How I landed almost $10,000 of freelance work in 2 months

Amna Shamim

No, this isn't some get rich quick scheme.

I hustled and worked hard to earn every penny of this money, but taking these steps was well worth the effort.

Here's how I did it:

Step one: Negotiate a 2.5x rate increase with a great client, in exchange for a bit more work

This one isn't a start-from-the-bottom step. I have a client who I'd been working with for about 6 months. They are one of my all-time-favorite clients, so I didn't really want to walk away, but I also needed to be earning more money. I had been providing more value to them than they had been paying me for during the last few weeks, so when I reached out to them wanting to discuss our contract, they weren't surprised.

I prepares for our conversation by figuring out the value I was providing, the minimum and ideal amounts I would need to keep working with them, and what else I was willing to give them in order to ensure they were happy with our new agreement.

Our meeting was about 15 minutes long, as she had also done her homework. We quickly settled on a new monthly amount, one that was 250% of what I had been previously earning, with one more task that takes about two hours/month to complete.

Because I had already been providing value above and beyond what we had agreed upon initially, I didn't have to sell it on the call. At her suggestion, I invoiced her for the previous month at our new rate so there were only a few weeks where I was going above and beyond our original agreement without additional compensation.

This was a total win-win. I'm earning significantly more money from a client I really like working with, and she's getting a lot more value. I am always willing to walk away from a bad client, but I'm also always trying to grow the relationship with good clients. And remember, this new contract has been going on for several months now, so the increased income extended well beyond those 60 days.

Action step: Figure out whether a client you're already working with has more work that you can do (and the budget to pay for it eventually). Take on the extra work, do it well, and once they see the value of having someone else handle that task, ask them if you can talk about getting paid for it. Usually after being relieved of some work, people are unlikely to want it back on their plate again, especially if the other person is doing the work well.

Step two: Offer a curated group of people who need a specific service a limited-time sale

My full-time job is Legal Green Marketing, where I offer  SEO site audits and roadmap implementations to small businesses in the newly legalized cannabis industry. When what I do came up in a conversation on Facebook, several people expressed interest in learning more about SEO and confessed to feeling overwhelmed by it. After all, when you're busy working in your business, it's hard to also work on your business, doing things like SEO and social media management.

I took one of those services (the site audit) and offered it to that Facebook group at a limited-time discount. The goal was two-fold: shake things up a little bit for myself by getting peeks into different industries and help out fellow entrepreneurs who are starting out.

I created a short landing page explaining what services the deal included (the full site audit and a one-hour video call to go over the results), the time frame (2 week limited-time offer), and what the savings was (50%). I also capped the number of available offers to five.

Although not all of them sold, I'm glad I had the foresight to do that. Each site audit is time intensive, and while I enjoy being able to help others, I'm not willing to give up all semblance of a social life for weeks on end in order to do so.

Action step: Pay attention to who is interested in what you do and how you can help them. If you decide to run a deal, make sure to explain clearly the value and the limitations of that offer. Promote it as much as you want. (I did next to no promotion but am sure if I had, I would have sold all five spots.)

Step three: Reach out to my network, promote my services, and find a new client, who goes through my funnel and signs a 6-month contract

Self-promotion might be shameless, but it works. By letting people know I was looking to work with someone new, ideally outside my regular industry, I landed a client who went through my funnel and signed up for six months of SEO work.

I offered him the same three-step SEO system I use for the cannabis industry and applied it to the pet-care industry to suit his company's needs. Of course, there are new things I'm having to learn as this is a completely different industry, but learning about another industry is exactly why I wanted to do this.

I reached out to my friends and family and various random contacts to let them know I was looking for a client outside my normal industry. When they heard of someone who needed SEO work done, they knew I was looking and would reach out to me about making the connection. I spoke with a few possible clients and realized that with most of them, I wasn't the right person to help them. With this client, his needs matched up with my skills and we both signed that contract confident that I'd be able to help him.

Action step: Be vocal and consistent about letting people know you're looking for a new client. It's not enough to mention it casually on your Facebook wall, but avoid spamming people. When people ask you about work or how life is going, mention it. Mention it in relevant conversations with your family, your friends, and at social gatherings. You never know who is going to know someone who knows someone who needs help doing exactly what you're best at.

As I mentioned earlier, my full-time job is at Legal Green Marketing. All the work I've been telling you about is technically "side projects," not my bread and butter. These steps are very applicable for anyone who is looking to land some work on the side. One thing you should be careful about is not overcommitting yourself.

It was a hectic six weeks when I was completing the bulk of this extra work, but my bank account assures me it was worth the pause in my social life. Choose your steps carefully and remember to only take on the work you have time to do and do well. By implementing all three steps, or just one or two, consistently, you'll be able to land as much work as your bank account demands.

Amna Shamim is the founder of Legal Green Marketing, where she helps new businesses in the legal cannabis industry grow their brand online. Get your Local Guide to SEO and learn some of her top strategies for ranking a new business. For more, visit Legal Green Marketing on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. 

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