Have you ever ever counted the time you spend managing work you are not getting paid for?
In fact, managing invoices, responding to buyer emails, and reaching out to new leads are essential to conserving your corporation afloat. Nonetheless, these duties can rapidly turn out to be enormous time wasters.
So how will you achieve extra time for undertaking work and thereby earn extra as a freelancer? We share some ideas on this article.
How can repetitive duties be automated?
Solopreneurs typically juggle many duties starting from enterprise growth to accounting. Thankfully, today you’ll be able to automate a lot of them utilizing varied methods and instruments. Let’s have a look.
1. Use skilled invoicing software program
Creating invoices manually utilizing Excel or Phrase paperwork is a time-consuming course of that always results in many errors.
To spend much less time on billing, think about using billing instruments. By counting on software program as an alternative of spreadsheets, you’ll be able to create invoices a lot sooner by pre-filling fields like bill quantity and buyer particulars.
Two different key options additionally assist ship invoices and get paid sooner: invoice reminders and recurring billing. These options make it more likely that you just will not be chasing after overdue payments.
Because of bill reminders, you not have to put in writing emails and bear in mind to ship them to clients manually. Most billing instruments will assist you to arrange electronic mail reminders to mechanically ship to clients.
Supply: Lili
You need to use your favourite bill reminder template – the invoicing software program will do the remainder. It should fill within the fields with bill and buyer info earlier than mechanically sending it to a buyer’s handle.
With the opposite function – recurring billing – you not must duplicate your bill to alter the bill quantity and cost due date. This device automates the method by updating key fields and sending the bill to your buyer. This function is especially helpful for freelancers who work on a charge foundation.
2. Rent a digital assistant
Freelancers typically must cope with some time-consuming duties that may simply be outsourced. Digital assistants are excellent with them, and their hourly fee is usually cheap. Lowering the burden of extra tedious work lets you deal with the vital points of a undertaking and enhance your productiveness.
You possibly can outsource many duties to a digital assistant – electronic mail contact, primary advertising and marketing tasks, customer support and even sending out thanks playing cards to your loyal clients.
Hiring an expert VA can unlock extra time to work on well-paying tasks and handle your billable time extra successfully.
3. Combine Inbox with an electronic mail consumer
Juggling a number of inboxes and productiveness apps can rapidly result in lack of focus and burnout. This impact is often brought on by switching between the quite a few tabs when you must entry completely different instruments and analysis info on-line – to not point out being distracted by lots of of advertisements bombarding you on-line once you achieve this .
Think about how a lot simpler it will be for those who might do all of your work from one dashboard with out having to change browser tabs. At the moment, electronic mail shoppers assist you to carry all of your electronic mail accounts and the preferred productiveness instruments below one roof.
Utilizing an electronic mail consumer like Mailbird, you’ll be able to handle a number of mailboxes from one place – your unified mailbox – and combine with 30+ productiveness instruments. This fashion you could have every part in a single dashboard and may get rid of greater distractions that trigger you to get much less work finished. Try how built-in apps work collectively within the screenshot beneath.
4. Create recurring duties
Creating Instagram posts, replying to weblog feedback or checking KPIs are the duties that by no means disappear from a freelancer’s to-do record. Regardless of their recurring nature, these duties are simply forgotten.
As an alternative of writing these duties down on a bit of paper, use a preferred activity administration device that provides a function for setting duties to repeat.
For instance, for those who use Asana for activity automation, you’ll be able to set your duties to repeat on particular days.
After configuring duties as recurring, you should not fear about your steady reminder disappearing from the dashboard. You possibly can mark them as full and they’re going to seem again in your dashboard based on your scheduled time.
5. Monitor undertaking time on-line
Time monitoring is essential to provide shoppers correct undertaking estimates earlier than beginning work. After the undertaking has began, you typically must create weekly or month-to-month time studies to replace a consumer on the work progress.
Nonetheless, it is simple to neglect to activate the timer when you’re working and switch it off once you change to a different undertaking or simply need to surf the online.
With time monitoring instruments like Hive or ClickUp, you can also make time monitoring a extra managed course of. A few of the packages can mechanically monitor time and affiliate tracked hours with a particular undertaking.
Plus, you’ll be able to generate studies for any undertaking or consumer with only a few clicks. For instance, in Toggl you’ll be able to export a timesheet in PDF format for a particular time interval.
6. Plan social media posts upfront
Whether or not you are managing your shoppers’ social media or your individual, creating, planning, or monitoring social media metrics, the time can add up and turn out to be consuming.
You need to use social media scheduling instruments to automate social media administration from A to Z. These instruments assist you to plan your social media posts for all channels from one dashboard and generate studies with a 360-degree viewers overview.
That is what these studies seem like in Sprout Social, a social media administration device.
If you happen to handle a number of massive social media accounts and are accountable for remark moderation, managing all feedback from one place turns into an actual time saver.
7. Simplify scheduling
Retaining shoppers up to date on their undertaking progress is among the most vital each day duties of a freelancer and no channel can assist with that higher than a video convention.
The identical applies to events – arranging a phone name to debate potential cooperation choices is usually step one in the direction of concluding a contract.
Both approach, looking for an obtainable timeslot can lead to a protracted electronic mail dialog. To rearrange calls sooner, it pays to make use of scheduling instruments.
For instance, for those who use Calendly, you’ll be able to ship a buyer a hyperlink to your calendar with obtainable slots. By reviewing all your obtainable time slots, a buyer or prospect can extra rapidly choose the one that matches their schedule.
8. Current your portfolio
Earlier than beginning work with a freelancer, shoppers often ask candidates to ship some samples of their earlier work or to share a portfolio. To explain earlier tasks it could be obligatory to put in writing a protracted electronic mail and add a number of hyperlinks to your public tasks.
As an alternative of writing emails like this each time you must showcase your work, publish your portfolio on a website or devoted portfolio platform.
For instance, you should use Contently or any of the assorted platforms if you’re a content material creator. Including hyperlinks to your earlier articles is the one factor you must do to create a visually interesting portfolio on-line.
If you happen to’re a graphic designer, you should use Dribbble or Behance to create a portfolio undertaking. You possibly can entice new shoppers by shopping candidates by posting your portfolio on these portals.
As well as, you’ll be able to hyperlink to your Behance or Dribbble portfolio in emails to clients coming out of your website contact kind or from social media.
9. Submit NPS surveys
Gathering suggestions in your work from shoppers utilizing on-line surveys is an effective way to find your consumer loyalty and how one can enhance as a freelancer. NPS surveys are one of many instruments you should use to foretell whether or not a consumer will need to work with you frequently.
The sort of survey reveals a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the best rating. Usually, these kinds include an open-ended query that enables clients to supply written suggestions.
Creating NPS surveys and analyzing the outcomes with an electronic mail editor is time-consuming, however you should use survey instruments to automate this course of. They supply visually interesting survey templates which you can simply combine into your electronic mail physique.
Utilizing these instruments, you’ll be able to modify query blocks with a drag-and-drop editor and replica the HTML code to make use of in emails. Plus, you’ll be able to ship the surveys immediately from an NPS device, making gathering suggestions even simpler.
Try this pattern NPS survey to get an thought of what they could seem like in a visible editor.
Wrap up
Each freelancer faces many repetitive duties. They will rapidly turn out to be time wasters, taking your time and focus away from billable work.
With out automating these tedious duties, your day can rapidly exceed the standard eight hours, resulting in burnout. Fortunately, by implementing the methods and utilizing the instruments really useful on this article, you should purchase extra time to deal with current and new tasks.