If you have been doing freelancing for years (or even if you’ve just started), you’re most likely wanting to grow and make more money.

So it’s important you stay relevant and level up to stand out in a competitive market.

In this guide, you’ll learn the 2 proven ways to grow your freelance career and bring your business to the next level. 

Are you ready to dive in?

Let’s do this!

1. Upskilling

According to Google, upskilling is the process of elevating existing skills to the next level.

It is aimed at making you more marketable and attractive to clients in need of trending skills. 

Think about this.

Sharpening your skills allows you to charge your clients more and impress new business prospects.

So how exactly are you going to do this?

Look at the other complementary offerings you can add to your repertoire. 

For example, if you’re a content writer, can you offer SEO writing as well? 

Or if you specialise in email copy, can you expand your talents to include web copy or landing page? It might be that you already have the skills required, or that you can do some training or online research to boost your expertise and knowledge.

That being said, here are 5 tips to step up as a freelancer.

A. Take up online courses

Now, more than ever, there are a lot of courses that could help you improve your chosen skill.

Just a warning though. If you decide to get one, better make sure that you spend time on it and implement what you’ve learned. Or else, it would just add to tons of files accumulating digital dust in your computer.

B. Attend webinars

Webinars are a great tool to get the latest industry insights. 

Aside from being time and cost-effective, they are usually free or charge a nominal fee to attend. You wouldn’t need to commit many hours into it since majority are conducted for an hour or two.

When you join, keep away from distractions and ask questions to maximize the learning experience. Also, take down the key points to make the most of webinars.

C. Read books

You can never go wrong with this. Pick up books on your chosen skill and start reading. Not only will this help you gain the right knowledge but also improve your vocabulary and concentration. 

D. Join internships

If you’re just starting to upskill and you feel like you need confidence-boosting power, an internship is one option you can consider. 

Not only will it help you level up fast, it can also open more opportunities for you. 

So where can you find these internships? Graduates of the VA Bootcamp are given this chance once they finish the course. Every month, the students are invited to be part of the program and improve their skills in marketing, content creation, community group moderation, and many others.

To top it off, one of our students was able to survive the pandemic all thanks to the VA Bootcamp Internship Program.

E. Find mentors

The freelancing landscape has become more competitive, especially with the invasion of the virus. 

So having a mentor – usually someone who has more experience – is a sure way to fast track your success.

Sure, we can go with the step-by-step guide on how to do freelancing the right way. But with the guidance of a mentor, it will help us avoid the mistakes done by others and speed up our process of achieving our goals.

Now, upskilling is just but one way of growing your freelance business.  As you start to gain traction and get more clients, you would not want to burn yourself out by doing all the deliverables.

Hence, you need help from others.

Which brings me to…

2. Upscaling

Scaling essentially means growing or expanding your freelancing operations while proportionally growing your profit.

Once you reach a certain number of clients on your roster, or hours per week that you are spending on your business, it’s possible that you hit a ceiling and stall out on growth.

And nobody wants the feeling of getting stuck. So to keep on accepting clients (and increase profit), freelancers start to build a team or agency so they have someone to delegate their tasks with.

However…

When Is The Right Time To Scale Your Freelance Business?

To be honest, this is very personal. In fact, there’s no formula to this. 

It boils down on what you want, what your goals are, and the level of ambition and responsibility you're willing to take on in pursuit of growing your business.

So you better ask yourself.

Do you want to scale into a full-fledged marketing agency with employees, contractors, account managers, billing and payroll?

Or do you really want to just expand your current operations to the point where you've got a healthy lifestyle business that is paying for your life with yourself mostly hands off?

Start with the end goal in mind and ask yourself what you really want.

At the end of the day, only you can decide on where you want to see your business 5, 10, 15 years down the road.

And this concludes the 2 Proven Ways to Grow As a Freelancer (And Make More Money).

If you’ve made it to the end... congratulations!

I hope you’ve found this valuable.

Free mentorship program for beginners is available for members of the Freelancers in the Philippines (FLIP)- by Jason Dulay FB group. You’re most welcome to join!