photo credit: Ivan Walsh

The New Year is just around the corner. Are you ready for it? In this article, I’m going to give you some top tips for greater success in 2010.

• Write a business plan. Yes, you are in a business and just because you’re a freelancer and you might not be going to the bank to get a loan doesn’t mean that you don’t need a business plan. It doesn’t have to be an insanely formal document, but it should be something you use as a guide and reference throughout the year.

• Blog regularly. A blog is a great way to connect with readers – both prospects and customers. If you blogged twice a week last year, consider bumping it up to three times a week this year.

• Create some best practices and systems so that you can spend less time on fiddly stuff and more time on billable work. Invest money if you have to.

• Spend time refining your niche and identify who your perfect client is. Then go after that client.

• Commit to promoting someone every week. It doesn’t have to be huge but it should be genuine. Write them a LinkedIn referral or talk about their business on Twitter. Be selfless and honest. You’d love it if someone did it for you so do it first.

• Identify the top 3 things that keep you from doing work (i.e. procrastination techniques or troublesome clients or unnecessary personal demands) and eliminate them.

• Schedule regular mental retreats for yourself (say, once every 2 or 3 months) to get away from everything and just do creative brainstorming and reading and relaxing.

• Figure out a new service you can provide your existing customers to increase revenue without increasing your marketing and lead generation time.

• Outline 3 business goals you have and start networking to solve those goals.

• They say that what gets measured gets managed so identify some measurable numbers in your business and track them every day. (For example, I use average-rate-per-word as my metric and every day I figure out how many words I wrote and how much I earned overall and then I can calculate what my rate-per-word is that day. Then I work to improve it the next day).

• Plan your goals for 2011 (yes, 2011) and create action plans for 2010 that can help you achieve those 2011 goals.

I love new beginnings because it’s always fun to jump in with some good practices and lots of vision and to start the year off on the right foot. You can too by following these tips now and by revisiting them throughout the year to make sure that you are on track.

Have an enjoyable New Years Eve. Stay safe, don’t drink and drive. When you count down, think about how you are counting down to a year of new opportunity. And have a GREAT 2010!