How to Grow your Freelance Business & Drive Better Outcomes

Regardless of your location, it’s possible to gain better paying clients, make more money and ultimately, grow your freelance business more easily than you think.

No, this is not a joke. Starting a successful freelance business is not a cake walk but, a number of freelancers like you are doing quite well with their businesses so there’s clearly no reason why you shouldn’t.

Of course you’re yet to make it big with freelancing. But, instead of feeling discouraged, what you need is a road map on how successful freelancers were able to build their success. And a strategic plan on how you can build yours.

This is why I am putting together this guide, to take you on the step by step strategies you can use to get yourself from the ground and grow your freelance business into a profitable business that can actually pay your bills.

So, are you ready for this? In the following paragraphs, I’ll be sharing with you the top growth hack strategies that’s worked for other freelancers at your own level and how you can use these strategies to get your business right on its foot…

Write Down your Goals

The first step to grow your freelance business is to identify and write down your goal(s).

You might be wondering why this is important but the truth is, you can’t really get anywhere when you don’t have a clear direction on where you’re going.

So, the first thing you want to decide on at this stage, is to define the things you want to achieve with your business. The kind of clients that can help you to achieve that, the services you’ll offer in return and everything in between.

No, you don’t have to set too many goals at a time, so you don’t get overwhelmed. Start with the most important goals that will lead you to achieve your first few significant successes.

To make things easier, you can have an overall goal and then divide this into tiny goals or steps that will leads towards the achievement of the main goal.

Preferably, start with 1-3 goals. And then as you get on achieving those ones, you will be motivated to set more and more goals.

Sketch Out your Game Plan

In order to grow your freelance business and make the best out of this year, the next thing you want to do after identifying your goals, is to set out your plan.

Your plan is all about the steps you want to use in achieving your set goals. Supposing your foremost goal as a freelancer is to start earning in 5-figures before the second half of the year… Your plan will have to cover the steps you’ll use in earning that amount.

Your business plans should cover significant details on how you want to go about achieving the set goal, the services you’ll offer, number of hours spent, number of target clients etc.

The more detailed your plan, the better idea you have on the things you’ll need to do in order to achieve your goal.

Remember, while setting your plan, it’s possible you might not have a complete understanding of all the steps you’ll need to take in order to be able to achieve your goals but this is not a problem.

You really can start with the little idea you have about achieving what you want to achieve

So, if you really want to grow your freelance business, do not bother about all the details from the onset. While writing out your game plan, you might want to skip the details if you can’t figure them out clearly.

Focus on writing out the rough idea as it is, then with time you can work on adding as much details as possible.

Identify & Evaluate your Freelance Model

Another important step you can take to really grow your freelance business, is to work on your business model. This is very important if you plan to see an improved result for your business.

Reason behind this is because there’s a high probability that if you continue to work the way you’re doing right now, you’ll definitely get the same result you are getting at the moment.

So, if you really want to scale your your freelance business then there’s need to evaluate your existing mode of operation, alongside your effort and try to see if you’re actually getting the kind of results you’re supposed to get.

Where you’re not getting this then you have to use a different approach, set up different models and try them until you figure out what’s best for you. I’ll discuss briefly on this in the next sub heading.

Create a Reliable System

A system is a procedure, method or course of action designed to be used in achieving a specific outcome.

One of the best ways to grow your freelance business is to create a system that will help you to achieve more productivity in less time.

For this to work, you have to intentionally systemize and simplify your freelance processes. What I’m saying here is that you want to work on creating a system that will boost your effort so you can achieve better results in less time.

So, if you have a business model in place, the first thing to do is to take a step to evaluate your model. After doing this, where the model is not delivering on expected outcomes, you have to create a better model.

Considering that creating an effective system can help you to cut down on cost and time spent on a particular business activity, this in turn will help you to scale your freelance business much faster. So, you want to take out time to do this effectively.

For instance, if part of your major tasks as a freelancer involves paying up subscriptions for different clients at different times in a month, consider setting up a system that allows you to collate and pay up funds for all clients at same time instead of paying at different intervals within a month.

Same things could happen if you’re a content creator…

Instead of spreading your content creation process through different days in a week, you can work on choosing a day or two to create all your content, schedule them for publishing and promotion and then use other days for other things.

Doing this will reduce your time spent on these extra activities.

In the post I’ll be sharing via the link below, Tet has written a step by step process that will help you create systems that can scale your freelancing business much faster.

Build Effective Collaborations

Collaboration with others is a very effective strategy you can use to grow your freelance business. In the freelance world, collaborations are very helpful and expedient in some cases.

So, if you want to scale your freelance business then you have to realize that there are going to be times you will need to work with other freelancers or a team of freelancers to achieve a specific goal, easier and faster.

Considering that a lot of your achievements will depend on your efficiency and ability to create faster results, you want to pay attention to collaborating with others effectively as this can improve your efficiency.

So, you want to start with creating good relationship with other freelancers in your niche or complementary niches. Find ways you can be of help to yourselves and then explore these accordingly for your own benefit.

PS: It is very important you keep relationships like this mutually beneficial, if you want to enjoy the benefits on the long term.

Be Innovative

Innovativeness is one of the defining factors that makes businesses grow in leaps and bounds.

As one of the important steps you can take to grow your freelance business, you need to find out areas where you can be more innovative with the way you run your business.

Instead of doing things the way it has always been done, find out; is there a way you can create a better value for your clients?

Where it’s possible to create a better result, or additional value, find out ways to do this consistently. Learn more about how to be more innovative with your business here.

Stay Resilient

Just as with any other entrepreneur, as a freelancer, there are times things may not necessarily go your way no matter how much effort you put in.

For this reason, as you’re aspiring to scale your freelance business, instead of feeling discouraged whenever situations take a different turn, stay resilient.

If you come across instances where you don’t get expected results after putting in your best effort, try to analyze the situation at that point and find out what went wrong.

Evaluate both the possible and actual cause of the downturn. This will give you an idea on how to avoid such outcomes in the future.

Of course it might get really difficult to stay resilient or continue putting in the effort when things don’t turn out the way you want but, throwing in the towel is never always the first thing you want to do. So, you have to stay resilient while finding better ways to drive growth.

Final Words

As you can see, there are so many ways to grow your freelance business and get better and more satisfying results… But the thing is, you have one of the biggest role to play if you’re ever really going to scale your freelancing business.

So, as you work on using the above steps to enrich your business and create better outcomes, there’s need to continuously analyze your outcomes, embrace change while consistently putting in your best to get the result you want.

So, there you have it! Do you need further strategies on how to build a successful freelancing business? Reach out to our team here.

Now, there you have the top strategies to grow your freelance business fast. Which of these strategies is the most significant for you? Drop your comments below…