You may have started your freelance career as a photographer many years ago, yet you may still struggle to grow your solo business. It’s completely normal to feel pressure like in every other business if you aim to be a successful professional. The good news is that you can quickly grow your freelance photography business by changing small habits. Here are some tips to help you grow your business.
1. Automate your work and use tools to be more efficient
The first step of growing a freelance business is using many different resources to automate some of your workloads and ease administrative details. If you are a self-employed creative professional, details are time and energy-consuming. These details, mostly financial or bureaucratic ones, might pull you away from being an effective freelance professional.
You can use systems or online tools to automate your communication, project management processes starting from now. You can automate many parts of your projects to save you enormous amounts of time you need to grow your solo business. You can even use revenue management tools to optimize your revenues.
Many of these platforms and tools might cost small amounts of money while giving you a lot of flexibility and efficiency. Also, you can find free tools to make your business more efficient. For example, you can use free tools to make calculations easily for freelancers. Using an hourly rate calculator tool, you can enter all your priorities and quickly find your ideal hourly rate for your billable freelance services.
2. Master proposals, invoicing, and paperwork by starting a virtual company
The best way to reduce operational costs and time-consuming finance workload is to start a virtual company. By creating a virtual company, you can eliminate the psychological, financial, and bureaucratic burden of starting and running a traditional company. You can issue invoices electronically and write project proposals & quotes in minutes while you avoid dealing with paperwork & unnecessary financial operations.
If you start a virtual company, you can monitor your transaction status all the time and receive payments to your bank account in your preferred currency as soon as your client makes the payment. You can also easily create contracts or non-disclosure agreements to identify duties, responsibilities, and terms binding you and your client, resulting in a more secure workflow.
These are the benefits of launching a virtual company:
- Avoiding starting fees & operating costs of a traditional business
- Borderless invoicing
- Flexibility to earn in multiple currencies
- Offering multiple financial options to your clients
- Eliminating bureaucracy with less red-tape and paperwork
- Easy accounting & compliance
- Keeping your client information in one place
- Securing your work through contracts
- Making secure to documentations and paperwork processes using eSignature or eSign PDF.
- Keeping track of your freelance income
- Going paperless and becoming an eco-friendly business
3. Find your niche to differentiate yourself from other freelancers
What is that one skill that makes you shine through? If you have the answer to this question, you are lucky. If you don’t answer yet, you can try several different approaches to find your own niche, which you can own for yourself. Here you can find some inspiration to guide you on how to find your niche photography style.
In today’s world, where media is clustered tremendously, it is hard to find your audience, especially if you try to broaden your client list. Focusing on a concentrated area in photography can enable you to be more efficient while reaching for new clients. Like any other product or service, positioning yourself is the critical factor to be more accessible. The more talented you are at some photography niche, the more chances you will get new jobs in that niche. Usually, clients look for a photographer who can do a specific type of work, and if you are an expert in that area, you can perfectly fit their requirements with your services. It is essential to define your photography service as soon as possible because you can determine the rest of your marketing strategy by doing this.
4. Create a popular social media identity & build your professional social network
You may think that social media usage is a distraction from your work; however, it is one of the most important tools to help you grow your freelance photography business. Using an effective social media marketing strategy in the right way, you can attract new clients for your creative services.
Social media platforms help you present your portfolio, build a social network, find new clients, get referrals, and make profitable new contracts. You can also connect with different professionals interested in your work who can refer you to other potential clients.
The first step in building a professional social media identity is determining which media channels you can use to establish your professional presence and reach the right professionals. Instagram is a great platform to visually show your creative work, while LinkedIn is an excellent platform for building close relationships with clients that can provide referrals or testimonials. Testimonials are like the secret sauce of successful freelance professionals. When you show testimonials, you are showing how trustworthy you are in the eyes of other clients. Trust attracts new clients. You can always ask your customers to write sentences about your work ethic or what they liked about your work.
In conclusion, by following these four easy steps, you can be more efficient, create extra time for your work, build stronger relationships, promote yourself and your business with a broader audience. Growing your business by improving these small tips will give you a more solid foundation in 2021.
