If you want to grow and scale your freelance business, it’s time to stop trading time for dollars and find out how to earn a great income that’s not dependent on your billable time with a client.
As a young freelancer, I found myself trapped in the mindset of “staying in my lane”. I knew what I could do well and I served my clients with those skills to the best of my ability, but where I got stuck was in doing only what the client asked me to do, sending them a bill and going on my way. I was afraid to offer them other services because I didn’t want to jeopardize our relationship.
Do you feel like that too?
What I learned over time was that I was really missing out on some great opportunities not to just make additional revenue, but to set myself up with a foundation that would continue to provide income to my business, month after month, year over year.
Watch the video below or read on to find out how!
#1. Find a Niche
This might sound cliche, but it’s important to know who our target customer is and who EXACTLY we serve. It might result in a super-defined niche (working with one vertical like dentists, or dog groomers) or you may be more of a general practitioner where you offer web or print design services to a more general market.
I really believe the “riches are in the niches”. The more we can be laser-focused on who our perfect client is, we can understand them and the problems they have, and how to provide better, more effective solutions for them.
#2. Suggest Complementary Services
Complementary services are ones that nicely accompany the service we already provide our clients.
As I mentioned earlier, I used to have this block in my brain that was keeping me in my lane. A client would hire me for a job, I would give them an estimate for that project and then I would get to work on that project. When I was finished, I would find myself missing out on a significant amount of work.
For example, I was doing some work on branding collateral for a company which included business cards, mailers, and brochures. I was developing a great relationship with this client and every time I’d get to the end of the project they would ask me to email the files to their printer so they could have them printed.
As a designer, working with printers had been part of my experience for years and I knew how the business worked. But I was hesitant to offer it a part of my services because I didn’t want to offend anyone or leave my lane.
I finally got the courage to ask companies I was designing for if they would like me to offer a bid on printing services as a print broker. I was SHOCKED at their response.
“You can do printing TOO?” They were eager and amazed that I could offer services as a print broker (which means I managed the printing and made sure everything went as expected.) This eliminated a step for my clients; they were able to hand the job over to me and have it handled from start to finish. I earned extra money and didn’t put out that much extra work!
Printing was the perfect complementary service to my design work, and provided me with an entirely new stream of revenue. Not only that, but it strengthened the relationship between me and my client.
#3. Develop Products and Services Which Generate Recurring Income
Do you have services that you could manage for your clients long-term?
I’ve been in web development for a long time, since the late 90s, (eons ago!) but I remember starting out in web development and talking with clients; it was like I was speaking a foreign language to them. There were so many things that my clients didn’t understand: web hosting, security certificates, etc.
To help them, I was able to create a couple of services to take off their plates, including domain name registration and web hosting.
Since I have a reseller relationship with hosting companies, I was able to upsell and cross-sell some long-term management services to my clients. The great thing is that I am able to create invoices on a monthly or annual basis and set them to automatically go out.
This recurring income provides stability for freelancers, and a much-needed service/product for our clients. Win, win!
I hope thises tips to grow and scale your freelance business have been helpful. Got questions? Hit me with them in my Freelance on Fire Collective Facebook Group HERE.
Want to get more information about what you need to start and grow your freelance business? Download my Freelance Blueprint, where I give you what you need to know to rock your freelance business.