If you have been a freelance writer or freelance graphic designer for many years, a time might come in your career when you desire to run your own show. Most freelancers work with platforms such as Upwork and Freelancer or Textbroker where they bid for projects or get assigned tasks to complete. Your years of experience as a freelancer might qualify you to launch your own freelance agency business if you would follow the procedure outlined in this guide.
What is a freelance agency?
A freelance agency is like an online company with a group of workers specializing in various aspects of a client’s project. There is the marketing team who sources for projects, the creative team who gets the job done, the finance which takes care of payments, the managers to ensure quality control and workers’ supervision, and the technical team to keep the platform working and functional for all parties.
For a writers’ agency such as Textbroker, there are marketers, editors, writers, supervisors, customer service, accountants, HR, and web developers. Depending on your skills, you may fit in as one of these service providers – most likely content creator or writer. But an independent freelancer on the other hand does the entire work by himself without reference to anyone – from sourcing for clients’ jobs to executing the tasks himself and getting paid directly.
How to start a freelance agency business
Before you decide on starting a freelance agency business, you must understand that you are planning on becoming an entrepreneur who will be managing several aspects of a remote business. You must have a sizeable budget to take care of all the departments – from acquiring clients to hiring freelancers and marketing. Here then is how to get started:
Define the creative services to offer
Depending on your personal and professional skills, you must know what services to offer before you launch your agency. This knowledge will enable you to target the correct clients and businesses for acquisition. The best bet is to structure your freelance agency business after freelancer specialization.
If you had always worked as a writer for other platforms, then you should start a content writing agency; and if you freelanced as a graphic designer, then your agency should be about graphic design. When you fully scale your business, you may include other offerings by diversifying.
Get a physical location even if you’re working remotely
Although almost all your work will be executed online, it pays to have a physical office where clients can visit if required. Local and state laws may also require that you have a physical location where you can be served official papers. Such an office might also be useful for in-person conferences if ever required. Ultimately, it makes clients to be sure that you’re a legitimate firm and not a fly-by-night gone-by-day business entity.
Choose a brand name
The name you choose for your agency is very critical to its success and it must reflect the structure and thrust of the agency. The name is the branding, and you must consider it for trademarks, domain registration, and online marketing among others.
Structure your agency and hire freelancers
You must structure your agency on how you want it to run based on your proposed services, and then hire freelancers for work. The employees and freelancers you hire must be critical to the success and daily operation of the agency business. A simple advert online will bring potential freelancers to you and you must interview or vet them before onboarding them, but you may have to do more to acquire paying clients whose jobs will keep you in business.
Establish a payment structure for services
As an agency, you’ll likely pay internal staff monthly salaries and remote freelancers on a per-project or hourly basis. You’ll also likely ask your clients to pay by hourly, per-project, or retainerships. Hired freelancers are content to work on an hourly or per-project basis so long the payment structure is well laid-out upfront. They will know what they will be paid once the project is executed satisfactorily and at what intervals – after each project, weekly, or monthly.
You can start a lucrative freelance agency business in 2022 if you start early enough, making you an employer of labor who is in the process of building wealth.
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