"I have chased them but the excuse is always they are also waiting on late payments from clients."
This is absolutely no excuse. Any business worth their salt will have a bit of a pool of money that can give them the room to pay their staff even if they haven't received payment from their clients yet. That's business 101.
I had a family member in the same situation, and because he was the "little guy" he ended up getting stiffed. They think that if you don't have the money to take legal action, then you won't - especially if you are self employed.
I would 100% withhold work and stipulate that you don't work for free and you can find other clients that will pay you for your work.
You have no obligation. They cannot demand to know your other clients. They can ask you to sign a contract stating that you won't be working for competitors, but you never have to tell them about your client base. I personally have worked for competing clients before. I have never found it to be an issue. I do excellent work for both clients and deliver exactly what I said I would. I don't pit them against each other and have no investment in one over the other. But then again I guess this depends on the type of service that you are offering. If it is PR and Marketing, that can be a bit of a problem because it is promotion based and invested in brand development. I merely write content for them. Nothing that directly competes.
I think most companies understand that as a freelancer you are working with multiple clients, just like most of them are. If they expect you to work for only them, or to have a say in who you can work for while you are working for them, then they need to offer you some pretty good financial incentive to have that say in your business.
Agreed with LiberatedLancer in that you should be taking advantage of other social media platforms and not just Twitter, and invest in social media marketing. And taking only courses is always a good way to go.
I would also suggest that you focus on your own branding and business development (how you want to present yourself and sell your services). Have a well thought out marketing strategy and implement it.
You should also optimize your business website so that it shows up higher in the search results, which in turn helps you to gain more traffic to your site. How have you presented your content on your site? Have you optimized it with keywords? A good keyword research is not easy. Do NOT keyword stuff; that will get you penalized fast. I would first suggest that you use something like Semrush to check out the stats of your own site and how you are ranking and for which keywords you are currently ranking for. Then see what your competition is ranking for. Once you have an overview of this, you can have a better idea of which keywords you want to avoid and which might be useful for you. Then you re-write your content to naturally include these keywords. The key here is naturally. Your content should still first and foremost present your business in an informative and engaging way and present the professional brand that you are going for. Keywords are just a small helper, but shouldn't become the dominant focus of your content. You will need a tool to find these keywords. Like most of the world I use Google Adwords, but there are some others as well that are just as useful. That article not only lists tools, but also gives helpful advice and tips on keyword research in general. I found it pretty helpful. I would suggest that you read up on content optimization in general and educate yourself about it before trying to dive in and tackle it. There are a lot of great articles and tutorials out there with the information that you need.
I would also suggest that you build up backlinks. Always include a link to your website in your social media posts. Also, if you make industry connections, you can help each other out to mention each other and post a link to their website - whether this is in a LinkedIn post or as guest posts on their company blog. You do it for them and have them do it for you. It not only helps you to become established within the industry that you are trying to succeed in, and help you gain very useful professional connections, but backlinks ensure that their following (on social media or their blog) also hear from you. You now then have a larger reach of potential followers at your finger tips. Plus any legitimate links back to your site also help your SERP ranking. DO NOT BUY THESE! Buying backlinks may seem like the easy and quick way, but it will end up penalizing you. Easy and quick has almost never amounted to successful. Don't don't do it quickly, do it right!
All of this takes quite a lot of time and effort, but it's your business that we're talking about. A successful business takes time and effort.
Sometimes getting experience means investing time and energy in for free at the beginning. One thing I can suggest is to ask friends or family members if they need your services and then you can add the work that you do for them to your portfolio and develop a small list of work experience. Often business starts off with small circles and word of mouth. I would also suggest freelancing sites as well, but at the beginning don't go with one that you have to pay for. Use free platforms (just do a quick google search and you will find some). Starting out is always a bit difficult. It takes a lot of hours of investment and a dedicated and patient attitude. Nothing happens over night.
SallySqueak, post: 24307, member: 29012 a écrit : If I were to teach myself all the Adobe design programs, and become a freelance logo designer, would I be able to make a reasonable living, or would it be pretty difficult?
This kind of all depends on you. This depends on how you develop and market your business and the time and energy that you have to invest in it. I am always for learning new skills and new software, and to be honest Adobe has so many more features and possibilities than Gimp.
How are you currently getting your work? How are you marketing yourself and promoting your website and services? Where do you rank on the SERPs and where do you rank with your competition? If you don't have the answers to these questions, then you need to look into these matters first.
I think that it is too general to say whether something can or cannot make someone a decent living. It's not always what you do, but how you do it and how good you are at doing it that matters. If you offer people something that others simply cannot, and you market your business and services incredibly well, there's no reason why you can't be successful with it.
I would say you need to sit down and generate a 5 year plan. Working while starting up your business is a great idea, and as your business begins to pick up, then you can drop to part time at work, and then fully drop it all together. Just make sure you don't get into any trouble with your company. Keep your clients and their clients separate.
As for where you start, the first thing to do is to educate yourself. Take some online tutorials on business management so that you can cover all of your bases. Then I would say you need to start building your brand image and marketing your services. This means starting a website and beginning to connect with industry professionals to establish your company. And it means landing your first few customers and generating a good word of mouth.
Again, you may want to consider taking some tutorials on brand development and marketing as well.
It's a long road, but worth it. And I think when you break it down into something like a 5 year plan it is more manageable and less overwhelming. Plus you have your end goal in site that you will be completely self-sufficient by this date. Of course this can also be a 3 year plan or so. Depends on what you feel comfortable with and how long it takes to get your business off the ground.
