You’ve decided you want to be a freelancer and start on all the work.
You’ve built your website, joined the job boards, applied for jobs, pitched, written guest posts, and even landed a client.
How do you expand your business, while managing any new clients you land, and ensuring the quality of your work is at a high standard?
But what now?
How do you expand your business, while managing any new clients you land, and ensuring the quality of your work is at a high standard?
What Are Your Freelance Business Goals?
You may have ideas to…
- Earn more money
- Switch niches
- Expand into other topic areas
- Offer new services
- Work fewer hours and get paid more
- Secure more clients
Don’t shy away to list your big hairy goals and quarterly goals for your business.
Time Management & Business Planning
You have your goals in mind but you’re finding it hard to find the time to work towards them. Well, here are some tips to freeing up your time so you can plan for the future of your business…
1. Track Your Time
Spend a ‘typical’ week working through your schedule as normal.
Only this time, scribble down how long each task takes you.
This way you will have an idea on the length of time it takes you to do a task. E.g. a blog post may take you 3 hours to research and write and another hour to edit.
2. Get Organized
Once you know how much time you spend on an activity you can visually see where your time is taken up and how long it takes to do certain tasks.
Ask yourself where you can fit in your additional business needs.
Perhaps it’s an hour in the morning before the kids get up and an hour in the evening after they’ve gone to bed. Or maybe you can free up a day to grow your writing business.
3. Plan Your Week Ahead
Don’t leave it until the morning to decide what you’re going to work on.
Schedule your week in advance. Know what days or time slots you’ll be working on client work and what time you will be focusing on your business needs.
This way you won’t waste time faffing around wondering what to do first.
4. Switch Off Your Phone and Stay Off Social Media
It’s hard, but by unplugging yourself for a few hours it may help you to focus on your work. You’re less likely to get distracted and you will be able to finish your work within the time frame you’ve set.
5. Change Your Work Environment
Switching your place of work may help you to mentally move from one role to another.
Perhaps you could work from a coffee shop whilst focusing on your business and work from home when working on your client’s blog posts.
11 Tips to Grow Your Freelance Business
You’ve freed up some time, you’ve scheduled in some time to work on your business, but where do you start? Let’s take a look at some of your options to expand your business.
1. Review Your Rates
Take a look at your rates every 6 months.
Are you in a position to tell your current clients your new rate?
It’s not an easy decision to make as you may lose the client, but if working for your client is taking up your time to find higher-paying work, then it may be a sacrifice you need to make. Remember to always increase your rates with each new client you secure.
2. Expand Your Niche
People will vary in their opinions on this one.
Some freelancers will comment that it’s important to focus on one niche and brand yourself as an ‘expert’ in that area.
Another freelancer may offer writing services to clients in various niches.
You have to find out what works for you. There is, however, the option to widen the topics you write about whilst staying within the same niche. Get creative, have a go at drawing some mindmaps to generate blog topic ideas.
3. Offer Other Services
It’s also possible to stay within one niche but offer various services.
For example, in addition to blogging, you could offer to design and manage the client’s social media content, write their newsletters, redesign their website, the list goes on.
It may be that you need to do some research or take a course to upskill yourself, but hopefully this will pay for itself when you land those higher-paying jobs.
4. Guest Post
When you started freelancing it’s likely that you pitched to bloggers, small businesses, magazines, and various sites, to offer to write guest posts for them.
You may want to revisit guest posting, especially if you’re looking to expand on the topics you write about.
However, you are no longer a newbie and can use your current experience to write for the bigger publications and/or get paid for your guest posting. This way you can earn more whilst expanding upon your niche and increasing your exposure.
5. Network
Take time to network with businesses you’re interested in, comment on their posts, connect and build relationships with business owners that you’d like to write for, and chat to other freelancers within that niche to glean from their experience and knowledge.
6 Cold Pitching
Update and refresh your pitch.
Send around 5-10 cold pitches a day stating your experience and why you’d like to write for them.
If you’re unsure how much work you can take on with your current clients, chase after paid guest posting opportunities to start with.
7. Design a Visual Motivation Board
Knowing where you’re aiming for is important and can be key to your success.
Grab a large sheet of paper and get drawing, cutting, sticking, and writing about about your dream clients and goals.
Ask yourself where do you see yourself in 1, 2, 5 years time. Keep the vision board in your office to keep you focused and motivated.
8. Work Out Your Finances
It’s easier to know how many clients you need to be working with, or what you need to be charging, so you can realistically meet your financial goals. Be realistic, but at the same time challenge yourself.
9. Update Your Website & Social Media Platforms
It’s easy in all the excitement of pitching to forget to update your website and social media bios. Take another look at your copy. Is it clear on the services you are offering and the clients you want to attract?
10. Join More Job Boards
Obviously, by now you will have joined up and used job boards, but are there any more you could join, especially if you’re offering different services or expanding upon the topics you blog about?
11. Talk to Your Current Clients
It may be that your current clients could do with help managing their social media accounts, writing a press release, or designing newsletters.
Over To You
Changing direction or growing your business takes time and effort, so don’t expect everything to click into place overnight.
Seek out the support of other freelancers, it’s always great to share experiences and learn from one another.
If you’re finding it overwhelming to make changes and grow, then take a break and re-look at where you’re spending your time, and focus on one or two small changes you could make.
You’ve come so far and achieved so much, you should be proud of the freelance writing business you’ve created.
There you have it, some tips to get you thinking and moving towards growing your business.
Do you have any more tips or advice? Please let me know in the comments!
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