Freelance Series: Finding Clients

If you have been following my freelance series you may be all set and ready to go. You've picked a field or two to work in, you've set your prices. Now you are just sitting around waiting for the orders to come in. Where are they? Where are your clients? Well, they aren't just going to materialize out of thin air. They don't even know you are out there! Part of freelancing is getting out there and finding your clients. Once you have an established name word of mouth clients may start to roll in, but it is still a good idea to keep marketing yourself. Below is a list of resources for finding clients. Unless they can also lead to clients for product sale, I am not including channels for creating passive income, because I think this deserves a post in itself.

Web Advertising:
Craigslist: Yes, the ubiquitious web clearinghouse for everything and anything is a good place to find clients for your freelancing. Look around to see the types of posts otheres with similar products/services make. This will give you an idea of the information you need to include. Make sure to post often, as there are so many posts in a day your post can get buried under a mountain of other posts. Also post in every categroy that is relevant to you.

Once you are done posting, don't forget to look at listings of people seeking services. If one matches your business, reply. I find craiglist is best for people in service industries, although people selling product can include links to websites and try to attract shoppers.

Tips: Make sure to respond to email promptly. When working with CraigsList clients for the first time I require half payment upfront and I do not take check. Paypal is the way to go, or cash. Never give out personal information like your personal phone number or address. Instead have a specific business email you use to communicate with. Also never meet anyone anywhere other than a very public place in broad daylight. I recommend not meeting at all if your service can be entirely virtual, or meeting in a Starbucks.

Your Own Blog or Website: Having a web presence can really help you out. If you are selling product you may want to post up sample photos using a service like flickr etc. The key is to not only post products, but to also post relevent informatina and intersting articles to atract viewers. I will post more on atracting viewers, setting up a website and e-commerce in another post. I am still working on getting this started for myself. There is a lot to learn but it is worth it. Blogging is another great way to atract business. A friend of mine runs a college dmissions consulting business. She blogs  about education and her experiences on her own blog, as well as on user-contributed content sites like about.com. This has lead to many clients for her. Post interesting content relevent to you target audience. They will see you are intelligent and know what you are talking about and be more likely to hire you.

Facebook and Twitter: I will admit to not being great about this. I finally creating the Budget and bargain facebook page, but I have not yet made a twitter account. Other bloggers and freelancers tell me they get tons of page hits and clients from interacting with others on facebook. It is something I should get better at.

Forum Websites: Websites where other freelancers network, like wahm.com can lead to great tips as well as clients. They also often contain information about finding clients specific to your field. Other websites you shuld be checking out are websites for your target group. For instance if you are looking to sell hand woven baskets made from recycled organic straw you might want to start posting in forums about green living. If you design custom scrubs you should get involved in medical and nursing forums. Do not just spam posts with links to your site or about your business. Become a valid contributor, participate and add meaningful material to the site. This is the only way people will trust you and want to order from you.

Elance, Freelancer and ODesk: These websites are like craigslist for freelancers. While each comes with a limited free account option, to get really good jobs you want to have a paid subscription. You need to analyze whether this purchase is worth it for you. You have to weed through jobs that pay peanuts and are clearly looking for overseas labor. The best jobs are those that use the website escrow system, so you know your money is ready and waiting for you and you will not be stiffed.

Flickr, Etsy, Squidoo: If you sell products, or are in a photography and/or design field the best way to market your work is to show photos of it. Flickr is possibly the most famous example of this. It can really help drive clients to your personal website. Etsy and related websites like artfire allow you to post handmade and vintage goods as well as supplies. People come to these sites specifically looking for unique pieces and small businesses. The forums are also chock full of marketing tips and ideas. Each site has a slightly different clientele and fee structure. Some will charge per item listing, other per sale etc. They are more narrow focused than sites like ebay and can lead to a more loyal client base for you. They also let you post links to your personal website. Some people post on several such sites. Others find that most of their clients come from one such site and stick with that website only. Squidoo will be discussed more in the upcoming "passive income" post. However it can also be used to drive traffick to your personal website or business. By posting relevant, informative articles on Squidoo you can atract clients.

The Old Fashioned Way:

Tell your friends and family! This does not have to be intrusive, but you can mention your new business casually and tell them if they know of anyone looking for xyz, then you are there to supply it. You need to let your social circle know about your new business. These are people you trust, who trust you. They will lead to high quality clients.


Work with other local retailers: If you know several other retailers who work in related, but different fields, you can get together and promote each other. For instance someone who does bridal hair can team up with someone who does bridal makeup. When a new client books one of you and does not have someone yet for the other service, you each reccomend the other. This helps both of you. You don't have to arrange an exclusive deal, but you can generate positive referrals  You can also arrange trunk shows and attend trade fairs. The best way to hear about these and learn about setting up a booth is from other retailers in the same industry.

Cold Call/e-mail: This requires a bit of initiative and agressively marketting yourself. If there is a company you'd like to work with or a publicatin you'd like to see yourself published in, pitch them an idea. Most magazines include a submissions contact and a professinal, interesting query letter might land you a job. Calling a local children's buotique and speaking with the manager or head of purchasing might get your cute knitted hats onto their shelves.

Follow Up:

Once you have established a contact or worked with a client, be sure to keep their contact info including an email address. In this way you can send information about new products, special offers and services. Give every client a business card so that they can contact you again in the future. Make sure your business card includes your title or a description of your business. A card labelled "Mrs. Freelancer" with a phone number is not going to cut it. When someone digs that card up in a month they will have no idea who you are or what you do.

Freelance Series: Setting Your Price

After mulling over my last post you may have indentified several areas of freelancing you are interested in. You are ready to start marketing your goods and services. However, you have no clue what to charge. Don't worry. This post is here to help!

Calculate Cost: What is the cost of the supplies you are using? Include cost of shipping and packing materials. Also include cost of depreciation on equipment like computers, glue guns or baking pans. If you buy an item in bulk and use only a portion in this project, do not forget to count that fraction of the price as part of your supply cost. Also consider your expenses for other needs like advertising, space/rent, health care, education, legal advice and office equipment.

How Long Will This Take: Your rate will be determined by how much effort and time you spend on a job. A quick, five minute job usually costs less than a 3 hour job. How valuable do you think your time is? How much do you want to make per hour? Multiple that by the amount of hours the job will take.

For a base price add your supply cost to to your time cost.

Scope Out the Competition: How much do competitors charge? Is their product quality as good as yours? You do not want to price yourself out of the market. If your competition has a price much lower than your base price, then you are either way overpaying for your supplies or they are delivering work of lower quality. If your work is better quality, you might still stand a chance. If your work is of similar quality but due to supply prices your work will cost much more there is no reason for someone to choose you over a competitor. If you have to lower your price to meet your competitors prices this activity may no longer be worth time.

If all your competitors are charging a lot more than you are, you are likely undervaluing your time.

A simple web search will usually bring you to competitor's websites. You can also check out freelance websites and income surveys from groups like the freelancers union.

Fixed vs. Per Hour Pricing: For many projects you will want to charge a fixed rate upfront. This is especially true for items like baked goods, essays (price per word) and jewelry. Clients love fixed rate projects because they know exactly what they will be paying. On the other hand, if you go over time you won't get any more compensation. Other projects are charged per word or per hour. You need to agree on the per word/hour price beforehand and come up with a scheme for billing. Make sure you have  a good relationship with the client otherwise you may find yourself haggling over the bill later. How will you prove you worked that many hours? Is there a max number of hours they will pay for?

The right model will depend on your relationship with the client and your needs. It is very common to get paid for magazine articles per word. Many magazines have a set per word rate.  On the other hand it is very uncommon to get paid for making a hair accessory by the hour. You need to set the price for that accessory that people will pay at the time of purchase.

Don't be afraid to say no or negotiate. If a client is looking to pay you less than you want, it may not be worth it. Clients rarely let you ramp up the rates later. Therefore, selling low at the outset will just lead to expectations of future low rates. Never, ever sell at a loss. If your price is not going to cover your supply costs you are pricing yourself too low.

Finding Your Inner Freelancer

During my "Revenue Review" Posts I often list revenue earned from freelance activities and private clients. This has generated a nice portion of side income for me. The point of those revenue posts are to show you that you too can bring in extra income whether you are a SAHM a WOHM or a WAHM. However, I have been remiss by not explaining how to find these jobs and how to make the most of them. This new freelancer series should help clear that up!

For the inaugural post I will show you how to stop thinking "I would like to freelance, but I have no good ideas" and how to start building a concrete list of freelance activities to start working on.

How much time do you have? Think about your life, your daily rhythms and stresses. When are you free during the day? Are you able to handle steady work during those hours? Can you handle any more work? These are serious questions. If you are only free after the kids go to bed then substitute teaching at a high school is not going to work for you. Likewise if you are only free while the kids are at school then becoming a nightclub waitress during the hours of 9am-4 pm is not going to work. Finally if you are running yourself so ragged at your usual job that the mere thought of doing anything else during your rare free moments makes you feel like you need to lie down, then this is not for you. I would try to loook for ways to live with less instead.

Most freelancers would kill for a regular paying client. However in a recent conversation with a reader, I discovered she really does not want steady work that must always take place between certain hours. Adding another firm time slot to her packed schedule was not for her. This was reasonable. Activities with fixed time slots were not going to be for her, but other activities that one can do anytime, with generous deadlines, would work. They sometimes pay a little less but that's better than nothing. Your freelancing has to fit within your life or else it will end up costing you more than its worth.

What do you Like to do? When thinking about ways to freelance, your hobbies are a great place to start. These are activities that you are doing anyway, that you love and that you are good at. Now they can start to earn you cash. Make a list of your hobbies. Then get creative about what to do with them.

Look at the market you are trying to enter. Is it saturated beyond belief in your area? Are start up costs prohibitive? Then find another way to monetize that hobby. A good example is food service. Many people will have "cooking" or "baking" on their lists. However legally running a catering business in most states is very expensive and requires a lot of tools and equipment. Running one illegally to cut costs opens you up to many law suits. Plus the market where I live is so over-saturated sometimes I think everyone is selling some kind of food item. I cannot tell you how many people I have seen going around advertising that they are starting to sell cookies or appetizers from their house only to never get a single order. Does that mean these are not viable hobbies for monetization? No. It means in my area people need to think of other ways to channel this hobby. Write a cookbook, give cooking classes, start a youtube series on how to properly bake a flan. All of these would be better approaches, with lower start up costs. Think about what makes you unique in an oversaturated field.

What do you all ready do? This is easiest for working moms, but also applies to SAHM's. Think about your primary career and then find ways to freelance outside work. This does NOT mean stealing clients from the office. Heaven forbid. It means using skills from your training to build a freelance career. For instance, it's no secret I'm a graduate student in the health fields. This has helped me gain a tremendous amount of medical knowledge and the ability to process scientific data quickly. So I freelance by writing medical and health related articles that interpret scientific studies for the general public. I do not take time, supplies, or private knowledge from one career to help the other. That would be unethical and would jeopardize my primary career. Instead, I leverage skills that I have gained in a different, creative outlet. What skills do you have from work? How can these be used creatively? For instance a SAHM might find joy in sharing her parenting tips through courses for new moms. An accountant might write finance articles. A school guidance counselor might try her hand at life coaching for adults. Always check the terms of your contract to make sure you are not violating any rules your company has about freelancing.

Do you have talents? are you a whiz at building web sites? playing the piano? entertaining friends with engaging stories? finding just the right outfit? Then use that skill! Your talents and hobbies can lead to serious side cash. If you are really so great at always knowing what to wear then there are people out there who will pay you to dress them. It's called personal shopping. You just need to break into the market (details to follow in a later post). If you play an instrument you can make serious side cash by teaching it to others. There's no need to take a lengthy course to learn something you have never been good at. Instead use the skilss you all redy have.

Warning: turning your hobby into a job can sometimes kill your love of that hobby when clients become picky or you have trouble selling your work. I find it is best to keep just-for-fun hobby activities still going on the side without trying to sell to keep your love of the hobby and your relaxation time intact.

Value Yourself. Many people are all ready doing things they ought to be paid for - they just don't value themselves enough to ask for money. Sometimes freelancing means cutting down on the freebies to random strangers. For instance a friend of mine was very good at website building. She was spending hours upon hours helping people who got her name from a friend of a friend with their projects. They were making money off these proects. She just got a thank you. If she was lucky. Many did not thank her or ever call her again until they needed more help.  Finally she realized that these people were using her instead of a professional to generate income. She finally realized that what she did had value. She started charging a reasonable amount (more on determining prices in another post) and you know what? Most were happy to pay because they had known for years what she had just realized. That her skills were worth something. Others were disgruntled and left. But guess what? they would never have been paying clients and they were taking advantage of her. They were some of the biggest time suckers and complainers of the lot. Her life got less hectic without them.

This is not to say you have to stop helping out friends and family. Community service is a wonderful thing. However you also need to realize that your time and supplies and energy have value. You need to realize that some people will be annoyed at not being able to get freebies, but that you need to think about what those freebies cost your family. Are you spending time you could be spending with your kids on the phone with a person you are distantly familiar with helping them with their kids college essays? Are you spending more time on the phone with strangers giving advice than you are with your husband? Enough is enough. You need to have a clear policy in place about who gets charged and how much this activity is allowed to seep into family time. Providing free work for grandma seems like a no-brainer but when friends of cousins start asking for freebies you start heading down a slippery slope. Especially if you are a people pleaser. What you do has value. It is up to you to decide if and how much you will charge for that. But never forget that you are are worth something too.

Passive Income is the holy grail of income. I am going to devote an entire post to it. Basically it means you invest a certain amount of time setting something u and then it continues to bring in money while you do nothing or very little to maintain it. While most freelance activities are one shot deals - write me this article and I will pay you this dollar amount- passive income is the gift that keeps on giving. It is also a little harder to set up. But it can be a boon to those who only have small increment of time every now and again to spare. Currently I only make about $10 a month in passive income. But it's the best ten dollars ever because I am not doing anything to earn it! I did something a year ago and it keeps on giving. I do not scoff at $10. This is something I will be trying to focus on with you as it is still an area of active exploration for me.



Do you freelance? Are you starting to compile your list of activities? Share and post your questions here!

Saving for Baby

So far I have been very lucky with this pregnancy. I have not been vomitting excessively, my coworkers have been supportive and I am not craving anything  bizarre or expenssive. My one main side effect is fatigue. When I get home from work (and sometimes when I am at work) all I want to do is cozy up in a nice blanket and sleep. Obviously that cuts into various frguality and money making measures as both take time and energy. Just cooking dinner has sometimes left me feeling a little distraught, as there are no chairs in my kitchen and I begin to feel dizzy after being on my feet for extended periods of time. Proper hydration is key to avoiding this.

Yet I am still plowing forward and trying to continue my routine. Each time I consider getting lazy and buying dinner or skipping a money making task I remind myself that each penny I can save for this baby now will help me in the future. Now is the best time to be putting aside money for the baby, as living expenses are at their lowest. It is also the best time to get working and setting up income streams because I will never have this much time again. I will only get busier after the baby arrives. Luckily the baby reminds me of its approaching arrival by moving around now and again. Providing me with delight and inspiration.

Here's how I did this past week, and how I'm planning on bringing in those extra funds for the future.

Demand Studios - $80 I fell off the wagon a little when it comes to Demand Studios. It is my bigest money maker (aside from regular work) so far but it is also my biggest time suck. To earn more income I need to actively invest time and write new articles. I am trying to increase my article writing to at least one a day or six per week (excluding Saturdays).

Squidoo - $6.17 plus $4.00 from Zazzle referalls. This week was the monthly payout for Squidoo. While this amount seems very pitiful, it is entirely passive income. I did nothing this month to generate the income. I set up these lenses in December/January and they keep putting out a small amount of cash each month. I now realize the power of this method and am going to try and put up some more lenses in the upcoming weeks. Now that I have a better grasp of affiliate marketing, SEO and the type of lenses people want to see I suspect I can generate more income this way. And passive income is great because it means I CAN take that nap I need.

Fiverr - $9 I had a few letter writing gigs purchased. These are pretty quick and fun. Fiverr is not a consistent or reliable method of making money but the sporadic orders are appreciated. Plus I have been getting very good feedback ratings. I think this makes the gig more popular and increases my ability to book future jobs if I post them.

Freelance Writing - Nothing. I finally got up the guts to ask the magazine I am writing for where my paycheck is. They owe me about $80. They are supposed to get back to me on Monday. We'll see. I am not submitting new pieces until I find out what is going on. They are usually reliable so I am rather surprised at this.

This blog - 4 cents? maybe? This blog is not a huge mney maker right now. But that's OK. It may one day become one. Or it may not. I am OK with that. Because I benefit from this blog in other ways. This blog helps me increase my savings in ways I never thought possible. I got two free pairs of shoes from the My Habit coupon I posted, I made $10 on the Serve promotion, I have been logging items into my price book and I am staying abreast of the best deals/freebies/survey sites and ways to stretch my dollar. I would not be half this efficient without this blog as motivation.

On the back burner are several items I keep saying I will get around to. This includes my eBook on medical school admissions and starting a recipe site to track my journey with Community Shared Agriculture cooking adventures. I am hoping to get to the eBook soon.

I am always on the lookout for new ways to bring in revenue. I don't scoff at small amounts because everything adds up and money can grow over time. If you've got an idea it would be great if you'd share it!