, each with their different strengths and weaknesses. FreelanceSwitch requested that I review one of these choices – activeCollab from a51 development.
Keeping In Touch with Remote Collaboration Tools
Ever since my wife and I started our custom software development business, we’ve been making use of remote collaboration facilities such as VNC and Webex in order to give demonstrations to clients without having to visit their site, or have them come to us, as I described in my blog entry on Demonstrating Software on the Web. This has worked well: the majority of our clients are over 100 miles away, so visits in either direction are quite a lot of hassle. We still do make site visits or have clients come to us where desired or necessary, but the use of remote collaboration tools has certainly cut down on the level of travel we
would otherwise have had to do.
The various remote collaboration tools have various levels of cost and functionality. For example, we usually use TightVNC for demonstrations, as it is completely free to use, and just requires that the client has a web browser with Java support in order to use it. However, it does require that you know your IP address, and may require modification to your firewall to ensure that the incoming request is passed on to the VNC server.
