🗣️How to find freelance graphic design work: best practices pt.2

➡️Working with a recruiting agency

Working with a recruiting or staffing agency can be a great way to find opportunities you wouldn't otherwise know about. These recruiters only make money by filling these positions. Which can mean that they may pitch dull-as-dust roles with the same enthusiasm as dream jobs.

Keep in mind that these agencies get a share that automatically cuts into your rate. So it’s actually in your best interest to be your own recruiter. That way, you can create opportunities beyond a recruiter’s network and what you’ll find on job boards.

➡️Be your own recruiter

Try sending emails to creative directors and managers at companies you actually want to work for. Keep it brief with an overview of your relevant experience and a link to your portfolio. Be clear about the skills you offer and the type of projects you’d like to work on. Make sure they know you’re looking for contract or freelance opportunities.

Being your own recruiter means pursuing companies and people you want to work with. So be brave and be picky — find clients that are right for you.

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❗️Do Freelancers Still Get A Pension?

Freelancers and self-employed individuals lack automatic workplace pension contributions but can still rely on the State Pension by making qualifying National Insurance contributions for at least 10 years. It's important to check your State Pension status via the Personal Tax Account to understand your future pension entitlements. To enhance retirement savings, setting up a private pension is advisable, providing a tax-efficient savings method and the structure for managing future finances.

💲Despite the challenges of variable income, starting a private pension with as little as £50 a month can accumulate over time, aided by tax relief which effectively lowers the cost of contributions.

⬇️When choosing a private pension, options include Stakeholder and Personal Pensions. Stakeholder Pensions feature low minimum contributions and capped charges but offer limited investment choices. Personal Pensions, frequently managed by insurance companies, present a broader range of investment options, appealing to those seeking more tailored investment strategies. Both routes offer valuable pathways to supplementing the State Pension, securing financial stability in retirement for freelancers and self-employed professionals.

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🧳Buying A House When You’re A Freelancer

Buying a home as a freelancer can be challenging due to fluctuating incomes and stricter mortgage lender requirements. However, it's possible with careful planning and the right approach. Here are condensed strategies to enhance your chances:

✔️Utilize Self-Employed Mortgage Calculators

- Online mortgage calculators designed for the self-employed can provide a preliminary assessment of how much you might borrow based on your income and savings. Use these tools as a starting point to understand your financial standing and set realistic goals.

✔️ Consult a Specialized Mortgage Advisor
- A mortgage advisor experienced in working with freelancers can navigate you through the application process, assessing the risk level of your application and offering tailored advice to boost your approval chances.

✔️Review Your Financials with an Accountant

- An accountant can offer invaluable insights into your finances, helping you prepare for a mortgage application by ensuring your tax payments are up to date and by forecasting your income, thereby improving your affordability profile.

❗️Remember, while these steps can help, success largely depends on finding lenders willing to work with self-employed individuals and presenting a strong, well-documented case for your reliability as a borrower.

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🔥Resume summary example

At the top of your resume sample, you may choose to include a summary. This section is particularly useful for freelancers because it allows you to speak directly to the employer and explain your situation. A hiring manager won’t be left wondering why your resume doesn’t look like others once they see that most of your career has been freelance.

👍In just 3-5 sentences, the summary should offer a taste of everything you have to offer. Mention your job title, your number of years of experience and your biggest achievements. If education is important in your field, you can also note any relevant degrees here. As a freelancer, it’s important that you define who you are and what you do – and the summary is the place to do just that.

Check out the summary from our freelancer resume sample for an idea of how to structure your own:

ADAPTABLE SUMMARY EXAMPLE
Dynamic Freelancer specializing in content creation, journalism, entertainment writing, and social media management. Adept in creating engaging, stimulating, and data-driven content that relays powerful messages to targeted audiences.

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🔒Statistical Insight

Statistical Insight: According to Flexjobs, a jobs board for remote work, the top fields for freelance employment are:

📌Computer & IT

📌Accounting & Finance

📌Administrative

📌Project Management

📌Customer Service

📌Medical & Health

📌Writing & Editing

📌Education & Training

📌Marketing

📌HR & Recruiting

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▶️Senior Python Developer

▶️Staff Engineer- Infra

▶️Marketing

▶️Blockchain Engineer

▶️Content Marketing Associate

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❗️Why LinkedIn Matters in 2024

LinkedIn rarely makes digital marketing headlines. Yet, used correctly, it can be the single best social media platform for founders and startups.

👍Growing Your Personal Brand

LinkedIn is where you go to grow your personal brand—but not just any kind of brand. If you want to become influential in photography, you go to Instagram. If you want to become influential in photography, you go to Instagram. if you want to become known as a business owner or entrepreneur, you go to LinkedIn.

👍Finding New Leads

52% of buyers say LinkedIn is the most influential channel during their research process. Almost 90% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation, and 62% of them say it generates twice as many leads as the next-highest social channel.

👍Networking with the Right People

Almost 25% of LinkedIn users are senior-level influencers: decision-makers, business builders, and C-level executives. These are the kinds of people you need in your circle when building a business.

👍Hiring a Well-Rounded Team

LinkedIn is the place to go when you’re looking for a job—and it’s also where your new hires are hanging out. Post job opportunities, look for referrals, and hire your dream team.

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🔥Bump Up Your LinkedIn Social Selling Index

You can find your SSI in the LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It measures your social selling skills and execution by looking at 4 primary components:

1️⃣Establishing your professional brand: Complete your profile. Fill out every single thing on the page. Summary, experience, education, groups, recommendations, skills—everything.

2️⃣Finding the right people: LinkedIn wants to see you using Lead Builder to find people. They also want to see you saving leads—saving leads lets them send you insights so that you can take action.

3️⃣Engaging with insights: LinkedIn wants to see you engaging on the platform and following their recommendations. Sometimes, the platform will prompt you to update part of your profile or to publish a post. Follow these suggestions, and LinkedIn will be happy with your effort.

4️⃣Building relationships: The right way is to be thoughtful about who you connect with and to send personal messages in your connection request. LinkedIn wants to see a high acceptance rate for your connection requests, meaning most people are connecting instead of rejecting.

Each of these components is worth 25 points, so your SSI score can be as high as 100.

❗️LinkedIn is factoring this score into how well the algorithm works in your favor.

Improve your score, and LinkedIn will show your content to more people.👍

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❗️How much time freelancers spend hours a week freelancing

On average, a full-time freelancer works for 43 hours per week.

That is similar to a regular nine-to-five job. However, freelancers have flexible working days and schedules.

💻This time also varies according to the industry a freelancer is working in and the workload they have.

Some freelancers may work part-time, around 20 to 25 hours per week, while others may work for more than 40 hours.

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💊Average hourly pay for a freelancer in the United States

The hourly wage for freelancers in the United States can be as high as $132.21 or as low as $14.90.

👌Besides, most freelancers earn between $24.28 (25th percentile) and $61.78 (75th percentile) in the United States. These hourly wages may vary according to your work and industry.

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❗️Top challenges of working freelance according to employees

🔵Finding enough work: 66%

🔵Managing an irregular income: 62%

🔵Managing irregular work: 60%

🔵Managing expectations with clients: 60%

🔵Clients not paying: 59%

🔵Self-motivation: 59%

🔵Time management: 58%

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👌Bookkeeping, accounting and invoicing

Keeping your accounts up to date and staying on top of invoices is critical for success as a freelancer. Doing so will help you run as tax-efficiently as possible and reduce instances of late payments to protect your cash flow.

⬇️Using an apps makes the whole thing feel far easier and more efficient:

🙂Quickbooks

The Quickbooks accounting app is one of the most popular of its kind, especially as it has a plan exclusively for self-employed freelancers. Having an app like this on your mobile, while you’re out and about, makes it quicker and easier to track miles and record transactions as and when they happen.

🔵Pandle

This is a free accounting app that is also a bookkeeping software and invoicing platform. Manage customer and supplier invoicing, upload receipts, view reports and complete banking straight from your mobile.

🔗Source

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📌Social media

Social media can be an invaluable tool for getting your name out there, building your audience and sharing your content far and wide.

However, to get the most out of your social media channels, they require investment of time and effort, which can be significantly optimised with a scheduling and management app. 💻

🔥Two of the most popular right now are Hootsuite and Loomly.

🔵Hootsuite

Download the Hootsuite app to draft, schedule, and publish social media content across all of your platforms from one dashboard. You can also engage with your audience and access performance analytics directly from the app, without having to log in to separate social media accounts.

🔵Loomly

This other popular social media management platform has recently launched a brand-new mobile app. Once all your social media accounts are connected, you can then create, optimise, schedule and analyse performance of your social media content all in one place.

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💘Enable a new audience to find you where you wouldn’t normally be found

Discovery is an important part of being able to effectively market yourself as a freelancer.

➡️If you’re an expert in a particular topic, let everyone know! Post your freelancer services page on your social media profiles, and share your links on LinkedIn, forums and community boards, like Reddit, Indie Hackers and other relevant places based on your interests. These are all great ways to network as a freelancer.

Effectively leverage SEO to help people find your website. SEO as a whole is complicated. At a high level, your job as a website owner is to provide information to people as fast and efficiently as possible.

❗️You’ll get magic Google points by having your website be the final destination of a search query.

You can check out services like Ahrefs, which can really help you level up your SEO game by targeting keywords and monitoring performance of keywords that you are ranking for.🙂

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