Being freelance can give you a lot of freedom. Not only do you get to work on projects that you love and enjoy, but also you can choose your working hours, your rates and the clients that you work with. It is definitely a luxury lifestyle to live. However, there is one thing that requires a lot of effort – and that is promoting yourself. As a freelancer, no work is ever guaranteed. Therefore, you have to be able to generate business yourself. It can often feel like a hardship, but if you can get into a rhythm of comfortably shouting about your freelance services, you should find it a success.
Build a Multifunctional Site
First, you are going to need a website. If you are going to be able to promote yourself online to a lot of different audiences, this is crucial. However, your website needs to serve many purposes. Not only will you need to work with SEO companies to make sure it’s optimized and draws in traffic, but it should also have a range of functions too. You are going to need it to be a contact source, house your portfolio, sell your services and even have a blog to help with your social promotes and SEO.
Get Used To Talking About Yourself
Next, you also need to start getting comfortable with talking about yourself. If you are ever going to survive the freelance leap, selling yourself needs to become second nature. Again, none of your work is guaranteed, so you have to work harder for it. Start by talking about what you do with family and friends, then get yourself into a networking environment and go for it. You should then feel more comfortable when it comes to selling yourself online too.
Sell Your Services on Social Media
You should also think about selling your services across social media too. Now, this does not necessarily mean that you are going to need to be all business all of the time, but you should be able to put yourself out there too. On social media, you get access to a wide audience, to utilize it. You need to be interesting and engaging, as well as an advocate for yourself. So go for it.
Buddy Up
You may also want to think about working with others to promote your services. Selling yourself can be hard, so sometimes you need to let others give it a go and try it from different angles. This is definitely the case when it comes to affiliate marketing. Why not set yourself up an affiliate program so that online publishers like bloggers can bring business to you for a small commission? It is a great way to access a range of new customers too.
Stick to the Basics
Of course, you are definitely going to want to work on the bread and butter of being a freelancer – pitching. Cold pitching does not come naturally to us all, but once you get started, it will come a lot more easily to you. Just make sure that you start, and the rest will be history.