Eight Ways to Avoid Freelance Nightmares
Saturday, March 17, 2018, 6:00 AM | Leave Comment
Being able to work from home, plan your own schedules and run a business is an exciting experience. It gives you more freedom to conduct business in the way you see best and not have to adhere to a large company’s practices.
However, with anyone who is a freelancer, self-employed or a contractor you do need to have guidelines to avoid any problems in your business.
For freelancers, especially those new to the industry, following some advice online and from other freelancers in the business will help you avoid any nightmares that may flare up, whether it’s financial, work rate or bad clients here are eight ways to avoid the easy issues.
-
Business Plan
You don’t have to have big plans for your career to create a business plan, but having one is a healthy way to structure your freelancing future. The business plan doesn’t need to be viewed by others but it’s a great way to organise your work and financial targets.
For those new to the industry, creating timescales for work and how much you intend to charge is really important, it’s easy to put off work and offer low prices in the beginning. But by doing this you might find your income is too low or you’re not doing enough work to support your business.
-
Create A Website: A Place to Showcase Your Work
The backbone of any freelancer’s career, designing a website to showcase your work is key to attracting new clients.
It’s ideal to have the website ready at the beginning of your freelancing as a domain for clients to view your work. Your website will prove your professional intent to be a full-time freelancer, rather than someone just trying to make some quick money by writing content.
-
Networking: Make Your Presence Known
A website is a great place for clients to view your previous work and get in touch with you, but how do you attract them to the site? Social networking is an easy free approach to advertising your business, Twitter, LinkedIn and even Facebook are great ways to communicate with potential clients and discuss working together.
You can also outreach via email to sites looking for content, having other platforms for the webmaster to view and a website will only tempt them more to want to work with you.
-
Accounting: Don’t Let Finance Become a Problem
Naturally, writers are more creatively minded, and working on finances might not be the best part of the career path, but it’s essential for staying on track.
A financial advisor isn’t usually an option for people new to freelancing, so download accounting software is the next best thing.
There are paid and free options to pick from, but essentially is a good template to lay down all your accounts and keep up to date. It can even create invoices to send to clients to ensure on-time payments, plus it looks a lot more professional for return business.
Keeping cost down, in the beginning, is also important. Spending all day writing in a coffee shop buying expensive drinks and cakes might not be a bright idea, even if the atmosphere is best suited to your writing.
Keep costs down and make notes of all your work time spending to help identify your outgoings each month.
-
Client Relationships: Keep them Positive
Sadly, sometimes this nightmare is unavoidable but the key is to learn from it. Working with bad clients should be avoided at all costs, it’s likely that you will come across a client that pays poorly, offers unrealistic deadlines and tries to add on extra work after the price has been set.
Although staying professional and completing their work politely should be executed, cutting ties with them after this is advised. Some clients try to bully freelancers into taking on work even if it’s not worth it, and some freelancers are too polite to refuse the work.
-
Insurance: Get It!
Potentially the biggest nightmare on the list, insurance is needed from the very start of your career in freelancing.
Being inexperienced at the beginning makes it more likely for any issues to arise. Having professional indemnity insurance means that if a client decided to take legal action against you, you’ll have legal and financial aid to protect you and your freelancing career. It protects you even if the client is wrong or you have made a mistake, it’s worth having for peace of mind.
-
Work Rate: Make it Manageable and Healthy
Working hard and caring about the final product you produce for a client shows your passion, after submitting your work to them you’ll naturally feel satisfied with the work you’ve provided.
However, it is possible to overwork and burn yourself out if you don’t take time off.
Finding the right balance of clients and manageable work will help with your enjoyment of freelancing.
Having time off in the week to unwind and process your workload will help with producing high-quality work. It can become a negative cycle if you work too much, you’ll produce poorer content which means you have to work more to make ends meet.
-
Content Farms: Avoid Them
In the beginning, using a content farm will seem like an easy avenue for revenue. But it’s best to avoid them when possible. They have the potential to attract most of the previously mentioned nightmares into one client.
The pay is low, the work rate is demanding which means poorer work is provided and they take advantage of people looking for work. There isn’t really a benefit to using them unless you’re desperate for money, but it’s hard to find work elsewhere whilst working with content farms.
Hopefully, you may never need to come across any of these problems but it’s good to read up on mistakes to help avoid them, but it’s also good to know if they do happen, that you’re not the only one to make the error.
Throw us a like at Facebook.com/doable.financeAuthor Bio
Richard Meadow is a writer that works on topics in relation to law, finance and contractors insurance. He is always interested in new subjects and articles to read and enjoys writing about them.
@meadow_richard
