Getting a steady flow of income from freelancing is very hard to accomplish, if not the hardest. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. It is possible to become independent through freelancing and also have a steady flow of income. On the basic level, you need to have two significant qualities for obtaining these two goals.
Firstly, you need to be very hard working and also have a dedication to your work. A straightforward way to have these two qualities while you work is doing something you love to do. Besides these two certain qualities, you need to achieve some operational goals to have the cash rolling in constantly. If these goals are met your dreams of attaining full financial freedom will not be far away.
To stabilize your income as a freelancer you need:
To be consistent:
Consistency is key to the success in any career, and in freelancing consistency is the Holy Grail. Now you need to be consistent in two different areas for this to work.
First, you need to work frequently and have to 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 the work you provide. If you write articles, all of your articles need to be spotless. If you write a good article and another bad one, it will not leave a good impression, and the client will think you are not consistent.
One way to maintain consistent quality of work is to take frequent short breaks to recharge your mind. Ensuring consistency in these two fields will surely 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 contents. Rushing to build a big 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 for newcomers to write one article per day and no more than that to keep your creative juice fresh. As 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 landing you good clients that regularly give you work that pays well.
Be able to standout:
There are a lot of freelancers out there providing similar services like you. What will make the clients choose you over any of the other freelancers?
To understand the solution of this problem let us look at an analogy.
Consider the two fast-food chains, Mc Donald's and KFC. If we want a good burger, we go to Mc Donald's, and if we want a good chicken fry, we go to KFC. Similarly, you need a quality that helps you stand out from the crowd.
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 in retouching photos, and someone else may be concentrated in removing the background. Each of them will get works that they are specialized in. Likewise, you will get more works if you specialize in a specific field that helps you to stand out from the crowd.
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Have clients that prefer your work:
One of the most reliable ways to make sure work keeps coming in is to find clients that prefer one freelancer to do their work. These are the clients that have a project 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 keep a sense of uniformity in the articles.
Not only speaking for articles, but they will also prefer one freelancer to do their website designs and SEO too. So, finding these clients are not that hard, but it is not that easy too. Freelancer hunt for these clients so it is quite competitive. After finding one such client, it is important to retain him/her.
To retain these clients there needs to be consistency in your works 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 and adjust yourself to their tastes and maintain consistency and you are good to go.
Have multiple clients:
It is quite common that one client will not have work available for you 24/7 although it is quite risky to work for multiple clients at once, as it is risky to be in multiple relationships at once. But as mentioned before dedication and hard work is 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 do client B's work 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 to achieve stability in the flow of income, it must be done.
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To conclude freelancing is a good source of income, but to gain stability you need to invest the same amount to time as in any other career, if not more. With dedication and hard work anything is possible, so do not give up on your dreams and work harder with dedication.
Freelance offers a variety of fields to earn from, but the field that you will find the most success in is the one that you are attracted. So, find works that interest you and implement the mentioned strategies to that field. Success is not far.