We’ve all experienced the freelance income rollercoaster. Those times when it’s hot and dry; and those feast-or-famine months. This is the curse of not having steady income streams.
We have a couple of options as freelancers to smooth things out and stay out of famine mode. (Well, there are a lot more options, but these are the best two in my opinion.)
- Try to get booked out ahead of time.
- Create additional income streams from information products.
Why are these the finest income streams for new freelancers? So, let me tell you…
When you learn to book yourself out, you can predict your income for the next several months because you already have clients who have agreed to work with you. Whoa! My mind has been blown. I’m joking. But it makes sense, doesn’t it?
You know how much time you need to devote to a project, so you schedule it in your client calendar. This way, you have enough work to keep you going without exhausting yourself or under-delivering by overbooking clients.
Get booked out
So, how do you go about doing this?
Step 1 – You determine how long a project will take and how many clients you can handle at the same time. What’s the ideal strategy to spread out your new projects — one every week? once every two weeks? Remember to account for your regular client intake process as well as all of the steps/time it takes to launch a new project from start to finish.
Step 2 – Set your intention to fill all of the open slots on your calendar. Seriously. Put it on your project management system, draw a symbol on every new client day in your calendar, and yell it at a stranger in the grocery store. You’re going to DO THIS.
Step 3 – Start hustling. You must get out there, market yourself, and begin creating relationships if you want to fill your client calendar. Relationships are essential for developing trust and converting cold leads into business partners who are thrilled to do business with you.
Step 4 – Celebrate your achievement, produce high-quality work, and laugh hysterically about how you escaped the 9 to 5 and still earn a consistent paycheck. You outwitted the system!
Isn’t that fantastic? Obviously! You’ll never have to eat ramen for a week and wonder how much internal damage it’s causing.
However, your earnings are still limited by the number of jobs you can complete. And maybe you’d want to be able to take a few weeks off here and there to travel or attend a yoga retreat in Bali, or maybe you simply want to take a break and watch the entire Billionaire’s Undercover show and plan out your business idea down the lane. Do what you want, friend. No judgment.
Creating a secondary income stream from information products will allow you to earn more money without having to clone yourself. Many people refer to this as “passive income,” yet it’s not totally passive. You must still create and promote it. It’s a process at first, but you’ll be able to sell your product for the rest of your life with very little effort.
Create an info product
So, how do you go about doing THIS?
Step 1 – Create your product idea. What are your clients always asking you? What is it that you are particularly adept at fixing for your clients? What are you particularly good at? What’s your thing, man?
Step 2 – Choose a format. There are numerous ways to market your info products, including e-courses, e-books, workshops, manuals, and physical books. Choose the format that’s most appropriate for your audience and the topic/content you are giving.
Step 3: Put your product idea to the test using a landing page opt-in or perhaps a pre-sale. If they buy, you know you’ve got a winner that will be worth the time and work you put into generating it. If not, abandon it and return to the drawing board.
Step 4: Build and launch. This is definitely a significant step. Creating an online course or ebook can take a long time, and developing a launch plan is just as time-consuming. But if you know it’s a product your customers want, it’ll be well worth it! Try to identify a few launch partners who can help you with the process.
Step 5 – Keep generating “passive income.” Set up sales funnels to generate sales from your list as it expands if your product is evergreen. If it isn’t, prepare your future launch while keeping the lessons you gained from the first one in mind.
These two income streams will undoubtedly help you balance your freelance income and keep you out of the feast or famine cycle. Or maybe help you fund that spectacular trip to Thailand this winter.
