There’s much to like about being a freelancer.
You don’t have to learn sophisticated workflow management techniques, and you don’t have to waste your time in meetings that all too often tend to drift off course. What you are selling of course, are your skills.
A gift for design is wonderful to have; but to ensure you always give your clients value for money, you need to look at your freelancing activities from a business perspective:
- Consider your work costs. If, for example, you are using Be’s pre-built WordPress websites, you are already saving precious time, and delivering high quality in the process.
- Seeking client recommendations to potential clients should be one of your business objectives. Focus on building a group of recurrent and referred clients.
- Constantly work on improving your skills, and upgrading your work standards.
If passion brought you this far, you might need some business smarts to go further.
Focusing on the “value for money” idea is essential. The resources you use need to be spent with care. Do that, and it will be that much easier to convince your clients that the work you put in was well worth their money.
When you utilize your resources wisely and efficiently, it’s easier to go the extra mile for a client. Make under promising and over-delivering a habit; deliver your work before the deadline; make transparent communications routine; give discounts to recurring clients. All these things prove that the value of your work exceeds the money paid.
Are Your Tools Really Valuable?
Let’s take a close-up look at your WordPress theme of choice, and see if it is helping you provide value for money for your clients. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Am I spending excessive time on technical issues related installing/customizing the theme? Or, is the process a straightforward, pleasant task?
A WordPress pre-built website destined to a younger audience that can be customized in no time.
- What specific features about this tool help me most in my work?
- When I work with this tool, am I spending my time, energy, technical, and creative resources efficiently?
In recent months, BeTheme has become one of the most appreciated and popular themes on the market. Its features are extremely simple to use, it doesn’t require coding skills, and it offers tremendous value for your money. Be Theme places at your disposal 200+ WordPress pre-built websites to start your projects on.
This eBook pre-built website can easily be transformed into a crisp presentation website of any e-book category.
Be is a perfect example of a product that has value for money. For example:
- Using Be can save you valuable time. Since WordPress pre-built websites already provide quality design, you simply need to pick one that best suits your client’s domain, and follow your vision from there.
- You can skip the mock-up wireframe stage. This is a real time saver, plus your clients will love you for it, since they will find editable layouts much easier to work with.
A minimalist herbal shop is one of the newest pre-built website launches.
- There is no shortage of WordPress pre-built website categories to choose from; they range from business, entertainment, and creative, to one page, lifestyle, food, sports, and beauty, and everything in between. Each one can be heavily customized with your client’s branding and content – in no time.
Could you describe your finished projects as having value for money?
To honestly answer this question, you must have good communications with your clients, and a good understanding of their needs. You can usually get a good measure of their degree of satisfaction if you ask yourself, or your clients the following:
- Are they pleased with the way you solve their briefs? Are they sometimes pleasantly surprised when you find innovative solutions to their problems?
- If they were to describe the way you work, would it be “OK”, or “the best I’ve seen”?
Delivering great projects for clients requires experience, skill, and good communication.
- Are clients coming back, and are they recommending you to others? In e-commerce marketing, returning clients is an indicator that business is good, and they want it to be even better. A growing number of returning clients or new projects that come from client recommendations, usually means that your work is not only OK, but far above it. You are perceived as a freelancer who provides “value of money” – that’s big.
- The number of times you are ready and willing to modify layouts is another test of the way you work. If your clients believe that all their specifications have been considered, they will be more open to modifications or suggestions for change you send their way.
Take time to make this short self-analysis. If you can identify some points where everything is no all it should be, you’ll know where you can start improving.
Sometimes freelancers need to work harder; usually they just need to work smarter.
Set a specific purpose. Improving the way you communicate with clients might be a good choice. Research areas in which you can improve, learn new rules, or simply pay closer attention to what your clients want. Some new work procedures may be in order, or a short guide your clients can use to better partner with you.
Are you actively working on creating value for yourself?
This is a complicated one, since you’re the one with the answers. Look at it this way. If you strive to produce more value for money for yourself, you’ll provide more for your clients down the road.
Startups invest some of their money in employee paychecks, office rent, the internet bill, and so on. At the end of the month, these investments are expected to provide more than their value, much more.
As a freelancer, your principle investments are time and effort. You can see where that time and effort has been well spent, or where there are certain skills or techniques you need to upgrade. When you’ve had a great month, it’s a good sign you’ve created some value. It’s not just the money.
The most beautiful experiences are defined by the way you enjoy them.
Paying attention to how you improve on a personal level, and what you have gained is important. This is true of any other domain in your life you seek to improve, whether it involves a weekend of travel or working on a personal project or hobby.
There are plenty of examples of resources in your life that offer more that their effort’s worth on a financial level. As you explore in greater detail, and in different settings, what value for money means to you, and learn from it, you’ll become a more confident, relaxed freelance professional.
Take-away ideas
You can use the value for money concept as a criterion, to determine how others are impacted by your work.
- The products you use day to day to produce your website designs, must be more than good. Be Theme’s 220+ pre-built websites, with their easy to use features, clearly provide you with value for money you can carry over to your clients.
- How you use these pre-built websites will tell a tale.
Be Theme – the WP Theme of Choice for over 49,000 designers around the world.
- Your objective must be to become a human resource that provides real value to your clients.
- The way you work should reflected in your income, in your lifestyle, and in your dealings with others.