Professionalize Your Freelance Business
by Andy Strote, photo by Gordon Cowie
As a freelancer or small agency owner, you’re running a business. While you may think of yourself as a writer, designer, developer, or photographer, you’re also a business owner.
Most of us have spent many hours learning our craft, but very little time improving our business practices.
Let’s fix that. Here are some recommendations for professionalizing your freelance business.
Pick one and work on it until you see measurable improvements.
Tighten Up Your Processes
Look at how you do things, specifically tasks related to working with your clients.
Review your onboarding process. What happens after a client says yes, they want to work with you? That should be the start of your onboarding process, where you set expectations about how you’ll work together, what you expect from them, what they can expect from you, and how you want to get paid, etc.
If you need to professionalize your onboarding process, review this detailed blog post about what to include in your onboarding process.
Review and Improve Your Terms and Conditions
For most freelancers, there are three critical types of Terms and Conditions:
Payment
Service
Legal
Review them to make sure they’re complete and appropriate for your business. Secondly, ensure they’re written in a friendly tone and voice. Be careful of Terms and Conditions written by lawyers. They tend to sound cold and threatening. You don’t need that. It’s not the way to start a business relationship.
Include your Terms and Conditions in your onboarding process. If clients have any issues with them, you should sort it out before you start working together. Then, create edited versions of your Terms and Conditions for your estimates and invoices.
Here’s a good primer on Terms and Conditions for freelancers.
Review How You Identify and Pursue New Business Opportunities
No matter how busy you are, you should always invest some time looking for your next great client. (You’re not looking for mediocre clients, are you?)
There are two ways to find clients: hunting or fishing. Ideally, you’re doing both. Hunting means that you’re identifying your target clients and going after them. Fishing means you’ve put out lures, hoping your clients will find you.
Think of these in terms of active versus passive techniques. Both can work, and you should use them in a complementary fashion.
Here is how freelancers can use active and passive techniques to find new clients.
How to Find Clients as a New Freelancer
What if you’ve just started freelancing? Maybe you have a few clients, but you definitely need more. I’ve got you covered. Here are some ideas for how to find clients if you’re a new freelancer.
New Book For Freelancers
How to Become a Successful Creative Freelancer is the essential business guide for freelance writers, designers, developers, filmmakers, and photographers.
It’s broken down into easy-to-understand chapters with strategies and tips you can use today. Not just “what to do”, but also “how to do it”. It’s available now in Paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.
Want to Grow An Agency? The Agency Book is For You
If you’re thinking of growing an agency, you’ll want to read How to Start a Successful Creative Agency. Available at Amazon(Paperback & Kindle ebook), Kobo(ebook), Apple Books (ebook), and Gumroad(PDF).
Grow Your Clients Based On Your Existing Clients – It Pays to Serve Niches
One of the critical ways to professionalize your business is to serve specific niches. Yes, some freelancers and agencies will work for whoever comes along, but the most professional ones, the ones that command the highest fees, have defined niches.
If you’re just starting, it’s fine to work for anyone who will pay you. You need the experience, and you need the money.
But once you’ve been in business for a few years, you should have one or more defined niches. Your work will be easier as you understand the business of those niches, you’ll be recognized within the niches, and you can charge more for your expertise.
How do you start to build a niche? Look at your existing clients. Pick the ones that you enjoy working with and find more like those.
Here is how to build a niche and how to find more clients based on your existing clients.
Step-by-Step Guide to Find Freelance Clients on LinkedIn
As a freelancer, you should be on LinkedIn. It’s the most business-oriented of the social media platforms. It also has powerful search capabilities to help you find companies and people who could be your next clients.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding freelance clients on LinkedIn. This is an ideal way to grow your niches.
Decide Where You’ll Start
Finding new clients and growing your business depends on you taking focused action. Identify what you want to tackle first and then pursue it until you’ve made progress.
Results may take time. Be patient, but be relentless. It’s the only way to succeed. Make a decision and then take massive action! (Thanks Tony Robbins)
Here, I wrote about how to make decisions, take action and move forward.
Free 1-Hour Consultation if You Bought One of My Books
I’ve been doing this but never publicized it. If you bought one of my books, I’m happy to chat on Zoom, Google, or whatever platform works.
I’ve done it for quite a few people and have enjoyed it. For some, it helps them give their business direction or solves immediate problems.
No proof of purchase is necessary. I’ll take your word for it (but I might ask you what you liked most about the book).
So, buy a book and get in touch. If you already own one of the books and want to talk, let me know.
On Bluesky, DM me at @strotebook.bsky.social
On Twitter, I’m @StroteBook
On LinkedIn, I’m Andy Strote