Students That Freelance

Well, before I go any further, I am assuming you would like to know the definition—or at least my take—of “sustainable competitive advantage,” so here we go. My definition of sustainable competitive advantage is this: anything that you or your business can do to gain an advantage that helps you compete in the long term and is difficult for another business or entity to duplicate.

Whoa. So let’s break that down just a bit. An advantage can be anything that makes you more viable as a business than another business. Wal-Mart’s advantage (well, one of them) is that they are able to negotiate with their vendors to get the products at the lowest possible price, because they are buying very large quantities at a time. Their size is their advantage, and because of this, they use it as a competitive factor. What is that competitive factor? That their prices are low. When they are able to negotiate to lower their buying price on products from vendors, those savings translate into savings for their consumers. There is no other retail company larger than Wal-Mart. Therefore, no one else can compete on size because Wal-Mart has that covered. Since Wal-Mart is so huge, and it is very hard for other retailers to grow as fast and/or as solid as Wal-Mart, that makes Wal-Mart’s size their sustainable competitive advantage, because they are able to sustain that advantage without other companies duplicating that advantage easily.

Since student freelancers aren’t Wal-Mart, what can student freelancers compete on, that is an advantage that can’t be easily duplicated? It is highly recommended to not compete on price (even though Wal-Mart and other companies do) because it can be easily duplicated, not to mention that in a service-type business (that we student freelancers are) price is typically indicative of quality.

Could a service offering be a sustainable competitive advantage for a student freelancer? Possibly. What if a student freelancer is a photographer, who does portraits really well? Well, while in school, this student freelancer also learned how to paint portraits really well, and very lifelike. This particular student freelancer could add a service to their offering that they could not only photograph a family’s annual portrait, but could also paint it and frame it for the family to hang in their living room. How difficult do you think it would be for other portrait photographers to offer that service themselves? If other photographers had to partner up with a painter in order to provide this service, then yes, it can be easily copied. However, what if the freelancer marketed it in a way that gave quality to both the photograph and the painting, because that freelancer did both? What other freelancer could do both? Not many.

How about customer service? What if you became known for going above and beyond for your clients, helping them every step of the way, and doing the not-so-fun stuff that clients don’t want to do but that other freelancers don’t do (or don’t do as well)? Could that be an area where you could develop to provide impeccable customer service, that can’t be matched by other student freelancers? Very likely. If you are a print designer, you could work with a team of printers to negotiate pricing and offering, and offer it as a service. But not only that, you can provide exactly what your client wants, without having to bend toward the printer’s wishes. What if you could have it to your client the very next day, after a design has been approved? Could other freelancers do that successfully and still make a profit?

The point of the story is find ways in which you can gain a sustainable competitive advantage as a student freelancer to help propel your business forward. Students are in an interesting position to do so because they have all these resources available to start learning and discovering what they can also offer to their clients. Take some time to think about what makes you different from other freelancers like yourself and start working to make sure that no one can duplicate that advantage easily. As most business books describe, start building a wall between you and your competition that your competition can’t easily jump over to see what and how you are doing something. If they can see how, then they can duplicate it easily. And as you can probably guess, building a sustainable competitive advantage won’t be easy as well, but it will be well worth the time spent.