On FreelanceSwitch, you’ll meet a lot of boss-shunning, solo-working rebels. But there may come a time when the freest of freelancers will need to hire employees. Or subcontractors.
Or you might want to sell your freelancing business, and the buyer will want to know how you’ve been handling things.
In short, these are the times when you will need to explain what you do to others. Or you may need to tell others what you want them to do. At first, these tasks may leave you at a loss for words. This article will help you get your words back.
The first task in your explaining project will be to figure out exactly what it is you’ll need to explain. Here’s an outline of the three basic functions of a business, with questions to guide your thinking:
1. DOThis is everyone’s favorite. Here you’re describing what you DO for money.
Let’s say that you’re a website designer. You don’t just pull those marvelous designs out of your head and dazzle the clients with them. You probably have some sort of prototyping process. How does it work? Do you create your layout ideas in Photoshop, then save them as JPEGs and post them in your server space for the clients to review? Or do you go straight into the coding and post rough drafts of your ideas?
Then, once you’re past the idea stage, how do you build websites? Are you building them out of HTML pages or are you using a content management system like WordPress or Drupal? Do you have subcontractors working with you on site buildouts? What kind of subcontractors? How do you instruct them?
Then, once the site is done, how do you hand the files off to the client? What sort of client training do you offer? How about service after the sale? Do you maintain websites? Do you offer related services like search engine optimization and website hosting?
Now, I just threw a whole bunch of questions at you, and you’re probably scratching your head, trying to figure out the answers. The good news is that you’ve answered them already. Here’s where you can find the answers:
How do you acquire new clients or drum up repeat business from existing clients?
This is the marketing and sales part of your business. For the purpose of this article, let’s define marketing as what you do to get people to come into your freelancing store. Sales? That’s persuading people to buy what’s on your shelves.
I’ve previously written about what can happen if you pay too much attention to marketing and not enough attention to sales. (Hint: your freelancing business suffers.) So, I’m going to devote most of this section to sales.
Sales consists of two activities:
As you may have guessed, a lot of people really enjoy the first activity, because it doesn’t require talking to strangers and asking them for their business. Heck, it’s kind of fun to write a little essay on who your Ideal Client is. And searching online and offline for leads lists? That can add up to hours of not talking to the people who might hire you.
Then there’s that second activity. Reaching out to people. Talk about scary. But using a script will make it a lot less scary. In my own business, I use scripts for making cold calls. Scripts for making warm calls. And I’ve created templates for cold and warm e-mails. I even have a scripted method for answering my telephone.
Scripts come in handy if Introverted You hires a vivacious employee to help you prospect for business. After all, you don’t want Vivacious Vincent to get on the phone and not know what to say. Or when the phone rings and Vincent is closest to it. What would you want him to say in that case?
So, what do you want your business scripts to say?
Now, a word (or two) about marketing:
It can consist of everything from placing advertisements to sending a monthly e-mail newsletter. Any marketing activity provokes a flurry of questions. For example, let’s look at advertising. You can place your ads in media ranging from printed publications to websites. What will those ads say? What will they look like? What do you want people to do after they’ve seen or heard them?
Same goes for your e-mail newsletter. Who will be on your list? What are you going to say? Will you use an HTML newsletter, or are you going to stick with tried-and-true plain text. (One of my friends still uses plain text for her newsletter. And she says it works just fine.)
3. RUNNow this is a word that gets no respect. Some people even call it “administrivia.” But let the following things go, and watch your business run into the ground.
Accounting: Do you use accounting software? If so, what kind do you use? What sort of functions does it perform for you? Invoicing? If so, what information do you include on your invoices? What do your invoices look like? Can your software generate checks? What do your checks look like? Who do you order them from? What kind of financial reports can you generate with your accounting software? And how do you use those reports?
And, since I mentioned financial reports, I guess I don’t have to tell you that they’re needed for filing taxes. How do you handle that fun-filled task? Are you a DIY kind of tax filer? Or do you use a tax accountant? How do you communicate with your accountant? Do you consult with your accountant at times other than tax season? (I hope you do!)
Administration: That’s right. You the Administrator. That was probably the last thing you aspired to be during your job days. But, take heart. In your freelancing business, there isn’t a lot of administering to do. Unless you need to do some long-range planning. Like writing a business plan so you can get a bank loan or investor capital. Or developing a professional development plan. The word “plan” leads naturally to the next question: What will go into those plans?
Legal: This isn’t the part where you’re going to sue someone. Or (heaven forbid!) be sued.
But even the freest spirited of freelance business has some legalities to comply with. For example, do you live in a city that requires that businesses be licensed? If so, how did you apply for your business license? And how often does it need to be renewed? What’s the fee? And what about professional licensure? Are there certifications and licenses that you need in order to enter or continue in your field? How is this done? What about security clearances? Do you need those? If so, how do you apply and keep them current?
Office and Business Management: Okay, you don’t work in an office anymore. Which means that you’re now your very own office manager. Ever had to purchase equipment for your studio? A telephone or a computer? Or how about office supplies? As Internet-savvy as we like to be, there are times when we still need to send a letter to a client. What does the business stationery (letterhead, envelopes, and business cards) look like? And where do you order it from? And how do you manage all those projects that your business gets involved with? How do you supervise the work of your employees? Or, if you don’t have employees, your subcontractors?
Okay, that’s enough. I’ve asked you quite a few questions. And you’ll probably think of others. It will take time to answer them, but here’s what could happen if you do:
Years ago, I did business with a small accounting firm on the east side of Tucson. This firm documented everything that it did, and I do mean everything. They had quite a thick procedures manual, but no one felt overwhelmed by it. Rather, they regarded it as The Book. They turned to it many times a day.
The Book allowed this firm to run so smoothly that the boss and employees didn’t have to work through the weekend before April 15. (In the United States, April 15 is Tax Day, the federal tax deadline. A lot of accounting firms go flat-out during the last week or two before this date.) Matter of fact, Tax Day at this firm was so relaxed that the boss and her employees came to work in pajamas. And TV cameras would show up to document the occasion.
Now, you may be wondering why I’m referring to this accounting firm in the past tense. It’s because it no longer exists. Boss sold it to a larger firm, and, I’m told, the completeness of The Book helped to increase the sale price. That’s where documenting your business processes can get you.
One of the most difficult parts of freelancing is the tendency of the freelancer to eventually lose joy for the work. You may have come, like me, from a gig that paid well but didn’t fully capitalize on your talents. You decided to start working as a freelancer in order to make money doing what you love. That’s what this is all about, right? Following your passions?
The struggle comes when, as with anything, the shine fades. But you have it extra tough as freelancers because you’re left without any of the protective structure of a formal work environment. This isn’t a salary position. You can’t have a bad day, get nothing done, and make your boss happy by doing twice as much the next day. An off day for you means no billable hours.
What happened? Wasn’t this supposed to be a wild ride toward financial freedom and fame for being an expert in your chosen field? For creatives, especially those who make their living by framing and finishing ideas, the grind of freelance work can slowly rip the joy out of the creative process.
How can you get the joy back? Whether you’ve been freelancing for years or are just starting out, I think you’ll find value in the following tips:
1. Simplify your processGet back to the basics of your craft. Take away the client-focused “big picture” mentality and focus on the details how you get things done.
If you can afford to spend the next month working from a villa in Rome, do it! The rest of us will have to content ourselves with working from a different coffee shop or switching coworking spaces. The point of changing your location is to alter the subliminal influences of a place that gain power over time. When you look at your current workspace, do you see a place where numerous late nights and frustrated phone calls take place? Do you sit in your office chair and get that feeling in the back of your mind that you’ve plopped yourself into more of the same old thing?
Dig your way free of the suffocating weight of your current environment and try working in a space that feels “new.”
3. Resurrect an old passionPerhaps you once played in a band, took pottery classes, or went rock climbing back in the days when you didn’t have clients scheduled back to back? The freelancer’s workday is a blend of work and life like no other. You can use this to your advantage and push joy back into your work by adding joy in another part of your day.
For a creative, improvement in one area will necessarily help with the rest. Picking up that guitar again will hone your sense of rhythm as a copywriter. Taking pottery classes might cure you of your fixation on grunge web designs. Rock climbing and most other physical activities will give you a boost by reducing stress and increasing your stamina.
4. Set short-term goalsRemember when you were a dreamer? Now your work has extended its gnarled tendrils into every part of your life and you’ve stopped dreaming. I don’t have a quick and easy solution to bring your dreams back but I’ve found setting short-term goals to be a powerful way of helping me think more about my future.
When you think about your future, you’ll begin to consider possibilities and hopes that you may have forgotten. Setting short-term goals and reaching them will help you regain joy in your work by reaffirming your ability to use this work you’ve chosen to change your life for the better. For example, you may have dreamed that freelancing would allow you to be debt-free but life is complicated and you’re back scrambling to make minimum payments on your credit cards. A short-term goal in this case would involve paying one of your cards down by an additional $300 this month. Once you’ve planned and achieved that goal, you’ll have confirmation that you can indeed reduce your debt as a freelancer. Nice!
5. Get professional trainingJoin a professional society, start a professional club in your area, or sign up for classes related to your field. Why? Because iron sharpens iron and the freelancer who knows she has an edge in her field is the least likely one to frown at the idea of doing more good work.
Professional training will also give you another reason to get out of the house and talk to people. Until we start using James Cameron’s expression technology to move the eyebrows on our avatars, we’ll only find the true joy of companionship within range where deodorant matters.
What about you? Have you lost your joy for your craft and later regained it? If so, how did you do it and what can you share to help us find your success? Thanks for sharing!
Get more tips and creative inspiration from Seth Simonds at his blog or hit him up for a follow on Twitter.
Last week I introduced you to the latest collaboration between Rockable Press and FreelanceSwitch, How to Write Great Copy for the Web by Donna Spencer. I am happy to announce that the book has been launched today and Rockin’ List members get a $5 discount on the digital book, bringing the book’s price down to just $10. Get subscribed and check out the book.
“In How to Write Great Copy for the Web, author Donna Spencer will help you start writing content for the web that works! Learn about how writing web copy differs from other forms of writing, and how writing useful, functional and concise copy can both help persuade your readers, and also help with search engine optimization!
Whether it’s for your own site, or for somebody else’s, How to Write Great Copy for the Web will quickly bring you up to speed with some clever strategies that will make you popular with your site’s visitors, or with your clients!”
We know it’s hard to judge a book by its cover, so we’re making the first chapter and the table of contents available to download for anyone who is interested. That way you can decide for yourself if this book is right for you. We think it’s great for any sort of freelancer who wants to write web copy, be they freelancer writers who are new to the web, or web designers whose clients keep asking them to take care of copy—it happens all the time, so it’s a great idea to learn the skill and make some money out of it!
This post is an excerpt from my eBook, The Blog Business Funnel. It teaches freelancers how to run a profitable freelance business, fed entirely by a healthy and thriving blog. This excerpt is from Chapter 7: Scaling Up. FreelanceSwitch readers can claim a special discount at the end of this post.
One of the nicest things about freelancing is that you decide when to give yourself a raise. If you feel like you’re doing a great job, developing experience and becoming hotter property, you don’t need to wait for your boss to notice. You can give yourself a raise, and if your clients agree with your assessment, you’ll get it.
As a freelancer, you can give yourself a raise by increasing your hourly or per-project rates. This part is simple, but setting up the right preconditions for the change is a trickier process. How can you raise your rates while making sure you still get plenty of work?
Throughout this post, there are a few things I want you to remember:
One situation where you should always try raising your rates is when you are unable to meet the demand for your services. If you have enough clients to keep you busy 50 hours of the week – and you only want to work 35 – it’s time to incrementally raise your rates until supply and demand equalize again.
Another sign that you might be charging too little is if nobody ever mentions your rates as a sticking point. At the very least, you should occasionally have clients try to negotiate you down in price, but still choose to work with you even if you don’t budge. The saying “You can’t please everybody” is true—and if you’re pleasing everyone, something is probably wrong with your rates.
If you’re doing lots of work each week, are being paid for it, and still struggle to make ends meet, you may find you are charging too little. In the developed world it would be considered very unusual for a skilled freelancer to charge less than $25 an hour. After all, you’re not flipping burgers, or doing a job the average person could be trained to do in a week. You are a skilled worker and deserve to be compensated as such.
Another time to think about a rate rise is if you’re simply better than you were at the time you first set your rates. If you’ve been working 30+ hours a week in your freelance field for a year, you can’t help but have become more skilled than you were when you began. For better results, clients should expect to pay more, and you should expect to charge more.
There are also some situations where raising your rates might be a good idea even when your roster of clients isn’t full. While some freelance services—like HTML & CSS markup/coding—are in widespread demand, others—like programming in Ruby on Rails—are more specialized. There may not be a large enough pool of prospective clients to keep your hands full for 35 hours a week, but as a specialist, trying to attract more clients may not be the best way to increase your income. Instead, remember that your services are rare, and as such, can command higher rates.
Opposite to the situations described above, there are circumstances where you probably shouldn’t meddle with your rates:
In these situations you should stick with what’s working until you have a more solid base from which to experiment.
An Approach to TestingMy philosophy for finding your current ideal price-point is to raise your rates in small increments on a per-client basis until you find your sweet spot. The second half of the strategy is to make sure you receive feedback on your rates. This is so you can clearly observe how your rates are affecting your business.
If you display your rates publicly, in the Services area of your website or blog, clients have the opportunity to evaluate them in private. Ten people may consider your services and reject them on the basis of price without you ever knowing. This can be a great time-saver when you’ve settled on your rates and are confident in them — these are all people who may have otherwise requested a quote, only to reject it after they saw the bottom line. But the situation changes when you are trying to re-evaluate your rates. You want your client’s decision-making process to be open to you. This is why you should consider removing public pricing from your site during this phase, and discussing prices only after prospects contact you.
If you’ve put effort into an email exchange, or into preparing a quote, most prospects will take the time to write a response, even if they decide your service isn’t right for them. And most of the time, they will state a reason for deciding not to hire you. Keeping track of these reasons will be invaluable when trying to determine your current
‘sweet spot’ rates.
If you’ve decided to re-evaluate your rates and have made sure you’re in a good position to do so, here’s how to begin: the next time a new prospect inquires about your services, add $5 to your previously quoted hourly rate. If you are someone who charges by the project, increase your project rate by 10%. Try the same thing for the next prospect, and the next prospect, and the next.
Do you notice a change?
If you find that more people are knocking you back on the basis of price, to the point where you aren’t able to work as many hours as you like, you may need to return to your earlier, more successful rates, and work on building up the value of your services before trying again. However, if you find that you are converting at the same rate, and being hired just as much, this suggests that the market has accepted your new rate.
Because this process is based on small incremental increases, you can continue to repeat the process until you finally feel the market pushing back, telling you that you’ve gone a little too far. At that point, pull back one notch to your last successful price-point. For now, this is your current sweet spot. In future, when you feel you’ve once again increased the value of what you provide, you can attempt to advance further if you feel confident doing so.
Value-adding Can Take it FurtherEarlier, I talked about how clients will measure your rates against their perception of the value you will provide them. By increasing this perception of value, you may be able to raise your rates further. Here are some ways you can add more value to your services:
Increase your skill. The most obvious method to start: simply get better at what you do. Learn new techniques, develop unique methods of working, and refine your style. More impressive work justifies more impressive rates.
Become better at expressing the benefits. This relates to the way you talk about and describe your service. If you can become better at the way you communicate the benefits of what you do, clients will see it as more valuable. Compare:
I write highly polished blog articles using impeccable spelling and grammar.
to…
My articles are highly optimized for StumbleUpon traffic, and have the potential to attract tens of thousands of visitors to your blog.
Both are important and desirable qualities, but the latter seems more unique and valuable.
By describing the benefits differently you might find clients are all of a sudden willing to pay more for your work, even though the final product is the same. The perceived value is different.
Create a perception of scarcity. People often associate scarcity and exclusivity with quality. Even something as simple as adding the following sentence to your service page can create a perception of scarcity:
Please be aware that, due to high levels of demand, there may be a waiting list for this service.
If you ever find yourself swamped with work and need to stop accepting new clients for a while, avoid taking your Service page down. Instead, add a notice letting prospects know how busy you are:
Due to overwhelming demand, this service is temporarily unavailable. Please contact me if you’d like to be notified when it re-opens.
Earn more prestige. Become well known enough for what you do and people will value you on much more than the apparent face-value of your work. People know that experts are always pricey, but usually worth it. If you can be truly perceived as an industry leader, you can probably charge your dream rates — and then some!
Tap into hot trends. A few years ago, a relatively new freelance skill emerged — SEO copywriting, in other words, the ability to write persuasive sales copy that would also rank in the search engines. Though any person with copywriting skill and a basic knowledge of SEO fundamentals can perform SEO copywriting, for a while it had a much higher price tag than ordinary SEO, because many small business owners were desperate to tap into the benefits. By being flexible enough to tweak their service to tap into a hot trend, copywriters were able to significantly raise their rates.
A Final WordAdjusting your pricing is a vital strategy to increase your profits over time, but it shouldn’t be your only strategy. Otherwise, you’ll reach a point where it’s not working
as effectively anymore. For example:
In the rest of the chapter, I teach you how to create low-maintenance partnerships you can profit from, while doing very little extra work. You’ll also learn how to add new products and services to your business that eventually remove you from the equation — except when it’s time to collect your earnings!
Discount Code
FreelanceSwitch readers can use the discount code ‘RAISE’ to get $5.00 off The Blog Business Funnel.
As a freelancer, I’ve tackled plenty of projects. Not all have been enjoyable, naturally, but I’ve been able to keep a steady flow of work. I don’t think every job has to be perfect, and as long as I’m making good money and maintaining my freedom, I’m generally satisfied with my career.
While I’ve worked regularly for some of the same clients, I have never had to work on one project that required multiple weeks of single-client focus. It’s a totally different beast. Not only can it be unpleasant, but it can uproot your whole vibe.
Obviously when you put “all of your eggs in one basket,” so to say, it’s not the ideal situation for most freelancers. Freelancers like to pick and choose, and the thing I love about being a solopreneur is being able to wrap up a project and kiss it goodbye when I’m not enjoying it. Most situations are temporary, and I have a say in who I work for. Of course there are initiatives that I enjoy but there’s no doubt that a huge advantage to freelancing is being able to finish a project and never have to look back on the work or the client.
In this case, I think there are two kinds of freelancers: Those that take on short-term gigs and focus solely on those. That can be lucrative, and often involves relying on a recruiter or agencies to find ongoing jobs. In my case, I am a full-time freelancer that takes on a mix of one-time jobs. I also have several clients that need ongoing work, and also hold down a very flexible part-time job. This blend of arrangements enables me to consistently pay the bills and live comfortably. So if you work strictly for agencies, taking on a long-term job for one client isn’t exactly dangerous–it can be great. But if you’re making a living off of several clients and having to constantly secure customers, and you take on one long-term job for a single client, it can hurt your business.
There are many issues that came up for me as I’ve been powering through the last several weeks. And I always try to learn from my experiences–and share those experiences with you–so here goes:
No Time for MarketingIt’s been hard to make time to outreach, and not only does that have the potential to hurt my business, but it wears on me emotionally. When you can’t plant seeds and you are the kind of freelancer who likes unveiling new opportunities, it hampers the feeling that you are spreading your wings and flying.
Instead, I’ve worried that I’m not lining up new jobs and ruining my business–but really, I know myself well enough to know that’s just an old fear I had from the beginning of my career as a contractor. In this case, it’s okay for me to take a break from marketing, because I haven’t stopped all efforts. I’m cutting down for now and I’m stable enough to step back from my normal marketing agenda. But I know it is temporary. Beginning freelancers may not be able to do this and ceasing on marketing could be devastating. Assess your own situation first before you take on a one-client gig that will go for a few weeks.
Perpetual FrettingIn addition to fearing that I’m not securing new work, paranoia can increase in other ways. Having hit a few snags communicating with the client, I couldn’t just throw in the towel. (First, I’m not a quitter. Second, the project is for awe-inspiring pay and working for a well-known company–a huge plus for any copywriter.)
The client and myself worked through some initial issues, especially in the communication arena, and while I would normally do that with any client because I like to see things through, I worried that the tension could hurt our relationship in the long run. The client is an agency that gives me regular work, so anytime I have to stand up to them or we have to go back and forth on project terms, I worry about losing future gigs. But this was a huge client of theirs they entrusted me with, so I wanted to make sure not to disappoint while standing my ground. Still, when there was some tension I felt very trapped. So I took many deep breaths, resolved the issues, and am now coasting through to the finish line. I trust in the end this client will use me again because they have in the past–despite issues. They know I’m a hard worker and there is back-and-forth with any employee.
Usually after I have some tension with a client, the project wraps up, we settle back into separate corners and meet up again refreshed and ready to work. The beginning of the project included a few bumps in the road regarding setting deadlines and settling on fees, and while they are settled up now, it was nerve wracking at first. But you can’t expect things to go perfectly, and you can’t blow tension out of proportion–negotiation is part of the project process.
Deadlines GaloreFor this particular project, it was broken into several different deadlines. So an advantage to giving all my attention to this client has been that I only have to focus on their deadlines. There’s a plus. It’s nice to be able to focus on one thing instead of multi-tasking all the time. If you work for an agency on short-term projects, this is a huge advantage. For freelancers that rely on multiple clients, it’s nice to focus on deadlines from one client, but it’s not as feasible.
Maintaining Other RelationshipsEven when you work on one project at a time with one client, you still have to communicate with existing clients and make time to respond to potential customer inquiries. While I haven’t had time to get out and establish new clients, my business thrives on several ongoing partnerships, including that part-time job I mentioned. I couldn’t just turn that off, though I could minimize other incoming work. Still, I’ve had to multi-task to take on other jobs without taking on too much. I ducked in to let the part-time job know that I needed less work for the next few weeks but let them know how much I could handle.
I firmly believe in having several ongoing jobs for any freelance business–waiting on individual projects to come in is too financially risky, especially if you have a lot of fiscal pressures. So even though it would be nice to focus on my big project, I had to make time to at least let others clients know that I could get back to them in a few weeks, or that I had time to take on a quick job. Maintaining communication and being honest is key when you have other clients. You can’t just turn off when you have a huge, ongoing task at hand. You want to be available but you don’t want to take on too much work and slam yourself at the same time. It’s a balancing act like everything in the contractor world.
I guess the point in all of this is that it’s easy to see the dollar signs when you are presented with a huge project. But you have to consider if it’s right for you and your business, especially where you are now as a contractor. For me, this was a huge undertaking. But now that I know how to manage a persistent project–and all is well with the client–I would do it again in a heartbeat. But first, I need a week to breathe. Maybe four.
As a freelancer, you may find yourself either a) too busy or b) too clueless to handle your own marketing. This happens more often than you might think, and even some excellent freelancers with a strong reputation aren’t doing a very good job at marketing.
But you, you’re smarter than that. And you realize you should get some help to rev up your business and take it to the next level. So you start looking for a marketing expert to give you some advice and counsel, and you find what you think is the perfect person for you.
Someone who’s savvy and experienced. Someone who understands your creative needs and your lifestyle. Someone who’s had a lot of success getting other businesses the attention they need.
Someone who, a month into your working relationship, is driving you up a tree.
It’s inevitable. You’re two talented people with strong opinions about how you should present yourself. The marketer thinks he’s right because he’s the expert. You think you’re right because you’re you. And it feels like you can’t agree on anything, from your brand image to your web copy to what to put on your business cards.
Here’s how to work with a marketer without losing your cool, so you can get on with the important stuff – getting the word out to new clients that there’s a fantastic freelancer in town.
Don’t Get Locked InOne of the most common problems freelancers have when working with a marketer is getting way too precise about what they want.
Most of you reading this are either designers or copywriters, and you feel like you have a pretty good idea on how to create the basic components of a brand that’s marketable. This is what you do for other people every day, after all.
Unfortunately, when you’ve already decided on the layout of your website and the look it needs to have and the tagline you want to use, you don’t give the marketing expert a lot of room to work. And that person needs that room to come up with new ideas that are probably more effective than yours.
I know. That bites. But think about it a minute: you’re a creative artist. Marketing isn’t your thing.
Instead of locking yourself into your ideas right off the bat, decide what you want in abstract terms. Think about what you want to accomplish with your marketing. Think about the type of person you want to work with, and what clients you get along best with. Think about what sort of person you are, so the expert can craft a brand that suits you.
But let the rest go. You need to give marketing experts the space to be creative in their own area of expertise so they can get you the results you want. And they can’t do that if you’ve boxed them into what you think is best for you.
Don’t Be a PushoverWhile you don’t want to dig your heels in and completely ruin the marketer’s ability to create great new concepts for your freelance business, you also don’t want to be a pushover. If you absolutely hate the ideas the marketer comes up with, say so – and say so quickly.
Usually when you hate those ideas, it’s because the marketer didn’t really understand what you want. It’s time to go back to the original conversation and reiterate what you do want, who you are, and what impression you want to give to your clients.
It often helps the marketer immensely if you can demonstrate exactly why his ideas won’t work for you. Concrete examples of what works for you and what isn’t lets the marketing expert get a stronger grasp on your needs, and he’s much more likely to come back with better ideas that fit you more.
For example, you can point to a particular tagline and say, “Look, I’m an easygoing, casual sort of person, and this makes me sound like a guy who lives and breathes numbers and results. I don’t think that fits with who I am.”
Don’t let the expert walk all over you. Many might insist that you that you have to go along with their idea, because this is what will sell. That’s all well and good, but if you don’t feel that you can back that up, then it’s not going to work. Stand firm if you’re uncomfortable and ask for new concepts to work with.
And if the marketer won’t back down, find a new one.
Be Willing to WalkSometimes you and the marketer just aren’t a good fit for one another. It happens. That person may just not be able to get a good vision on what you’re looking for, or his skills may not be developed enough to deliver a brilliant new concept for what you need.
You can walk away. It’s allowed. It’s okay. As a freelancer, you’ve been on the other side of this equation. Freelancers inevitably get clients who they just can’t satisfy, no matter how hard they try. So you know, personally, that not being a good fit isn’t a measure of how skilled you are at your job.
It’s just that you couldn’t get your visions to mesh.
Be polite when you’re parting ways. This isn’t a judgment on the marketing expert for not doing a good job. If you know that person tried their best, be sympathetic. It didn’t work out, and you’re going to work with someone else, but it’s not a good idea to burn bridges behind you.
You never know – that marketing expert may be looking for someone just like you for their next client’s campaign.
Go out and try again. It’s worth it to find a marketer who gets you and is capable of finding just the right way to sell you to new clients. Be willing to put in the time and money to find the right fit, because it really will pay off in the end.
It’s worth all those new clients, isn’t it?
About the Author: For more tips on how to get the most out of your freelance business, check out James Chartrand’s blog at Men with Pens, where you’ll discover on-target advice that helps you get ahead of the game.
A couple of years ago, FreelanceSwitch brought you How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer by Collis and Cyan Ta’eed, which helped a lot of you find your feet in the world of freelancing. Since then, FreelanceSwitch and Rockable Press have been working together to bring another great guide to your bookshelves: How to Write Great Copy for the Web.
If you’ve ever wanted to get into web copy—whether you’re a freelance writer now or you’re a web designer whose clients always ask you to create the content as well—this book will help you immensely from the very basics up.
“In How to Write Great Copy for the Web, author Donna Spencer will help you start writing content for the web that works! Learn about how writing web copy differs from other forms of writing, and how writing useful, functional and concise copy can both help persuade your readers, and also help with search engine optimization!
Whether it’s for your own site, or for somebody else’s, How to Write Great Copy for the Web will quickly bring you up to speed with some clever strategies that will make you popular with your site’s visitors, or with your clients!”
We’re going to be releasing this book any day now and wanted to make sure you knew about it in advance–and had the opportunity to get a great discount on it. The book will cost $15 for the ebook and $19 for the print copy, but if you’re subscribed to the Rockin’ List you’ll get a coupon to get the ebook for only $10.
The Rockin’ List only sends out mail occasionally when there’s a new release–other than that, you won’t hear from us, and you get a great free report on Personal Branding when you sign up.
Click here to subscribe to the Rockin’ List and make sure you don’t miss out on your discount!
And for the 49,000 cunning entrepreneurs reading this—Rockable provides an affiliate program to help you make some money of your own, by helping us sell books. It’s definitely worth checking out.
Staying motivated isn’t easy – we often convince ourselves not to be. We often give ourselves excuses, allow other people to put us down, or look at the success of others and think, “That’ll never be me.”
There are two basic types of motivation: intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation comes from the feeling of self-achievement inherent in the task or project achieved, i.e. solving a puzzle, completing a school assignment, or finally publishing that website you were working on for a client.
Extrinsic motivation is the reward you get from others – or outside “forces”. This includes money and other financial or tangible rewards, such as a free vacation for achieving your sales targets, a trophy for winning first place at the Olympics, or even the crowd cheering as you overtake car #2 in the last stretch of the race. This explains the “home team advantage” methodology.
Extrinsic motivation (namely money) is often the primary basis for our motivation. Everyone needs money, and wants as much of it as possible. That’s no secret. However, I believe the feeling of self achievement is equally important when it comes to staying motivated.
When you’ve finished the design work for a client, what feels better? Getting paid or seeing your client smile, succeed, and receive brand recognition partly due to your efforts? If you picked getting paid, try thinking about it this way:
A small, startup company seeks your help in setting up their identity (logo, business card, website, etc.). The company is completely unknown but happens to take off. All of a sudden the company is everywhere – the NY Times, TechCrunch, CNN, a trending topic on Twitter, you name it.
Do you still feel the same? Okay, that might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but hopefully my point was made.
But what about the money?
There are many ways that you can use money and your personal financial status to keep yourself motivated. Here are a few ideas:
What else?
Networking. It’s easy to meet other people in your industry on the internet these days (especially if you’re a designer). If you don’t already have a blog, consider starting one. Sign up for Twitter and get out there! Meeting other people in your line of work helps you to learn the language and communication styles that are effective in your industry.
If you know a lot of designers, for instance, they can refer clients to you when they’re overbooked, or when a client requires something beyond their expertise.
It’s also a good idea to try to network in person. It’s refreshing to get out of your home or office and meet people face to face. People will often share more in person than they will on their blog or via Twitter. Escaping your workstation every once in a while will give you that added fuel you need to move forward when you return from your mid-day vacation.
When all else fails, I tend to go on a “success story” binge. Take an hour to watch a few TED Talks, read a few articles about people on the Forbes 400 list, or poke around the Small Business Success Stories page on BusinessWeek.
Stay motivated – and if you can’t, try something new.
If you’re working for an employer, your career patch can be pretty clear: work hard and move up the corporate ladder, hopefully winding up somewhere near the top. But when you’re freelancing, your career path can be a lot less clear. We all want to land more clients and earn more per hour, but where do we want to wind up?
A Creative Agency of Your Own?One logical career path is to keep taking on more clients and hiring a few creative professionals yourself. The end result is a creative agency that allows you to take on more and bigger projects. Once you get to this point, it’s relatively easy to continue to grow — but there are also a few drawbacks, like the fact that you’re responsible for paying those folks you now employ.
A Product of Your Own?Another option that many freelancers seem interested in is creating some sort of a product out your freelancing skills, shifting your income from being based on your services to being based on a product. Such businesses can look very different: your product could be a web application, a book or dozens of other things. The switch can make it easier to increase your income, but also can take a whole new set of business skills beyond what freelancing requires.
Taking a Great Job?Not everyone wants to freelance forever. Perhaps you have a dream job in mind, one that you want to work towards with your freelancing experiences. That can mean taking on particular types of projects, so that you can make sure opportunity comes knocking. Considering an employer can offer certain benefits, although a reduced level of freedom, it’s no wonder that many freelancers move back and forth from freelancing to employment as we find opportunities.
Sticking With Freelancing?For many people, the flexibility of freelancing is key. You may want to increase your rates over the years or specialize in one particular niche, but sticking with freelancing and avoiding adding frills is definitely an option. Other career paths can require very different types of responsibility, as well as fundamental shifts in how you do business, and the switch isn’t comfortable for many people?
What Does Your Career Path Look Like?When I originally started freelancing full-time, I assumed that sooner or later, I would find a full-time job and cut back on my freelancing. That hasn’t happened to me, although I know plenty of freelancers who have taken jobs (and just as many who have left them) over that time. Career paths change and have to remain flexible, especially if you’re freelancing. That said, though, it’s worth having an idea of where you want to wind up in the long run. Not only is it often necessary to work towards reaching those goals, but simply having those goals give you a reason to keep moving forward and finding new opportunities.
Have you asked yourself what your ideal career path looks like? Where do you want freelancing to take you?
In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, Travis King and Thursday Bram look at website maintenance packages and what to do if people have a problem with were you live.
Ask FreelanceSwitch is a new regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that you want answered, send an email to askfreelanceswitch@gmail.com.
It’s go time!
My partner and I are starting a small web and graphic design business. We are still in the process of building our website and figuring out how to handle clients, etc, what I wanted to know though is what to do after you’ve completed a project for a client. Should you offer to maintain the website for a monthly fee (how much…?), or just leave it be as it is? Because if you do, then I guess you should offer that to all of your clients, but seeing as we’re only a two people team, the more websites we’ll have to maintain, the more hectic it will become in the long run. What if they call us 6 months after this is done saying “my website is down, help ASAP!” Are we supposed to help them for free, charge them…?
-Kimo
Thursday: In general, it’s up to you whether or not to provide maintenance service in the long run — assuming that you aren’t providing hosting. There are benefits to providing at least a certain level of maintenance, though: you can have regular income that isn’t dependent on landing new clients. As a two person team, it can seem tough to manage maintenance for multiple sites, but as long as your monthly fee covers your time, it’s worth working into your schedule. After all, if you have enough websites to maintain, you can always bring in a third person to handle the tasks associated with maintenance.
If a client doesn’t ask for or pay for maintenance, but calls six months down the road wanting help with an emergency, you’re under no obligation to help them free of charge. While you want to be polite to past (and potentially future) clients, it’s reasonable to tell them that you are unable to help or offer them emergency services at a price. Your time is valuable and it isn’t unreasonable to expect clients to understand that.
Travis: I heard a good line from one of our freelancers that a website is never finished, it’s just abandoned.
I think one of the most difficult things to get across to a client is that a website is never really done. In their mind they want to pay the price and be done with it and they start to get all twitchy when you bring up the idea of monthly work. It’s your job to educate them on how the website is an ongoing marketing tool and not a one off purchase.
You’ll want to start this education early, so don’t leave it to the last minute.
Some clients will get it, some wont. Before long you’ll get a feel for which type of client they are. Just don’t try pushing a monthly package on a client whose firm on wanting a boring static website. Just say to them – I see that you’re going to be a boring person. That always works.
I also heard another good line from one of our freelancers- There once was a man from Australia…
Question #2What can I do to not put off people by mentioning “I’m a freelancer from India”?
While I do realize why there is so much dislike for Indian IT workers in general across the web, for obvious reasons mostly caused by Indians, I am just concerned about my business. I have always had this problem of staying online with my real identity as an Indian.
So my question is I have 2 choices :
A. Should I not disclose my location?
OR
B. Just mind my business on the internet without trying to be a part of the elite western IT club?
-Deb
Thursday: It isn’t right or fair, but many people — clients, bloggers and everyone else — make some automatic assumptions when they see a freelancer is from certain countries. How you deal with those assumptions depends on what your goals are. It is possible to build connections and land clients no matter where you’re from, but you can often do so faster if you’re willing to keep your current location under wraps. I wouldn’t suggest lying to a client, but simply not disclosing your location is an option. That said, it is possible to succeed while still disclosing your location. It requires perseverance, but you may be able to create a higher quality of connection in the long run.
It’s not an easy decision to make and there are consequences to both approaches. It’s important to choose the route that best matches what you feel comfortable with, as well as what your long-term goals are.
Travis: That’s a real tough one Deb. I think I’d also go with Thurday’s advice and keep your location under wraps.
If you do good work, then let your work speak for itself. I don’t care where people live as long as they are passionate about their work and deliver quality. And besides, India is the home of Aishwarya Rai, and if that isn’t high quality I don’t know what is.
If people really want to know where you are from, give them the name of your state or town. Or if you’re feeling particularly sneaky, grab yourself a US mail address and say you’re location independent and work out of many places.
For example, I live in Canada, but if for some reason I didn’t want people to know that, I could say I live in Saskatchewan. And then people would say “Gesundheit.”
Twitter seems to have a very polarizing effect on people. Some love it and some hate it. Some even love to hate it when they haven’t even tried the service yet. What makes Twitter so divisive?
Recently, actor Sir Patrick Stewart came down on the usefulness of Twitter in his life calling it too simplistic to reduce life to 140 characters. But whether you agree with the Captain or not, Twitter – when used correctly – can be a extremely beneficial tool for your freelance business.
With its growing list of books, Rockable Press recently released Twitter Up Your Business: How to Market Your Business on Twitter. The mini-book promises to teach you how to use the service, and explains how Twitter can help your business. Let’s see how it delivers.
Engage!
The book is broken down into six sections that take you from an introduction to Twitter to how to use it to market and improve your business.
Let’s take a look at each main chapter:
Introduction to TwitterI admit that it’s sometimes fun to hate a product just to be different or to go against the grain. I did this with Myspace and Facebook without ever trying the service. I suppose we must think we’re too cool for what’s cool.
The reality of the matter is, if you’re hating on Twitter just to be different, you may be hurting your business. There are certainly plenty of good reasons to not use Twitter, but you will be far better off if you come to an informed decision after trying out the service than just avoiding it for the sake of avoiding it.
In this chapter you’ll get a quick introduction to what Twitter does, some of its uses and whether your business will benefit from using it.
Setting up Your Twitter EnvironmentIt won’t take you long to realize that the default Twitter website is not the most efficient way to use the service. This chapter highlights how to set up your account, what Twitter applications are available and how to brand your profile page to match your company.
Finding People to FollowI remember when I first started using Twitter it felt a little like talking to myself in an empty room. Fortunately there was a long list of freelancer Twitter users that was already starting to develop.
Since Twitter doesn’t really have a user search, it can often be difficult to find people to follow. This chapter will help you to search for people who share similar interests or network with people in your area.
The chapter also discusses how to filter your follow list by looking at the users profile and previous tweets to see if they will add any value to your Twitter experience.
Delivering ValueWhereas I’m personally interested in what type of coffee you’re currently drinking, most followers will not be. This chapter makes it very clear that the best Twitter users are those that provide value to their followers.
Personally, I’d rather get to know people than be bombarded by article links all the time, but when I was working with Creattica, those article spammers were an incredible resource that made my job so much easier. So it really comes down to knowing what your readers want to read.
How often to post and how to interact with your network is also discussed as well as one of the best ways to see who’s paying attention by asking a question and seeing who responds.
Growing Your TribeSo now that you’ve got your feet wet with Twitter, it’s time to build and improve your network.
Specific techniques on how to get people to follow you and why following too large a number of people can dilute your Twitter experience are both discussed.
Using Your Tribe to Market Your BusinessThis last chapter brings the value of Twitter out by teaching you how to leverage your network to expand your business. Whether you’re directing traffic to your site, or using Twitter to help your customers and clients, there are plenty of useful marketing opportunities to the service.
The chapter concludes with several case studies of how businesses are using and benefitting from adopting Twitter.
ConclusionWhile the mini-book doesn’t get into a few areas I wish it did like how to overcome Twitter-overload and ways to keep the noise down, the book delivers incredible value for those that are new to Twitter or who are uncertain of its value.
The book is available from Rockable Press for $8.00 for the PDF and $13.00 for the paperback.
Get a 25% Discount on Twitter Up Your BusinessRockable Press is offering a 25% discount coupon for FreelanceSwitch readers on the PDF version of “Twitter Up Your Business“. All you need to do is use the coupon code FreelanceSwitch in the checkout when ordering your copy of the book. This offer ends on the 31st of March, 2010.
Human beings are creatures of habit. (Yes, even freelancers like you.) We tend to wake up at the same time each morning, go through the same basic routine of tasks every day, and go to bed at the same hour every night. Routines are comforting and familiar.
Oh, and they could destroy your productivity.
Every person is most productive at certain times of day and least productive at others. You may assume you’ve already figured out when those times are for you, because you’ve been following the same patterns and habits for years.
Since you’re getting work done fairly well, those are your most productive hours, right?
Afraid not. I know at least a dozen extremely successful freelancers whose careers only took off once they discovered the true times they were most productive – and every single one of those freelancers had no idea, up until that point, that they weren’t getting as much out of their workweek as they could.
Taking Your Productivity for a Test DriveThose best, most productive hours are different for everyone, unfortunately, so I can’t just suggest you work from 5am to 11am or 4pm to 8pm, for example.
The hours each of us are most productive have to do with the way our individual brains are wired. Studies show that night owls and morning people have completely different nervous systems. So how do you find out what hours are most productive for you?
I’m an early riser, myself. Up at 5 am every day. I know a few other people who swear by getting up at dawn, like James. Those hours make us feel good. We enjoy the silence, the slow beginning to the day. We like being at our desks before the rest of the freelancing world has even hit the snooze button once.
You might be that kind of person. And you may not even know it.
Others enjoy late night work. There’s no shortage of night owls in the freelancing world, and burning the midnight oil is extremely satisfying for them. They like finishing off a big project in the wee hours and then falling into bed, spent.
You might enjoy one of those nights too. But you also may not have tried it.
That’s the problem. We often believe we’re a night owl or a morning person, but in actual fact, we’re just locked into a habit and we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that we’ve got it right. James used to stay up until 2am every night – for years – doing some good work indeed. That is, until he realized that going to bed at 9pm and getting up at 5pm left him feeling a whole lot better.
We tend to get set in our patterns and habits, but we’re not 9-to-5ers. Our freelancing careers allow us to get more creative than that. Since you have the freedom, try playing around with your hours. Get up a little earlier every day, or stay up a little later. (Don’t do both at the same time – you’ll burn out.)
Try out your new time for two weeks or so to adjust. See if you notice any changes, good or bad. Pay attention to when you get the most work done during the day. Often freelancers think they’re hitting a block when they’re actually just hitting a pocket of non-productivity.
You haven’t lost your touch – you just need a break.
Start getting up from your desk for an hour every time you get stuck. Do something else, something mindless. Come back in an hour and see if you’re rearing to go.
Keep a log of those hours over at least a week. If you notice you’re always productive at the same time and completely incapable of working at other times, congratulations: you’ve found your optimal productivity.
Leveraging Your Productive HoursMost freelancers exhaust themselves by trying to work through hours when they aren’t productive. Don’t do this. You’ll either wind up mentally exhausted or you’ll distract yourself with procrastination. If you do the former, you’ll be too tired to work at your best times. If you do the latter, you’re liable to go right through your most productive hours without even noticing you’re ready to go again.
No good.
Instead, work as hard as you can during your most productive times and stop when you start to feel yourself lagging or getting tired. Use your off hours to give your brain a break. Do some physical activity for awhile – hell, go for a walk. Read for pleasure. Have a chat with a friend. Cook some food.
Whatever you do, make sure you’re letting your brain completely disengage from the work at hand. Pick an activity that’s mindless and carried out almost automatically without you having to think about it.
When your productivity window comes back around, sit down and get back to work. Your brain will be rested and you’ll be primed to do some of your best work.
Be prepared for your productive hours to be scattered all over the day in little bits and chunks. This isn’t just likely – it’s almost guaranteed. Very, very few people can actually work productively for a solid eight-hour block, freelancers or no. Don’t fool yourself that you’re above being human like everyone else.
The difference is that freelancers have the freedom to step away from their desk and give their brains a break. Feel sorry for the guy in the office cubicle who can’t – he’s wearing out his brain.
You, on the other hand? You’re flying high in your best productivity zones. Right up until the moment you’re not, and then you get to take a break and wait for your next productive time to come around.
We knew the freelancer’s life was better, and now we have one more reason why.
About the Author: For more tips on how to get the most out of your freelancing career, head on over to Men with Pens, where Taylor and James give you tricks of the trade to get ahead.
The latest episode of Freelance Radio, the official FreelanceSwitch podcast, is now available! This episode, the panel (John Brougher, Dickie Adams, Kristen Fischer and Von Glitschka) talks about full-time experience and its value for freelancers. Subscriptions to the podcast are available via iTunes and an archive of all podcasts will appear in the podcast section. We hope you enjoy it!
Subscribe to Freelance Radio on iTunes
You can subscribe on other podcast aggregators by using our podcast feed–it’s simply http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreelanceRadio. Download the podcast file (in MP3 format) via the link (right-click to save).
The Shownotes:
And that’s the episode! If you like it, please feel free to rate it in iTunes or your favorite podcast aggregator, and don’t forget to email your questions/comments via the Freelance Radio form. If you’d like to record a question/comment or submit an original outro song, you can upload them via this form.
Find out more about the panelists at the following sites:
Over the weekend and into Monday we unfortunately experienced some pretty severe downtime on all Envato WordPress blogs and here on the FreelanceSwitch Forums. The downtime was due to problems in the data centre of our current hosting company which was out of our control.
It seems to all be resolved now, but I just wanted to make a quick apology for the inconvenience and interruptions. We’re going to be re-examining our hosting setup to make sure we avoid this situation in the future and to generally try to pull up the quality of service across the board.
In the meantime there may be some further minor interruptions as we shore up the setup. Thank you for your patience!
For freelancers, there’s a direct correlation between how many hours you work and how much money you make. Increasing your income can be tough because there are only 24 hours in any given day and most of us have to do things like sleep and spend time with our family at some point. Even when we’re working, we have to spend hours on administrative tasks that we’re not actually getting paid for. There are a few ways to increase the number of hours you can devote to paying work — without cutting the number of hours you sleep each night. Some require a little up front investment of time, but a few extra hours can be worth it.
1. Establish a Process for EverythingFor any given part of a project, there are certain things you have to do. You may need to email the client a couple of times for information or go looking for stock photography. Those steps can often be made more efficient, especially if you have a clear process in place. If you know that you’re going to need to send out certain emails, for instance, you can create templates, rather than re-writing each email from scratch. You may be able to tweak your processes a little when you pay closer attention to them. Perhaps you wind up getting 90 percent of your stock photos from just a handful of sites — it would make sense to always check those sites first.
2. Bring In an AssistantIf you can find someone to handle non-paying work for less than you earn for an hour’s worth of work, it makes financial sense to hand off certain tasks to an assistant — and if you look at the prices for virtual assistants in countries like India, you can find assistants for a tenth of your hourly rate. Invoicing, searching for stock photography, nagging clients about information — any task that isn’t actually creative work doesn’t have to be your problem, letting you spend more hours on paying work. Working with an assistant is much easier if you have clear steps for each process, letting you get the bonuses of both parts.
3. Hire a ProAssistants make financial sense because they cost less than you earn. Hiring a professional — who likely charges a rate more in line with yours — may seem less practical. But a pro can often handle certain tasks in significantly less time than it would take you. A good bookkeeper, for instance, can often get your accounting done in half the time it may take you, especially if you start out with a minimal background in accounting. The same can hold true for certain parts of freelancing projects. Maybe you’re working on a website design that requires a Flash animation. Bringing in someone to handle that animation can save you time that you can spend on other parts of the project.
4. Don’t Start From ScratchFor many projects, starting entirely from scratch each time just isn’t necessary. If you’re writing a report, you can have a templated outline in place. If you’re designing a website, you can bring in code snippets from past projects. The more groundwork you can have in place before you even start, the less time you need to spend on getting a project rolling.
5. Set Time Limits for Administrative TasksMany businesses spend half their time on administrative tasks that don’t bring in income. If you can impose limits on just how much time you’ll spend on things like invoicing, you can wind up with more time to spend on projects. It’s important to make sure those tasks get done, but it’s often easier to identify solutions that will help you make yourself more efficient if you know that you’re in a time crunch.
Fellow Envato site GraphicRiver is running a competition for its first birthday, and it’s perfect for aspiring freelancers with over $4,300 in prizes aimed at helping you make a living from what you love doing.
To enter, you need to create a collection of GraphicRiver’s best files in a certain area and submit it for selection:
To be eligible, simply create a collection of files showcasing the BEST files on GraphicRiver—this can be the best business card templates, the best icons for websites, the best Twitter backgrounds, best web elements, best character vectors…the possibilities are endless! Don’t forget to give it an eye-catching image, a snazzy description, and make it viewable to the public.
Here’s what you could win by participating:
Read more about the competition at GraphicRiver.
It doesn’t take a long visit to FreelanceSwitch to figure out that many of us were unhappy employees.
Some of us made dramatic exits from the job world–stomping out of the office after a fight with the boss, telling an especially demanding client exactly what you think of her micromanagement of your design work, or, on a Friday afternoon, walking out of that toxic waste dump of a workplace and making your weekend permanent.
Then there’s Daniel Pink, who was a White House speechwriter in the Clinton administration. His moment of truth came late on one of those muggy summer days for which Washington, D.C. is infamous. Following a meeting with Vice President Al Gore, Pink felt nauseated and light-headed. His health took a sudden, dramatic turn for the worse, and a doctor was summoned. The diagnosis was exhaustion.
Three weeks after collapsing in the Vice President’s waiting room, Pink celebrated the 4th of July by declaring his independence from employment. He’s been on his own ever since.
In 2001, Pink published Free Agent Nation, a book that documented the growing number of independent workers in the United States. While it made passing references to trades-people working as carpenters, plumbers, and electricians, much of the book was about people like us – tech-savvy freelancers who deal with remote clients. To this day, it stands as one of the key freelancing manifestos.
Through his book, Pink was doing something that I suggest that we all do: He was advocating for freelancing. The opportunities for doing so abound – and you don’t have to write a book.
For example, here in the United States, there’s quite a governmental effort to rev up job creation. So far, it isn’t going very well.
Now would be the perfect time for us to tell our elected representatives about our lives as freelancers, especially how we’ve been able to earn good livings without a job. And enjoy better lives.
If you’re freelancing parents, aren’t you glad that you can stay home and raise your children instead of having to drop them off at daycare on your way to work? Or let’s say you’re up in years, but you want (or need) to keep working. Instead of being turned down by employers who can’t see beyond your white hair, you’re freelancing just like your grandkids. Matter of fact, you and the grandkids have been known to team up on projects.
And let’s not forget that freelancing isn’t just for the tech-savvy. Know anyone in the trades? I know quite a few, and let me tell you something–the good tradespeople have more than enough work to do. Even in this economy.
After you’ve written your e-mails and letters and made phone calls to your elected reps, here’s something else for your advocacy to-do list: Write letters to the editors of your favorite publications. The letters are usually the most-read part of any publication, so if you’re looking to get your name out there, here’s an opportunity.
There’s another side to advocacy, and that is speaking up when things just aren’t right. Here in the United States, health care coverage is tied to employment. Most Americans get health insurance through their jobs, but guess what, we freelancers don’t have jobs.
As Daniel Pink said in Free Agent Nation, “America’s health insurance system is seriously and intrinsically flawed. It traps people who’d like to become independent in jobs they don’t want because leaving that job would mean losing its medical coverage. It makes the lives of those who are free agents more precarious because they have few options and limited bargaining power in the health insurance marketplace.”
A few months ago, I was one of the speakers at a health care reform rally. I spoke from my perspective as an over-50 freelancer with few options in Arizona’s individual health insurance market. This isn’t a good situation to be in, but that’s my reality. I finished my speech by saying, “Too bad that such things are allowed to happen in the richest country on earth.”
My speech was all but drowned out by rush hour traffic leaving Downtown Tucson, but I don’t regret making it. I know too many people in the same situation as I am. And I also know many job-trapped people who’d make terrific freelancers. I’d love to work with them on projects. So, I’m not just speaking up for myself – I’m speaking up for them too.
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