5 Lessons I Learned as a Freelancer

A collection of the best lessons I learned in my first year as a freelancer.

It’s a new year and the first of January happens to mark my first anniversary as a freelance designer.

Needless to say, taking the plunge into the unknown is always a risky business. However, going freelance wasn’t as scary as I initially thought it would be. Below is a list of lessons which I collected along the way.

1. Use idle time wisely

Luckily, things worked out great for me from day one since I had already been doing freelance on the side while working at my previous full-time job. That meant I already had a list of loyal clients I could turned to. But things aren’t always sunshine and rainbows. I received my first hit in March which was still very early in the year. Early enough to throw me into panic mode and start questioning my recent career move. For 3 whole weeks there were no new emails in my inbox. What was going on? Nothing much really. It’s part of the job. There’ll be sunny days and there will be gloomy ones, too.

Instead of focusing too much on the problem, I tried to figure out how I could use this idle time to my advantage. Earlier in the year, Cedric Vella was telling me how his site needed a facelift and I thought that this could be the right time to work on it. So, I offered to work on his site for free since idle time was costing me money anyway if I weren’t making something out of it. Once the site was launched, it received a lot of attention and it was featured on design blogs and web galleries which in return got my inbox busy again.

You may not always have a project waiting for you to work on, but my point is this: don’t stop being productive just because you don’t have any clients asking for work to be done. This might be the right time to work on that personal project that you have been postponing or try to pick up a new skill. Whatever it is that you work on, make sure it’s some of the best work you have ever produced and let the world see it. Use sites like dribbble, or just your own site — after all it’s always nice to see some fresh work in your portfolio. Use this as personal marketing to hopefully attract some new clients or collaborators, which brings us to the next point.

2. Your work is your best friend

And so are your clients. Word of mouth is still the best marketing tool out there and to this day most of my work comes from referrals.

Very often I receive enquiries with things like “I like what you did on the Hangar site” or “I need something similar to your website.” Your work is proof of the quality of work that you are able to produce and your client relationship is proof of the quality of service. Do not underestimate either. Clients will spread the word saying how happy with the service they are and how confident they felt with the whole process—potential clients will then use your work to judge the quality that they’ll be paying for. These two go hand in hand.

3. Find productive patterns

One of the most talked about perks of being a freelancer is flexibility. Freelance allows you to schedule work the way you think fits your lifestyle. But this can be both a blessing and a curse and self-discipline is imperative in making sure that your working hours are as productive as you wish them to be.

For the first few weeks, I adopted a regular 9 to 5 timetable as that was what I was used to, but soon enough I realised that I may have different productive patterns and that I am more productive after having short breaks. So eventually I stretched my working day but introduced frequent breaks in between. Breaks could be anything from preparing lunch to going for a walk or cycling. Anything works as long as you stay away from your laptop or the internet.

4. Stay organised

Running my own show meant that I had to play various roles. I wasn’t only a designer now. I was the accountant, the sales person, the project manager and everyone else that a small business requires to run smoothly. At times this can become overwhelming and updating expenses spreadsheets and keeping track of payments are tedious jobs which unfortunately we all need to do. The good news is that tools such as Tradeshift and Google Drive make these small tasks easier to manage.

But being organised goes a longer way and I also realised that I needed to work more efficiently. As most people who work on the web, we need to be constantly up to date and this means reading blogs and following sites on a day to day basis. This can become a distraction and stopping every ten minutes to read the hottest news in the tech world is counter-productive. I decided that I needed to separate this from my work and started using Readability to bookmark any interesting articles which can have my full attention later.

5. Learn new skills

One of the biggest challenges I faced at the start of the year was that I was now a one man band as opposed to the team setup I was used to at my previous job. Having a developer in the same room had always been helpful and whether I wanted an animated illustration or some other Javascript triggered event, it was just a matter of asking for it. For years, I never had to deal with Javascript as there was always someone taking care of that. But that has changed. I had no other choice but to learn that myself; unless I wanted to outsource the work.

I admit that I struggled at first and I still have a long way to go, but experiences like these really push us out of our comfort zone and the result can be extremely rewarding.

Here’s a bonus lesson. I felt that including this one in the 5 lessons would be cheating, as it probably covers more than fifty, but reading Design is a Job by Mike Monteiro has definitely taught me a whole lot about freelancing. Don’t let the title mislead you, as this is not just for designers. As long as your everyday work involves working with clients you can easily swap the word design with code, copywriting or whatever it is that you do.

Just like most of A Book Apart’s books this is a quick read and I could easily say that it was the best book I read last year. It goes into all the tiny details of working with clients, including the most dreaded ones such as contracts.

Whether you’re already freelancing or thinking of making the switch soon, I hope that these 5 tips will help you deal with some of the day to day issues that you might face as a freelancer but the most important thing to keep in mind is to keep making great work.