If you’ve been hunting for the perfect position on the job market this year, you might be feeling pretty fed up. No one could blame you for wanting to pack it all in. Supposedly, the average time it takes to find a job in your chosen career after uni is around six months. However, for some people, it could be double that, and all that people will tell you is you just need to keep pushing that envelope. Great, but what if you never see any results? And, even if you do, you know you’re just heading for yet another interview where you’ll be compared to hundreds of different candidates. There must be a better option?
Well, there is, and it’s called freelancing. When you freelance, you’ll be working for yourself, and all your money will go directly into your account. You can get paid weekly, monthly or even annually. You get to decide what you make and how many hours you complete each day. You get to choose what path you take in your career. So, how does someone become a successful freelancer?
Promote Yourself
The first step is to make sure you are promoting who you are and what you can offer. There are a huge variety of different ways you can do this. But you should probably get started by setting up a profile on Linkedin. Once you have done this, you can work to build up your contacts and who knows. Hopefully, you’ll get some interest from the right people. Don’t worry if you don’t find attention straight away. As with anything else, the freelance sector is highly competitive. But there are always positions available so you should be able to find work.
Sweeten The Deal
When you’re not well known, you will be relying on businesses and private clients to take a chance on you and your work. The problem with this is that they’ll have no evidence you can deliver. You need to focus on building up positive word of mouth. To do this, you should consider offering your services for free or at a discounted price. Eventually, if you’re delivering a great service to these clients and customers, you’ll be able to raise your price.
Marketing Your Brand
When you work as a freelancer, you become your own company, your own brand. The trick here is making sure you know how to stand out from the rest of the competition. Some freelancers set up their own website to market themselves and their services. This might be worth doing, particularly if you know how to make it attractive with stock images. You will also need to think about adding SEO and ensuring that it does rank. Otherwise, you won’t receive a lot of interest all.
Stay Open
Finally, you need to use social media to connect with new and existing clients. By doing this, you should be able to make sure that clients like who you are and feel connected to you as an individual. This will keep them loyal and guarantee they continue to use your service.
Are you a freelancer? Let us know how you find it and share your wisdom with others in the comments.
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