7 Tips to improve your freelancing work

As we see around us, there is a very high demand for freelancers. Freelancing means you are a self-employed person, which can be a good thing for some people because you will be your boss also gives you the flexibility of working so you can work anywhere you want. But on the other side, freelancers do a lot more than an employee in a company does.

So, today I have combined some tips that will help you to improve your freelancing business whether you are a freelancer or you thought of starting freelancing.

Create a Brand Identity

Brand identity is your business personality, the feeling you want your clients to have when they see your logo, your colors, or even your work.

As a freelancer, creating your brand identity is essential. Because you are a business, and you are providing value as a service.

That will help make people recognize you and gives your business an identity that makes your business memorable that can help you to stand out from your competitors.

So how can we create a brand that makes us stand out? I will share with you some tips that will help you to achieve that.

Research

Starting the research and knowing your target market is the first step to building a successful business. By knowing your target clients and their needs, you will have a clear vision to target them and also offer them solutions for their needs.

Also, you can research your competitors to see what they offer for their clients and what is the market needs, and also not overprice your services.

Logo

After searching and having a vision of our business needs, It is time to create our logo.

As we see every business has its logo, which helps these businesses to stand out and also to make their clients recognize them easily. Now let’s learn how to create an awesome logo

Do Brainstorming

Building a mind map about our business, what we are doing exactly? what are our message and vision? Then start to create your mind map until you arrive at your business core idea.

Start Designing

Design is the silent ambassador of your brand. — Paul Rand

Your logo should be simple and expresses your business idea without showing that it hardly . that will make your logo looks good and also unique.

Choose Brand Colors

Color is an essential part of your brand identity, It expresses the feeling you want your clients to feel when they see your brand. Selecting colors may be at some point being difficult but by knowing your business personality you will be able to choose your brand colors easily.

Every color has its meaning and expression and those meaning should express our business's message, when we see a restaurant brand the most used colors are red and orange because those colors express a feeling about the food and fire.

You can select your colors by knowing the meaning of every color and you can use this awesome website that will help you with this Color Meaning.

Create a Website

A website can help you make your freelancing business look more professional, build trust with your ideal clients or customers, and improve your online presence, making you stand out from your competitors who don't have a website. Creating your website will make your brand stronger.

Register Your Domain

We will start by registering our domain, a domain is your address on the internet so that makes people visit your website. Choosing your domain can be based on your brand name or in our case can be your name as a freelancer.

You can use domain providers to search for your domain. I use Google Domains, and before that, I was using Namecheap, And the two providers I didn't face any problems for now.

Building Your Website

After knowing the benefits of creating our website, let's learn how to create one. Every business has a target of making a website, your target will change the way of creating your website.

If you want to create a website that shows your freelancing work and gives your clients a brief about you and your work, you can make it using website builders services like Wix or Adobe Portfolio for Designers.

But on the other side, If we want to create a blog, we can use a CMS service like WordPress.

Highlight your skills

The most important thing for every freelancer that gives him value is his skills. Improving it can raise your value as a freelancer, but what if you have good skills and do not share them in your work, basically these skills do not exist for your clients.

Showing and highlighting your skills is vital to present our value to clients who see our work. Also knowing your client what skills you have and what value he expects from working with you, helps you to raise your price. I will give you a list that will help you to highlight your skills.

• Create new projects

• Include a clear presentation

• Update your portfolio

Don't work with less than you charge

I have a short story with this tip. I have worked with less than I charge one time because I needed money, so I accepted a project that was less than what I should charge for it, but I had to accept, but I noticed something when you don't get what your work is worth, you don't do your best In this job.

Working with less than you charge not only will give you this feeling but also there's an odd thing In this and I have noticed it, that the client who needs this work with less than you charge, has a lot of things that you need to do.

You can only work with less than you charge If you need that money, but If not please don't do it. Some people undercharge themselves because they think they don't bring significant value to the table, and that happens because they don't know what value the client will get or they don't know the market price for this service.

Include your expenses

Working as a freelancer means you need to provide gear for yourself, maybe you use some applications that need a subscription to use, your desk and chair that you set on, also you need to pay for your internet and electricity.

All of these things we call overhead pricing, which includes everything your business needs to run to start working. As a freelancer, you need to provide all of these things for your business, and of course, these things are not your expenses so including these things in your rate is something normal as a business owner.

And I have a good formula that can help you to calculate your overhead price and include it in your project price.

Let's say you have a MacBook pro that you working on and maybe you are a designer so you need to subscribe to Adobe applications to use them in your work. Also, let's say you expect your MacBook to work on it for the next 3 years and it costs you 2000$ to buy it and the Adobe subscription costs you 52,99$ per month.

So now we can say we should pay for our business

12000 / (12 * 3) = 31.75$ 

1(Overhead per month * (working days / 30)) + Your Service Cost = Your Final Price

Use Contracts

Contracts help you to avoid any problems while working with a client. It contains everything you and your client should know before you start. Also contains your terms and conditions for working with you as a freelancer, for example, you can include how many edits your client can ask for, also It contains your milestones and deadline.

What To Include

You can include what you will be working on, your price for this project, and the deadline, and also you can include your terms and conditions and that's it.

Create a Contract

You can create your contract with a tool like Canva, There are tons of free templates that you can use, and customize for your needs.

Show Your Work

Working as a freelancer means that you provide a service and to make sure people know what you are doing, you will need to market yourself consistently. Including marketing in your daily routine is something essential as a freelancer.

Be Visible On Social Media

To make sure people see what you do, you need to exist in the place where your target clients there. Creating social media accounts will help you with that, on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin start filing your information on these platforms.

Share Your Voice

Once you have your accounts, start to share your voice with people, share what you do, and share your work. Join the communities in your field, interact with people, help them, and be active on your accounts and there you will be easy to contact with you.

This is the end of our post today, I hope you benefit from the tips I have mentioned in this post, and If you are interested in this kind of post you can subscribe to the newsletter to get all the new posts in your inbox. Thank you for your reading and have a great day 🤘