If you’ve always wondered what the difference was between you and your freelance operation that may be making enough to get by but nowhere near as much as you had hoped it would and those operations that seemingly print money whenever they feel like it, you’ve probably trying to figure out the secrets that those successful and wealthy freelancers understand that you do not.
Unfortunately, cracking the code as an “outsider” is one of the biggest challenges you’re ever going to face. After all, you can’t know what you don’t know about in the first place, right?
Well, we are going to blow the lid off of three of the most closely guarded secrets that wealthy freelancers actively trying to keep out of the hands of new upcoming “rookies”. These are the secrets that help them skyrocket their income faster than anything else, the kind of secrets that you can effortlessly integrate into your operation (today, if you like) to double or even triple your income – just like that!
Ready to dive right in?
They (VERY) rarely do anything “from scratch”
The first secret that we are going to expose to you is the fact that wealthy freelancers almost never do anything “from scratch”.
Sure, they often times create and deliver absolutely stunning and unique pieces of work (across every freelancing field unimaginable), but they’ll always operate off of templates, structures, systems and “swipe files” that serve as inspiration.
Understanding that the fastest road to success is closely mimicking something that has already proven to be successful (while adding benefits or polishing the original piece), these freelancers cut down on the amount of time they spend “producing work product” and instead focus on creating iterative work that they can make a ton of money on.
Not only that, they systemize and create templates for everything. Contract agreement template documents, proposal templates, marketing and advertising templates, etc. are all stashed away and ready to be polished up so that they can be deployed at a moment’s notice.
They (VERY) rarely do anything for free
Secondly, these successful and wealthy freelancers almost never do anything free of charge.
They don’t fight over spec work for clients that probably aren’t interested in paying what it costs to have a professional tackle the job. They do not produce “consignment” work where they may never see payment at all. And they certainly never produce “pro bono” work just to get their name out there – whatever that means.
No, successful and wealthy freelancers know that the secret to making money is actually charging for your experience, your expertise, and the unique intangibles that you bring to the table. You have to be confident in what you offer to charge for absolutely everything, but once you get over that hurdle it becomes a lot easier – and a lot more profitable.
They (VERY) rarely do anything on their own
This might be the biggest secret of them all, but you’ll rarely find solo operators in the freelance world that really do everything on their own.
Freelance writers hire out freelance web designers to handle their webwork, freelance designers and engineers hire out writers and advertisers to handle the sales and marketing, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Understand your limitations, but do not let them influence the deliverables that you offer. You don’t have to reveal that you are bringing in outsiders (unless your contract explicitly states you must), which gives you the opportunity to run your own little shop – as lean and mean as possible – while at the same time letting you increase the quality and consistency of the deliverables you produce.
