By BloggerKhan

My profession is Management and Marketing and it revolves around outsourcing, ecommerce and marketing on the internet. Wise men say identify what you are passionate about and then see if ...

Are you a freelancer with big dreams and looking for those big projects. You are very experienced and have a good team around you but somehow big projects elude you. You refuse to be detracted by small projects and continue to decline them. Well maybe you should read this article as we share some of our experiences. 

We want to talk to you, the person reading this article about the importance of small projects and why you need to appreciate them. Whether you are a small digital agency, an individual freelancer or a student looking for a part-time gig, you need to understand the benefits of small projects.

A small project does not make you money. If you are a company, a small project quite often will result in a loss as there are costs associated with projects no matter how small that a company has to absorb. But what it does is get you a foot in the door and if you do a good job, helps you establish credibility and familiarity. Your clients will quite often talk to you about other issues they may have and as they open up more to you, there may be additional areas where you can help them. You become a confidant to the business owner.

Let me share some of our experiences with you below:

We had a client who hired us for interfacing his inventory management system with his eBay store. We did that job in a couple of days. Periodically we would talk and he was wondering if he should have his own website in addition to his eBay store. Direct sales would save him the 10 to 15% eBay commission. We designed and developed an OpenCart ecommerce site for him, integrated inventory downloads from multiple suppliers to his system and then upload products data feeds to eBay and Amazon. Without adding more administrative personnel, the client now does a lot more business at a lower cost and with greater efficiency and accuracy as everything is synchronized. That one week project has blossomed into a 2 year long relationship.

A lady with a small Yoga training business asked us to help her setup a membership system on her website. We suggested DAP for membership management, she liked it and asked us to implement that. Tiny project. We did that and have not had any additional business from this client. She is happy with her website and her membership works. You may call it a waste of effort. Not quite. That experience with membership for a fitness oriented site helped us land two more clients in the same business. Why? Because we had a reference site and the new clients could trust us to understand their business better because of our past experience in that area.

Another client dealing with high end audio equipment hired us to fix a few minor issues with his WordPress site. We took care of that and that gave him suggestions about improving his website. He liked our ideas and gave us a project that lasted 3 months.

One client was using ZOHO CRM. He asked us to do some modifications and tailor ZOHO to his needs. We tried but ZOHO being a SaaS product would not let us do everything the way the client wanted. We apprised the client of the situation and returned his money. The client appreciated that. Two months later the same client gave us a much larger project involving ZOHO and Pandadocs and we successfully implemented that.

Small projects also give you variety. You will never feel stuck doing the same thing over and over.

Small projects give you future leverage

We know that small projects may not seem like a lot of dollars, especially if you are a very ambitious person, but welcome them and over time you will have a full portfolio. Your portfolio is the bigger picture and so are the connections you make. These small gigs are going to take you there. Embrace them, do your best and use them as leverage for a grand career.

Good luck!