surveys for companies, especially those in your specialty area, who want to know more about what their customers think about the products they buy or services they use. There are many online survey companies you can use to develop specialized surveys for just about any kind of business that needs your help. Once the survey is done, you can collect the data and, depending on the objective of the survey, create a presentation report based on that information.
You can do this kind of work for just about any type of business, but you definitely need a good consultation with a client company contact who has a definitive idea about what the company wants to find out from this survey. You may need to do several revisions as the survey is developed. Also, be sure that you have only one established contact for the survey information. Trying to put together a survey while consulting with four or five people who each call you with their own ideas about how it should be done is a royal nightmare. Nip that situation in the bud and establish one contact only, and put the goals of the project in writing.
Survey Monkey (at www.SurveyMonkey.com) is one place to start looking at how surveys are created and how the data is presented to you at the close of the survey. You can sign up for free just to get an idea of how things work, but be aware that the free version limits the amount of questions per survey and how many users can take the survey. Still, it is a good way to start.
If you get into surveys as part of your business services, either through surveying your own clients, or creating them for other businesses and their products and services, definitely consider using the upgrades at Survey Monkey that allow many more options for you to work with and also give your work a more professional look. Once you have an understanding of online surveys, you can look at other survey companies to see what services they provide and whether they can offer you a better deal, based on what kind of returns you want to get.
HOW BOB DOES IT
Anyone who is setting up a freelance business has to figure out how to find clients. When I started freelancing full-time in February 1982, there was no Internet, and “networking” was something you did face-to-face.
My main way of getting clients back then was to send out postal mail—sales letters promoting my copywriting services. It worked incredibly well. Then I started to add other marketing tools, such as writing articles and giving talks, which also worked well.
Today, a lot of my clients come from the Internet, specifically from my search-optimized copywriting website, www.bly.com, and from my e-newsletter, which has 65,000 subscribers. I also still give talks, which are another effective way of drumming up business.
If a person who contacts me doesn’t have a company name or her own website, I dismiss the inquiry as not serious. I also turn away anyone who says something like, “We have a small budget.” If they can’t afford me, they can’t have me.
For many more tips, read my book Selling Your Services: Proven Strategies for Getting Clients to Hire You (or Your Firm) (Henry Holt, 1992).
PLANNING IS KEY
Of course, writing reports or creating surveys are not the only ways you can turn your past jobs into a freelance career. But you get the idea. Examine your jobs and the skills you gained in your years at work to see how you can turn that experience into your very own freelance business, one which you enjoy and find fulfilling. Obviously, if you didn’t enjoy a particular type of work, don’t try to do it as a freelancer. Believe me, your clients will know it when they see the work you provide them.
That’s the key to planning what you want to do as a freelance business: Do something you’re good at and that you enjoy doing. Your enthusiasm will impress potential clients when they are first trying to decide whether to hire you. Make sure that your enthusiasm is geared to your clients and their needs. It’s not about you; it’s about what’s in it for them if they hire you. Therefore, to get a clear idea about what you want to do, make that list of each previous job and what skills you learned during the course of each job.
HAVING A VISION
Once you have an idea of what you want to do, spend some time thinking about how you want to do it and what a successful business will look like. What will you offer as a freelancer that a potential employer couldn’t find among his own employees? Who will you market your services to that other freelancers in your field might be overlooking? What will your business look like one year from now? How about five years from now?
Having a vision of your business allows you to determine how you will make your service or product better than most others on the market, and it will help you decide how detailed your plans need to be when you are getting started. You can say to yourself that you want to freelance so you can be your own boss and take vacations whenever you want, but to make that happen, you have to create a successful business. And the way to build a successful business is by focusing on what benefits and features you will be providing to clients. For your business to be successful, everything needs to be directed to your customers, especially if you want repeat business.
A home-based freelance business can be incredibly simple or highly complex. If your previous job included computer programming, for example, you could choose to tutor local high school students one-on-one in your home so that they can learn simple skills. Or, you could choose to create intricate programs that address problems common to a particular field and then market those programs to multinational corporations around the world.
If you use your imagination AND do your homework, you can soon be thriving in a business you thoroughly enjoy.
STRAIGHT TALK FROM BOB
One day, my wife, my oldest son, and I went to a beautiful little stable in Pennsylvania so we could ride horses.
Well, they rode the horses. I declined. The truth is I am not crazy about horses.
So, while they rode for an hour, I sat outside at a picnic table and read my favorite publication, the New York Review of Books. It was a beautiful autumn day. I was surrounded by hills with an explosion of trees decorated green, brown, yellow, orange, and red.
After their ride, my wife and son told me, “You really missed out on all the fun.”
That’s what they thought, but I didn’t think I had missed out on anything. I did what I wanted to do, and I really enjoyed myself.
You shouldn’t do what others think you should do just to make them happy. You should do what you want to do to make yourself happy.
When I graduated from college, I took a corporate job, which pleased my father to no end. In his mind, it paid a steady salary and was safe and secure. But I was bored. So I became a freelance writer.
He felt I was making a mistake, giving up my safe and secure corporate job and my steady salary. Early on in my freelancing, I did a large job for a software company and got a check for $10,000 (that was a lot of money in the early 1980s).
Wisely, I copied the check and showed it to my father. He never again complained about me quitting my corporate job.
Make yourself happy. When you do, those who care about you will eventually be happy for you.
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