In the companion piece to this article , we told you about five important things to help ensure that your freelancing business would be successful. Here, we share five more tips for getting your freelancing business to new heights.
Look bigger than you are
While it’s true that most clients will consider the quality and professionalism of your work the most important factors in their relationship with you, in many verticals it remains important for freelancers to look bigger than they are – or at least not make it obvious that they’re still in their pajamas at 1 p.m. working on a card table in their basement.
Sharon Dotson, for example, believes a “big” image is crucial to the success of her one-woman enterprise, Bayou City Public Relations, in Houston. “There are a number of people out there – both clients and competitors – who look for vulnerabilities,” says the 58-year-old freelancer. “They think, ‘She must be much cheaper because she’s alone, or she’s a housewife trying to pick up some extra money.’ I need to level the playing field.”
So, among other things, Dotson has a slick-looking website. She chose to name her outfit something outside her own identity. “I thought that introducing myself as ‘Sharon Dotson, from Sharon Dotson Public Relations,’ would be silly,” she says. And she rents a street address from a private firm for $100 a year on Cherry Park Drive in Houston and gets all her mail for that address at a post-office box.
Author: The Sloan Brothers
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