You can find lots of ways to earn money, but one of the best ways to earn extra money is to take courage and make the leap to start a freelance business.
Whether you want to become a full-time freelance entrepreneur, or just want to use your best skills to earn extra money, here’s everything you need to know before embarking on that new adventure.
Choose your business carefully
You are going to spend a good part of your time in your freelance business, so you must choose what you want to dedicate carefully. There is a rather popular Venn diagram that suggests that your ideal business should be a combination of:
If what you aspire to is the area of intersection of the three circles (ie, to combine what you love to do, what you do well, and what people are willing to buy), Then you are on the road to success.
However, keep in mind that many freelancers start their projects because something is good at, and therefore lift get great business. So if your heart tells you that you consider only one of the three circles, you can always choose to go ahead with it and see what happens.
With the Internet, set up a freelance business is easy
How can you establish a freelance business? Usually, this is as simple as making the web .
If you want to become a professional copywriter, A clothing designer, a professor of online fitness or marketer, All you have to do is buy a domain to your freelance business online.
There are platforms like WordPress Where you can create a professional page fairly quickly, and if you work with PayPal, charge your customers as simple as that made the payments in a couple of clicks.
Build base of customers it’s half the battle won
This is one of the few secrets to start a business freelance: you can make the best blankets for babies hand the world, but if nobody knows what you do, you will not buy unless you take your time to build a base of customers.
The Internet is full of freelancers, many of them doing exactly what you want to do. Just because you put your virtual poster on the net opening does not mean that customers will start to click on your doorstep.
How can you build a good customer base? There are many sources of online resources where you can learn from email campaigns, how to have a good presence on social networks. To promote yourself, or how to manage Google ad campaigns.
The real way to build the foundation is by making good products and sale them to the customers and give the sense of satisfaction and gratitude. Use the good advertising and “word of mouth” to grow the business.
Of course, we must emphasize the “little by little”. Rarely it is given a successful overnight, so be aware of that will at first few months until start making a profit serious.
All you need to know about benefits
This is what you need to know about the benefits: make sure you’re making.
One of the biggest mistakes business owners freelance make is undervalued against the competition, or can only assume That They charge lower rates They are new in Because of the field and/or inexperienced.
You need to earn a profit on each product or service you sell. In addition, you should ensure that you are at that price including both the cost of materials or goods that you use, the cost of your time. Let’s say you sell belts made from old comic book covers; Materials cost you about $ 10 for each belt, and it takes 2 hours of your time. And how are you going to sell it? How about $ 20?
That makes every hour of your work costs $ 5 ($ 10 in material + $ 10 for 2 hours = $ 20 for which you sell that item), and your freelance business never gets to have real success.
So do what many freelancers, and charges for what your job really costs. That belt sold for $ 40 and will be making a profit of $ 30 each.
This is a very simple explanation of how to price your items or services in a proper way so you do not waste money. And of course, when you think about it, keep in mind that you will have other expenses additional like paying the name of your domain and hosting, business cards and taxes if you want to do it professionally!
Taxes, licenses, and permits
You need to be prepared to pay federal taxes, state, and other taxes. When you start earning money through your freelance business
Each country has its own rules about taxes, so little research on the regulation of small businesses in yours to learn more about this. Even if you know other freelancers, you can get information through them.
And you do not forget the sales tax – if you sell items to other people, you need to learn what the different sales taxes that apply to what you offer you.
In addition, many types of businesses also require licenses or permits. Always check if you need any such authorization before embarking on a freelance business, even though you want to be a freelance writer!
Have you ever started a freelance business? What advice would you give to other freelancers like you? Please write your comment and tell us about your experience!