Multiple Sources of Income for Freelancers

Multiple Sources of Income for Freelancers

When working with clients, you can’t just depend on trading time for money for the long road.

This may be great for a couple of years, but eventually something will happen that will prevent you from actively working.

These can be things like a family crisis, tech issues, natural disasters or an emergency issue.

I’ve seen ALL of these happens repeatedly and if it were not for multiple forms of revenue filling the gaps during these tumultuous times, it would have been a major issue. 

After all, it’s not just you that relies on your freelance income, your family, staff, and other obligations, force you to make sure that you have enough coming in, or things can get sour fast.

One of the craziest moments is when I burned both my hands. I couldn’t do anything of over a month, and fortunately I had the different income streams I’m going to mention below to get me through it. 

It’s amazing how quickly money in the savings account can go if you don’t have stable and continuous income. 

So lets break down the main parts of how you earn when you’re a freelancer to sustain yourself.

Freelance Alpha: Your Time

Your main chunk will most likely come from your active time, especially in the beginning. This can basically be in the form of milestone payments or directly selling your time. 

I prefer the latter, because this is something in YOUR control. And while that may not always be the best for your client, you have a business to run. And YOUR business should be paramount to someone else’s businesses, if you want to maintain.

Bending over backwards and fitting into too cumbersome of a work life balance, can cut your freelancing career very short.

So here’s where you wan to make sure you setting yourself up for success from the start. 

I’m a big fan of acquiring more and more skills which makes your hourly rate more valuable in the eyes of the client.

This is the best way to increase your hourly rate and allow you to make more money in less time.

Remember, a current client can hire you for more than one thing. This has been the single greatest way I’ve been able to expand current contracts into something much greater than what was originally discussed.

The goal is to make yourself excited for the work that you’re doing. If you’re too busy thinking the client doesn’t appreciate your time, you’re not doing it correctly.

If you want to learn more about upskilling, I put together an automation academy that is meant to help educate you on marketing automation. This is where I’ve found an extreme amount of success on Upwork and it continues to be an excellent source of high paying work.

I put together two things that may be interesting for you.



1. First is the “Automation Vocabulary Guide”. This is for the beginners that just want to get their heads wrapped around terminology we use in automation, AI, marketing, CRM management, and other methodologies. 



You can click here to download for free. 



2. If you really want to take it to the next level, I have an Automation Academy available that will teach you how to operate popular automation platforms. This will allow you to possibly 10-20x your current hourly rate. 



You can click here for access. 


Other Freelancers:

One of the most profitable ways of creating alternate income streams with your current clients is to attach other people to the project. I do this in the form of my agency on Upwork called AutomateScale. 

This allowed me to scale in ways I never thought possible. 

Instead of one contract now I open 5 or 6 and it allows my team to directly work with the client through Upwork. This allows me to take full advantage of the platform, earn money, and not need to actively work on the client’s project. 

Like I mentioned earlier about the fire I dealt with, my team really came in and saved the day. I was able to keep the clients happy using only voice memos. 

If you want to learn more about how to set up an agency, so you’re getting paid when other freelancers are working, check out the masterclass I did for Agencies on Upwork.

Click here to access the agency course.

Retainers: 


I’m putting this here, because I know a lot of successful freelancers operate under retainer payments. 



This is great if there’s very simple ongoing maintenance work. 

I like this for SEO companies, content marketers, possibly security and IT firms, and possibly ad spenders, ongoing consulting. 

I don’t like it for anyone in marketing agencies or developers that build things like launches or funnels. 

And don’t even think about it if you’re an app builder or a developer, unless you want to commit yourself to a life of hell. 

I think if you’re going to do this, you should have at least 5 years of ongoing service with a proven track record, or you’re going to run into some unforeseen issues when dealing with multiple clients.

Affiliate Offers:

 

One of the most passive ways of earning scratch is by getting your clients to purchases SAAS products that they may need for your projects. 

Many software platforms have affiliate programs, and you’re leaving money on the table if you’re making recommendations and not earning something on the back end. Clients that like you will have absolutely no issues with this.

Just be open about it…now that I mention it, there’s an affiliate link below you make be interested in… hint hint.

Once you do have your list of platforms that you work with, create a page on your agency or personal site that lists these all out so you make it easy for your client to grab, if their interested in going for your referral. 



I made mine available at automanescale.com/software. 

If you want to us to construct you one of these, there is a free freelancer site we create for you when you’re in the Automation Academy.

Just Click here to access.

Your Own SAAS:

If you’re going to pay attention to just one of these, this has been the most interesting for me. Instead of offering other platforms that you’re merely an affiliate for, imagine that you could offer your own platform that earned a service fee every month GUARANTEED. 

This 10 times better than a retainer or an affiliate, because if they stop paying, they don’t have access to the software anymore.

This covers one of the single biggest issues freelancers have when working with clients, which is the inevitable expiration of the relation ship. 

By offering software to your clients they rely on, you’ve significantly lessoned the risk of a short term client, while increased lifetime value, and provide something sticky that will last years.

One of the most amazing companies I chose to partner with to achieve this is Go High Level.

These allow you to provide your clients with an amazing platform for…

• Email Automation that competes with Active Campaign and Hubspot.
• SMS / Text Automation that works with seamlessly through Twilio and allows you to refill and earn a profit.
• Social Media Scheduling that will allow your clients to get of HootSuite
• AI image Generation and Copy generation
• Website Creation to host WordPress
• Funnel Creation that competes against Click Funnels
• Membership Area and Course Creation to create communities that battles Kajabi
• Appointment Setting Creation
• Facebook Goal/ Google Analytics KPI Integration
• API’s for all integration

It’s amazing, and I’m able to save my clients money by providing a single source to build everything on verses the 10-15 platforms I used to have to stick together in order for builds to go properly.

If you want to check out the Go High Level software, you can click here  to get a 14 day trial and try it out yourself. 

One of the greatest things, is that it will give you an area to test out a lot of what we cover in the Automation and Academy and provide a platform for you to build all of your internal marketing pieces. 

We build everything on AutomateScale on the GHL platform, and we wouldn’t change a thing.

We save a considerable amount of money by doing this, and it allows us to scale up our business.

With the Automation Academy, we will also provide you with templates you can load into your account, once you purchase your own GHL account.

Hope you appreciated this!

Always make sure that you have multiple income streams running, to ensure stability and make sure you can keep your eye on expanding rather than just maintaining.

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