Finding great and reliable clients is crucial for freelancing, but it’s even better if you are capable of finding long-term clients, and therefore – keeping them. Working with the same clients all the time can bring you safety, improved income, and overall better work and personal life organization.
Freelancers usually try to find from 2 to even 5 long-term clients, depending on the amount of work they need to provide. It’s believed that you should find 3 long-term clients if you are finally ready to make your freelancing career stable.
Six steps to get and keep long-term clients in the freelance business
- Focus on the user experience.
Your freelancing experience can be great guidance that will help you to find and recognize potential long-term clients. Yet, don’t allow situations to trick you. A lot of freelancers didn’t even know that they came upon potential long-term clients while trying to finish a single task for them. Look at every client as of great long-term opportunity. What you should do for the clients for them to come back is that you somehow make their life easier, which means that your services not only save their working time but also provide value to their businesses and companies. By adding value to client’s lives, you become their top choice and they’ll always come back for your services. You should think about this fact even when you’re writing a proposal. Don’t focus on representing your skills only, but try to tell that client why they need you and how you can improve their business. Not sure that you know how to write great proposals that stand out from the crowd? Check out this article as well – proposal software is usually the best start for freelancers.
Freelancers who are present and visible online also improve their chances of being hired, especially by experts and potential long-term clients. Always focus on building your digital self in a professional manner. If you still don’t have a personal website, this is why it’s time to create one.
- Be honest at all times.
You may tell them that you’re capable of doing everything, but the truth is they’ll very soon realize what your capabilities are. Therefore, if you exaggerate when you describe your skills and knowledge, you may get that one project, but the clients definitely won’t become long-term. Be real and honest at all times because that will pay off in a long term, like with everything in life.
- Communicate regularly and politely.
One thing that barely anyone mentions about freelancing is constant communication. You’ll miss numerous amazing opportunities if you don’t know how to communicate, or if you don’t communicate regularly. Don’t make clients wait for your response for days. Besides that, communicate in a professional manner. Don’t take things personally and never argue. Professional freelancers have learned how to communicate in a polite manner, and clients truly appreciate that. Remote communication is already hard, so don’t make it even harder.
- Always meet your deadlines.
Remind yourself once again about the second fact we have mentioned in this list. Being true and honest is crucial, and that’s also related to deadlines. With time, you’ll find out how much time and energy certain projects and tasks require, and you’ll know how to calculate when everything can be finished. Once you realize how to make a proposal and set the deadline yourself, it’s time to learn how to complete tasks step by step. Freelancers who have long-term clients never miss deadlines. If you’re not sure about deadlines, it’s always better to set a wider one if possible, than to be late.
- Exceed expectations.
Do more than expected. We don’t say that you have to do other tasks for free, but it’s always better to do a little bit more than it’s expected. Exceeded expectations build trust and clients get a message that you’re truly interested in their business, company, or a certain project. If you think about your freelancing work only as of obligation, long-term clients won’t come. Instead, clients want to work with such freelancers who are serious about project ideas and are really focused on making them work, not only automatically completing what they need and taking the money after it’s done.
How much you should do? It doesn’t have to be something big – but you can, for example, do some simple small tasks besides the ones you got. Those that don’t take a lot of your time and energy, but require knowledge and skills you already have. That’s how you get long-term clients that truly appreciate your entire personality.
- Be available and reliable.
This one can be connected to the 3rd and 4th facts so we can get an entire picture of what we’re talking about here. Communicating regularly and politely, meeting your deadlines, and professional availability and reliability go hand in hand – these are always together if you want to create stable relationships with remote clients. You can’t expect to work with someone long-term if you don’t go online for weeks, don’t respond to the messages, and when they need you – just disappear. We don’t say that you have to be available non-stop, but be sure that your long-term clients know when they can reach you. It’s okay that you need a break sometimes, and that you go on a vacation, but let your clients know about it. This way, they’ll realize how much you care about their time and overall their online business. That’s how professional freelancers behave.
We can easily come to the conclusion that finding and keeping long-term clients actually requires professionalism in freelancing. Actually, that’s how every freelancer should behave, so it’s nothing hard you cannot achieve. In the end, it’s time to take a look at pros and cons of working with the long-term clients, so we can make a final conclusion.
Pros and cons of having long-term clients
We have talked a bit about the pros of finding and keeping long-term clients as a freelancer at the beginning of this article, but when we’ve seen what a freelancer should do to get long-term clients, it’s time to summarize if it pays off for you or doesn’t.
Biggest pros of finding and keeping long-term clients in freelancing:
- Stability of work and money. Finally, you’re a freelancer but can have a full-time job, or better said – earnings higher than a full-time job.
- Safety and the possibility to plan and organize life in a needed and wanted manner. Very soon, you’ll realize what’s expected from you on a daily basis, which will provide you a chance to plan and organize both your personal and work life.
- Know what you can expect from your clients. You’ll meet each other and find the best way to communicate, which will definitely spare you a lot of stress and misunderstandings that are common within remote communication.
- You don’t have to spend time trying to find short-term freelancing gigs anymore – but you can. There’s no need to wake up every morning and search for new job opportunities. Yet, you can do this when you want and have time, which means – extra money.
- Less stress in your everyday freelance life. Forget about constant bidding, writing proposals, and communicating with numerous different clients just to win that one project.
Cons of working with long-term clients as a freelancer worth mentioning would be:
- You’ll probably have to work even while you’re on a vacation. This may happen, but it’s definitely not a rule – if your client has a business that cannot be stopped, you’ll usually have to take your work on a vacation as well.
- What happens with the client’s business when you’re absent? Maybe you got ill, maybe you’re busy with some family obligations – still, you have a long-term client that needs your services on a regular basis. This is similar to the previous fact – for such purposes, it’s best to think about making a written contract. Check out how to do it in this article.
- Usually, it’s a bit lower price. For long-term cooperation, you’ll usually get paid a little bit lower than for a one-time project. Think about what’s more important to you – more money or stability. We believe that it’s better to have long-term clients for a bit lower price, and then to bid on some short-term projects when needed, than to only work on short-term or one-time projects.
Overall, there are definitely more pros than cons when it comes to working with long-term clients as a freelancer.
