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From 1 Client to 20: Expanding Your Online Service Business

Online freelancers and entrepreneurs have a valuable business asset that few offline service businesses can apply: the ability to scale and size their workload, and in turn their income, effectively. With the right amount of employees and professional assistance, the only barrier to an increased online service income is the amount of clients and inbound cash flow that you can attract to your business.

This article isn’t for freelancers that are just taking their first steps into online work and haven’t built a regular client base. As difficult and confusing as that period can be, it’s not something that can be fixed with greater optimization and business expansion. Early on, it’s important to focus on one thing only: acquiring more clients.

However, for freelancers that are already inundated with work to do, there’s a distinctly different concern resting on their minds: how to deal with it all. From extra employees to client management strategies, this article covers the basics of business expansion, attracting ideal clients and low-maintenance assignments, and intelligent online service business management.

Hiring Employees and Managing Contractors

Hiring online employees can be difficult, especially when you’re working within an entirely virtual space. Online labor might be cost-effective, but it’s difficult to interview and judge a job candidate when the only interaction you have access to is via Skype and MSN Messenger.

However, there are some quick optimizations and methods to make your online hiring efforts less stressful. The first is to set a challenge for potential employees to ensure competence. Instead of asking people to email through a resume and a quick introduction, ask potential full-time employees to include a certain word or code at the end of their email. This ensures that they’ve read through the entire job posting, rather than simply skimming through it in a rush to submit an application.

Hiring contractors is a little different, especially if you don’t have time to spare on a short assignment. Instead of setting up a test, look at previous feedback on a job website such as Elance or Odesk. With some quick checks into their previous work and assignments, it’s easy to get an all-round look at whether or not someone is trustworthy and easy to work with.

Organizing Clients and Prioritizing Assignments

When your business is dealing with tens, sometimes even hundreds of clients, management and organization can become a nightmare. Even if you’re not directly responsible for any client work, assigning different projects and managing progress can quickly eat up time, making it even more difficult to deal with new clients.

The solution: prioritize certain work above all else. Create an effort-based timetable, where simple orders are processed quickly, no matter what large orders are looming on the horizon. By organizing your employees’ time around effort-based projects, managing future projects becomes significantly more simple and much less time consuming.

Cost-Effective Outsourcing Ideas

Outsourcing can be inexpensive, but all too often it turns into a nightmare of ignored instructions and patently terrible work. We’ve all heard horror stories about $3 per hour assistants and ultra-cheap foreign labor, and the most alarming part is that most of the stories are true.

Whenever you’re outsourcing, it’s best to prepare for the worst case scenario. Have a backup plan ready should things fall through, even if it means you tackling the assignment yourself. As frustrating as a poor outsourcing choice can be, once you’ve had enough stressful experiences you’ll begin to find a team that you can work with long-term.

Keeping Clients in the Know

As convenient as outsourcing can sometimes be, it’s slightly unethical not to let your clients know that you’re not working on their projects independently. The best solution, as always, is radical honesty. It’s amazing how many clients don’t mind where their work is coming from, so long as it’s high quality and what they were looking for. Rather than hiding the fact that you’re outsourcing some aspects of project work to contractors, let your clients know straight away that you’re using a range of different providers to keep a price point and quality level that works for them.

Honesty about outsourcing is only one part of keeping clients in the know. When it comes to major projects, it’s best to regularly update clients and keep project status clear. Regular status reports are best, along with biweekly or monthly overall progress reports for lengthy projects and high-effort assignments.

Managing Current Clients While Expanding

Sooner or later, every online service business hits a tipping point. They’ve built a large enough client base to bring in comfortable income and steady work, but their current client commitments stop them from being able to expand further. There are several solutions to this problem, but one stands out as the best.

Whenever possible, put yourself in a position where excess work can be completed without your direct assistance. When your current employee and contractor base can cover incoming design assignments and projects, you’re free to look at expanding your business towards other clients, business goals, or even revenue streams. With a high-power base of on-contract and employed staff, your business can gain the time and management flexibility required to expand further and increase earnings.

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