Freelancer Tips: Converting a Mere-Client into a Fixed-Client (1)

Being a freelancer is a choice that is sometimes a dilemma. Be it a writer, designer, coder or the other. If we can not compete to get potential clients then there is no income we get. And every month we are confronted with personal expenses to continue living, while our income depends on the project from the client. If in one month, a freelancer does not get the project from the client, then certainly a freelancer had to hit the brakes to a normal life. Or in other words, the freelancer must do a lot of savings. In order for income to be relatively normal, then a freelancer should get fixed clients.

Be their Friend!

Good communication between a freelancer and the client, needs to be built so that the relationship between the two is more than just a working relationship. More than that, we can make our clients as friend or even close friend. We can create the relationship in the following way:

Profiling

The first thing to do is, profiling! This makes the profiling process freelancers know more about who, how, and other stories about the client.  Profiling can be done by googling the full name, phone number, or email address. Can also be done by extracting the data via facebook. Moreover, if the client does not set privacy options in their facebook account, we can get all the information about the client without becoming friends with them on facebook. For example, photos, wall posts, likes, and others.

Small Talks.

Small talks, occasionally needs to be done. Asking weather, economic trends in the client country, or even just a story about our family, helping enough to be used as small talks themes. Small talks, could help reduce the burden of work that sometimes stressful, both freelancers and clients. Feel free to start small talks, because the client is still a normal human being, not an alien who can not talk

With a little help from Google, then we can easily get to talk to make small talk. If not excessive, this small talk would be able to make the client feel comfortable in communicating with freelancers.

Know what your client likes.

In communicating, when two or more people make friends, one contributing factor is that they have in common in terms of hobbies. For example, like music, fishing, surfing, or anything else. By knowing the client’s hobby, we have a greater opportunity to start small talks, to then create a commonality of thought. This needs to be done so that small talks are not boring. If a small boring talks, the client would be bothered with these chats. Different if small talks begin with things that preferred by the client, then the small talks can sometimes turn into a project .

Exclusively written for FM Blog by Arief Rahmansyah