How to Make More Money as a Freelancer
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Freelancing can be a flexible side hustle or a fulfilling full-time career. But the nature of freelancing means you might be making less money than you could be. In this blog post, we explain how you can boost your freelance income by:
- Choosing a niche to specialize in
- Increasing the rates you charge for your services
- Making sure your resume is up to date
- Contacting previous clients for referrals
- Finding ways to market yourself
- Reviewing how you use your time
- Improving your knowledge and skills with training
Read on to find out how you can make more money as a freelancer.
1. Specialize in a Niche
As a proofreader or editor, specializing in a niche means choosing to focus on and offer specific types of work. Your niche could be the services you offer, like developmental editing. Or it could be the type of writing you choose to edit, such as young adult fiction, memoirs, or scientific essays.
This can potentially narrow your choice of clients, but it provides many benefits, such as:
- Making it easier for clients to find you
- Developing specific skills that make you more suitable for higher-paying work
- Establishing your reputation as an expert in your chosen field, meaning clients will be more likely to pay higher rates
All of these will enable you to make more money from your freelance work.
2. Consider Raising Your Rates
This might seem like an obvious point, but raising your rates will mean you can earn more for your work without being forced to take on more projects and risk burnout.
Conduct some research into what your fellow freelance editors are charging for the same services. You can also take a look at rates editing societies suggest and see how yours compare.
If you’re charging significantly less for your services than others, you could be undervaluing your skills and what you offer to clients. This could lead to clients undervaluing your level of expertise.
Increasing your rates as a freelancer can seem intimidating, but as long as you communicate the change properly with your clients, you’ll be closer to reaching your financial goals.
3. Update Your Resume
A good quality, up-to-date proofreading or editing resume can help you land better paying work by properly demonstrating what you can offer as a freelancer. Make sure your resume includes:
- All your most recent work and experience
- Any training you’ve undertaken
- Any areas you specialize in
- Your correct contact information
If you’ve only recently made the switch to freelancing or don’t have much relevant experience yet, you can still create an editing resume that shows off your skills.
4. Ask for Referrals
Referrals are when previous clients and colleagues recommend you to others who might need your services. They’re a great way to find more clients and increase your income, as referred clients are more likely to trust your expertise.
To get referrals, though, you need to ask for them. So, when contacting past clients about this, make sure to:
- Ask professionally: As with all client communication, you should be clear and polite when requesting a referral.
- Ask the right person: The person providing the referral should be the person you worked with most closely on the project. This might not always be the author of the document itself, especially if you’ve worked with a publishing company.
- Ask at the right time: It’s best to ask for a referral immediately after you’ve completed a project when your work is still fresh in your client’s mind.
Consider including a referral request when asking for general feedback at the end of a job.
5. Learn How to Market Yourself
Working as a freelancer means you’re responsible for finding your own clients. This means that marketing yourself is a critical skill, especially if you want to earn more money. Some tactics for promoting your services include:
- Using social media: Create professional social media profiles across sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to connect with a range of potential clients and fellow freelancers.
- Cold emailing: Take the initiative and contact potential clients who you’d be interested in working with. Just make sure to follow our five tips!
- Setting up a website: Having your own professional website makes it easier for clients to find you, demonstrates the quality of your work, and helps you stand out from the crowd.
- Networking in person: Networking events, conventions, and seminars are all great ways to meet clients and gain tips from experienced freelancers.
If you’ve decided to specialize in a niche, you can tailor your marketing to the sorts of clients that you want to work with. If you specialize in crime fiction, for example, you could join groups for crime authors and make use of related keywords on your website.
6. Manage Your Time
As the old adage goes, time is money. This is especially true for freelancers, so juggling your time efficiently is crucial if you want to make more money. Fortunately, there are several ways you can manage your time and improve how you spend it:
- Use time management apps and software, such as Toggl, to keep track of how long you spend on different tasks.
- Make use of software to handle repetitive admin tasks, such as invoicing.
- Improve your workflow by introducing a second monitor or upgrading your broadband speed.
Once you know how you’re using your time, you can work out how to put it to better use and earn more for it.
7. Improve Your Skills
As a freelancer, your biggest assets are the skills you can offer to your clients. While you don’t need a specific degree to work as a proofreader or editor, undertaking training in the basics and upskilling with more in-demand skills will enable you to find higher-paid jobs and increase your rates.
Some ways to improve your skills as a freelancer include:
- Taking on proofreading and editing tasks as part of your other job (if you have one)
- Shadowing or being mentored by another editor
- Watching webinars and other interactive training videos
- Enrolling in an online course
Online courses can offer a flexible, affordable way of learning. Our Becoming A Proofreader and Becoming An Editor courses are no exception.
With content provided by industry experts and guaranteed work, training with us can help you boost your knowledge and skills, gain more experience, and earn more money as you expand your freelance career. Save 15% by buying our two-course bundle, or try our courses out for free first.
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