Evaluate & Define Yourself as a Freelancer

If you have given up your 9 – 5 job and have begun freelancing, you will come across several challenges as you may be a jack of all trades, master of none. Here is what you must do once you have taken up a few assignments, evaluate and define yourself.

Avoid these mistakes as a freelancer and build a better career.

1.    Find Your Niche

You may be able to a lot of things and applying for several kinds of online jobs creates a confusing portfolio. If you are good at logo designing, content writing, accounting, just choose one particular niche where you are simply ‘outstanding’.

If you are a specialist, you will attract premium rates and high-end clients.

Make sure you deliver good quality work within deadlines to gain a competitive edge. Find your tribe by engaging in a community as it allows you to discover new things and gain knowledge. You will learn strategies and ideas of other successful writers.

This is not to say that those who do not create a niche do not do well as freelancers. It just means that if you create a niche, clients expect you to understand their business model – inside and outside.

A word of caution, do not create a niche in the beginning of a career. Boost your career by exposing yourself to different industries and clients. This will accelerate and broaden your knowledge, expertise and insight of the services you can provide. This will result in a more refined, skilled and competent you.

It is a good strategy to keep testing other domains to be able to write on any topic of a domain. Explore and discover challenges; the experience will help you stand out from the crowd.

Consistently work on it to thrive in the industry, build better connections, gain experience and reap benefits.

2.    Be Critical

Not every job is worth accepting. Simply saying ‘yes’ to, everything will be harmful. Differentiate yourself from a generalist, you will be busy with low-paid work.

Carefully assess all the work that comes to you in terms of  

·       Commitment (Long-term or Short term projects)

·       Time it will take to complete the task

·       Niche project (Does it interest you)

·       Client (How you feel about the client? Can you work with them?)

If you think either one will do you more harm than good and if you think you are not a good match refuse without repenting.

It will save you a lot of time and frustration. Invest your creative energy into projects that motivate you and offer better compensation.

3.    Marketing Yourself Well

Most freelancers have a blog and a website. This is not marketing. How do you market yourself? Marketing is the way you communicate with your customer to sell your services or product, where communicating USP is the key aspect of marketing.

You must learn the art of marketing yourself well. Some of these skills will help:

·       The Web site helps showcase your work and draw clients.

·       The Portfolio must showcase the industries you have worked with by grouping your work by the industry and link the samples to the portfolio.

·       Social media will help you be present where you will meet potential clients. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are the most popular. Freelancers must join groups relevant to their niche, ask questions and give answers to the needy. This will help you be popular and post updates anytime you publish a blog on your website.

·       Listen and clearly, understand client requirements, ask questions where required.

·       You must take feedback and criticism positively. It is a good practice to work on improving where required, and deal with criticism positively and boost your effectiveness.

You may be making some mistakes, avoid them as they often become big.
Do not fake perfection, when you can learn from mistakes.