Setting up a work at home business starts with knowing what your skills are and understanding how best to offer these skills. What are you good at? What can you do? Where can you find the market which needs your skills? Although you will be working from home, understand this situation from a business perspective. Your product will be your skills while freelance job sites could be where you place these skills. To serve as a better guide, understand the four P’s of marketing: Product, Price, Placement, Promotion.
For people who can write, their product may mainly be that skill itself. However, it is not always that someone who can write can actually write different kinds of materials. There will be people specialized in writing for business while some will be specialized in writing blog articles. A related skill would be the ability to edit or proofread material.
Take note however, that it is possible to not have all these skills which isn’t totally bad. If it cannot be forced like when time is not on your side for you to learn skills you don’t have for now, focus on honing your current skill set and specialize. In this way, when you’re able to create a very good portfolio, you can actually help yourself to get more clients and also even increase the fee you can ask for your work.
In a business where your skills are at the center, how good you are directs how successful you will be. So think that if you are very good then you will be very successful.
After you have identified and honed your skills, make yourself visible. Create your profile and start looking for work. Put out your credentials and have your portfolio ready. Clients will want to see how good you really are before they hire you and they can do so when they see that work you have done. Even if you’re just a newbie writer, you can draw up some sample pieces to help clients decide whether you have their preferred level or proficiency or even their preferred writing style. Some clients will be more specific than others, requiring you samples of work where you wrote using Business English. On the other hand, some clients will only need to see whether you have a good command of grammar or you don’t. With this variety in requests, keep in mind one thing, its okay to decline.
If a job requires a skill which you don’t have, politely decline the invitation for an interview. There’s no need for you to put yourself in a compromising situation where you won’t be able to deliver or where your client is likely to be disappointed. Remember, this is a business and in business, reputation matters a lot. If you can’t deliver what the client expects, this can not be a good impression on your work and it can affect your chances of getting more clients in the future. So be smart about what you’re going to offer.
