Freelance Programming - Strategy, Tactics and Actions

As a self employed freelancer, you're like a small firm or startup in yourself. You must not only manage things in several areas or departments but also plan, strategize and act accordingly. You may not be an expert in all areas right from the beginning but become skilled by gaining experience as time passes. Below are the major areas or departments where one needs to apply strategic planning and devise tactics to achieve your goals:

Sales Strategy: Achieve sales maximization with profit maximization.

Sales is the most important function in any business or industry and hence should be getting your maximum focus. Without having the required sales numbers, you may soon run out of business, especially if you're small.

But profitability or net sales is also as much important as gross sales. What this means for a freelancer is that you shouldn't put too much time and energy on a project that only results in burnouts and frustrations in the end. You must always strive to identify such dragging projects from beginning and cut them off. One way you can handle this situation is to switch to a hourly rate from fixed price. Clients usually cut in on feature creeps and identify the dragging modules themselves once their bills start mounting up.

Below are some useful actionable tips to help you with achieving your sales goals:

• Have a habit of scavenging lots of project requirements and job offers daily on sites like Fiverr, FiveSquid, Freelancer, Guru, etc. Once you have a wide range of choice, selecting a project that suits you will be much easier.
• You may scavenge on Linkedin too but that is the topic for our next point (Marketing).
• Another useful daily habit is to commit something useful on Github. Employers have an eye on your Github profile and the quality of code you write has a strong impact.

Marketing Strategy: Create a brand for yourself on social media, long term goal should be that clients should find you and come to you, not the other way round.

With increasing competition in this field, you must have a healthy flow of both kinds sales (i.e. clients finding you online and you finding them on platforms, both online and offline). Some actionable tips:

• Interact regularly on social media (Twitter/Linkedin), this is where you might stumble upon prospective clients (and they upon you). Remember to stay away from politics and other addictive topics as much as possible, those will not help one bit with your sales or marketing goals. But do it too much and you get used by it! Hence, only 1-2 hours of maximum use each day is recommended, preferably in the evening after all days' work is done.
• Regularly contribute on Github, its a wonderful platform for social coding and its a great opportunity to showcase your skills to a prospective client who visits there.
• Build your portfolio and profile, keep improving and pay attention to details. Its ideal to have a portfolio on your own blog or website such as this one, but even the one on Fiverr or Upwork should do. Its also important to pay attention to small details you put on your profiles on Linkedin, Twitter, Github, etc. They should all be in sync and corroborate the work you have done, its all a part of your digital identity.

Accounts Strategy: Maintain books of accounts, calculate and pay taxes

This differs from country to country, each follow a different financial year though 1st April to 31st March is a good standard in many countries. There are many excellent FAS software that help you maintain books of accounts, both cloud-based such as Quickbooks and offline like Tally.

Its also important to know about the applicable income tax rates in your country and the types of tax returns you have to file. Its better to have a CA or tax consultant if you can afford one. GST (or sales tax) isn't generally applicable unless you exceed a yearly sales turnover limit but its still better to get it confirmed from a CA who is specialized in your country's tax laws.

Actionable tactics in this area can include a weekly roundup of your accounts books: enter sales data in your accounting software and ensure whether you're achieving your sales target, check out your tax liability, etc.

Research & Development Strategy: Life is a never ending learning process, keep learning new concepts, programming languages, libraries, frameworks, etc.

Reading, learning and revising various concepts, programming languages, libraries, frameworks, etc. should be a regular errand. The efforts you put in here improves your skillset which in turn improves your sales prospects, so this area is also very important, almost as much as sales.

And the concepts need not necessarily be IT concepts, learning about healthy habits of using a computer or laptop can also be a helpful concept. Learning about learning, planning, strategy and tactics (what you're doing now), etc. should also be part of your R&D strategy.

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Of course, this is all general advice and a blueprint to create your own strategy and tactics, they'll be created by you depending on your own situation, what kind of work you do, what kind of skills you have, etc. But whatever you come up with, document it thoroughly (call it your freelance constitution or something!) and keep reviewing it regularly to ensure that its current and serving its purpose.