This is the sixth and final part in our series. I’m going to be talking about each essential stage of freelancing. So this post shares some tips about the sixth stage: scaling your freelance business.

We’ve talked about Stage 1: how to choose the perfect freelancing niche…how to determine if you want to be a bookkeeper, a proofreader, a freelance writer, that kind of thing.

We’ve talked about Stage 2: how to build an online marketable skill set to perform services in your chosen niche.

We’ve talked about Stage 3: how to onboard new clients.

Stage 4: how to market and getting clients.

And Stage 5: how to optimize your first client.

Now we’re going to talk about how to scale your freelance business.

If you prefer to watch the video, just scroll down.

If you don’t know what scaling your business is, it just means how to make more money without necessarily putting in more hours.

How to streamline your business so that you’re making the maximum amount that you can make per hour without having to put in more hours.

Now, there are two different ways to scale and you can do one or the other or both. And that is simply:

1. Changing what you offer
2. Changing whom you offer it to.

So to change what you do, in a sense you can get more specific…you can niche down. That’s an example of scaling your business.

So instead of being a general photographer, which I wouldn’t recommend, I would recommend that you have a niche that you excel in.

You could do something like be a maternity photographer. And then to scale your business, you could offer a package where you do the maternity photos and the first month, six months, and then the first year of the newborn.

So that would be a streamlined, niched-down package that would change what you offer by making it more specific, and would result in restructuring your packages.

Changing whom you do it for would be something like changing the kind of client that you offer things to. So it’s usually finding higher-paying clients in your niche…that’s what you move toward.

So for example, instead of just doing general stock photography for bloggers, you would do customized brand photography for the hard-hitters, for the six- and seven-figure bloggers who want to do an entire rebrand or who want a customized, branded photo shoot, something like that.

So you are essentially doing the same thing, offering the same service, but to a different kind of client.

So changing what you offer or changing your ideal client. Doing one or the other or both will result in a more streamlined business where you’re making more per hour without necessarily putting in more hours.

It’s up to you to decide if you want to do one or the other or both. I usually recommend starting with one and then adding in the other. But if you are laser clear on exactly how you want to scale your business, then go ahead and do them both at once.

Let me know what you think in the comments!