upping your freelance game
TRANSCRIPT
@mgacreative
I am a former Art Teacher in Palm Beach County,I.T. Director, and Apple At Home Expert.I have been Freelancing for about 9 years (Full-time for 7 years) - long enough to have made all the mistakes many freelancers make.
• Have a process• Finding Clients• Proposals• Contracts• Onboarding
• Design / Prototype• Development• Delivery• Maintenance• Recurring Revenue
Market Leads Meeting Nuture
Proposal Onboarding Development Delivery
Maintenance Referrals *based on WP Elevation Blueprint
• Do you have/need a niche market?
• How do you find it?
• Finding an “in”
• Position Yourself as an Expert
• Position yourself as a solution provider, consultant, company owner, instead of website designer
• Look for Red Flags (listen to your gut)
• Learn to say “no thanks”
• Take control of the project via your process
• Avoid looking or sounding desperate
• Gather project information via phone, meeting, form or a paid discovery session. Talk to the decision makers• Rank your clients on budget, project, client respect. Bad clients aren’t worth the hassle but a great client leads to another.
• PITA upcharge
• Walk the line between nonchalance and desperation
• Send follow-up emails but WAIT
• Develop a template or use a good one to save time or use online tools like Bid Sketch, 17 Hats, or Proposify until you find the one or create it.
• Outline business goals, target audience, detailed scope of work with a timeline including client delivery of content.
• List your Care Plans in your proposal.
• Use a CONTRACT!
• Cover use of stock images, premium plugin licenses and renewals, security, hosting, updates and backups
• Intellectual Property, TOS, and Privacy Policy
• Timelines (Design Process and Payment Schedule)
• Suspended and Abandoned Projects
• Termination, Cancellations, and Refund Policy
• It is your job to educate your clients on their role in the project
• single point of contact• give them a worksheet on their
responsibilities i.e. what content (text and images) you are expecting and put a due date on it.
• Create a delivery checklist
• Provide client training videos (Video User Manual or WP 101), or step by step guides (iorad.com)
• Define bugs / limitations
• Website Care Plans
• Hosting
• SEO Services
• Social Media
• Paid Marketing
WPElevation.com - WP Elevation
NathanIngram.com - Advance Forum
training.iThemes.com
sellyourservice.co.uk