{"id":348,"date":"2012-12-14T10:47:26","date_gmt":"2012-12-14T10:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/?p=348"},"modified":"2013-01-30T02:42:44","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T02:42:44","slug":"10-tips-for-marketing-freelancers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/2012\/12\/10-tips-for-marketing-freelancers\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Tips for Marketing Freelancers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Freelancing is like a playground see-saw. It has its ups and downs and requires a measure of balance to succeed. If you are a freelancer, friends will envy your independence and freedom, but they won\u2019t realize that they come at a cost. Here are some observations for new-bies or concepts for those who\u2019ve had a taste of the freelance life.\"BrandMe<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Find your market and work it best as possible. Think of the market as a series of concentric rings. Let\u2019s say your expertise is marketing autos–that\u2019s the bullseye or \u201ctarget market.\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. Even if you\u2019ve found ample work in the target market, you\u2019ll need to stretch yourself outside your comfort zone to develop a more diversified portfolio.<\/li>\n
  3. Even though your clients like your work, you are not exactly part of their office team–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 you are someone \u201cout there.\u201d It\u2019s a thin line between maintaining good communications with your clients and being a nuisance. Don\u2019t be insulted if they don\u2019t get back to you right away.<\/li>\n
  4. Freelancing can be isolating. On the rare occasion when I\u2019ve complained about the isolation, I\u2019ve had office-bound friends respond, \u201cI\u2019d gladly change places with you,\u201d so this is a \u201cgrass is greener on the other side\u201d kind of dynamic. Nevertheless, you can go days without talking to anyone but your family and the cashier at 7-11. Plus, you need to leave the \u201chome office\u201d to find out what\u2019s going on out there, and don\u2019t count of the Internet to do it for you–there\u2019s a reason it\u2019s called a \u201cvirtual world.\u201d<\/li>\n
  5. \u00a0Certain aspects of life must be tied down, like adequate shelter, food, and medical insurance. You may find yourself getting jealous of your office-bound co-workers who are driving new cars, or moving to bigger houses. But assuming you\u2019ve consciously made that trade-off, you still want to feel secure, and relatively free from worry.<\/li>\n
  6. There is a certain amount of record keeping, including taxes. Resist the temptation to cheat on taxes, so you don\u2019t get hit with a big bill you can\u2019t pay down the line.<\/li>\n
  7. Record keeping, part II. You\u2019ll have to keep track of what you\u2019re working on, when it\u2019s due, what you\u2019re owed, how many days since submission, and all of that. If you\u2019re a popular freelancer, this could mean keeping track of a dozen or more projects at once, knowing where they are in the system, and of course, keeping the system open for more projects. You can do this on an index card, in a notebook, or on your phone–there are several apps designed to handle the job.<\/li>\n
  8. Step away from the machine. You didn\u2019t sign up for this, I\u2019m guessing, to be a millworker. Set yourself a schedule and try to stick to it. Some of us are morning people–you can get to work at 5 a.m., work eight hours and be ready to hit the tennis courts by one o\u2019clock. Some of us are night owls, but few of us are both.<\/li>\n
  9. Caffeine is an addiction, like any other.<\/li>\n
  10. E-mails, gotta love \u2018em, gotta hate \u2018em. Obviously, e-mail is the killer app that makes freelancing possible, so we love it, but they do add up and require time just to manage the flow. Don\u2019t let a bad e-mail ruin your day. As to the management part, freelancers have different styles–handle them as they come in to avoid nasty e-mail build up, even if they interrupt your work–or let them build up and carve out a time to deal with them. And are they ever hard to manage. I try to keep the \u201cworking e-mails\u201d–assignments, and e-mails that are pertinent to assignments–in my in box, and farm everything else out–passwords,contacts, ideas–to folders to prevent chaos.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Have fun. If you really need to be miserable, get an office cubicle.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Freelancing is like a playground see-saw. It has its ups and downs and requires a measure of balance to succeed. If you are a freelancer, friends will envy your independence and freedom, but they won\u2019t realize that they come at a cost. Here are some observations for new-bies or concepts for those who\u2019ve had a taste of the freelance life. Find your market and work it best as possible. Think of the market as a series of concentric rings. Let\u2019s say your expertise is marketing autos–that\u2019s the bullseye or \u201ctarget market.\u201d Even if you\u2019ve found ample work in the target market, you\u2019ll need to stretch yourself outside your comfort zone to develop a more diversified portfolio. Even though your clients like your work, you are …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trade-show-tips","tag-freelance","tag-freelance-trade-show","tag-trade-show"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}