The main reason most freelance businesses fail is that they simply run out of money. Overheads are generally low but generating a steady flow of income can be a challenge. Creative freelancers in particular often struggle with this side of the business as it's not in their nature to go out and hustle for sales. To help see where sales are coming from we dug into the data, went through our stats and asked a bunch of established freelancers where they get jobs from. Here's what came back.

1. The top answer was Social Media. However this answer does come with a caveat. The question that was asked was 'where do you generate most of your new sales from? Breaking down 'social media', Twitter was the platform that produced the most sales followed by Facebook with LinkedIn slightly beating Instagram to the number 3 spot presumably as Instagram doesn't allow for links right now. Nail Artists, however, said that most of their work came from clients seeing their Instagram work followed by a click to the freelancer's website.  
    
2. Word of mouth was the second highest answer. The term used was recommendations which covers online referrals too. Recommendations have never been so important for freelancers with more clients turning to friends or reviews to find the service they're looking for. Particularly with freelancers, it's more than just the service you provide, it's your personality and professionalism that counts just as much. 
   
   
3. Jobs Boards took the number three spot. This constitutes sites with a jobs board that allows the freelancer to apply for roles online. Once your profile is set up, applying for jobs takes up very little time and can result in 'easy sales'. Take it from us, if you're proactive and regularly update your profile on a small number of platforms, you'll highly increase your chances of landing new freelance jobs. Most freelance jobs that we post on Freelancer Club need to be filled quickly and the employer will make a call within a couple of days, sometimes a couple of hours if it's urgent. Bridal roles are statistically less urgent to fill and so don't require such a fast response but it's best to be on the first page of applicants than the last. Who gets the job? Statistically, it's the freelancer who addresses the brief in their message, provides a competitive quote (rarely does the cheapest get the job) and has a complete profile with content that relates to the job. 
    
4. Networking Events made the top 5 with more and more opportunities for freelancers to meet clients and collaborators at events. Check out sites like meetup.com or eventbrite.co.uk to see what's up. Blatant self promotion alert, you can also check out our events page or attend a Freelancer Club networking event.  
    
5. Advertising turned out to the be the lowest score however this was due to many of the freelancers that we spoke not running paid advertising campaigns. Interestingly, the ones that were advertising found that their return in investment was more positive on smaller targeted sites rather than the likes of Gumtree or Google. 

To see what jobs we currently have, check out the Jobs Board.