Recently, I read an article on SEO, as part of my attempts to improve the Google listing for my clients and my site. In said article, the author recommended using question forum Quora in part of your marketing strategy as you establish yourself as a person of knowledge for your particular field. I spent the next couple of hours answering questions about freelancing, marketing, social media and mental health, linking back to relevant blogs and articles I’d written on the topic. To my surprise, these answers went down very well and my inbox soon became flooded with an increasing number of questions on other areas of self-employment, from the best hourly rate to charge to setting up your first Self Assessment account. With that in mind, I wanted to write a blog post that tackled some of these big issues all in one, as an informal guide to becoming a freelancer for the very first time. If you do have any more questions, or just want to know my recommendations for starting out, feel free to drop me an email and I’ll do my best to get back to you! In the meantime, let’s start with the basics. A: Investing in a good quality and informative website for your freelance business can be a game-changer for finding new clients. However, they can also be time-consuming and complicated to set up. For my website, I used WordPress, with the Elementor plugin to build the site, Unsplash for sourcing my imagery, Canva for any neccessary graphic and I’m currently hosted by TSO Host. I really do recommend TSO Host as a great, and cost-effective, platform to set up your first site with. They have great customer support and can typically get any existing domains or information transferred over to your new site in a number of hours. They can even set up your SSL certificate for you, which is vital for a safe and reliable site. One of the first things I would do is to write up a quick sitemap, or a list of the pages you want to include. This would usually include Home, About, Services, Case Studies, Blog and Contact but you can add your own variations depending on your brand and industry. This can then help you to flesh out those pages with copy, images and links before you start implementing it into the site itself. Try not to put too much pressure on yourself to get a flawless website the first time around — most sites go through evolutions and edits, and you’ll learn what looks right as you go. It can be a really fun experience to teach yourself how to build your own website, and will be a huge selling point for your new clients too! A: One of the biggest differences between working self-employed, and working for a company, is the lack of external and automated resources at your disposal. You no longer have an accounts team, a manager who pays your salary, […]
