Freelancing often means managing everything in your own business, including the admin. But being a creative freelancer, also means there are opportunities to collaborate. Here are some benefits of collaborating with other freelancers:
1. Referrals
Collaborating with other freelancers opens up opportunities for you to gain referrals.
If you are a freelance writer, for example, and you have previously collaborated with a freelance web designer, they could recommend you next time they land a client who is looking for a content writer for their website.
This exact situation has happened to me a few times and is a natural, organic way to gain gig opportunities. It’s super helpful.
2. Learning
Collaborating with freelancers either in your niche or outside of it gives you the opportunity to broaden your perspective on how other people work. This can in turn help you when you work.
Working with others outside of your niche, in particular, will give you the opportunity to learn more about their niche and craftsmanship.
3. Meet-Ups
Working from home is not uncommon for the average freelancer.
But sometimes it is nice to work in different environments. And having a freelance friend to work alongside can be good company.
4. Testimonials
Collaborating with freelancers is an easy way to gain testimonials.
This can be helpful in building your brand, especially if you are searching for clients.
5. Exchanging Services
Some collaborations mean you can exchange your services and set of skills in exchange for another. If you are on a budget, collaborating in this way can be a good medium.
I know that it has helped me in certain situations. I collaborated with a previous client in exchange for a strategy call and I’m so glad I was able to do this!
6. Contacts: Benefits of Collaborating
Having a range of contacts as a freelancer can really help your brand and business. The more you collaborate, the more chance there is of another freelancer seeing an opportunity that may be of interest to you and share it with you.
I’m grateful for my freelancer friends who have shared freelance gigs with me. It helps ease the pressure off you solely looking for opportunities.
7. Social Skills: Benefits of Collaborating
Being a freelancer can be lonesome if you spend all your time doing work alone.
Meeting up with people every now and again can help you keep up with social skills that can be easy to slip off at if not around people much.
8. Allows You To Focus On Your Strengths
When you collaborate with another freelancer/s who are stronger in other areas than you, it helps take the pressure off of you to do everything, which is what freelancers are used to. Instead, you can play more to your strengths and let the other freelancer do the same. You can help each other out in this way.
9. Build Team Work Skills: Benefits of Collaborating
This also links to the previous point. Working alone can sometimes mean getting used to doing everything yourself, but through making time to collaborate with other freelancers, you are choosing to build team working skills, which is a skill in itself.
It’s a skill to understand how to effectively work together with others, especially when you are all passionate about a particular project. Collaborating with other freelancers helps you to exercise this skill.
10. Bring More Value To Your Clients: Benefits of Collaborating
Through collaborating with freelancers, you are expanding your network, which means your clients can ask you directly if you know of another freelancer to help them with something in another area, for example. This saves time on the client end as they don’t have to search as much for themselves or advertise on social media.
They can instead ask you through the contacts you have. You could even charge a commission based on the successful referrals you send to them. This point is a worthy addition to this list of benefits of collaborating with freelancers.
11. Helps You Look More Proffessional
Following on from the previous point, the more connections you have the more credible it makes you appear. It makes you seem like you are established and understand that your net worth is your network!
I hope this list of benefits of collaborating with other freelancers has helped you.
Also, if you are at the start of your freelance journey looking for guidance on how to navigate this world, I offer a Beginner Freelancer E-course to help you with this.
