There are a few things that every freelancer needs at the start of their career -  spare time, patience,the ability to self promote, stubbornness, and something to sell. Other than that, all you need are these 5 important documents to help you interact with your clients and get the basics down. Use them as templates for your own documents and check out the resources below each to improve and augment them.

Email Pitch – Key to getting some of those first jobs, the email pitch can say a lot about what kind of freelancer you are and what you can do for a potential client. I send lots of these things and certainly not all of them stick with potential clients or even get a response but I have nothing to lose by sending them and they occasionally lead to great and unexpected projects. Having an email pitch half prepared will save you some time and allow you to send out more cold emails to more potential clients by filling in a few lines of personalized details.

The email pitch is more or less the Internet equivalent of the elevator pitch. Freelance Folder has a great article about perfecting your elevator pitch.

For very in depth and informative guide to creating great client pitches check out 10 Essential Steps to Making the Perfect Pitch at Freelance Switch.

Resume – Sometimes all clients want to see is your website and your work but when a client wants to see a resume you should have one prepared. What your resume looks like will vary greatly from person to person and profession to profession but my resume includes some unorthodox sections that apply more to us freelancers.

Allfreelance.com has some more specific advice on writing resumes for freelancers and small businesses that can help to make your resume as professional and complete as possible

Karissa at Freelance Pulse has written a great article outlining how to perfect your resume and how to get it up to par with the rest of the creative professionals out there.

Contract – Not all freelancers like to have a contract for their services, claiming that it’s too much hassle and gives off an overly formal approach. I think it’s particularly important to have a contract written up and in place at all times but especially for the first few jobs of the young freelancer. It gives you important protection from being taken advantage of as a young freelancer and can also be downright impressive to a client. Download and use my contract as freely as you please and change all the terms to match your specific projects and conditions.

Laura Spencer at Freelance Folder has written an interesting post that talks about the debate as to whether you need a contract for freelance work or not. Presented objectively, it lists some of the pros and cons for each side of the argument.

Over at Inkthinker Blog there is a great resource article that lists a bunch of freelance contract samples and resources that you should certainly check out and add to you contract research.

Questionnaire - Functioning as a mini-design brief, this document is particularly important in my process. It’s a document that I attach to emails at some point in the process, usually early on, which helps me find out a great deal more about the client and the project all in one shot. I usually cut out some questions that have already been answered by the client and add in a few more as I go. The result is a short but effective design brief to guide my process and let me know what will be coming up later on in the project.

The wonderful Freelance Switch has a great guide to writing The Ultimate Design Brief that can be very helpful in thinking about what you want to get out of your brief and what questions to ask.

Eightyone Design also has some alternatives on how to write a brief for freelance graphic design work. It includes some important tips on how to make your brief or questionnaire much more than just a laundry list of tasks.

Invoice - Like the contract, having an invoice in not for everyone. We would all rather just do our freelance work and just have the money show up with out having to bother with it. Sometimes clients need a little prodding to get payments to you on time and having an invoice adds a degree of professionalism to your client dealings.

I would advise all who plan on using invoices in your freelance business to read this article on A List Apart about better invoices for better business. Like all articles on A List Apart it is well written and it is packed with very valuable information about constructing the best invoice for your business.

Some who would rather not deal with creating their own invoice and filling it out each time may opt for some of the online services listed here on Tutorial Blog. These services can be faster but they give you much less control and tend to give a less professional impression than a well branded document sent by you.

All of these documents present and opportunity to be branded to your company and enhance the overall experience of the client with a degree of professionalism. Download all the documents or individual ones, customize them and re-use them as your most important 5 documents for everyday freelancing. Disclaimer.

Do you use any other important freelance documents daily in you business? Are there suggestions you would make to improve the documents provided?  Please leave a comment and share these documents with your fellow freelancers.

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