🔥 Campfire 13
Why you shouldn’t ignore your competitors, applied over gained knowledge, it all stacks up, and how to earn more as a freelancer
Why you shouldn’t ignore your competitors
A decade ago, you might have heard that you don't need to look up your competitors and focus on your customers. While building a SaaS was a hard job to do, that was the case. There was also much less competition in each industry.
However, now researching your competitors is one of the parts of the product development process. And if you don't do it often and properly, they might eat your lunch.
In her article, Marie Prokopets outlines the types of competitors and expands on four competitive analysis methods to learn about your customers.
Applied knowledge over gained knowledge
I wrote something very similar at the beginning of this year on Twitter. Instead of reading 50+ books per year, I would rather read one and implement everything I’ve learned.
Reading and gaining knowledge is great, but only applying it can give you results.
In his tweet, Tanay outlined this idea in a good way.
Reading 100 books a year might sound fascinating.
But the real magic lies in reading 1 book every month and adding the learnings to your lifestyle.— Tanay Pratap (@tanaypratap) March 24, 2022
It all stacks up
People think that it can't be as easy as making a little progress each day. But the truth is that this is the only way to grow.
The visual by Jeff Kortenbosch shows this perfectly:
Learn one new thing every day, month, or year... big or small - it all stacks up. pic.twitter.com/q0tKbhRJqT
— Jeff Kortenbosch (@jeffkortenbosch) March 18, 2022
How to earn more as a freelancer
Earning more is a goal of everyone who’s running a freelancing business. The industry gurus say that to make more money, you need to solve more significant problems. And that’s true because you always get paid for the value created, not hours worked.
But real-life experience told me that to earn more as a freelancer, you don’t have to solve bigger problems (even though if you do, your chances are higher). You just have to find clients who are willing to pay more for what you are already doing.
Let me give you an example of this. My first job on Upwork was designing and building a website for $200. Three years later, I created the same-size website for $9,000. The difference? The client was willing to spend much more money on it.
If I did the job for the first client even after three years of working as a designer, I probably wouldn’t charge over $500 for the project. But I found a second client and positioned myself as a professional, allowing me to charge 45x more for the same work. Crazy, right?
So if you want to earn more as a freelancer, find a client who’s willing to spend more money on the work you’re an expert in. It’s not easy to find such clients, but definitely possible. And I’m the proof of that. If I can do it – you can too.