Getting a steady income from freelancing is hard, if not the hardest. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It is possible to become independent through freelancing and have a steady income flow. On the basic level, you need to have two essential qualities to obtain these two goals.
Firstly, you need to be very hard-working and dedicated to your work. A straightforward way to have these two qualities while working is by doing something you love. Besides these qualities, you need to achieve some operational goals to constantly have the cash rolling in. Your dreams of attaining complete financial freedom will not be far away if these goals are met.
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To stabilize your income as a freelancer, you need the following:
To be consistent:
Consistency is key to success in any career, and consistency is the Holy Grail in freelancing. You need to be consistent in two different areas for this to work.
First, you must work frequently and be consistent at it too. Working a lot one week and not working at all the next will not ensure a steady flow of income. If you are a freelancer who needs to pay their bills every month and have a family to look after, having consistent work hours is extremely important.
Second, you need to be consistent in the quality of your work. If you write articles, all of your articles need to be spotless. Writing a good essay and another bad one will not leave a good impression, and the client will think you are inconsistent.
One way to maintain consistent quality of work is to take frequent breaks to recharge your mind. Ensuring consistency in these two fields will help you maintain professionalism and thus ensure that the cash keeps coming in.
To have a portfolio with quality work:
Patience is required to build a good-looking portfolio consisting of excellent content. Rushing to make a significant portfolio will result in poor quality of work which in turn will not impress your clients enough to give you tasks.
To maintain a good quality of work, as mentioned before, you need to take breaks. Which means rushing to do more work is not an option. It is suggested that newcomers write one article per day and no more than that to keep their creative juice fresh. The old saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Your flow of income through freelancing will not be stable in a day too.
Building a good portfolio is key to finding good clients who regularly give you work that pays well.
Be able to stand out:
There are a lot of freelancers out there providing similar services to you. What will make the clients choose you over any of the other freelancers?
To understand the solution to this problem, let us look at an analogy.
Consider the two fast-food chains, McDonald’s and KFC. If we want a good burger, we go to McDonald’s, and if we want a good chicken fry, we go to KFC. Similarly, you need a quality that helps you stand out.
Let us say your services include Photoshop; you need to specialize in a specific part of photoshop to land you more jobs. Someone may be concentrated on retouching photos, and someone else may be focused on removing the background. Each of them will get works that they specialize in. Likewise, you will get more jobs if you specialize in a specific field that helps you stand out.
Have clients that prefer your work:
One of the most reliable ways to ensure work keeps coming in is to find clients who prefer one freelancer to do their work. These clients have projects like completing a full-fledged affiliate site or an AdSense site. These clients prefer one freelancer to write all the articles required for the site to maintain uniformity in the papers.
Not only speaking for articles, but they will also prefer one freelancer to do their website designs and SEO. So, finding these clients is not that hard, but it is not easy. Freelancer hunt for these clients, so it is pretty competitive. After finding one such client, it is essential to retain them.
If you want to rehire previous clients, your work needs consistency, as mentioned in the first point. Your style needs to satisfy their taste, or they will not hesitate to change you and get another freelancer. Get feedback, adjust to their preferences, and maintain consistency, and you are good to go.
Have multiple clients:
It is expected that one client will not have work available for you 24/7. However, working for multiple clients simultaneously is risky, as it is dangerous to be in various relationships. But as mentioned before, dedication and hard work are needed to get a stable income from freelancing. The trick to working for multiple clients is time management.
Let’s say you have two clients, A, and B. You will do client A’s work on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday and client B’s on Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday. Or you can split a day in two, one work in the morning and another in the evening. It may sound exhausting, but keeping stability in the flow of income it must be done.
To conclude, freelancing is a good source of income, but to gain stability, you need to invest the same amount of time as in any other career, if not more. Anything is possible with dedication and hard work, so do not give up on your dreams and work harder with dedication.
Freelance offers a variety of fields to earn from, but the area you will find the most success in is the one you are attracted to. So, find works that interest you and implement the mentioned strategies in that field. Success is not far.