Winning Repeat Clients - Tip #1: Communicate Well and Often

The first "trick" to a successful freelancing career is to be good at what you're offering. I can't teach you that. Well, maybe some of it, but that's not the focus of today's post. I want to share my tips for making your clients really happy such that they return ... beyond just delivering what you promised.

I'm not a sales or marketing person (although I can write about those things - try me!) and I'm definitely not a schmoozer. I've started a career that I enjoy and I want my clients to be happy, so the things I'm going to tell you actually come naturally to me--most of the time. Occasionally I have to remind myself that these steps will help me build that solid base of customers that I need to really make this work. We all get a little lazy sometimes, right?

Anyway, let's dive in. Today's tip:

Communicate Well and Often

Repeat clients make me HAPPY

I could talk about communication for like 10 blogs worth of rambling, but I'm going to focus on one main idea for now: in short, keep your client updated on the project status before he has a reason to ask.

Often freelancers help from a distance. David Jones in San Francisco doesn't know who I am. He doesn't know that I'm working away on his project on my couch in Atlanta (oops, did I just tell you I work on my couch? crap). If he's a first-time customer, or even second- or third-time customer, he doesn't yet know that he can trust me to deliver by our deadline come hell or high water ... or that I will let him know if we're off track.

I had to learn this somewhat the hard way. I was used to my corporate job where everyone trusted me to do my work. When I first started freelancing, I would get annoyed with clients that emailed me with the old, "How's it going over there?" Now I know the secret: beat them to it. Just communicate. Tell them something. If you're merely a Skype handle four states over and a picture that's supposedly you, but maybe not, you can imagine how your client might get nervous when he doesn't hear from you regularly.

Tell your client when she can expect to hear from you next or when you expect to have the next "piece" completed, or even tell her you're going to be off-the-grid for a couple days and will be in touch next week. As a freelancer, you do have the luxury of setting your own schedule (that's one of the biggest perks for me), but you will make your life much easier if you communicate it to your clients when it makes sense.

Freelancing: How I got started, and how you can too

I started freelancing pretty much on a whim, which is how many things in my life begin. I'd always edited small things for family and friends, throughout college and since graduation. "Jacki, can you review my resume?" ... "Hey, I have this one paragraph that just doesn't sound right, can you look at it?" I'm not really sure how that even started.

I don't have an English degree. I actually took zero English or writing classes in college because I exempted whatever English requirements by getting a 5 on the AP English test. I'd never considered myself a great writer at that point and the 5 on the test honestly shocked me. I guess for that one day I was really good at analyzing poetry ... or maybe the subjective scorer was just feeling generous.

Maybe this was the fateful, drunken night ...

So yeah, I don't know how my editing for friends and family really started, but I know it led to one drunken conversation that changed everything. Yep, I was drunk and I was bragging. I overheard a friend talking about writing business proposals for her MBA class, and how hard it was to meld the pieces together when writing as a team. I proceeded to tell her how awesome I am at "that kinda thing." Editing together different voices and making them sound like one cohesive and clear thought process. I told her I'd be glad to help if she was ever in a bind.

She took me up on it. I think I edited two group business projects for her team and I refused payment. I didn't feel "qualified" to charge for these services. (That feeling took a while to kick and still peeks its head back out at me sometimes.) Anyway, she asked if I'd ever heard of oDesk, an online community for finding freelance jobs that many of her classmates had used before. I hadn't and I was intrigued. I got online that night and started submitting for editing and some admin-related jobs. Fourteen months later I left my job to freelance full-time.

I'll fast forward a bit here ... I now basically use three sites (although not all my clients come through these sites now, this is how I started and I still use them):

• Elance.com
• oDesk.com
• Fiverr.com (Update: I now do not use and specifically do not recommend Fiverr)

... in that order. I've tried others and I never end up staying with them. That's not to say these are the only good ones, but they're the ones I'm settled on for now. If I had the time, the next one on the list would be craigslist. Some people like to hire local even if they've never met you. I've gotten great jobs through craigslist, but it's not exactly as user-friendly as the other sites, which are specifically designed for this type of work.

The quickest way to start freelancing is to make profiles on these sites for any service you can offer remotely. Of course writing and editing are on the top of my list, but check out this full list of categories from oDesk.com (with my personal categories checked) ... these sites go well beyond writing and editing.

Reference: oDesk.com

Quick notes about these sites:

Elance and oDesk jobs are mostly applied for by the freelancer. You have your profile, you can upload samples, and you can take skills tests. Then you search for jobs and apply by writing a cover letter and perhaps providing other information, and by bidding on the job. You may also be invited to apply for a job, but that is less frequent.

Both sites take a cut, but it's 10% or less and that's pretty standard. They are giving you a very valuable service in that they connect you with people all over the world and protect you financially from fraud. So you can feel pretty safe and have lots of options and it certainly seems worth it to me.

The fees aren't the annoying part of the sites, it's the competition and the expectation of cheap services. You are not only connected to hirers all over the world, you're also competing with freelancers all over the world. Depending on where someone is living, he or she is often willing to work for much less than you are. It boils down to these few pointers:

1. You have to be willing to work for less to build up your profile and rating. Most people aren't going to hire you for top rates when you have no street cred on the site. Leave your ego at the door, at least for now. At the same time, you will start to learn that certain hirers are really looking for the cheapest possible work, which is almost always someone outside of the U.S. ... so you'll learn to start ignoring these jobs over time.
2. It's a numbers game. You have to be persistent and patient. Some hirers do truly want a really good writer (or other skill) and are willing to pay for it, but you have to find them. You learn to look for clues or certain signs, but you also just have to apply to a lot of jobs. Think of it as putting in your time as a newbie, earning your stripes, whatever.

That's really it. If you do these two things and you're decent at the skill you're offering, you will build up your profile, rating, and "hireability" over time.

Note on next two paragraphs: See above link to why I no longer use Fiverr!

Fiverr is different. It's more like a shopping site. You offer something for $5 (called a "gig") and people can buy it. For example, I have gigs for 500 words of editing, 50 words of copy writing, and some other fun things I've tried over time ... like providing feedback on online dating profiles. The best thing about this site is that the jobs come to you. No searching, no cover letters. The worst thing about this site, and this actually angers me, is that it takes 20%. So not only do you often end up working too hard for $5, but then you only get $4. Then you transfer it to PayPal and lose another small percentage. It should really be called Three-point-ninety-two-err.

You might be wondering why I still use this site. Well, it's great to have tiny jobs that fill in the cracks. If I can ever drop a site because I'm just that busy, Fiverr will go first. I honestly think it's highway robbery for them to take 20%. I do pause my gigs pretty often when other work is keeping me busy (it's super-easy to do) ... but when I'm not, it's nice to have those little jobs. 

Okay, I think that's enough for now! Head to one of these sites and give it a try, what do you have to lose? Feel free to ask any questions below.

31 and time to grow up?

I'm 31 years old. After 8.5 years of job security, high salaries, promotions, raises, and too many pats on the back to even begin counting, I left my career as an IT Consultant in corporate America in February of 2014. I left to pursue a career in freelance writing, editing, and perhaps acting. I copy write, ghost write, and edit pretty much anything. I'm not sure if acting will ever pay my bills or if that's even my goal, but it will always be how I spend a good part of my time. I'm finding a growing passion for writing and running my own business, and I'm open to either writing or acting getting more of my attention at any given moment.

This blog will serve a couple of purposes, if I choose to stick with it.

One, I like informal writing and the idea that it might entertain or advise others. I spend a lot of my days writing for other people or editing their words, and I love it, but I need to put my own words out here too. I'm also writing my own book, but more on that later.

Two, I think we are in an exciting time in which many people are learning to work for themselves or find more flexible ways to earn a living. In some ways it's really easy to go out on your own with something like writing, but it's not without challenges. If I can give people some help along the way or encouragement to give it a try, I want to. I think the world will get better each time someone decides to pursue a more creative or passionate way of earning a living: one that comes with more freedom, less meetings, and less bureaucracy.

So I'm writing this for me and, if you're an aspiring freelancer, I'm writing this for you. Well, maybe not this particular post, but I'll get there.

October 2008, 25 years old:
Shortest hair yet (and since)

Today I just want to touch briefly on something I'm struggling with ... and that is how hard it can be to make truly big life decisions. Not just the ones that seem big, but the ones that are big for you because you're you. Some people struggle to decide on a big haircut ... my drastic haircuts usually happen on a whim with some scissors in the bathroom, to be fixed later by a professional. No, I never regret it later.

I've never really had to make a decision that felt big to me. That may seem crazy to people who know me, or even only know me as much as you've learned so far from this blog, but any big decisions to this point in my life have felt like inevitabilities. The answer presented itself. The choice seemed obvious, at least to me.

Picking a college is one of the first big choices made by many American kids. In short, when I walked onto the Virginia Tech campus, I fell in love. I knew I had to make a decision, it was just a matter of which school. My reality at the time did not give me any room to consider not going to college, so I had to pick one, and the choice seemed clear.

Interviewing for jobs my senior year has some interesting highlights that might get shared later, but the important point here is that it was another obvious choice for me. Getting a "good job" right out of college was again the only option under my present reality. I struggled through interviews with "the big dogs," and hated all of them. The feeling was mutual. When I interviewed with CGI, still a great company, but with some notable culture differences from my prior interviewers, I actually enjoyed myself. I wanted to work there, no thought required. When they offered me work in Atlanta or Fairfax, Atlanta seemed the obvious choice. I'd heard a lot of bad press on Northern Virginia having gone to school with a bunch of kids that came from there (since then I've realized they probably weren't the best source of information, but anyway ... ); Atlanta was closer to my parents and had a cool reputation in my 22-year-old mind, and so I went.

May 2005: Graduation Day with a good friend

Since moving to Atlanta, I've moved neighborhoods and I bought my own condo. I decided not to get married. I bought my first car. I quit coaching volleyball. Obviously "the big guy" (at least that's how others see it) is my recent career change. Oh, and I've had many a drastic haircut. All of these decisions have one thing in common: they never felt like something I was picking, but rather going with the obvious choice ... what I had to do ... not because I didn't have freedom, but because it was just so clear to me what I wanted within the options I had. When you're having daily nightmares about coaching because the parents are crazy, when the best hybrid on the market at the time is a Prius and you just love it, when you only have one really good choice for a condo in your price range in the zip code where you want to live ... some decisions just fall into your lap.

Big girl pants?

Okay, so now, I want to move. I want to move out of my condo in Atlanta. That's the only thing I know for sure. I don't know if I want to move 5 miles southeast to a part of town I know I'd like ... or if I want to move to Seattle, or Amsterdam, or Charlotte, or LOS ANGELES? (Okay, no, probably not L.A.) This is new territory for me. I have no deadline for making a decision. I have no gut feelings telling me what to do, other than move neighborhoods. I have several priorities floating around in my head and adding to the confusion including being close to family (and which family members?), being close to the film industry, getting as fresh of a start as possible yet not wanting to run from my problems, weather, cost of living ... and tying this all into the theme of this blog, when you're a freelancer like me, the options are ENDLESS.

All of this has made me realize that if I move right now, no matter where I choose, it may be the biggest decision I've made so far ... because it's the first one that feels like it really requires decision-making, weighing options, and taking a risk. So that's got me wondering ... at 31 years old, am I finally going to be forced to grow up and put on my big girl pants? Well, I suppose it's time.