Last Updated on January 22, 2022 by Marian
Maybe you picture yourself living a certain lifestyle, but you don’t quite have the means to be able to carry that vision out at the moment. One way that you can fund the lifestyle that you want to have is to become a freelance service provider.
You’ll be able to set your own hours, be your own boss and make your goals or dreams come true. Working from home at your leisure is a big perk many people wish they had, and now they can!
How Working for Others Can Grow Your Income Fast
You have to have money to fund your lifestyle. If you’re like most people, you don’t want to take years to build up your income. One way to grow it fast is to work for others. When you work for others, there’s no wait time for you to get started.
You can land projects to work on right away. As your own boss, you don’t have to take on the projects that you don’t feel will be a good fit or that don’t pay what you want them to pay.
Working for others is the fastest way to get money in the bank. There are other ways – like building a blog as affiliate – but it takes time to build that kind of income. In some niches, it can take nearly a year and a half to even hit a four figure month.
You might be someone who’s working a side hustle and you’ve been busy creating your own products. That takes creative energy, plus time. You have to come up with the idea, then write it up or outsource it, develop the graphics if you have any, and get it on your website or third party platform.
Then after that, you have to work to promote it and then hope your audience responds favorably and purchases the product. So building a blog or creating info products can both be good ideas, but as a way to build income fast, they’re not.
The income you want to make is in the service industry. Working for others allows you to take on projects quickly. You can take on as many as you feel like you can handle and still be able to deliver quality work.
As a freelance service provider, you’re not limited to any particular niche. You’re only limited by your knowledge and skill set – but you can grow both of those. If you’re wondering what type of services you can offer, the answer is whatever you like as long as there’s a market.
You’ll be able to tell if there’s a market for it easily. All you have to do is go to a site that connects jobs with service providers and look at the categories or job offers that have been listed in the past.
This will show you what others are looking for. Some of the most common areas of freelance services are things like writing – including ghostwriting, copywriting or technical writing.
Some people are also looking for content writers or creative writers. There are other jobs waiting for people who can provide content that includes graphics or design work.
You can offer your skills as a virtual administrative assistant or as an editor.
You can offer transcription services or photography. Almost any online or work from home job that you think of can be offered as a freelance service. You can search Google to see what kinds of freelancers people are hiring, too.
Finding Projects and People to Secure as Clients
One of the first things that people who are new to the world of freelance service ask is how do they find projects and get clients. If you’re worried about that, you can relax.
There are more jobs offered for freelancers than there are people to take on the work.
So you’ll have plenty to keep you busy and you’ll be able to find work. There are places like UpWork that you can sign up for. You can look for the type of project you’d like to do by using their search function.
Or, you can use their category finder under “types of work” and just click on one of the links. For example, Sales & Marketing leads to more than 30 different projects listed. You’ll find everything from a social media manager to YouTube freelance gigs for jobs like video editing, keyword research and more.
If you’re thinking that these projects are all low paying, they’re not. Some are for the inexperienced but for people with experience, you can earn a lot of money providing your services.
The site lists the pay for each project so you know up front which ones to consider submitting a proposal for. Fiverr is another site where you can land projects. Once you sign up and create an account offering your skills or knowledge, you can get hired to do projects known as gigs.
When the company first started, all the gigs were $5 but now, the gigs can be in $5 increments. So you’ll see people offering their services such as “starting at $275” or some other amount.
You can offer freelance services such as proofreading, design, building websites, coaching, consulting and more. It’s not unheard of for people to be earning $500 and more per gig.
The more experience you have or gain, the more you can make. One woman named Charmaine Pocek used her skills and experience and made a million dollars on Fiverr.
Another way to find projects and gain clients is to network.
Word of mouth networking with marketers can quickly get your name out there and from that, you can get client referrals that will help to grow your reputation. You can do this online or in person.
Hang out in places where marketers hang out. Make it a point of telling them what you do and that you have openings in your schedule to grow your client list. If you don’t have your own website, then you definitely need to set one up.
There are a lot of ways that you can gain clients by having a space online where they can find you and learn more about your services. You can also find projects and clients on sites like LinkedIn, which lists thousands of jobs including ones for freelance service providers.
Be sure to check out places like guru.com, flexjobs.com, and mediabistro.com, too. Having your own website where you detail your skills and talents and list pricing will help you get more jobs, too.
The Most Common Freelance Gigs Available
On all of the freelance job sites, there are many different categories listed. If you have a specific skill such as in the IT industry, there are some sites that are dedicated solely to that niche and don’t offer other categories.
So if you have a specialized skill, you can also do a search for your skill, plus the words “job board” or “work from home” and you’ll get dozens of results for what you’re looking for.
However, there are some common freelance gigs available because these tend to be the ones that people are outsourcing or hiring for. These are skills that are in high demand so you won’t have trouble finding clients.
On Upwork, there’s good demand for gigs in virtual assisting, administrative task managing, editing, design, and writing. You’ll find a lot of different clients and can pick and choose the ones that you want to work with.
For example, under the editing category, you might decide that you want to edit audio projects or visual projects. But there’s also a category for editing written material like speeches, papers, guides, eBooks and more.
You can also work as a writer and the type of work that you do will relate to the skills that you have. Some people work as a resume writer. Others work as a blog writer or content marketing writer.
The better you are at what you do and the better the customer service or satisfaction you give, the more money you can make on any of the sites. On Fiverr, what people are often looking for are those who have skills or experience in categories such as graphic design.
They might want things like a logo or social media headers done. Or they may want a book cover designed. Another category there where people are always looking for a good service provider is in the area of writing.
People are always looking for someone to write cover letters or website content for their business. It doesn’t matter what type of writing that you do, there’s always a market for it because many people either don’t have time to do the writing, aren’t interested in doing it themselves or don’t know how.
Virtual assistants in administration gigs are always needed on Fiverr. You can offer things like social media management, customer support, scheduling, research, data entry and more.
If you have a knack for creating and editing video clips, this may come in handy. There are many people who need short branding videos known as intros and outros to use in their online video marketing efforts.
What Your Clients Expect for Top Dollar Earnings
There’s no room for mediocrity if you want to fund your lifestyle as a freelance service provider. You have to be the best that you can possible be if you want the top dollar earnings.
In a world where “good enough” often seems to be the mark, people get tired of substandard efforts. They’re looking for freelancers that know how to take care of them as a client.
If you want quality clients that pay big bucks, then you what you offer also has to be quality. Having the mindset that everyone is just trying to save money and won’t pay extra or what you’re worth is wrong.
There are plenty of clients willing to pay more to get more. Clients expect that the work you’re going to do for them will be great. That means that you should do your best to make sure it’s mistake-free.
If your service is writing, that means you should have a good grasp of how to write well. With all of the books and videos and tutorials that are freely available, there’s no excuse for not knowing how handle anything you need to write if that’s your skillset.
It’s the same in any niche. You may not know everything there is to know in that area, but you can learn whatever it is that that your client wants. You may be someone who’s never written a real estate blog post in your life, and you don’t understand half the terms.
But you can learn what you need to know and leave the client with a well-researched post that’s so well written and knowledgeable, it makes him glad that he hired you.
Besides making sure that you know your stuff when delivering whatever type of content you provide, you need to be sure to ask questions when you don’t fully understand the scope of what the client wants.
Some people think that asking questions will make them seem like they don’t know what they’re doing. But clarifying something makes you a service provider who cares about the outcome of the job and it helps the client know that you get whatever it is they want.
Make sure that the content you deliver is unique. Don’t rely on what everyone else is writing or designing when working on a job. Be creative and create with the client in mind.
When you do a job, go the extra mile. If you see something that could add more value to the project, let the client know. If you know a resource that can further help them with their project, you can recommend that, especially if you know they’re still looking for that.
Your clients will expect you to meet your deadlines. Nearly every service provider in the world has dealt with an emergency situation that’s impacted their ability to get a job done.
But those situations are rare. When you take on a job, make sure that you can meet or turn in the project earlier than the client needs it. This will mark you as someone who cares about the client’s timeline.
You don’t want to get a reputation as someone who holds up a client’s project because you couldn’t get stuff done on your end. For top dollar pay, clients expect you to be friendly, but remain professional.
They don’t want to be your therapist, your best friend or your coworker. They just want you to get the job done and do it right. This takes a load off their shoulders, which is one of the reasons they outsourced to begin with.
Getting Follow Up Gigs with Ease
Landing a client really isn’t that difficult, but you don’t want your clients to be the type who are one and done. You want them to need your services so that you can establish a long term working relationship with them.
There are dozens of strategies that you can use so that your clients will immediately want to give you more work. You can start by letting them know, as soon as whatever current job you’re working on them for is finished, that you have room in your schedule if they want to go ahead and book more work with you so that you’ll have time.
This comes across like you’re giving them a preferred space and makes them feel important. Make it a point of staying in touch with your clients. Check in with them via your normal contact routine to let them know you enjoyed working on their project.
You can even suggest additional work by mentioning something you may have noticed about their site, like the need for a lead magnet or whatever. You can also offer a bundle service during this follow up email.
This would be consider a bulk service buy. For example, if the client hires you to do the text content for his website, you can give a small discount if he also adds a graphics package to the project.
When you do this, always mention what they stand to get out of it. You could tell them how something you offer could increase traffic or improve conversions. This is one of the biggest ways to make sure that you get repeat clients.
You must know what it is that they need because when you tap into their need, you find out what it is they’re missing that you can provide. Some clients are overworked and too busy to handle everything on their own, which is why they hired you.
They may not realize that the same overwhelm is going to happen to them again the next month. You can turn them into a repeat client by offering your services on retainer. This retainer can be divided by different work categories, too.
For example, maybe they hired you to write blog content, but they also need someone to write their social media content or to publish it all, as a virtual administrative assistant would. You can offer to do both as part of the retainer.
Becoming an online freelance service provider is a great way to earn the kind of money that will meet your basic financial responsibilities and also provide for an increase to your lifestyle.
It provides you with the flexibility you seek in a work day and gives you the power to pick and choose who you work with. This is much better than applying for a strict 8-5 job where you have no say over when and if you get a raise, or which clients you’re assigned.
