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Work for Free Now, Profit Later
If you’ve created an album, a book, or a painting, how many people are enjoying it each
day? If it’s sitting in a box in your garage, there’s no income potential because no value is being delivered.
One of the best ways to show people the value of your work is to share it with them for free. This minimizes other people’s risk and makes it easier for them to receive your value. In this manner you can start sharing your value immediately.
For example, if you want to start generating income as a web site developer, focus on sharing your skills for free. Invite as much free web work as you can manage. Ask for referrals. Focus on clients where you can deliver a lot of value in a fairly short period of time by working from your strengths. Decline any clients that aren’t a good fit for you. If you’re halfway decent at what you do, you should have no shortage of small businesses willing to let you help them for free. Once you start getting more qualified free referrals than you can handle, you can start charging a fair price for your work. Some of your free clients will probably become paid clients if you impressed them, and you should also benefit from ongoing referrals.
Photo via forcefieldmagnets
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Matt- CapForge.com on February 26th, 2008 11:16 am
This: “One of the best ways to show people the value of your work is to share it with them for free.” is probably one of the worst pieces of advice I’ve ever heard. If you give it away free, people will definitely value it much less than if they had to pay for it. You may do one or two small jobs to gain references and get some practice working with clients, but the last thing you want is a flood of referrals from people who’ve heard you work for free. If you are able to do quality work, you should charge appropriately for it from the beginning. If you can’t do quality work, then keep practicing until you can before taking on any clients, free or otherwise. Undercharging is one of the biggest mistakes new business owners make, thinking this is all they have to compete on or that they can raise prices later. In reality, competing on price is a terrible strategy, particularly in a service business where time is time and there are no economies of scale.
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