Freelancers Become Businesses When They Build More Revenue Lines

However, we’re lucky to be in a period where low-cost software tools, social networks, and automation have made it possible for us to create businesses out of ourselves.

In my journey, I’ve made many mistakes that slowed down my progress. But one choice that had an outsized positive effect was developing my business to have multiple revenue streams. You can never do this too soon. 

I recommend all contract workers shift from project-based or hourly work to developing multiple lines of revenue for their business. The main benefit of this is that they can systematize and scale rather than being the single point of production (and failure).

Set Stricter Guidelines Around Boundaries

The first step to building new revenue lines is to define your current revenue lines. A common freelancer mistake I see is viewing themselves as the business. If they’re unsophisticated, they’ll focus on maximizing the number of hours they spend earning. As they get more experienced, you’ll see them try to maximize their hourly rate.

Neither path is ideal. 

I suggest sorting deliverables into business lines. Then, set strict guidelines around them. Clients aren’t just buying your time; they’re buying an outcome. Once you can put numbers and specificity on each outcome, you can figure out how to get these outcomes more quickly. 

Thinking about your work in terms of hours allows the work to stretch into other areas. If you’re providing product advisory and the client also needs ad consulting, even if that isn’t much extra work for you, I’d suggest charging it as a different business line. 

This has several benefits at once. 

Your revenue increases. 

You conceptualize your business as having multiple lines of business and can begin to objectively assess the profitability of each line, and even hire people to help. 

In any other business situation, you’d have a manager protecting their employee’s time. Not so when you’re a solopreneur. Every rule you write down for yourself saves time and turns your one-person freelancing job into a business where you can start slotting people in. When I finally defined these for myself, I was able to automate processes and get a higher quality of output in less time. 

Strict guidelines are something I wish I had when I first started solopreneuring. It’s easy to tell yourself you’ll say “no” when it’s appropriate, but this discipline rarely manifests in the moment. 

Every time you add value, you should be able to capture some of that. One common way fractionals mess this up is by providing free access to their network as a bonus for working with them. They’re downplaying their value. This is an asset of theirs that needs to be closely monitored and maintained. 

Charging separately for network access may not be how you want to do things, but the point is important to internalize: 

You are more than the work you do. 

If you're giving other parts of yourself away for free, that's one thing, but you better be capturing at least some of that back by having a higher retained rate. 

Sort Your Clients Into Buckets

The biggest reason to bucket your clients is so you can map out what leads a client from one service to another. You’re building a funnel between your different services. 

Say you’re in the social media function, the core value that you provide isn’t just the individual messages you write. It’s also the structure, brand kit, communication, and regularity of communication. These are replicable aspects of you that are saleable.

You could also talk about the types of posts that you need to make on a regular basis. This type of strategy is an asset you could give out for free as a means of driving people to an eventual funnel where they become direct clients. 

You're giving them the strategy and building trust in your skills without actually implementing it, which would require a much larger fee. 

In this example, the founder could give this asset to their marketing team where it is incorporated as part of their business model. Then maybe down the line, they’ll call you in to do coaching for their marketing team. And eventually, when the opportunity is ready, they bring you on board as a fractional CMO. 

In my case, some clients want a fractional CMO for organizational building, team building, and process building. As you’d expect, I can only handle a few of these at a time. So naturally this has to be priced much higher. But viewing it as a different type of client helped me plan out what each of my other offers were and what I had to deliver to have them be happy with the outcome and want to increase the depth of engagement.

You’re leading each product into another product, but protecting your time very carefully and getting a high implied hourly rate. 

Move From Work To Ownership

New business lines pay dividends when you start to own assets rather than just selling your own time. 

We’re seeing this shift a lot among online creators. The market is becoming more sophisticated, people are selling more than coaching offers. And as a fractional or freelance worker, we need to replicate those in our own businesses. 

This goes back to what I said above about looking at the work you do and separating the core value. Your time is your most precious asset. So sell interested leads tools for their businesses. And then be the expert who is even better at using these tools than they are. There’s minimal risk to you because you're creating the tools you would use yourself.

Most freelancers struggle with constantly having gaps between opportunities. They go months without a new one and then suddenly get a bunch at once. To counter this, you use smaller offers to buffer these issues and build predictability. Agency work is also a scalable way to grow from an individual contractor. 

Developing lines of revenue makes a lot of sense for the contract worker at this early stage because we can only do so much contract work. So if you only need a few clients to be full, then this sets you up nicely to have a pre-sold pipeline. 

Stop Being the Only Point of Failure and Production in Your Business

Look at your business as it is today. What is going well and what isn’t? 

Well, the process I outlined above will take you from isolated worker with little clarity on your path to growth to suddenly having near-unlimited upside potential. 

You can’t be the only point of production. To turn yourself into something bigger, you need to adopt technology, processes, and boundaries that naturally sell you into something greater.

The process starts with putting up boundaries, grows as you bucket your clients, and takes flight when you can confidently move from work to ownership. The assets you build today will be the wealth of your business in the future. 

This is a big part of building a successful empire. Focusing on branding and content is helpful, but having multiple revenue lines that funnel leads into deeper engagement with you will be invaluable over time.