Working full-time long-term is leading a life based on your business. You need a decent continuously-flowing income, and a secured retirement plan. And this is where freelancing largely falls short. However, freelancing can be your proven way to both the decent income and the secured retirement plan. Here is how.
Freelancing is all about building reputation
- Join one or more freelancing platforms, set your profile including your skills and what you can do.
- Start small. As you still don’t have feedback from clients about your skills and the quality of your work, set a small hourly rate so that you can attract clients and get jobs, and prove yourself as a skillful professional.
- Develop an attention-worthy portfolio on your freelancing platform(s). Include your work history to showcase your expertise.
- Gradually increase your hourly rate. This is important not just to get rewarded for your effort and experience, but also because your hourly rate defines how clients regard you in terms of business experience; a newbie, developing, or an expert.
- Promote yourself. Link your expertise to your business-oriented social media profiles to get further exposure.
- Improve your LinkedIn profile.
- Make a Facebook business page.
- Follow people and businesses on twitter that are working in your career niche.
- Follow niches Quora that are related to your business and answer people’s questions.
Having done with constructing your reputation and promoting yourself, now you can go through one or both of these two routes.
- You will get potential clients that are interested in communicating with you and having your CV. Upon my personal experience, these clients include reputable multinational companies.
- You will be able to establish your own business. As you go through your freelancing career path, your growing business experience will inspire you with ideas and insights on how you can start a business of your own. And that, in turn increases your chances to land a decent corporate job that gives you the life security that you want to achieve.
Bottom line, freelancing is all about building reputation and, subsequently, exposure and promotion so that you can stand out as a skillful professional, and eventually land the job of your dreams.
Now, if you’re a freelancer or to-be freelancer aspiring for long-term life success and financial security, let’s know what you think. Share your ideas, questions, and/or success story in the comments section below to inspire other people like you.
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