You may think that people who freelance are generally those who failed to get a decent regular employment. Well, hate to break it to you, this is not the case.
Since a long time, people have become more inclined towards freelance because of many positive reasons such as high chances of growth, more professional connections, greater flexibility in work, and what not.
With the dramatic growth in the number of freelancers, companies have lined up to hire disciplined, innovative and skilled freelancers for a number of their projects.
Hiring top-notch freelancers have become a priority for companies of all sizes, and thus, if you are somebody with an entrepreneurial acumen, then it is the right time to start your own freelance business.
Today, you will come across many companies which outsource freelancers or run websites to provide a common place for both employers and freelancers. These companies or individuals have understood the relevance and lucrative characteristics of the freelance business.
When you run a freelance business, your worries are less: fewer taxes, no healthcare expenses, fewer employee-related expenditure and what not.
You can simply direct your business from home without needing much workforce under your control; this way more profits come to you and your life is simpler and more comfortable.
By now, we must have piqued your interest in this whole “freelance business” thing, and you may be wondering about the ways through which you can start your own freelance business. Well, you need not look anywhere, but read this article word-by-word.
In this article, we will guide you about a rudimentary requirement—which is website-making.
Starting a freelance website is not a no-brainer and requires a lot of patience and contribution on your part. Thus, in order to successfully design and operate a freelance website of your own, you must first prepare a checklist of what is needed the most to ensure that.
So, without further ado, here is a checklist of 5 things you must keep in mind while starting your own freelance website:
1. Decide on the time you would launch your website
This is the first step towards launching your website. It is essential that you decide the date way before the launch, then draft accordingly. The date is important because it enables you to ascertain the time you have to finish off with all necessary work to kick-start the site.
Many people often put this task on the backburner, thinking once they are done with the all work the date will be a convenient affair.
- Get a notebook or even a piece of paper, scribble dates and select among them the aptest date for the launch. Once your head is fixated on a date, you will be more focused towards the goal; otherwise, you might assume a lackadaisical attitude, and this will be not good.
- The timing of the launch should be well-thought out. You cannot simply decide on the time as a matter of convenience. Often timing plays an important factor in gathering reputation. If for example, your website is one about content writing, you can launch the website at a time when a great freelance content writer was born.
- Remember this: the date of launch should be such that it makes an impression. For example, if you launch your website on Christmas’ eve, people are most likely to remember it. These are some of the many ways you should decide on a date. Think about it carefully and start your journey with an objective.
2. You got to create hype over the launch
Okay, you have worked hard enough on zeroing in a date and timing for the website launch, but would that make any difference if people do not know about them? Well, of course, there will hardly be any difference made. The thing is once you have decided, you must put your hands to work on the task of marketing.
You must tell the world that you are going to launch a website soon. Build up a community of friends, colleagues, and family, and ask them to popularize the launch whenever and wherever possible.
Here are some tips to create hype over the launch:
- Finding blogs: Yes, blogs save a lot of time in advertising. Get in touch with well-established bloggers online, negotiate a deal with them and get your marketing work started. Those bloggers with considerable readership will help in building credibility since people will most likely believe in the authenticity of what has been talked about on the blog.
- Popularize your avatar: We know you have your own brand and identity, but you should also make them known to the world. Use consistent identity in major networking sites such as LinkedIn. This helps in making the brand more memorable to people.
- Make the best use of the social networking websites. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will be best your companions throughout your business operations. There are ways you can advertise your website to the entire online community by shelling out a few bucks.
- Be regular: This is absolutely important. In order to create consistency in marketing, you must be regular in advertising the launch. Make posts almost daily on the launch; employ catchy phrases to attract attention; remind your people to share the posts daily. Do not give people any moment to forget about the launch—keep them reminded!
3. Monitoring traffic
Monitoring traffic is extremely important if you want to ensure better outcomes. There are a few things you can do to ensure that:
- Study about the tools you might use in ascertaining traffic on your website. With the help of these tools, you will get a fair idea about how your site is functioning and accordingly tweak changes into your strategy.
- Be prompt in updating information on all functional accounts on social networking websites. Study the pattern of the number of shares, comments, likes and what not you receive on a daily business. Pay close attention to negative reviews.
4. The Day of Launch
The time has finally come when you are going to throw open your website to the world. You must be extra careful about everything and always have in store backup plans to save your grace in case of a gaffe. Throughout the day, you must keep on promoting the site.
- Make direct correspondence: You should draft a proper email and send it to your contacts. In the email, drop a polite reminder to check out your site and also to share the information about the site to other people.
- Come up with a grand post on the launch to instantly attract the attention of the readers. The post on the date of launch should be exceptional so work diligently on it.
- Check out all major directories and submit your URLs to them. There are many international business directories as well such as DMOZ that can greatly expand your user base.
- Make the best use of web galleries the moment you launch.
- When you post about your website, do not solely rely on words. Pictographic messages are amazing audience-pullers and are usually employed in advertisements. Pay attention to graphics used and try not be too compromising with the quality of the picture.
5. Monitor the website
It is time to start working on the growth of the website harder than ever before. Your job of promoting the website and making it better does not end with a launch. So, to help you out, you need some tools.
- Newsletters are commonly found features on websites, but it depends on the needs of the website.
- Get a software to monitor the traffic on the website. You can use Google Analytics to get your site monitored; there are many other tools available.
- You will need XML sitemap to enable Google index the pages of your website. So, make sure you submit the same to Google Webmaster Tools.
- SEO is a cool thing, though it may be difficult to understand at first. Learn about it, but if you are unsure, hire an SEO expert to make your life easy.
- A Social Media Manager is what you need. Hire someone who would do this job for you: maintaining the social media accounts of the websites on a daily basis and posting creative contents to increase user traffic.
Keep patience. Patience is what is most needed when you start something new. A website takes time to expand since the Internet is vast and highly competitive, but if you are doing things the right way, you should keep patience and let things work.
