How to Get Freelance Clients - My Guide to Killing it as a Freelancer!
Téa Luehne
Founder of Téa Rae Designs, Squarespace Website Design for Women-Owned Businesses
So you want to be a freelancer? This is good because knowing your goal is the first step! After you know and understand your goal, you can frame your mindset for success. That being said, a freelancer's journey is not created equal and each person has a unique experience; so I want to share my guide to getting freelance clients in the hope that it will help you kick-start your freelance journey!?
Build Your Portfolio - Reach Out to Your Network
Freelancing is one of the few careers that allow you to reach out and take advantage of your friends, family, and colleagues to gain the skills and experience you need to build a portfolio. Building a portfolio is not only a requirement to gain new clients but a major asset in showcasing your talents and your ability to service your client base.?
Your friends, family, and colleagues all have different niches and fields of expertise that you can use to write a blog in their field, design a new logo, create a website, write website copy, or create an ad. There truly is no shortage of options for what you can create to build your portfolio while using the network you have around you.?
Get Valuable Criticism and Feedback
The best thing about using your network to build a portfolio is that your network can give you valuable feedback and critiques on your work and what you can improve on without worrying about truly upsetting a client. When I first started as a freelance copywriter, I didn’t have a network I could reach out to that needed copywriting - so I settled for myself, meaning I created ‘projects’ and ‘briefs’ that I would possibly get from a client and treat it like a project. This was one of the best decisions I made in the beginning.?
As we’ve seen already there is a wealth of beneficial results when you use what you have to create an outstanding freelance portfolio. It allows you to practice your skills and hone them to be a professional and detailed freelancer, no matter what service you offer!??
Curate a Neat and Organized Portfolio
I believe that your portfolio should allow potential clients to find what they need without explanation and without having to ask a million questions. Clients want to be able to clearly and concisely know what you are offering and how you can help them.?
My portfolio is organized in folders in Google Drive as well as saved to my computer so I can attach everything as a file. Each folder is particular to either blog posts, social media captions, social media graphics, or website copy, to give a few examples. Any client looking over my portfolio doesn’t have to question where to find what they are looking for!?
As a freelancer, you want to treat your portfolio as your resume, it shows potential clients what you are capable of by showcasing your expertise, and if your work aligns with their goals. A neat and organized portfolio will let them know right away that you are professional and ready to take on their projects!
Compile Referrals, Ratings, and Recommendations?
When you work with paying clients or even if you do pro bono work for friends, family, and colleagues to build your portfolio, their ratings and recommendations are so important to include when you send work to clients in the future. I like to think of these ratings and recommendations as references for a job interview. As humans, we are hardwired to look for testimonials, reviews, and recommendations when we are in the process of purchasing something.?
You can add these ratings and recommendations to your work a few different ways, you can compile them into short little ‘blurbs’ where you include what the client said, what project it was for, and some stats about the project and how you worked with the client. You can also put a header at the bottom of each piece you’ve completed that says “What Clients Are Saying” and then their rating or review. As long as you have them in a place that is easy to share and easy for the client to access, it will make their decision to work with you effortlessly.?
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Marketing Yourself and Your Services - Social Media
Once you have built your portfolio and have a solid foundation with which to showcase your talents to future clients, it’s time to market yourself and your services to your ideal clients. This process can be done a few different ways, but when you’re first starting and don’t have a second income to spend, I recommend using social media to your advantage!?
I know you may feel the same way I do when it comes to advertising and marketing yourself and your services; you don’t have the budget or the income to spend on paid ads on social media or Google - but thankfully social media can do most of the heavy lifting - for free!
Network, Post Testimonials, Get Inspiration
Social media is a landmine for inspirational content and ideas. With this, you can showcase your testimonials and ratings to your target audience and followers, and it is also a place where you can network and connect with your ideal client and figure out what they need the most.?
Whether you are a copywriter, a website designer, a logo designer, or any other type of freelancer, social media is a great way to spread brand awareness and your skills to the clients you are looking to bring in. In my experience, I use social media the most for posting polls and questions on my story for my ideal clients and followers to respond to – like what they want to read about in this blog – and it truly helps give me a real sense of what my followers and clients want to read about and are interested in.?
The power of social media also lies within the inspirational content that is posted daily by other entrepreneurs, freelancers, and business owners! There are so many aspects of social media that you can take inspiration from and turn into your unique and creative idea! It is so helpful to have a network of inspiration, as well as people, to have for reference when you’re starting as a freelancer!?
Blogging – The Key to SEO
When it comes to getting noticed for your brand and your services, SEO is going to be your new best friend. If you’re not familiar with it already, SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization and it means your content is formatted in a way that lets Google and other search engines pick through your content to relate it to what people are searching for. This, in my opinion, takes a LOT to get used to – especially as a newer freelancer, but eventually it comes naturally.?
If you’re not 100% confident with SEO starting, that’s okay because neither was I, and I’m still learning, but blogging gives you a step up into the world of SEO without needing to research too much at the beginning. Now, if you have the income set aside, you can hire another freelancer to help you write a blog or two to get you going, or you could do what I did and start on my own from scratch!?
Regardless of how you do it, posting blogs to your site allows more content to be present on your website for Google to search through – creating more search results for your page when clients search for keywords. It’s a great way to start entering the world wide web as a freelancer!?
What Have We Learned?
That was quite a bit of information I threw at you, but it’s all very valuable information that I learned step by step, but I want to provide it to you in one post! I have heard advice from freelancers making six figures and started making six figures very quickly after starting, but while I appreciated the advice, it didn't resonate with me because I wasn’t making and am still not making, six figures – and that's okay!?
The reason I wanted to give you all this information is so you can grow and learn from someone on a level playing field, someone that’s still newer to the freelance world like you are! So to sum up what I’ve learned:?