Freelancing so far…
Updated: Mar 20, 2020
I started freelancing a few months ago. I’d started my job but found I had a lot of free time in the afternoons when I would come home from work. I found ways around this at first, volunteering, online courses and Japanese lessons but I thought why not try and make money during this free time rather than spend it.
I started small doing a few personal projects to see if I would have the time to take on paid freelance work and then set out to find some clients. Over the past few months, I’ve definitely had to work out a lot of things by myself, I had no clue what an invoice was and I must have read over 20 articles trying to figure out how the business side of things would work. But to be able to work at my own pace and make money through a side hustle doing something I trained to do and enjoy has made it worthwhile. The list below is a few things I wish I would have known when I was starting to work with clients so if you’re thinking of freelancing then read these tips!
Define the relationship between you and your client, and set out exactly what you’ll be doing for them. The big thing here is too put it adown in writing, write a letter of agreement or a contract and get both of you to sign it. You never know what might happen down the line, and you’ll want to make sure you’ll get paid for any work you do for the client. Also, write down the project deadline. This will help have a clear vision of when the client wnt the project finished and it will help to push the project forward rather.
Always ask for credit on the work you do. Make sure your client promotes your services through the work you did for them and have them to link you if they post your work on Facebook or on their website.
If you take notes during a meeting with your client, write them up clearly when you get home. Everything will still be fresh and you’ll be able to remember more about the project when you come to work on it later.
Work out your hourly rate. I read quite a bit into the issue of how much to charge when I started and came to the conclusion it was easier to charge an hourly rate rather than a bulk sum for a project. The what-ifs might actually happen, and if you end up working a lot more hours on a project than you expected at least if you’re getting paid an hourly rate you’ll be paid a fair rate for your work rather than if you still charge a pre-agreed bulk sum. I charge a normal graduate rate and if I know I’ll be working a lot of hours with a client I’ll give a slightly discounted rate.
Use Instagram to find clients. My past two paid jobs have come through clients I met through Instagram so I’d definitely recommend it for finding clients. By using locations and tags, you can find quite a lot of potential clients, locally.
I hope these tips are useful. Take a look at my work here.
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