From a wise freelancer:
“There’s something to be said for not burning bridges. Especially in freelance, all of my work has come through past relationships and word of mouth referrals.
I left this employer in 2014 when they wouldn’t give me a raise I asked for. I made sure to leave on as positive terms as possible. They reached out to me this week to see if I can help them with several websites that had become so out-dated that upgrading them and applying security fixes would be very difficult and likely to cause issues. My Freelance hourly rate is now 5x what my salary would have broken down to in terms of dollars per hour when I worked there.
They said yes without hesitation.
Do good work, make people happy, maintain high awareness (like their linkedin posts, like their instagram posts, send them a Christmas card, etc.) – and your sales pipeline will magically stay full of easily closable sales. If your network is large enough, you’ll always have sales trickling in from places you forgot you were even fishing.”
It’s the “dirty little secret” of freelancing.
The average American worker makes 45K/year.
The average American freelancer makes 64K/year (more on freelance incomes HERE).
For all the blubbering about “income inconsistency” and “low-balling” clients and “job insecurity”… well… men lie, women lie, but numbers don’t.
But, here’s the one thing our wise freelancing friend from above gets wrong.
Round these parts… we don’t believe in “magic” or engage in “hope freelancing” and clients “trickling in from places you forgot”. That’s all fine and well, but we go out and get ours. We KNOW where our clients come from.
We don’t leave things to chance.
And, that’s why we tend to outperform the averages. That is, IF you know WHAT to do and you go out and do it. The what is building a client-getting system (more HERE) that leverages social media, search, and all the fancy online tools to consistently bring you clients.
The how is covered in my Beginner’s Guide to Freelance course, which you can enroll in on Udemy here: https://johnmorrisonline.com/freelanceonudemy.
Later,
John
P.S. If you prefer Skillshare, you can learn how to get access to all my courses, including this one, for FREE here: https://johnmorrisonline.com/skillshare.
