Apr 25, 2022
How To Earn Extra Money If You Are A Freelancer
Today I will share several ways to earn some extra money in addition to your services. Whether you are a freelancer or an agency, these tips will help you increase your income.
Hi! My name is Milya Kotery, I am a freelance expert and content marketer. I talk about selling your digital products and increasing your freelance income. Follow if you want to know more about leveling up your freelance business!
Where To Find Extra Income Sources
If you provide services, you earn money for your time and skills. For example, you write a text, get your $200 and move on–to write another text or create a landing page or an email campaign. How can you earn more here?
You have three ways:
- Upsell
- Cross-sell
- Affiliate programs
Let’s see each.
Upsell in freelancing
What is upsell? Upsell is a marketing method to make your clients choose the more expensive option. Your goal is to convince the client that it fits him better than the option he chose first. Let’s continue with the writing example.
If the client comes to you to order a text for Instagram ads, you can analyze his business and find out that he doesn’t have a good landing page to sell his product. He wants to sell it in direct messages but doesn’t give customers complete information about his business on his Instagram profile. What can you offer? Tell him about the importance of having an informative website with details about his product, and show him your previous clients’ results when they used a landing page for selling a similar product. If you succeed, the client will order a landing page–and you will get an order x15 more expensive (typically, a single post costs $10–20 while a landing page costs $300–500).
So when you talk to your client, try to analyze how you can help him more–and how you can earn more.
Cross-sell sales for a freelancer
What is cross-sell? Cross-sell is another marketing method when you sell something in addition to your leading service. If you develop websites, you can offer a design or maintenance. If you create a logo, you can provide the entire branding for the client’s business. Always search for an opportunity to work with one client on more than one task: many pieces of research say that repeat customers spend more and convert better (60–70% conversion rate to purchasing vs. 1–3% rate from a new customer). Also, it is much easier to sell something to a client who already knows you, works with you and is satisfied with your service. On the contrary, when you try to attract a new client, you spend much more time and effort finding him and starting working with him.
So your repeat customers are your gold mine. Sell them more at a one time and after you finish working.
Affiliate programs
My favorite part is affiliate offers. You’re not required to work more to earn more: you just send your client a referral link and receive your money. Let’s see how it works.
Affiliate programs are the programs that companies launch to sell more without using their own resources. They find partners who can do it instead of them and pay a commission for successful sales. There are many offers: e-commerce, SaaS, educational, financial, hostings, etc. Choose tools and apps you use at work and look at which of them have an affiliate program. Register there–and start earning a commission from them!
Affiliate programs work like that. You sell website building services and charge a client for this service. For example, you create sites on WordPress and use Elementor Pro for page building. Then, you can register for some hosting affiliate program (I use DreamHost for my clients and me and offer them this hosting since I trust it) and Elementor program and send your client the links to register there. So you kill two birds with one stone: the client gets what he needs (a website, a hosting, and Elementor Pro for lovely designs), and you earn some more money–not only from the client but from DreamHost and Elementor, too.
You can find some affiliate programs on Admitad and Shareasale (it’s the best one I use), but the best way to find them is to check the footer on the websites of the tools you use in your daily work. Hostings, time and project management tools, plugins, builders, marketing tools, and other software. You can even earn money when you refer another freelancer to your client: Fiverr has an affiliate program where you get money when you recommend this marketplace to clients who order freelance services. So you won’t lose your client even if you don’t work with him–you will get a commission from his working with another freelancer! Isn’t it cool?
Affiliate marketing has its pros, cons, and difficulties. The method of earning an affiliate commission I’ve described works well, but if you want to make an affiliate income main money flow, you need to work hard on building your audience first. Blog on your site, social media accounts, paid ads, email marketing–that’s a partial list of what you should run and grow to have the ability to earn good money from affiliate programs.
But nothing is impossible! Work as a freelancer and, in parallel, grow your subscribers’ list–and soon, you will be able to finish your freelance career and start your own affiliate full-time business.
In conclusion, what to do to earn extra money from your clients if you are a freelancer:
- Sell more expensive services if you see the opportunity.
- Offer more services in one order and sell more to existing clients instead of searching for new ones only.
- Register in affiliate programs of tools you use in your daily work and send affiliate links to your clients.
- Increase your income every day!
As you might have guessed, I used several affiliate links in this article to earn extra money from my blog in exchange for my knowledge and valuable tips for freelancers. That’s how it works! :)
Get my free guide on 7 ways to monetize your expertise and earn more if you are an expert or creator here. In this guide, I talk about what methods you can apply today and what to do to promote your products even without a budget.
