Welcome to Going Freelance – A resource site to for freelancers discussing issues relating to freelancing across all industries.
If you are thinking of going freelance or have just started out freelancing check out the articles and resources on this site. We will cover everything from invoicing and accounting to self-motivation and how to best spend your cash!
Before making the switch from 9-5 to freelancing you should ask yourself the following questions:
1. Am I passionate about my work?
If you don’t have a passion for the work you will be doing, you won’t make it freelancing. When freelancing there is no one checking up on you so it’s easy to take time off to enjoy your hobbies or have an extra hour lay in. If you don’t enjoy the work you are doing you won’t be motivated to do it, and won’t be able to run a successful freelance business.
2. Am I willing to work long hours?
A common misconception people have is that working from home will allow them to have lots of time off or not work as hard. This for the most part isn’t true. There are many perks to working for yourself, but there are also lots of times when you will need to stay up all night working on a project for little or no immediate financial return. If you’re not willing to put in the hours you may find that you can’t sustain your business and personal financial needs.
3. Am I good enough at what I do?
There are going to be a lot of competitors when you start out, all of whom will have more experience than you so you will have to gain clients by either being very good at what you do and getting noticed, or undercutting your competitors on price while you built up a client base and reputation.
4. Can I manage the finances?
A big part of working for your self is learning to copy with a massively variable income. There will be months where you invoice out very little and end up with a bill to pay which means you have nothing left to pay yourself, but there will also be months when you finish a large project and take a deposit for a couple of new projects and have more money than you know what to do with! It’s important that you plan and budget your finances and keep something put by for those periods when you are working your hardest but invoicing out relatively little.
Christmas is often a time where you are working hardest to get projects ready for launch in ‘the new year’ and is also a time where most clients feel they don’t have to pay on time as “it’s Christmas”. If you haven’t been putting something aside during the year you may not have the cash spare for all the Christmas related expenses. You also won’t be getting the nice Christmas bonus you may have been used to receiving when working for someone else.
5. What am I bad at?
This may seem a strange one, but it’s important when freelancing to be able to recognise your faults so that you can improve yourself by learning new skills, or outsource some of your workload to others. For example if you know your spelling isn’t great always make sure your run your emails and promotional materials through a spell checker! Or if you’re a top notch designer and a client asks you to produce a leaflet including copy – know when to hire the services of a professional copywriter rather than attempting it yourself. Don’t forget to charge enough to cover your time managing the outsourcing too!
If you’re already freelancing, what kind of questions did you ask yourself before you made the switch?
Working from home you could find it hard to balance your work and social life. You will constantly be in contact with your working environment and constantly be thinking about clients, you won’t be able to rest or take time off. You have to separate your working environment from your social environment, meaning LOCK your home office when the weekend comes, so you don’t accidentally stray into working mode.