*This is a collaborative post
Every day, more and more people walk away typical nine-to-five style of employment in favour of something that offers just a little more freedom and choice. Over the last several years more and more people, myself included, have discovered the benefits of freelancing. However, many people find that the freelance life offers a lot more challenges than they were expecting. For every person who finds a new lease of life working as a freelancer, there are just as many who find themselves going back to traditional employment because the challenges were simply too great. From seasonality, a lack of consistent work to upredictable cash flow issues, making the switch to freelancing can be feel like quite a risky jump, however if you are dead set on giving the freelance life a try, here are just a few things that you’re going to need to do.
Get yourself a decent website
If you want to work as a freelancer, then you’re going to need clients. There have always been plenty of different ways in which clients make contact with people that they want to work with but in the modern age, few are more significant than the internet. Google searches comprise by far the largest portion of how people connect with freelancers in the twenty-first century. Because of this, if you don’t have a halfway decent website, you’re never going to be able to attract any clients. It’s not enough just to have a website; you have to think of it as the first exposure that many people will have to your business. What impression do you want them to take away from it?
Learn to be disciplined with your time
It might seem as though part of the fun of freelancing is that you can work anytime, anywhere. While this is certainly true, it’s also important to be aware that the novelty of getting up at noon and working from your bed is going to wear off pretty quickly. Not only that but clients will have time frames that they want you to work within, and if you don’t meet those deadlines, then there could be serious consequences. If you mess up at work, your employer may have to speak to you and might get in trouble, if you mess up as a freelancer then you’re just going to lose that client, as well as any clients that they might send your way. Its often said that for every good experience people tell 2 or 3 people, but for every bad – they tell 8-10.
Legitimize yourself
When you’re working for yourself, especially at the beginning, it’s easy for people to see you as an amateur. This can make it difficult to make people take you seriously. However, there are always things that you can do to solve this. For one thing, using a service like PhysicalAddress.com can help to make your business look more legitimate. It also protects your privacy if you dont feel comfortable publishing your personal details on your site, but allows official contact information to be shared online. Similarly, you might want to think about how your branding impacts how people see you – does your logo represent you well?
The reality is that working for yourself from home or setting up your own business aren’t just “better” or “easier” options. The only real difference between those options and working the traditional 9-5 is what it is that you want to get out of your career. That’s something you have to consider extremely carefully when the time comes to choose what you really want to do with your life.
Some things however are worth the gamble! The things you regret in life may be the choices you didn’t make!
