Writing an Invoice for Freelance Work for Research and Development Made Easy

Writing an invoice for freelance work for Research and Development

[Music] in theory freelancing is a very simple concept you have a skill somebody needs your skill they pay you for the skill that's all but why does it seem so hard to start a freelancing business and you've probably clicked into this video for this very reason you want to either start a freelance business or you have already started a freelance business but you're struggling with all the different kinds of questions that new Freelancers have like how do you price yourself do you need to register a business where do you get clients what do you do to invoice clients do you need contracts stuff like that if you don't know me my name is Dina and I have been full-time self-employed for the past four years and out of these four years a lot of the times I was a freelancer I had a calligraphy and art business where I was offering my calligraphy services to individuals companies I did on-site calligraphy I taught public and corporate calligraphy workshops and I even sold home paintings to Realtors and I'm like not a painter at all I've also dabbled a little bit in social media freelancing right now if you're trying to start a freelance business and you're trying to get into writing or graphic design video editing being a VA being a website designer or an artist or a calligrapher this video will apply to you even though my main freelancing business was my calligraphy and art business because all Freelancers need to have similar things in place you need a way to get clients you need to have a portfolio and invoice your clients and collect payment the first thing you need to do when you're starting a freelance business is get all the business registration legal stuff out of the way so depending on where you are located and how businesses are structured in your country you can start a sole proprietorship or you can start a corporation if you're in the US there is also something called an LLC that you can look into these kinds of business structures are very different and if you have no idea what I'm talking about you need to do some research on this stuff okay and if you're feeling really lost you can ask some business owners in the same area where you live on how they structured their business if you're in Canada like me there's actually a very helpful website that can help you start your sole proprietorship or register your corporation and that is called owner I use owner to register my Corporation and it was such a simple process so you can check it out below if you reside in Canada the next step in starting a freelancing business is to create some kind of portfolio I will say though the majority of people probably need to have a portfolio but if you have a lot of connections or you have big guts you might not even need a portfolio so first of all what is a portfolio a portfolio is basically a place where you are showcasing your work so that your potential clients can see what is it that you do what is the style what are the kinds of designs and they can use this information to decide if they want to work with you probably the most common way to create a portfolio is to have some kind of social media presence and a website I know there are websites like Fiverr and upwork like these are freelancing websites but I actually think those websites are not the greatest if you want to have a really sustainable full-time freelancing business because there are so many people on those kinds of websites charging really really low prices and there's a lot of competition okay you might have a lot of questions at this point about what social media to use how do you actually build a portfolio so I have some specific tips for your portfolio that I'm going to share at the end of this video but I want to give you an overview of the steps you need to take first the next step after you have built some kind of portfolio is to get clients obviously there's a difference between inbound marketing and outbound marketing so you can look at it this way with inbound marketing the customer comes in to you maybe they're finding you through your website or your social media but they're the ones contacting you and asking about your services without bound you are going out to look for these prospects for these customers you are going to networking events you are reaching out to people you are co-emailing people so those are the two types of ways to get clients you can think about how you can get people to come to you that's inbound marketing and how you can go out and find your clients at the start of a freelancing business it's probably less likely you're going to have people come to you directly unless they know what you're doing and you've been doing it for a longer time so the best strategy is to do outbound marketing and do outbound sales you are going out to find your clients with outbound you might feel like it's really scary to email somebody that you don't know and you don't know what to say but it doesn't have to be this way you can totally learn how to send really a effective emails a couple years ago when I started to sell paintings and do on-site calligraphy and corporate calligraphy workshops it was really scary for me to contact people I did a ton of research and actually I remember coming across one of hubspot's blog posts that came with some email templates so I found them for you and in my video description I have a link to 25 proven sales email templates one of them that I've used a ton in my business is the cold email template that starts off with some recent information that you saw about them so you can see this email starts off with recently I noticed that you company accomplishment congratulations and this works because it shows that you're paying attention to the prospect a really good way you can apply this to Instagram is actually replying to somebody's Instagram stories so it doesn't seem so salesy and like you planned the whole thing it just feels more organic that something prompted you to reach out another one I love is this one where you send a really short email asking to talk to the right person it doesn't come off as too salesy and it's really easy for the other person to deal with you and I have used this a ton of course with these templates you should change the tone depending on how you act actually sound in email or DMS but just reading through these templates and explanations of why certain things work in certain emails is going to help you a lot so check them out below and thank you to HubSpot for always looking out for us and providing us with these free resources other than cold emailing and cool dming people another really great way you can do outbound sales and outbound marketing is actually to go to networking events networking is probably the method that I would say has worked the best for me but it is a long-term strategy you are not going to get results right away because you really need to build these connections with people and then you meet their friends of their friends and it's going to take some time for people to know you and trust you and give you referrals and think about working with you so you don't have to go to events that are like specifically networking events there's a ton of different ways you can Network obviously there's in-person events and I would say my favorite ones to attend and the ones where I've made the best connections are the ones where it's like women in business or entrepreneurs okay even events where it's not really businessy stuff so for example like a jewelry making Workshop or if you're going to the gym to do yoga or a Zumba class you can Network there you don't have to go to some kind of business event to network what networking really is is just basically making friends networking is not a one-way relationship it is truly like you having business friends and it's mutually beneficial so with making friends it does take some time to get it started but once you have a good Network and you've built this through going out doing some Outreach outbound work you will find that you will get more inbound inquiries oh and another tip I have for you is when you are networking it's actually really good idea to try to meet people who are trying to do the same thing as you I know you might think oh my God why would I make them they're like my competition but when you meet other people who are like you so for example for me when I was doing my calligraphy business it was so useful to know other calligraphers because they like they say my ass so many times like for example if a customer inquired about me doing something but then I couldn't because I am like not available or something I just refer the customer to another calligrapher or let's say I'm doing a project and I really don't know what calligraphy pen to use I would just ask my calligrapher friends so it is so beneficial to know other people who are doing the same thing as you even though they're trying to look for the same kind of customer as you it's just so beneficial to have these connections because they can refer you they can help you if you need help you can ask them about specific things or for example like if there's some kind of event like they might ask you hey do you want to go with me so actually you get access to a lot more knowledge and people and in general it's just nice to even just talk about strategies for how to get clients with your business friends who are doing the same thing as you a really important mindset I had to have when I was doing my calligraphy business this was there is enough opportunity for everybody and I had to have this abundance mindset or else I would just be so scared of meeting anybody something I forgot to say is for networking it doesn't just have to be in-person events it could also be online networking through using social media like Instagram or LinkedIn and also attending like online events like Zoom events stuff like that oh a trick when you're going to zoom events is like if you can see the participant names I usually just screenshot everybody and then I go to LinkedIn and then I search them up and then I'll message them and like you went to the same event right so it's really easy to mesh stitch them and be like hey like I was also in this event like I was just looking at who's there and I found your LinkedIn profile and I see that you do this this well actually I do blah blah blah blah blah and this is you know and then like something interesting can ask them a question really easy to connect with people if you have a prompt the next step in your freelancing business is once you have your first client you are gonna do the client work obviously right but I do have a tip for you so when you're just working with a client don't just do the work and then at the very end once you're 100 done with the work show the client what I actually do and what I found works the best is actually to do 30 of the work first show The Client you just like send a picture or send kind of like a it depends on what you're doing right it could be an outline it could be a draft of what you're doing let's say I'm doing a calligraphy piece I would send the draft and pencil of like the layout and everything send it to the client after I'm done 30 and just show the client hey I'm working on this this is what it looks like so far and this is great because in the initial stages before you spent so much time doing the client work you can get feedback on your work most of the times the client will come back and be like oh my gosh this is great or like could you just fix this one little thing and then you are saving so much time if you're able to like fix something before you've actually finished the whole thing and then you might have to like start all over so I show the client at the 30 Mark and then also around when I'm like 70 to 80 done like when I've almost done the thing I like sending it to them and just saying hey I am almost done this is what it's looking like so far I'm just gonna do the finishing touches and then we're done so with art specifically I liked having like two check-ins before I finished the whole thing but I would say it depends on what you are doing and if the client is so busy then maybe you don't want to check in so many times but I think it is helpful especially at the start of working with a new client you want to check in more and then after you've established a relationship and maybe you're working multiple projects then maybe later on you don't have to check in as much because they know what you're doing next up after you finish the client work is to invoice the client you can also collect a deposit before you start on the client work so that is also very common as well but you will have to find a way to invoice your client depending on where you live that will dictate what kind of invoicing software you can use but for me in Canada and I think generally for North America there is wave stripe and PayPal so these are all free to use they just have the standard 2.9 plus 30 cents per transaction fee this is standard across the board they're going to have that fee but there are also a lot of other invoicing platforms like for example if you use an accounting software like QuickBooks then you can also use your paid accounting software to collect payments so congratulations on getting your first client and getting paid now I'm going to answer some commonly asked questions about becoming a freelancer the first one is Dina how do you build portfolio if you have no clients it's like a chicken and egg thing like how can I have a portfolio if I don't have my first client so to give you an example in my calligraphy and art business I really really really wanted to do on-site calligraphy on-site calligraphy is where you are hired by Brands and event organizers or stores in the mall to sit there and make custom calligraphy gifts or like custom cards for customers that come in and I just thought this was like so cool but the thing is how could I get these things if I have no experience if I don't have pictures of me doing on-site calligraphy if I haven't worked with any stores before so what I actually did was I searched for charity events in Vancouver and I reached out to a bunch of charity events and said hey I'm a calligrapher like I can do on-site calligraphy for free like I I'm gonna provide all the paper and everything and I actually did a couple of those at the start and I got some really great pictures of me interacting with people and I use this to build my portfolio nobody has to know that this was not a shop this was not you being hired and eventually I got hired to do some really cool on-site calligraphy events another example is when I had the idea to sell home paintings to Realtors I'm not a painter but I thought wouldn't it be cool let me just try this business idea out so I reached out to a couple Realtors and then I said hey I'm trying this new thing do you want like a free painting for your next house sale and so I did like maybe two or three of them and then I had these paintings of homes that I could have in my portfolio and all my social media and then Realtors actually started to ask me if I could do these paintings for them and in the end I made 500 from painting when I'm not even a painter so what I'm saying is if you don't have experience go out and build yourself a portfolio through doing free events free work or you could literally just make samples of your work at home I know there's always like a debate going on between should you do free work or should you not do you need to charge for your value I think at the very beginning if you don't have a portfolio you kind of like you need a way to start off and the best way the easiest way to do that is to do some free work you can't do free work forever obviously next struggle that a lot of Freelancers have is not knowing how to price themselves and I struggled with this a lot at the beginning too because I thought I haven't been doing calligraphy for like five years I've only been doing it for a couple months how can I charge this price and there was a lot of imposter syndrome and self-doubt as well the first thing is do not charge what you would be making at a nine to five job working eight hours a day because as a freelancer when you split up your day you are not working on client work every single hour of the day for eight hours right maybe you're only doing one or two hours that day the rest of the time you are networking you are working on your social media you're doing activities where you're not getting paid so with freelancing your rate is always going to be way higher than your hourly rate in a typical nine to five job when I first started freelancing I found this really really great resource by womenwoofreelands.com they got a lot of Freelancers to submit what they charge and honestly this is so interesting to look at and you can see by industry how many years people have been working and you can see what they are charging you'll see there are some that are like twenty dollars some that are a hundred two hundred dollars so with freelancing rate it can range a lot oh yeah and then with upwork or with fiverr.com some Freelancers are charging like you know five dollars or ten dollars an hour right so when you're coming up with your pricing there are several factors to consider you also don't want to charge too low or else you'll be bringing the entire industry down that's why with my calligraphy business I actually talk to a lot of calligraphers around my area about what they charge for example for like on-site calligraphy the going rate is like minimum I would say 100 all the way up to 250 depending on what you're doing like if it's a really specialized skill like engraving where you need more tools you need more skill then you would charge higher if it's doing calligraphy on paper cards or something that may be 100 150 so that is the range I would stick to and it is so useful remember I said making friends with people who are doing the same thing as you is so useful because you can also ask about pricing it's not good for one person to charge so high one person to charge so low and then maybe that customer is reaching out to two people it's best to stay within the range within your industry another reason why I like the networking method so much is because a lot of the times like your potential customer has a lot of options of who they want to work with for example I'm looking for a video editor and I'm sure there's thousands of video editors online but the most recent one that I'm working with is somebody that I actually know in real life and even though I'm paying a little bit more than what I want I don't mind that because I really like this person I enjoy working with person and I know that their quality of work is going to be good so you'll find that some people are flexible on price if they really like you oh and another trick I have for reaching out to people and putting yourself out there on social media is actually like okay if you don't really have business connections what you can do is when you're just scrolling on your social media like Instagram or Facebook you can reconnect with your old friends like for example your high school or your college friends your acquaintances and the easiest way to do this is like let's say you are just scrolling and then you see somebody posting about something and you think oh this is kind of interesting like maybe somebody posted something about their dog and you haven't talked to them in years but a really easy way you can get reconnected is actually to reply to whatever they post and be like I just ask a really simple question like oh my gosh your dog is so cute like oh I actually just got dog myself like obviously depends on like if you can find something similar or something interesting and then you'll be able to start a conversation that way and then if you feel like you really want to connect with this person like you actually really want to reconnect as friends then you could have a coffee chat go out for lunch or something and then when you're talking to them more like they're obviously going to ask you hey what's new with you then you can share about your new business with them and the thing is all of us we all have like at least a hundred people in our Network right so when you reconnect with your old acquaintance you are opening up the door to 100 more people so let's say I'm trying to do graphic design and then I tell my acquaintance I just started this graphic design business and then maybe like two weeks later she's talking to her other friend and then the other friend needs some graphic designer for something and then she's like oh my gosh well I was just talking to my friend Dina she just started graphic design business so don't underestimate the value of your current connections so I know this is a lot of information that I just gave you but I really want you to take it slow starting a business is a process and it will get easier the more you work on it right now if you're feeling lost about invoicing and contracts I do talk a lot more about that in this video it is an older video though it's kind of cringy but it's still very informational so watch that next if you want to learn more about invoicing and contracts as a freelancer foreign