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Home-Based Business Opportunity #1: Freelancing

By the time we’ve reached 50, most of us have been through the wringer several times in life, so we have plenty of experience we can share with other people about what to do, how to act, and how to run a business. If you’ve worked for others over your lifetime, surely you’ve run across a boss or two who just didn’t get it when it came to running a business or who couldn’t keep repeat customers—let alone loyal employees. You also know tons about customer service and business operations and best practices, in part from having observed the mistakes others made. So, how about parlaying that experience, or portions of it, into a business all your own? Now you can be your own boss and have fun doing it.

In fact, it doesn’t matter if you’ve spent many years in one type of business or if you’ve been involved in several businesses and careers over your life. You can always find a way to create a home-based business as a freelancer based upon those experiences.

Then again, maybe you don’t want to revisit any of those former jobs or professions. Instead, you have a hobby that you would love to develop into an expert-level gig and make money with your expertise. So, go ahead, build a business around it, and enjoy doing what you love most. You’ve got a whole new life ahead of you!

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

You can work as a freelancer in many different fields. The following list should give you some ideas:

•Accountant

•Architect

•Attorney

•Blogger

•Computer programmer

•Contractor

•Copywriter

•Desktop publisher

•Editor

•Graphic designer

•Illustrator

•Journalist

•Linguist

•Magazine article writer

•Photographer

•Project manager

•Researcher

•Social networker

•Statistician

•Videographer

•Web designer

•Web marketer

IS THIS FOR ME?

It’s pretty easy to hang out your shingle as a freelancer. But don’t just jump right in without thinking a few things through. Before you actually start freelancing, you need to attend to a few planning issues. First, plan out what you want to do, then create a marketing plan and a business plan, set goals, arrange your financial setup with a bank for the money you’ll make as a freelancer, and determine what tools you’ll need to accomplish all of those steps.

Even if you do jump in and get rolling with clients right away, the business side of your business must be tended to fairly quickly, including creating nuts-and-bolts items such as the first invoice or written agreement. At the very least, start with the basics of your business and a solid marketing plan; you will be developing these more fully over time. Look for more information about developing business and marketing plans in chapters 10 and 12 of this book, and check out my 2010 book, The Marketing Plan Handbook from Entrepreneur Press, for even more details.

As a freelancer and your own boss, you are totally responsible for your business—its success or failure—and for your self-motivation to that end. If you have enough operational structure set up in advance, it’s easier to create goals and motivate yourself on a daily basis because your foundation is already set. So start building your foundation by first determining what you want to do. Knowing what kind of business you want to run can help you determine what steps to take next to build on that foundation.

DECIDING WHAT BUSINESS YOU WANT

So now you know you want to freelance, but you’re not sure exactly what it is you want to do. Start first by making a list (or go through your résumé) of what jobs you have held, and what responsibilities you have had, and think about whether you might want to offer your services on a freelance basis to former bosses or if you just want to start out fresh looking for new clients. Generally, it’s easier to start by working with former bosses who know you and who respect the work you’ve done in the past. They, in turn, can pass you on to some of their associates or clients, or perhaps provide referrals to other people who might be interested in your services. This is word-of-mouth marketing and public relations at its best and cheapest.

WORD TO THE WISE

Don’t burn your bridges with former bosses, even ones you didn’t particularly enjoy working with. You may have hated working for them at the office, but they might be much easier to deal with if you are a freelance consultant instead of their employee. Who knows? One of your least-favorite bosses just might turn out to be your golden ticket to fast-track freelancing.

Back to that list you made of jobs you’ve held: There may be a job or two on the list that you really enjoyed but don’t feel you could perform well as a freelancer; however, perhaps some small aspect of even those jobs could be developed as an outsource opportunity for you. Let’s consider two small ideas.

PROJECT SUMMARIES

Let’s say you spent years as a market researcher and analyst for a large company. Now, you could use that experience to write project summaries. You could set up an arrangement with your former employer—or a new client—so that they send their data to you with a summary of the desired project and pay you to write a report, summary, or analysis based on the information. Not only could you write reports, but you could also create tables, spreadsheets with pivot tables and analysis, graphs, and whatever else you need to show your interpretation of the data. Just be sure that any analysis and macros you create for such projects have been double- or even triple-checked and tested thoroughly. Numbers and statistics must be accurate.

All information pertaining to that client is confidential, and you can never show it to anyone else unless it’s years later and the company has closed down. Even then, think twice about it. If you want to present a sample of your work, you can re-create a presentation with a fictional product and revised data throughout the report. Remove company logos and names, of course, and make the examples all your own.

ONLINE SURVEYS

You can also think about creating online surveys for companies, especially those in your specialty area, who want to know more about what their customers think about the products they buy or services they use. There are many online survey companies you can use to develop specialized surveys for just about any kind of business that needs your help. Once the survey is done, you can collect the data and, depending on the objective of the survey, create a presentation report based on that information.

You can do this kind of work for just about any type of business, but you definitely need a good consultation with a client company contact who has a definitive idea about what the company wants to find out from this survey. You may need to do several revisions as the survey is developed. Also, be sure that you have only one established contact for the survey information. Trying to put together a survey while consulting with four or five people who each call you with their own ideas about how it should be done is a royal nightmare. Nip that situation in the bud and establish one contact only, and put the goals of the project in writing.

Survey Monkey (at www.SurveyMonkey.com) is one place to start looking at how surveys are created and how the data is presented to you at the close of the survey. You can sign up for free just to get an idea of how things work, but be aware that the free version limits the amount of questions per survey and how many users can take the survey. Still, it is a good way to start.

If you get into surveys as part of your business services, either through surveying your own clients, or creating them for other businesses and their products and services, definitely consider using the upgrades at Survey Monkey that allow many more options for you to work with and also give your work a more professional look. Once you have an understanding of online surveys, you can look at other survey companies to see what services they provide and whether they can offer you a better deal, based on what kind of returns you want to get.

HOW BOB DOES IT

Anyone who is setting up a freelance business has to figure out how to find clients. When I started freelancing full-time in February 1982, there was no Internet, and “networking” was something you did face-to-face.

My main way of getting clients back then was to send out postal mail—sales letters promoting my copywriting services. It worked incredibly well. Then I started to add other marketing tools, such as writing articles and giving talks, which also worked well.

Today, a lot of my clients come from the Internet, specifically from my search-optimized copywriting website, www.bly.com, and from my e-newsletter, which has 65,000 subscribers. I also still give talks, which are another effective way of drumming up business.

If a person who contacts me doesn’t have a company name or her own website, I dismiss the inquiry as not serious. I also turn away anyone who says something like, “We have a small budget.” If they can’t afford me, they can’t have me.

For many more tips, read my book Selling Your Services: Proven Strategies for Getting Clients to Hire You (or Your Firm) (Henry Holt, 1992).

PLANNING IS KEY

Of course, writing reports or creating surveys are not the only ways you can turn your past jobs into a freelance career. But you get the idea. Examine your jobs and the skills you gained in your years at work to see how you can turn that experience into your very own freelance business, one which you enjoy and find fulfilling. Obviously, if you didn’t enjoy a particular type of work, don’t try to do it as a freelancer. Believe me, your clients will know it when they see the work you provide them.

That’s the key to planning what you want to do as a freelance business: Do something you’re good at and that you enjoy doing. Your enthusiasm will impress potential clients when they are first trying to decide whether to hire you. Make sure that your enthusiasm is geared to your clients and their needs. It’s not about you; it’s about what’s in it for them if they hire you. Therefore, to get a clear idea about what you want to do, make that list of each previous job and what skills you learned during the course of each job.

HAVING A VISION

Once you have an idea of what you want to do, spend some time thinking about how you want to do it and what a successful business will look like. What will you offer as a freelancer that a potential employer couldn’t find among his own employees? Who will you market your services to that other freelancers in your field might be overlooking? What will your business look like one year from now? How about five years from now?

Having a vision of your business allows you to determine how you will make your service or product better than most others on the market, and it will help you decide how detailed your plans need to be when you are getting started. You can say to yourself that you want to freelance so you can be your own boss and take vacations whenever you want, but to make that happen, you have to create a successful business. And the way to build a successful business is by focusing on what benefits and features you will be providing to clients. For your business to be successful, everything needs to be directed to your customers, especially if you want repeat business.

A home-based freelance business can be incredibly simple or highly complex. If your previous job included computer programming, for example, you could choose to tutor local high school students one-on-one in your home so that they can learn simple skills. Or, you could choose to create intricate programs that address problems common to a particular field and then market those programs to multinational corporations around the world.

If you use your imagination AND do your homework, you can soon be thriving in a business you thoroughly enjoy.

STRAIGHT TALK FROM BOB

One day, my wife, my oldest son, and I went to a beautiful little stable in Pennsylvania so we could ride horses.

Well, they rode the horses. I declined. The truth is I am not crazy about horses.

So, while they rode for an hour, I sat outside at a picnic table and read my favorite publication, the New York Review of Books. It was a beautiful autumn day. I was surrounded by hills with an explosion of trees decorated green, brown, yellow, orange, and red.

After their ride, my wife and son told me, “You really missed out on all the fun.”

That’s what they thought, but I didn’t think I had missed out on anything. I did what I wanted to do, and I really enjoyed myself.

You shouldn’t do what others think you should do just to make them happy. You should do what you want to do to make yourself happy.

When I graduated from college, I took a corporate job, which pleased my father to no end. In his mind, it paid a steady salary and was safe and secure. But I was bored. So I became a freelance writer.

He felt I was making a mistake, giving up my safe and secure corporate job and my steady salary. Early on in my freelancing, I did a large job for a software company and got a check for $10,000 (that was a lot of money in the early 1980s).

Wisely, I copied the check and showed it to my father. He never again complained about me quitting my corporate job.

Make yourself happy. When you do, those who care about you will eventually be happy for you.