Partner Article

Top 4 Tips for Starting As a Contractor

Choosing to begin your own business as a contractor can be an exciting and frightening decision. There are a few things to consider before you take the plunge into becoming a contractor. There are a few obstacles that may need to be overcome but once you have everything in place you may find that this is the most rewarding career choice of your life. That said, there are a few things that could help you to better make the transition from employee to contractor:

• Understand What Contractor Means – Contracting or freelancing normally refers to designers, writers or other similar professions. Contractors offer services to clients, typically without a long term commitment. They charge either by the hour or the job and are typically a single person business.

• Knowing How to Brand Yourself – The first thing that you will need to consider is how to properly brand yourself. This simply means choosing a name that your clients can easily remember and preferably one that will give an inclination of your services. You can use this brand to create your business cards, logo, website and other aspects of your contractor business.

• Marking Yourself – Marketing yourself, particularly if you are going to be working in an online atmosphere, typically begins with creating a website. Creating that website needs to be done very carefully. There are many things to consider when choosing how to design a professional site and what information to include. As a general rule you should make your site name:

• Descriptive – You want your site’s name to tell people what it is that you do. Try to tie it into your business in some way.

• Memorable – Having a site with an extremely long domain name is simply asking for people to forget you. Choose a name that is as short as possible while still giving an idea of who you are and what you do.

• Easy – Your site’s name should be easy to spell and if at all possible, not contain any strange characters. When you are giving the name of your website to someone in person or over the phone, you want something that they can spell easily without having to clarify and something that does not contain underscores or dashes if possible.

When you are building your site there are things to consider as well. While you want the name of your website to be descriptive, you also want the site itself to offer information about your services. There are a few vital pieces of information that you simply must include:

• Introductory Statement – This is to let people know who you are and what services you offer.
• Samples – Whether you are a website designer, freelance writer or any other contractor it is important that you be able to showcase your work. Choose a few samples to display on your website.
• Contact Information – You have to give potential clients information on how to contact you. Include your email address, any IM accounts that you may use and your phone numbers for contact.

Tying It All Together

Choosing to begin your own business as a contractor can be very rewarding, provided you take the time to ensure that you are properly setting up your business. Know the legalities of your contractor business including tax requirements before you begin so that you can avoid problems in the future.

This article was provided by Nixon Williams, the UKs leading contractor accountants. Visit their site to learn more.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jake Hall .