Most people who's longing for success online starts out with great ambition but it's often common that most of the freelancers have a misleading idea of what freelancing is all about and they see things with dollar signs in their eyes due to all the amazing success stories they've heard. Fortunately I will list 5 of the most common, in my opinion, mistakes new freelancers make.
- They do not think things through properly.
Anyone can become a freelancer, it's super-easy to become one but harder to stay as one. You cannot predict your income and due to the fact that your income probably will change from one month to the next. Some savings to use when you first start out would be great as you still have bills to pay and might end up with nothing the first period of your freelancer career.
- They sell themselves too low.
I understand the reasoning for providing things for extremely low, especially when you're first starting out as you would need to build reputation and credibility. However, it's always easier to lower your costs than increase the price for your services so you should really consider being a bit more expensive but provide excellent quality instead. Once you've gained recurring customers it's easy to putting your services on sale and offer people discounts to attract new clients and to make more sales.
- They spend all their income.
As new freelancers starts to make money they use their income on things they want. New clothes or a new cell phone and other things they want or need in life. I understand the feeling of finally be able to buy that special cell phone you've been longing for. However, it's a difference on revenue and profit. Revenue is the money you earn and profit is the money you keep. Spend only your profits.
- They don't get their first clients.
New freelancers creates their services or products and wait for sales. They wait for the money and that won't happen. Money doesn't come flying into your pockets. You need to market yourself. Advertise. Build relations and build reputation. When you've done that, the orders will come.
- They don't treat their freelancing career as a real business.
Being a freelancer means that you are the boss. You are your own boss and that comes with responsibility. Treat your freelancing career as a real business because it is one. At least, it can be, but that depends on yourself and many new freelancer doesn't take enough responsibility.
Do you agree? Let me hear your thoughts on this.
Best Regards,
hitmeasap
Beverly
I never had any real Freelancing success selling cheap services. On occasion, I had a $1.00 buyer, but mostly that was $1.00 for a sampler service, like 2 forum posts or 2 blog comments, not 200 Youtube likes. Just enough to show quality of service. At some point, I realized they were selling my services for double on an affiliate SEOClerks site. And, so I thought, well if those are actually selling at double, then why am I not earning double? So I doubled my own prices on at least one service and you know what, I got a boost in business.
Now I don't know if that would work for someone in a highly competitive niche such as bookmarking or Facebook likes but it worked very well for manual blog comments and forum posts.
Another benefit of charging more money for my services, it cut out the cheapskates and freebie seekers, AKA difficult customers. I rarely if ever had a bad customer once my prices got doubled and then later on tripled. And possibly the logic being that some buyers who have money don't want to feel like cheapskates and would rather spend it on a higher priced service as they automatically assume that bigger price equals better quality. And, if you can deliver the quality, you are not only going to complete that one order but get many more orders from that buyer in the future.
Now yes, all that is contingent on being able to give the best quality, be the best at whatever you are/do/sell/offer and if you can't don't bother - you won't be a success whether it's a $100 service or just $1.00.
So yeah it boils down to being an expert and then you can name your own price, whatever you want it to be. What you said about new freelancers not selling themselves too low is very relevant to me. I never had any real Freelancing success selling cheap services. On occasion, I had a $1.00 buyer, but mostly that was $1.00 for a sampler service, like 2 forum posts or 2 blog comments, not 200 Youtube likes. Just enough to show quality of service. At some point, I realized they were selling my services for double on an affiliate SEOClerks site. And, so I thought, well if those are actually selling at double, then why am I not earning double? So I doubled my own prices on at least one service and you know what, I got a boost in business. Now I don't know if that would work for someone in a highly competitive niche such as bookmarking or Facebook likes but it worked very well for manual blog comments and forum posts. Another benefit of charging more money for my services, it cut out the cheapskates and freebie seekers, AKA difficult customers. I rarely if ever had a bad customer once my prices got doubled and then later on tripled. And possibly the logic being that some buyers who have money don't want to feel like cheapskates and would rather spend it on a higher priced service as they automatically assume that bigger price equals better quality. And, if you can deliver the quality, you are not only going to complete that one order but get many more orders from that buyer in the future. Now yes, all that is contingent on being able to give the best quality, be the best at whatever you are/do/sell/offer and if you can't don't bother - you won't be a success whether it's a $100 service or just $1.00. So yeah it boils down to being an expert and then you can name your own price, whatever you want it to be.
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