Diversify Your Freelance Portfolio

If you’re like most people I know, you’re probably watching your financial portfolios and retirement accounts a little more closely after all the recent mayhem on Wall Street. But when was the last time you took a good hard look at your freelance portfolio—is it time to rebalance?

The prevailing wisdom among sage investors is to diversify, diversify, diversify. And the same holds true for your freelance business. Having a wide variety of clients and different kinds of work helps reduce the risk that your bank account will take too much of a hit if a client folds or starts scaling back on the amount of work they’re sending you.

In other words, don’t put all your freelance eggs in one basket!

Diversifying your freelance portfolio takes time, and I continue to diversify mine. At the moment, my freelance portfolio includes a nice mix of regular assignments from anchor clients, one-off writing assignments, an online editing position, and a blogging gig. My regular clients are also diverse—a radio station, a couple of trade publications, some online publications, and a few book publishers.

Based on my own experience, here are a few ways to diversify your freelance portfolio:

• Expand the definition of what you do. Is most of your income coming from one particular kind of freelance work or market? If you’ve always written for consumer magazines, why not try your hand at trades? Are you always taking on new writing assignments? Why not look for proofreading work to expand your horizons a little bit? It’s always a good idea to move beyond your comfort zone and into other areas. It helps make you more valuable as a freelancer too. Clients may not have the budget to hire a freelance writer right now, but perhaps they need someone to edit some of their online content. To find new streams of income, you have to continue looking for new opportunities to use your writing and editing skills.

• Say “yes” and see what happens. Don’t decline an assignment or project just because you’ve never done that kind of work before—say “yes” and see what happens! You’d be surprised at the doors that can open for you when you begin to step out of your comfort zone and do work that is entirely knew to you. Remember this: If you only do what you already know, you’ll never grow. And not growing is bad for business. In fact, businesses that don’t adapt or change eventually go out of business.

• Specialize, specialize, specialize. Do you have expertise in a certain area or a particular interest or hobby that you know a lot about? Building a brand for yourself around your area of expertise can help land you some great assignments. In my case, I capitalize on the fact that I’m a certified human resources specialist and frequently pursue clients who need HR-related content or expertise. And even if you don’t have a specialty, there’s no better time than the present to begin developing one. Competition is fierce in this current environment, and anything you can do to make yourself stand out from other freelancers is a real benefit right now.

• Aim for long- and short-term assignments. It is helpful to have a healthy mix of short- and long-term assignments—it provides added security. I have a couple of standing gigs that supply a base income, and then I supplement those assignments with shorter-term projects. It’s difficult to build a freelance business based on one-off, short-term assignments. My recommendation? Build a foundation with some anchor clients so that you have a base monthly income that you can rely on every month, but supplement that with shorter term assignments.

• Rebalance your client base.  If your clients are connected to an industry that is not doing so well right now, pay close attention and rebalance your freelance portfolio accordingly. For example, it’s no secret that many newspapers and publishing companies are experiencing an unprecedented decline in ad revenues. Many online publications, however, are doing quite well. So to keep money flowing in the right direction, you might want to consider pursuing more online writing assignments.

• Follow the money. Give some thought to the sectors that are not feeling as much of a budget crunch right now. For example, the health care industry usually continues to do well even in a down economy. Are there trade publications associated with the health care industry that you can write for? Many hospitals also have marketing and public relations departments that hire the occasional freelancer to help write their internal and external newsletters and marketing materials.

So how have you diversified your freelance portfolio? I’d love to hear from you!

Best,

Jenny