7 Tips to Avoid Common Freelancing Nightmares
Being a freelancer has its benefits, you’re the boss, you control your working hours, and it’s like living in complete bliss. But if that’s really the case wouldn’t everybody be quitting their day job and going unconventional for good? If you’re considering freelancing or even just know a bit about it, you must’ve come across some horror stories. Late payments, no payments, really horrible clients, some legal problem, almost every freelancer has a horror story to tell.
It’s quite true that there are few tough projects and nasty clients out there but that’s not the entirety of this situation. And with a few cautious steps, you can very easily avoid some of the very common freelancing nightmares. So if you’re thinking about becoming a freelancer here are some tips that will help you avoid any freelancing nightmare and kick-start an amazing career.
1. Plan It Out — The Blueprint
Remember that time in high school or when you were studying for SATs and you had to write an essay? The first thing most teacher’s probably asked you to do was to brainstorm your ideas and write it out, make an outline or a plan of your essay. Writing a persuasive essay became a whole lot easier once you had an outline of the stuff, didn’t it? And it’s not just with essays. Making up an action plan makes it easier to execute stuff.
Use the same strategy to work around the freelancing nightmare too. Make a business plan, it’ll help you better understand your business goals and how to execute them. Add in your financial plans, monthly plans, and yearly plans. Consider it as a way to keep track of your own performance and review it every now and then.
2. Market Yourself — Have a Website!
An integral aspect of being a freelancer is marketing yourself effectively. And the foundations of all your efforts is your website. It’s essential that you have a nice website that shows off your skills, makes you seem approachable and acts as a portfolio that showcases your abilities and past projects. For some clients, it’s also a way to assess your success so don’t be afraid to spend some time on polishing this up and setting up an eye-catching website.
Besides having a website, you can also use social media to your advantage, use LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest to have a presence on social media. That’ll help you to lure in clients and make your brand known.
3. Hate Math? — Learn to Love It!
Freelancing must seem so simple, right? You complete a project, the client pays for your services, transaction complete. Unfortunately, this isn’t that simple, taxes and payments need to be recorded from day one. Even if you’re on the creative side and don’t exactly like dealing with numbers you might want to start doing it. Dealing with numbers is hard but dealing with the tax man is even harder. You are responsible for managing your finances, get a reliable accounting and invoicing software and use that to help manage your finances and taxes.
4. All You Have Is You!
One thing that the freelancers don’t have is employee insurance that conventional employees have. To prevent yourself from running into hard times, as a freelancer you must invest in a freelancer insurance to help support your career through good and bad times. Clients can turn nasty if anything goes bad, having insurance to guard your future is fundamental. Business protection is likewise essential to secure your career, this safeguards your substantial things, for instance, your home office and the individual things you use amid work.
5. Stop Being Passive — Learn to Say NO!
Freelancing can be a tough job, especially when you’re just starting out. Taking on as much work as you can to make your career more profitable is understandable but you have to understand and know your limit. Sure, all that money looks and feels good but it’s not worth it if you’re burning out or overworking yourself. It’s essential that you take time off to give yourself rest, go take that walk or watch the new movie that just released. This will not only help you feel more relaxed but will also help you appreciate the work you do and help you regain that enthusiasm.
6. Build Good Client Relationships
It’s important that you maintain a good relationship with your clients. Try to avoid the bad clients, don’t waste your time and effort on a client that treats you like a servant or act like a dictator. Unreasonable deadlines, ridiculous last minute requests, extra work without extra payments, severely cut rates are all a big no. Even if you think that you’re new and you should take on this work because you need a client, don’t, it’s not worth your time and effort. You’ll find a better client that will pay you for your work and respect you.
7. Watch Your Expenses
A major concern and challenge you as a new freelancer is to watch your spending and keep track of all expenses. In the event that you sit in a cafe to do some work, the cost of your expressos may take away your profit. Make sure to keep a record of all day to day spending and budget out your work week efficiently. As mentioned earlier, attempt to refrain from giving clients a chance to add on additional work and no additional cost to the project because you could spend that time working for another client.
Try to avoid running across a nightmare as a freelancer can feel somewhat like trying to evade an undetectable tripwire. At some point or another, you’re probably going to fall all over. As unavoidable as it may be, finding a way to shield yourself from the beginning is an awesome method to cushion this fall — and have an effective freelancing career.
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