The FTF Guide To Getting Clients as a Freelancer

Ok, first things first.

If you want to build a long, successful and consistent business as a freelancer, you’ve can’t be a feast or famine freelancer.

Sure, you can go try to get work on freelancer sites like Upwork (although I think you should avoid Upwork at all costs, no matter what kind of freelancer you are).

And you can implement some quick-fix strategies to get out of a slump and get new clients fast. You can even find out how other freelancers get new clients fast.

But you simply can’t sustain yourself, and let’s be honest, ENJOY freelancing if you don’t stop being a feast or famine freelancer.

ESCAPE FEAST OR FAMINE

It takes a whole different strategy to get CONSISTENT clients and escape the feast of famine cycle for good.

Finding a way to implement a retainer-based payment model is a good first step to ensure you have more consistent income.

You also want to be sure you’re finding a better way to get new clients, treating every client like royalty because referral business, well it’s how I brought in an extra 58k of extra income for me one year.

I even wrote all about my favorite 10 ways to get more referrals.

But you can’t get a steady referral business, unless you’ve had a lot of clients that can refer you of course 🙂

So it’s time for the nitty gritty…

RAISE YOUR PRICES

Most freelancers choose their pricing based on their level of confidence — NOT the actual value they provide or what their clients are willing to pay.

The truth is, most freelancers are chronic under-pricers.

Here are 5 questions you can ask yourself to help you charge what you’re worth.

You may be afraid that raising your prices will result in you scaring away all your potential clients, only for you to never get hired again. But from my experience, I actually got more clients when I raised my prices.

I also discovered something pretty crazy when I had multiple price-points for different packages: how to get clients to choose your highest priced services.

Even if you don’t have set packages with pricing and you prefer to quote on projects, here’s how you can convince clients to triple their project budgets.

No matter what you decide for your pricing, here’s why I believe you MUST have pricing visible on your website.

Or, if you’re the rebel type, you could try out a completely different method of not having prices at all!

BRAND & NICHE YOURSELF

First, you gotta start with making sure that you’re selling what your clients want…

That you aren’t making the big mistake of not actually solving their problems (or showing them how you will).

Use these 10 tricks to finding out exactly what people want to pay you for.

Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been at it for awhile, you want to consider or revisit your branding and how to get clear on what you’re all about.

The truth is, you’ll make your life a lot easier (and put more money in the bank) if you get super clear on your PURPOSE as a freelancer (both for you and to your clients).

If you’ve never been too clear about who your ideal clients are, or you’ve been trying to go after any and all potential clients (and it’s not quite working out), it might be time for you to consider finding a profitable niche.

Once you’ve defined that, here’s how to craft a brand message that will help you stand out.

MAKE SURE YOUR WEBSITE IS WORKIN’ FOR YA

Make sure your website is a WEBSITE, not an online business card or portfolio. Potential clients don’t actually care about who you are or what you do…they want to know how you can help THEM solve THEIR problems.

There are a lot of freelancer website mistakes, but this is the one I see most newbies makes.

Don’t get caught up in design perfection (unless you’re selling design services maybe), focus on your copy and avoid the newbie copy paradox.

You want to make sure you speak with your own personality, not with a boring “professional” voice. If you tend to lean towards trying to be “professional”, here’s how you can balance the personal and the professional to attract your perfect clients a lot easier.

Consider using the story-bank method to connect in a deeper way with your ideal clients.

Make it clear on your homepage that you help X (ideal client), DO X (end result), so that they can X (problem solved).

Use these 3 about page tweaks to help you turn visitors into clients.

Make sure your sales/work-with-me page is making them jump at the chance to hire you with this checklist. Don’t forget these 3 sales page sections you shouldn’t leave out.

Do you have testimonials allllll over the place? Social proof is everything for getting people to pull the trigger and hire you. Here’s how to make getting great testimonials easy.

Do a quick check that you are scaring away your visitors with these 6 things that’ll cost you the client on your website.

Then when you’re ready to step it up a notch and get more clients from google, here’s the truth about improving your SEO and how to do SEO when you have limited resources.

SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS: BLOGGING & CONTENT CREATION

Ok, unless you’re a writer, you may avoid blogging at all costs. I resisted it big time because I thought I was a bad writer. But it turns out, once I got past the #1 mistake freelancers make with blogging, my efforts ending up getting me a lot of traffic and surprisingly, blogging saved me a lot of time.

If you’ve resisted blogging and content creation, this will be one of the most powerful ways to get booked out with clients. Here’s how to start blogging when you have no idea what your clients what to learn from you.

Use these 7 sure-fire method to overcoming writer’s block and make the commitment to GET CONSISTENT. Just start writing even even you don’t want to dammit!

Now, if you do have a blog, but haven’t been consistent, or don’t feel like it’s working to get you client, here are some posts that should help:

4 Easy Hacks To Instantly Boost Blog Traffic
My Easy-Peasy Method for a Boost in Traffic from my Blog
4 Blog Types to Make Blogging Easier
7 Reasons People Aren’t Sharing Your Blog Posts
How to Reuse Old Content To Capture Readers Interest
4 Ways to Repurpose Content From Your Archives
5 Reasons Your Current Content Strategy Isn’t Working
9 Essential Parts of a Successful Content Strategy

Get better, get most consistent, and you’ll be on your way to escaping feast and famine and getting booked solid.

THE MONEY’S IN THE LIST

It takes on average 7 times a potential clients needs to see you or hear from you before they’ll hire you. Email marketing is the best way to ensure that you hit those 7 touches and don’t lose your visitors, readers and potential clients to the internet black-hole, never to see them return again.

Check out this video on Facebook I did about how to not lose your website visitors with email marketing.

If you don’t have an email list yet, I get why you might be struggling to get consistent clients or keep the pipeline full. Here’s why you need an email list and how to make it grow.

Starting a newsletter and adding a little form to your website that just says “Join My Newsletter” is simply a waste of your time. You’ll grow your list of potential clients much faster if you have an enticing freebie that rewards their curiosity in exchange for handing over their email.

Make sure you get optins alllll over your website, even at the bottom of each of your blog posts (here’s how).

Then use one or more of these email marketing strategies to explode your freelance business this year.

And if you already have a list, but aren’t getting clients from it, you might want to consider when is the last time your subscribers heard from you and what to do about it.

Now that you’ve got the essentials in place…here are some additional resources to boost a few more areas of your business:

How to Promote Yourself Without Promoting Yourself
Dominate Social Media Through LISTENING
How to Use Twitter Effectively for Your Freelance Business
How I added 465 Followers on Twitter in One Month
5 Unsual Ways to Get Freelance Clients with Facebook Ads
How to Increase Your Facebook Followers
How to REALLY Build a Business on Facebook
The Easy Way to Get Clients from People You Know
6 Low Pressure Ways To Get Clients in Real Life
How to Get Hired on the Spot

What’s next?

Grab the Freelancer’s Toolkit below and you’ll also receive regular updates from me, FTF Founder, Leah, on what’s working right now to get more clients and grow your business fast.

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