How to Bait Your Hook (Part 1)

In my previous post, I mentioned the fact that all of us loves a bargain. As a freelancing professional, you should capitalize on the "feel-good" vibes brought by getting more than what you paid for to build your career and eventually end up making a five-figure or even a six-figure annual income.

Even if you're already charging competitive rates, it wouldn't hurt to tweak your marketing strategies even more in order to land more clients, or maybe end up with less, but better paying, projects.   

The following is not an exhaustive list, but just some ways of baiting the hook:

Provide a "teaser" in your business cards.

To illustrate, if your specialty lies in writing business plans, advertising copy, or resumes, you can inform potential clients that you're offering an initial session of 30 minutes for free. 

Imagine what 30 minutes of free counseling can do to a potential client. You can immediately nail down the reason he wants to hire you. You should be able to pinpoint his goals, or at least get a good grasp of his desired results after your meeting.

And should your client decide to stretch your meeting for another 30 minutes, or even go one full hour or two, you can just mention that you'll bill him for the session once you've submitted the finished project and you'll proceed to prepare an invoice.

Be strategic with your website.

For graphic artists, designers, and web developers, a functional website exhibiting your previous works is essential.

According to envato studio, a popular site for freelancers, a web developer can make an average of USD185 to USD400 for a single landing page for a website, provided it would help the entrepreneur garner more sales or more clients for his business.

Now, regardless of one's specialty as a freelancer, most workers operate on the standard number of free rewrites or revisions, which is a maximum of two. In envato studio, a web developer in his early 'twenties posted in his profile that he can have the finished project delivered to the client in five days, and he's allowing up to five revisions. If websites are your thing, your bait could mean allowing more than the standard number of revisions to potential clients.