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Upping Your Freelance Game
- 2. I’m Melanie • I am a former Art Teacher, I.T. Director, and Apple at Home Expert • I have been Freelancing for about 10 years (Full-time for 8 years) - long enough to have made many of the mistakes that freelancers make. melanie@mgacreativedesigns.com
- 3. Topics • Have a process • Finding Clients • Proposals • Contracts • Onboarding • Design / Prototype • Development • Delivery • Maintenance • Recurring Revenue
- 4. Have A Playbook Market Leads Meeting Nuture Proposal Onboarding Development Delivery Maintenance Referrals *based on WP Elevation Blueprint
- 5. Market • Do you have/need a niche market? • How do you find it? • Finding an “in” • Position Yourself as an Expert
- 6. Incoming Leads • Position yourself as a solution provider, consultant, company owner, instead of website designer or developer • Look for Red Flags (listen to your gut) • Learn to say “no thanks” • Take control of the project via your process • Avoid looking or sounding desperate
- 7. Qualify Clients • Gather project information via phone, meeting, form or a paid discovery session. Talk to the decision makers. • Rank your clients on budget, project, client respect. Bad clients aren’t worth the hassle but a great client leads to another. • PITA upcharge
- 8. Nuture Clients • Walk the line between nonchalance and desperation • Send follow-up emails but WAIT
- 9. Proposals • Develop a template or use a good one to save time or use online tools like Bid Sketch, 17 Hats, Better Proposals, or Proposify until you find the one or create it. • Outline business goals, target audience, detailed scope of work with a timeline including client delivery of content. • List your Care Plans and other services in your proposal.
- 10. Contracts • Use a CONTRACT! • Cover use of stock images, premium plugin licenses and renewals, security, hosting, updates and backups • Intellectual Property, TOS, and Privacy Policy • Timelines (Design Process and Payment Schedule) • Suspended and Abandoned Projects • Termination, Cancellations, and Refund Policy
- 11. Onboarding • It is your job to educate your clients on their role in the project • Single point of contact • Give them a worksheet on their responsibilities i.e. what content (text and images) you are expecting and put a due date on it. Use a Project Management tool to nag your clients. • Use a project management system Asana, Trello, Basecamp, Plutio, etc. The tool will nag the client verses you personally nagging them.
- 12. Delivery • Create a delivery checklist • Provide client training videos (Video User Manual or WP 101), or step by step guides (iorad.com) • Define bugs / limitations in your contract
- 13. Recurring Revenue • Website Care Plans • Hosting - (use a quality host) • SEO Services • Social Media • Paid Marketing
- 14. Resources WPElevation.com - WP Elevation NathanIngram.com - Advance Forum training.iThemes.com - free webinars mgacreativedesigns.com/wordcamp melanie@mgacreativedesigns.com