Hiring freelancers is a sure way that can help you expand your business. Usually, it is considered less expensive compared to hiring a permanent staff. This is because you only have to pay for a completed task, as opposed to making payment for taxes, work tools, training, retraining, and other additional expenses meant to be enjoyed as a full-fledged worker.
Table of Contents
How Freelancers Can Help Your Startup
This current economic realities has made it a necessity to save money, while working on your project. A June 2022 Fiverr survey reports that 20% of companies were intentional about increasing their use of freelancers as a result of growing expenses.
Beyond that, another benefit you can get from hiring skilled freelancers for your startup is flexibility. Whenever you need professional individuals, you can get in touch with them. On the same measure, hiring freelancers allows you to access different groups of skilled freelancers. If your focus is to offer a full-time position, there is every tendency you wouldn’t be able to hire experienced workers. However, you can still reach experienced freelancers to help expand your side gig business.
What do you need to know when finding Freelancers that can help your startup?
Finding freelance talent that can help your startup is good but a bit hectic. However, there are various ways and strategies to find freelancers who are experienced in order to expand your side gig business or startup. Among them are:
Recommendations
Requesting referrals or recommendations from your staff, other contacts, and other business owners. There might be colleagues who know people that you do not know; hence, it is important to reach out to individuals for recommendations if you’re intentional about expanding your side gig business.
Go where the Freelancers Congregate
Sharing or facilitating a workspace enables meeting freelancers. Many freelancers find it interesting working as a group since freelancing can be isolating. They use co-working spaces and innovation hubs to network, make valuable connections and work together. Networking with other startup owners who may be able to recommend freelancers is a strong way to go about.
Moving forward, you can link up with freelancers by attending business events and training programs. Equally, you can visit the websites of trade associations and business organizations. You can also register for innovation programs and look for networking events or programs on Meetup and Eventbrite.
Search through Websites
Freelancers can be gotten via a number of web directories. Some freelance websites allow writers submit proposals for a brief posted by hirers, while some pave way for searchable profiles on freelancers.
Some of these platforms to get freelancers who help to expand your side gig business,are: Freelancer.co.uk, YunoJuno, 99designs, Upwork, PeoplePerHour, Bark, and Fiverr.
As a passionate business owner, you can post a job advertisement for your demand for freelancers on various job platforms, specifically mentioning your preferred locationas being managed by business associations and other organizations.
By posting on your personal or business profile that you’re seeking a professional freelancer, you can get responses or recommendation from your network of friends or colleagues. Similarly, you may pay for a job posting on LinkedIn, other various job seeking platforms or seek special mention by a person with massive following on social media.
How to Collaborate with Freelancers Effectively
It’s not enough to get the attention of freelancers in moving your side gig to a developed business; it does also matter how you work harmoniously in bring out your brand tone and voice. Thus, while hiring freelancers has proven to be a terrific method to expand your business, it’s worth noting a certain few things.Following these instructions may influence your collaboration and make everything run smoothly;
Decide on costs and due dates.
Before reaching any agreements with a freelancer, make sure you and the other party agree on the payment and delivery date. It’s essential to findout if there will be extra charges involved if changes or more time are needed for a project. You will equally need to confirm everything that is ambiguous with the freelancer to make sure there is no misunderstanding or miscommunication, before the project commences.
By bridging every communication gap, you should respond promptly to emails and give a brief call to clarify any questions. To facilitate discussion with freelancers, you may want to grant access to digital communication technologies like Slack, Trello or Teams if your business uses them.
It is your business, it you observe some things aren’t being done correctly, offer helpful criticism to fix the problem with the freelancer
Give a brand and style manual.
For every business that wants to standout on the digital space, having a brand tone is very crucial. You should consider giving your freelancers a brand and style guide so that they can guarantee that the work they do is appropriate for your business. For instance, the topics to be worked on may include hints like editorial style, brand voice, usage of logos, brand colors, words and phrases to avoid, etc. You should also know that these depend on the kind of freelancers you are working with.
Effective payment mechanism
If you want to solidify your trust with a freelancer, give him or her a reliable and effective payment system. This will help avoid any misunderstandings that can affect how to expand your side gig business, moving forward. As a result, you should inform newly hired freelancers of the invoice mailing procedure at the outset of your working relationship. Let them know the rules guiding invoicing; these include what details they must contain, to whom they must send invoices, and whether or not there is a deadline for sending them.
For many freelancers, getting a late payment can have a negative influence on their financial flow and emotional well-being. And you wouldn’t want to be known as a business that is late with payments. Thus, ensure your bills are pay as scheduled. In case of any late payment with a valid reason, be transparent about it and let your business developers know when they may expect their money.
Final Thoughts
Finally, freelancers offer startup businesses a flexible and cost-effective solution to expand your side gig business. Their specialized skills and wide expertise can fill gaps, boost productivity, and drive innovation within a startup environment, effectively. By engaging professional freelancers who know their onions, businesses can access a wide range of talent pool, comply with changing demands, and scale operations efficiently. Fortunately, this collaborative mechanism not only enhances the startup’s capabilities but also steers forward a dynamic and adaptive culture that goes hand-in-hand with the developing business landscape. Businesses that aim to make a strategic move need to seek optimization of resources and navigate the challenges of scaling their businesses, must embrace skilled freelancers to so do.