After enjoying My Top 10 Tips for Freelancers for this week’s Articulate challenge, an intrepid reader asked me how to actually get freelance work. A good question, and one I’m happy to address.
My Flavor of Work
Freelance work comes in a lot of flavors, but for me it means that an organization’s training department sets me up as a vendor and has me handle e-learning projects from stem to stern, including all design and development. Even if your desired freelance work looks a bit different, you can still benefit by using this approach.
My 3-Step Formula for Success
There’s a lot involved in each of these steps, but this is what it boils down to.
Step 1: Be Irresistible
As a baseline we’ll assume you know your field, have honed your skills to an outstanding level and continue to learn more all the time, conduct yourself as a consummate and highly-principled professional, understand the basics of being independent, and are so fantastic to work with – both personally and by producing an outstanding product that provides real value – that your clients can’t resist hiring you.
Having all of this together means that once you have their attention, they’ll never want to let you go.
Step 2: Be Discoverable
If your prospective clients can’t find you and your work, how will they discover that you’re irresistible? You need a website where you show off your fantastic skills in the form of jewel-like samples of your work, maintain an active blog where people can get to know how you think and solve problems, and essentially reveal exactly who you are in a professional and best-foot-forward sort of way – which includes using your own name and picture.
Step 3: Be Involved
Choose your community and start contributing. The Articulate community is the one I’ve chosen to be involved with. That’s where I’ve learned oodles of stuff, gotten to practice my design and software skills while simultaneously creating portfolio pieces in the weekly challenges, and gotten to know my peers in both the challenges and discussions. We’re also actively in touch on LinkedIn, where it’s only natural to get to know even more good people in the field. I also attend e-learning events and webinars and continue to learn as much as I can from all of my smarty-pants peers who are ridiculously generous in sharing their experience and knowledge.
How Does All of This Lead to Work?
It just does. Whether it comes from your peers who know of a project you might be right for – or from those silent watchers in the community, on your website, on Twitter, LinkedIn, or wherever else you’re active – the people with the work will find you.
So that’s my secret formula. No “networking” events, no mailing lists, no advertising, no sweat, and no hassle. Just hard, focused work doing exactly what you love – and voilà! – you’re a success. Well done.
Excellent advice!!!
Thanks Donna!
Excellent job distilling the magic potion for getting work into a quick, easy read Jackie. I know how frustrating and hopeless the idea of getting your own clients can seem, but I have to say the approach you’ve outlined has worked fantastically for me. I have three clients keeping me real busy through January and beyond. I’ve found the Articulate community involvement and the blogging and twittering has been the key to success. It’s an excellent way to build up an amazing portfolio, even if you don’t have any work, but just do David Anderson’s challenges. AND I’ve learned SO much from my peers, it’s truly been enlightening and inspiring.
Thanks, Dan! I think that’s the hardest part for people – to stay encouraged and keep the faith as they lay the groundwork; yet don’t see work coming in yet.
But then it happens.
I’m sooooooooooooooo happy you found the success you were looking for too. :)
Great top 3 tips Jackie – and simple to remember. I would agree with this too. I’m only now 6 months into independent consulting and things going well. The main learning point has been for me to show my work – or the process of how I work – on my blog and to continually share what I know and connect others. Attending conferences and being involved in projects in my PLN has also helped to keep me engaged and constantly learning – which then helps my clients.
Hi Helen! That’s great the independent life is treating you well and that you’ve found this same approach to be effective. Thanks so much for sharing your experience!
Jackie, as always, a very insightful post and I love your writing style!
I have to ask: how do you manage it all? I have seen how much you participate in the weekly challenges and the community, and you are obviously a very successful freelancer with loads of work. How do you manage the awesome, but unpaid and more importantly un-deadlined, part of the job, that is: the blog posts, the weekly challenges, the forums, the tweets, the LinkedIn, etc etc etc etc? Do you adhere to a really structured schedule, like, “ok, on Wednesday morning I’ll do blogging” and so on? Or, do you just work all the time, and make no time for Game of Thrones ;) ?
Would love your insight! I went freelance 6 months ago and it is going SUPER, but I do struggle with the blog and the portfolio and the challenges. It seems like I ‘don’t really need’ to do these things seeing as I have more than enough work, but I WANT to do these things!
Thanks!
Veronica
Hi Veronica!
Congrats on your successful launch into the freelance world, and thank you SO much for your great comments and questions! I’m right in the middle of a day where I’m asking myself the same things. Excellent timing. I’ll have to convert this to a blog post. :)
I actually use the weekly challenges as a great framework to build all of my “unpaid” work around. As long as I create an entry each week, not only does that give me another portfolio piece, but it also gives me the chance to do a related blog post, which gives me something to tweet about and share on other SM. It also gives me something to share in the community.
So I adjust my priorities accordingly. If I tell myself that full participation in the weekly challenges is the best investment I can make in myself and my business – then the challenges rise very high on the list; though client deadlines will ALWAYS be at the very top. If I commit to delivering something fabulous by Thursday, you’d better believe I will.
I don’t have a regular schedule. At all. Each day is a whole new world. Most of the time I get swept up in the flow of it and the day is suddenly gone. Each morning I simply decide I’m going to accomplish X, Y, and Z by the end of the day – and (usually) do.
On the practical side, I’ve started to work with a little more of a team so I can focus as much of my time as possible on design and development. I have a fantastic project manager with whom I’ve worked in other capacities for years. She’s a complete lifesaver. I’d never have time to get new projects going without her. I’ll also use some development help on certain projects; though I’m terrible about giving up control. I still get my hands on every single image and every single screen.
No Game of Thrones, but I definitely goof off. If it’s silly or pointless I’m probably a fan of it – but you might guess that from some of my demos. :)
I hope that helps answer your questions, Veronica. Thanks again for getting in touch!
Jackie
Thanks Jackie! I like your idea of “each day is a whole new world”, such a great motto :)
Great advice Jackie! Although I’m still working on the “irresistible” formula, I can’t agree more with being discoverable and involved.
I’ve been running a successful company now for nearly three years after starting out doing exactly what you’ve outlined here for about two years previously.
If I may add one more to your list: “Under promise and over deliver.” This work ethic will help establish the contractor-client relationship for return business and building a solid client base. I suppose this could fall under the “irresistible” section, eh? :)
Hey Kevin! Thanks for the testimonial.
Yes! I agree completely with “under promise and over deliver.” I’d put that in my “irresistable” cache of weapons, too. Nothing’s quite so much fun as casually delivering stellar work that’s both early and under budget.
Great post As someone who has talked with Jackie on a regular basis, i can vouch for her advice. I implemented it a few months ago and have been very busy ever since. She has great insights into what works, how you should approach your overall design and portfolio and how to really do what you enjoy in the process. She’s an amazing person who I cannot say enough good things about….I would say more but I’m on a crazy deadline and need to get back to work!
Thanks, Richard! What better testimonial than that?? You’ve got so much work you barely have time to come up for air.
In my opinion the key is to do all of this consistently, diligently, and with every fiber of your being through the lean times and the I’ve-got-loads-of-work times – so HUGE congrats to you for hanging in there, doing the hard work and making it all happen. Well deserved.
Which elearning events do you recommend?
Hi Amanda!
That’s such a good question. I’ve been attending eLearning Guild events for the past few years, but I’m looking for something new.
I’m ready to have fresh, creative, open-minded, and highly-skilled people show me things I haven’t seen before in a savvy way that demonstrates not just their amazing expertise in their chosen area of e-learning, but in a way that also demonstrates their remarkable ability to communicate what they know using their fantastic teaching skills.
Any suggestions?
That’s a tall order! Maybe AECT?
It is a tall order, isn’t it? Call me crazy, but that’s what I think you should deliver when you’re asking your professional peers to invest that much of their time and money.
Thanks for the AECT suggestion! I’d never heard of them before. OMG!! They’ve got a conference in Istanbul in May???? I’m on it! I’ve been looking for an excuse to get back to Turkey!
This looks like a great group. Do you belong or know much about them? I’m going to look into it more closely. Thank you so much, Amanda!
You’re not crazy. That’s why I asked. I’ve seen many conference notifications but the registration costs are outrageous unless you’re backed by a large organization.
I do not belong to AECT and don’t know much about them. I’ve heard the name often because my alma mater competes in their events and usually present at the convention. You may find it to be a little more academic, but I can’t be sure.