I read lots of blogs about the freelance life and quitting the 9-5 job. My favourites are Freelance Switch and Self Made Minds, but there are plenty more. All of these give you great advice about going it alone, leaving the full time and how you can continue to make money.
I have now been freelance for coming up to 3 years and I have been in the fortunate position of not having to have looked for work, it all came to me through my large network of contacts I had built up before making the leap to freelance and word of mouth advertising. Two of the most useful ways to get work!
So you may be thinking, ok, this all sounds great so why is he going back to a full time job? What about the freedom of freelancing? What about the money, freelancers are all loaded aren’t they?
Well, the reasons are, in no particular order:
- I’ve been getting cabin fever working at home. It’s only in the last 8 or 9 months that the lack of the the social side of office work and lack of office banter has hit me, and I miss it!
- Working all hours. This last year has been busy for me, with a fair bit of work and working weekends and evenings as well as during the day has taken it’s toll and I’ve had enough of it. I haven’t had any time for my main hobby, photography, and have no social life and I want more time to spend doing what I want to rather than working on other people’s web sites.
- The bad times, financially. Even with a lot of work there have been times when I have been completely skint. Most of the time this has been caused by clients not paying on time, but I’m also not the luckiest person in the world and just when I think my bank balance is recovering, my car will break down or something will go wrong that puts me another step back. A regular salary will be a great help.
- Career progression. OK, working for yourself is great, being your own boss has a lot of benefits (although mine has been a slave driver) but in three years I am still working on the same sort of thing, nothing very high profile (in web terms) and want a bit more to show for my skills.
Now this all sounds quite negative, and most of it is down to me not being very good at selling myself, hence he type of work I’ve been doing, but also for financial reasons I have had to take on work just to pay the bills instead of taking on the more interesting projects.
So I guess what I wanted to do with this post is give you some advice from someone who has done it, enjoyed it, but decided it wasn’t quite what they wanted. So here you go 10 tips to be a successful freelancer (in no particular order):
- Have a backup fund for the bad times and keep it topped up when the times are good. Believe me you will need it! I didn’t have one and suffered because of it.
- Learn to say No. This has been my big problem, taking on too much at once.
- Get rid of problem clients quickly. If a client is failing to pay on time or anything else that means you are spending more time fire fighting them rather than working on the project then politely terminate working with them. Don’t let it drag on causing you stress and hassle.
- Network. Since starting freelancing I haven’t met many other freelancers or people in the industry. Make time to get out there and network.
- Work to live, don’t live to work. Another of my problems. Work took over and my life outside of work was non existent. So make sure you separate work from your life. Don’t work evenings unless you really have to. If you do it all the time, clients will expect it of you.
- If you don’t already wear glasses, you will probably need them soon. My eyesight went downhill quite quickly staring at the screen all the time. Take regular breaks, set your working environment up properly and get regular eye check ups.
- Get your fingers in lots of pies. If one aspect of your work slows down then you will have other options. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket and other such sayings.
- Exercise. I used to be quite fit, regularly mountain biking, but 3 years on and I my bike has cobwebs on it and I have a beer belly. That’ll be changing when I get my evenings and weekends back.
- Prioritise and schedule and stick to it. If you have 5 jobs to do that day, prioritise them and don’t let anything else get in the way. Obviously sometimes things crop up, but be firm with clients. If you have a project to finish, don’t start doing small site amends for someone else and then miss your deadlines.
- Work always takes longer than you think! Add in extra fix and tweak time to all work and charge for it!
Well there you go. 10 tips to hopefully help you.
Don’t get me wrong though, freelancing has been great and I wouldn’t have changed it. For me though I think I’ve done enough of it. I am off to work for an online company as a senior designer/developer type person working on front end stuff as well as mentoring junior staff, which for me is great and I can’t wait to start.
Oh, the regular pay cheque is a bit of a good thing too. Money coming in each month is definitely a good thing!!
That’s a great write up Garry, always good to get both sides of a coin and there are plenty downsides to working from home especially if your freelancing and still working on other people’s projects. All the best with your new path.
thanks Scott, don’t worry, I’ll still be reading SelfMadeMinds!