A freelance career sounds extremely appealing, and more people are now leaving their nine-to-jobs to instead focus on earning incoming through freelancing. The appeal of freelancing is not difficult to understand. It gives people more freedom as they can work from home and schedule their work around their existing lifestyle, it can be rewarding, and people no longer need to work under another individual’s direct authority.
People can also make much more money through freelancing after some time, and this is perhaps the biggest reason why so many individuals dream about a freelance career. However, the opposite is also true, and freelancing is not without its pitfalls. Consequently, it is important that you know how to start your freelance career if you wish to avoid these problems. It is indeed extremely easy for your freelance career to spiral out of control until you can no longer make a living.
Choose your freelancing career
Obviously, the first thing you will need to do is to choose what kind of services you want to offer. While freelance jobs used to revolve mainly about programming and web design gigs in the past, the recent years have seen the industry literally explode. It is now possible to make money as a freelance in a dazzlingly large number of sectors such as writing or just providing intangible services. You can obviously choose to delve into more than one service, but the important thing is to know what you want to do.
Stick to what you know
Although this may come across as a totally unnecessary advice, it is amazing how many people overlook this simple step. It is moreover not surprising that so many people start their freelance career on the wrong foot as they are obsessed with making as much money as possible as fast as they can. Consequently, they cannot resist the temptation of taking on projects for which they are not fully qualified.
Doing so is always a bad idea though as you run the risk of totally ruining your reputation as your first projects earn you negative feedback. You additionally run the risk of running out of motivation as you struggle to work on things in which you have no interest in. This is why is it so important to stick to providing services in sectors you are fully familiar with and where you have the necessary experience.
Set up a fixed work schedule
While the advantages of freelancing are that you can work on your own schedule and that there’s nobody to boss you around, having such an attitude will completely kill your career. You should thus actually set a schedule where you will actually work on your projects and try to stick to it as much as possible. Freelancing does give you the advantage of setting more flexible hours, but you will find it hard to respect deadlines if you have no definite schedule.