Podcast

Episode 145: Mastering Your Freelance Offers: A Guide to Creating High-Impact Freelance Services

By Zach Swinehart

In this episode, Zach dives into the key elements of crafting irresistible freelance service offerings that drive high-value outcomes. Discover how to structure your service offerings to emphasize measurable ROI, making your work more appealing to potential clients and helping you command higher prices.

You’ll learn how to differentiate between demonstrable, subjective, and commoditized service values and why focusing on ROI-driven outcomes can set you apart in the crowded freelance market. Whether you’re just starting or looking to refine your offers, this episode will guide you through creating a scoring system to evaluate the impact and ease of delivery of your services.

I also talk about:

  • The “freelance service offering thermometer” and how to categorize services by their demonstrable, subjective, or commoditized outcomes.
  • The importance of defining your niche and aligning your offer to high-value problems.
  • How to use a service offering scorecard to evaluate and refine your freelance services.
  • The role of ROI demonstrability in client acquisition and how to showcase early wins.
  • Strategies for selecting KPIs that reflect the impact of your work without being overly reliant on client actions.

Tune in to learn how to create compelling freelance offerings that clearly demonstrate value, resonate with clients, and set you on a path to sustainable growth.

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AI-Generated Summary:

  • 0:00 – 2:00 — Zach introduces his “200K Freelancer” course and explains the common mistakes freelancers make with offers.
  • 2:00 – 4:00 — Zach discusses the importance of defining your audience and problems before creating an offer, emphasizing the sequence of niche, problem, then offer.
  • 4:00 – 6:00 — Zach introduces a “freelance service offering thermometer” that categorizes service value into demonstrable, subjective, and commoditized outcomes.
  • 6:00 – 8:00 — Zach explains demonstrable outcome value, which includes services that deliver clear, measurable results like generating traffic, leads, or sales.
  • 8:00 – 10:00 — Zach continues discussing high-value outcomes, including saving money or time, and introduces subjective value, where the financial impact of services becomes less clear.
  • 10:40 – 12:00 — Zach discusses subjective outcome value in services like compliance and protection from risks, emphasizing how the likelihood of risk affects perceived value.
  • 12:00 – 14:00 — Zach explains the challenge of measuring success for services that help create or fulfill products, noting the subjective nature of their value.
  • 14:00 – 16:00 — Zach covers nurturing and authority-building services, highlighting how subjective value is tied to personal perception rather than direct financial impact.
  • 16:00 – 18:00 — Zach addresses the fear freelancers have about committing to demonstrable value due to perceived guarantees and reliance on client performance.
  • 18:00 – 20:00 — Zach introduces a service offering scorecard, explaining how freelancers can rate the ease and impact of their service to refine their offerings effectively.
  • 20:00 – 22:00 — Zach explains how the scoring algorithm prioritizes ease of delivery over the attractiveness of an offer, encouraging early validation with minimal upskilling.
  • 22:00 – 24:00 — Zach introduces the service offering scorecard, detailing how freelancers can manually score offers based on various criteria for better decision-making.
  • 24:00 – 26:00 — Zach emphasizes the importance of objective outcome value over subjective or commoditized value in freelance services to make sales easier and command higher prices.
  • 26:00 – 28:00 — Zach discusses ROI demonstrability, explaining the importance of clearly connecting work to measurable outcomes like sales or lead generation for easier client buy-in.
  • 28:00 – 30:00 — Zach delves into subjective time ROI, illustrating how saving clients time can be valuable, though harder to justify and price compared to directly measurable financial returns.
  • 30:00 – 32:00 — Zach explains how freelancers can differentiate their time ROI by emphasizing efficient processes, but notes this approach takes time and experience to refine.
  • 32:00 – 34:00 — Zach discusses the impact of time to ROI on service scores, using SEO as an example where initial results take time to materialize but can deliver significant long-term value.
  • 34:00 – 36:00 — Zach highlights the importance of considering aggregated ROI for services that create ongoing benefits, such as SEO or conversion rate optimization.
  • 36:00 – 38:00 — Zach shares how he uses a calculator on his CRO website to demonstrate ROI to clients, showing potential revenue increases from improved conversion rates.
  • 38:00 – 40:00 — Zach illustrates how to estimate the value of traffic or conversions over time, helping freelancers understand the broader financial impact of their services on clients.
  • 40:00 – 42:00 — Zach explains how ongoing traffic and lead generation improvements can provide significant long-term value and help justify service pricing.
  • 42:00 – 44:00 — Zach emphasizes the importance of showing early wins to clients and how to frame ROI timelines to make your service a no-brainer.
  • 44:00 – 46:00 — Zach discusses KPI result autonomy, stressing the importance of how much control freelancers have over the outcomes and how external client actions can impact results.
  • 46:00 – 48:00 — Zach highlights the challenges freelancers face when their success is dependent on client actions, using examples like developers working with strict QA processes.
  • 48:00 – 50:00 — Zach underscores the importance of selecting KPIs that are closely tied to your work but still meaningful to the client, avoiding outcomes that are too distant or overly reliant on external factors.
  • 50:00 – 52:00 — Zach explains how to score your service offering using the scorecard, detailing how each section contributes to the total score out of 70.
  • 52:00 – 54:00 — Zach goes through specific scoring criteria, including ease of delivery, outcome value, ROI demonstrability, and time to outcome.
  • 54:00 – 56:00 — Zach details the KPI result autonomy, emphasizing how much freelancers rely on clients to achieve key outcomes and the impact on scoring.
  • 56:00 – 58:00 — Zach provides a scoring breakdown, explaining the grade scale from A to F and how heavily the score is weighted towards minimal upskilling time.
  • 58:00 – 1:00:00 — Zach emphasizes the importance of leveraging existing skills and experience when choosing offers, suggesting gradual skill-building for more valuable services over time.
  • 1:00:00 – 1:02:00 — Zach encourages students to fill out the scorecard and mentions that upcoming modules in the 200K Freelancer course will focus on validating offers and ideal client profiles.
  • 1:02:00 – 1:04:00 — Zach outlines the next steps in the course, including lead generation and outreach strategies designed to validate offers and secure first clients.
  • 1:04:00 – 1:06:00 — Zach explains the course flow from ideation to scaling, emphasizing how foundational steps like niche selection and offer creation support overall freelance business growth.
  • 1:06:00 – 1:07:26 — Zach shares how to join the waitlist for the 200K Freelancer course, highlighting limited spots and the high-touch, hands-on approach of the program.