Working From Home: 6 Ways to Upgrade Your Services From Basic to Premium to Get a Better Pay Rate

With no doubt, freelancers have contributed immensely to the growth we have experienced in the digital economy particularly as it regards the marketing departments.

A lot of people who hitherto found it practically impossible, can now showcase their abilities in different fields as freelancers, in the process seminating information and ideas, and thereby affirm the world as a global village.

Freelancers have been able to impact the world very seriously, as they can make information that ordinarily should be remote to appear on the world stage -- they scourge nooks and crannies, sifting news and happenings from different niches and disseminating such, to the growth and development of the world at large.

The unfortunate aspect of freelancing, however, is that most often, they get a pittance for all their efforts.

But this is mainly because most freelancers still operate at the basic level and need to upgrade to higher levels for better pay rate.

If you find yourself in this category, you’ll find the following 6 tips beneficial in a way or two.

1 . Create social media accounts

Who are you? Who knows you? All these may never have been important to you, but they matter now.

As a freelancer, your presence must be felt in the social media. That is the only place where people will inquire about you. If you are not recognized by the major social media platforms, then you can call the whole game off.

The major social media platforms people will want to see you are Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. However, for your freelancing work, you seriously need the Linkedin account because that’s where people will check you out for business deals.

Though Facebook has more than 1.5 billion users worldwide, Linkedin allows you to target business professionals by the industry as well as by job title.

2. You will need a freelance writer website

As a freelance writer, you need your own website where you will be able to showcase samples of works you do. This is the basic step in creating a foundation for yourself.

Prospective clients will definitely give you a better rating if they see live proof of works you have done. Though this can be achieved by guest blogging, having your own website and also guest blogging in large publications will place you as more authoritative, and therefore give you an edge over the average freelancer.

As you go about creating a website, it’s important to consider the design along the line. Colorlib or any other Wordpress theme provider should come in handy in the creation and changing of your website design as user interface and experience can either build or break your website.

3. About me profile

There must be a means through which you can actually tell people about yourself. You must not wait for anybody to do that for you as they may not be doing you any justice.

You know yourself more than anybody and the way you present yourself is the way the world will understand and acclaim you.

The best way you can go about projecting yourself to the world is by creating an “about me profile.” This profile works for your autobiography in a very simple form.

The profile may also include records of previous work done. This type of information definitely will enhance your rating among your potential clients who may like to engage your services at any time.

4. Professional email

The email address you use, funny enough, tells volumes of you. This is one serious fact a lot of basic freelancers are not privy to, and which affects their fortunes to a very large degree.

Once a freelancer pitches a potential client with a Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo account, the client most often than not ignores that pitch. The reason is not far fetched.

Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo are free email accounts and can easily be set up by anybody. Spammers frequently employ them for their jobs and clients don’t expect any seriously minded freelancer to make use of them.

As a freelancer who wants to upgrade to the premium level with the attendant rise in pay rate, you will be expected to have your own professional email address. The format could be “Yourfirstname@yourwebsite.com,” or of any other form. The important thing is that it is professional.

Looking at the email address, you can see another reason why the second tip about having your own website is a necessity because you won’t use another person’s website to create your own professional email account.

5. Building your credibility

People you reach out to for works will want to know how credible you are. You must show proof that you are not a novice in the freelancing business.

This actually may prove tough but it’s surely your ticket to upgrading your status. You need to be published in two or three major blogs, magazines or publications.

There is actually no formula to arrive at this, all you need do is to go succinctly through the previous works published by the organization you are trying to get published on, find out the type of stuff they give out to the public and model yours accordingly.

Make sure there is a sequence in your content and don’t bury your argument like a needle in a haystack.

The end that justifies the means, in this case, is that once you are able to cross this hurdle, and get your works published eventually by these major publications, clients will come for you instead of the other way round.

6. How you charge your clients

We do for sure know that the customer is the king and that this applies to a lot of business ventures.

That should, however, not determine how much you charge your clients.

You need to charge them based on the quality of the work you do. Once clients recognize your potentials and acknowledge the qualitative nature of your work, they will be willing to discuss and close good deals with you.

Your discretion will be necessary at this juncture but you may consider the size of the setup, is it a mom and pop type of setup or a mega outfit?

Another thing you may want to consider before charging your clients is the volume of work you will be doing for them.

So at the end of the day, your rate will be expectedly relative depending on circumstances on the ground. The over riding factor, however, is ensuring that your content is qualitative, well researched, and knowledgeable.

The ability to upgrade from the basic to the premium levels of freelancing lies with the individual. It all depends on how serious and hardworking the freelancer actually is and also what amount of effort that is being put in.

It's a sort of numbers game; the more you put in, the more you rake out.