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5 Financial Tips For Freelancers

Take a look at these five financial tips for Freelancers before you start your freelancing career and be prepared for anything.

Published

3 years ago

October 27, 2019

Tracey Clayton

Making a career change and moving into the freelancing sector is an exciting prospect. Let’s face it: who doesn’t like the sound of being one’s boss? Yet, with great power comes great responsibility; especially so in the financial department.

Take a look at these five financial tips before you start your freelancing career and be prepared for anything.

Table of Contents

1. Learn How to Budget

Just because your income is erratic doesn’t mean your expenses should follow suit. In fact, as a freelancer, keeping your expenses in check is the only thing you can do (most of the time). Speaking of erratic income there is a handy tool which helps you calculate your monthly income.

Start by determining your break-even number — the number you need to shoot for to stay in the green each month. List all the essentials you need including food, utility bills, transportation fees, etc. and add them all up to get a total that you need to save up to (and surpass) every month.

5 Financial Tips for Freelancers

Preparing for tax season is yet another thing freelancers should do more of. Too often people get fooled by the amount of money they make only to find out that almost a third of that doesn’t even belong to them.

Separate your personal and business expenses (accounts) to get a better idea of what you’re up for and audit your taxes regularly. It pays to be prepared; quite literally.

2. Make Use of Contracts

The Internet — you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy; except for Mos Eisley, perhaps. By now, probably everyone and their grandmothers were scammed at least once over the Internet; freelancers face this issue almost daily.

The solution: draft a contract for every new job you do to protect yourself from being ripped off by unscrupulous clients. Of course, this does not means you should make potential clients sign contracts for every small gig you do online; use common sense.

Overall, making use of contracts is not only good for your financial well-being but also for your reputation. By insisting on signing contracts before certain jobs, you’ll give off a sense of professionalism and clients will take you more seriously as a result; understand them, they too have been victims of scams in the past.

Protip: for some larger jobs, always include a deposit. That way you won’t have to live primarily off of air until the project’s end; 20% to 50% is the industry standard in most niches.

Make Use of Contracts

3. Know Your Limits

When you’re a freelancer, it’s easy to get carried away by present successes. Yet, the sporadic nature of the job can often leave you in great debt without any real source of income.

What’s more, missing any outstanding payments can impact your credit history beyond repair. The moral of the story — known your limits!

To get a good idea of where you stand, be sure to check your credit score, regularly; especially so when you’re thinking of applying for a loan.

Keeping an eye on this will make it easier for you to apply for mortgage and car loans later in your life, so do try to stay on the safe side.

4. Set up an Emergency Stash

Flexibility means having the freedom to organize yourself, not being free to do whatever and whenever you want (all of the time); that’s called anarchy.

Usually, the best way of protecting oneself (financially) is by setting some money aside in the form of an emergency fund. When you’re a freelancer, you learn the true meaning of a dry season on your skin (too many a time).

Apart from the obvious financial benefits, another thing a stashed cache does for you is — it provides you with an ease of mind. With some funds safely tucked away, you won’t feel as pressured as you would otherwise during these few dry months.

So, start chipping off some funds from each paycheck from now on and put them into a savings account, just to be on the safe side; use an automatic billing system if necessary to keep the payments flowing.

5. Save up for Retirement

The story of the ant and the grasshopper — my favorite. You might be enjoying your high-life now, but, in a few years, you’ll regret not putting away more money for your retirement fund. Of course, by that time it will already be too late… start today!

Since you’re self-employed, you need to sponsor your retirement plan. Depending on your country, there are a few options at your disposal, including:

SEP IRA — lower taxes than a traditional IRA.
Solo 401(k) — a simplified version of the regular 401(k) plan; made for the self-employed.
SIMPLE IRA — employer contributions are tax-deductible in the form of business expenses.
Self-managed super funds — a superannuation fund you manage on your own.

Whichever one of these you pick, remember to always contribute to your plan, and contribute often.

Business

What is a Customer Data Platform?

Published

2 months ago

January 27, 2023

TwinzTech

A customer Data Platform (CDP) is a new approach to centralizing your business’s promotional and sales information. Learn how companies use CDP to get ahead of the competition and effectively address their clients.

Table of Contents

1. Understanding a Customer Data Platform

A customer data platform stores and organizes customer information in one place, making it accessible to various customer care, sales, and marketing departments. The software can do its functions because it compiles information from multiple channels, such as your company’s social media profiles, website statistics, and live chat sessions.

You may best analyze your consumer’s needs and produce more targeted marketing campaigns with a customer data platform. Your marketing and sales activities will be more efficient, saving you time and resources. The advertising, sales and other teams that you manage will be able to make more informed decisions with the help of detailed prospective customers.

2. Reasons Why Businesses Should Implement a Customer Data Platform

A customer data platform is essential for modern businesses for many reasons.

The Elimination of Third-Party Cookies

Given the development of privacy rules and the shifting security expectations of consumers, marketing methods dependent on cookies set by third parties are becoming more unsustainable.

First-party consumer data, collected directly from your clientele, is the new gold standard. You may better serve your clients’ individual needs by creating a unified database of their information and using that information to send them tailored messages. By adjusting to the world of first-party cookies, your digital advertising will be able to draw on a far richer pool of data, including consumer interactions, choices, and transactions.

Development of Comprehensive Channels of Interaction

Advertising platforms like Google Ads and social media are becoming more popular among businesses. Direct mail campaigns are one kind of marketing communication, sales call to prospective clients, and in-person visits from clients. Whatever channel your consumers choose to engage with your company, it’s essential to provide them with a smooth, customized experience.

Omni-channel success begins with a detailed consumer profile fed by a customer data platform. If you do not have the proper marketing software, your clients may have a poor experience with you on several platforms. That is an issue since clients who are unclear on what they want cannot make a purchase.

Adopting a More Personalized Approach to Advertising is The Norm Now

Marketing Messages that are universally sent to all customers, both present and prospective, are no longer appropriate. Consider the impact of brand loyalty on advertising, for instance. One customer’s connection with your business is not the same as another’s, even if they have made many purchases from you.

With marketing technology, particularly a customer data platform, it is now feasible to personalize marketing communications in response to individual customers’ actions. The most excellent way to learn what a consumer wants is to tailor your marketing to their purchases, purchasing habits, and associated activities.

Upgrades That Will Help Your Business Thrive

3. Benefits of Customer Data Platform

Track the Most Productive Advertising Avenues

Knowing who you are selling to enables you to focus on the most effective methods of communication. Their use patterns may help you determine the best places to advertise to them, increasing your chances of success.

Make Better Products and Services Available

Understanding your clientele has applications beyond advertising and sales. Customers’ pain concerns are a goldmine of information for developing fresh offerings that appeal to your target market.

Upgrades Your Advertising Language

With a deeper understanding of your target demographic, you can craft more persuasive marketing communications. Knowing your potential market’s language, pain points desired solutions, and previous purchases allow you to communicate with them more effectively.

Accumulate All of Your Client Information in One Centralized Database

There are many different places where data on your customers may be found. A customer data platform consolidates data from several sources into a centralized repository, giving you a complete view of your clientele in one convenient location. There is no need to go between applications to compile data on your clientele.

4. Final Verdict

Consolidating real-time data sources, linking them to a customer profile, and making them instantly deployable in a campaign gives a CDP a great chance of winning over your present marketing team members. As the pace of your campaigns increases on a global scale, you may find yourself in the advantageous situation of improving the degree of customization and targeted advertising. This aligns with a decline in time spent on data cleansing and making ads.