# 4. Learn to Sell Yourself: if you are anything of geek like I was 9 years ago. selling, negotiating and marketing might sound like an alien words. But trust me, if you learn how to sell yourself, you'll make 10 times of money you are making right now… Again, I can't give justice to a topic like this in small list so I'll write another post on it.
So far Here's my advice to you. Go to Google and search for “Scientific advertising” by Claude Hopkins. Download this book(it's free) and read it from cover to cover at least 10 times. It's an old book, but it's philosophy still applies and it's universal. Doesn't matter if you are from India, Slovakia or United states.
# 5. Network with like minded people: I so regret not trying networking when I was starting out. Find people who are freelancers in your niche. Get to know them and ask them if you could help them.
There's good chance of someone giving you small projects from their own.
# 6 No Work is Small: Don't mind doing small work like “assembling someone's computer or speeding up computers performances”. Its better than sitting and doing nothing.
# 7. Think Obvious: Now too many people try to think out of the box. Trying to think different. Its not bad thinking different. But also think about the obvious. Lets say you are a computer geek and want some work.. What's the most obvious thing to do?
You know what? Find people who have computer and solve their problems.
What's the next obvious thing to do? Find people who own a small business running on computers and solve their computer problems.
If you don't get people like these what's the next obvious thing to do? Well, leave your card with all the people you found above & giving them assurance of fixing their computer even if its 2 am.
Are you still trying to be different? You better not.
# 8. Be frugal : If you are just starting out as a freelancer. The only money you need to spend is on your business card. Everything else like office space, fax, copier etc etc are just expense you don't need right now.
Don't make the same mistakes I did. If you don't mind doing some grunt work, you might see yourself working on good projects in no time. Now print this list out and paste with your mirror. So that you slam these points in your mind.
