15 Ways to Enjoy Freelancing
Freelancers are always in search of some work, so that they can earn something by rendering their services to people from the comforts of their home. Most of us read a lot about productivity, marketing, pricing, customer service, and these aspects of business are all important. But it’s also important to enjoy the work that you do.
Being a freelancer is a great opportunity that allows you to shape and customize your ideal work style. Here is a look at some things you can do to help make your work more enjoyable.
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From YourSelf
1. Self Motivation
Self motivation is a key when it comes to freelancing. If you as a freelancer is not motivated to show off your skills then how come you would become a successful freelancer? I am sure that now you must get the answer to this question by yourself. So, it is advisable here that you must keep yourself motivated from the very beginning as yourself motivation will remain with you till you work as a freelancer.
2. Try to be Productive
Productivity is an important factor in the field of freelancing. Being a freelancer, you need to come up with something distinctive from others, so that your client can consider you as someone important and someone productive as well.
- Get More Done: 10 Tips for a More Productive Web Design Process
- 88 Tips to Make You a Productive Freelancer
3. Creativity is Also an Important Factor
Creativity is also very important in freelancing. If you cannot come up with something creative then no one would like to work with you again and again as he/she would be getting the same thing from you again and again. So, in order to become a successful freelancer, you must bring in some creativity to your work.
From Your Work
4. Must Know How to Manage Projects Properly
As a freelancer, you must be aware of things and steps which you must take in order to manage your projects properly. There is every possibility that as a freelancer, you might come up with times where you would be required to take care of multiple projects at the same time, in such situations, your project management techniques will come in handy.
- Six Project Management Skills Web Design Freelancer
- 15 Useful Project Management Tools
- 20 Great Project Management Tools
- 10 Free Project Management Applications
5. Time Management
Time management is also very important when it comes to becoming a successful freelancer. As a freelancer, you need to manage your time properly and at the same time you need to manage other things as well such as delivering the work on time, taking payments on time, taking new projects at the very right time and etc.
6. Must Follow a Well Defined To-Do List
As a freelancer, you would need to take care of multiple things at one time, so in order to make things much more easier for yourself, you must prioritize the work by preparing a to-do list for yourself. The work which are important should be completed first while the work which are not so important should be kept for last.
7. 80/20 Rule Must be Followed
You might have already heard of the Pareto Principle, or 80-20 rule, before. This holds that 20% of the cause in 80% of output, 20% of the work causes 80% of the results, 20% of the clients 80% of the profits, and so on. Percentage incorrect, of course, but the basic premise (that a small percentage of what we do produce most of the results) is an analytical tool very useful for your business. If you are lucky (and smart), you could end up increasing your business profitability by doing less and just focus on what is important.
- 80/20 Principle
- Paretos Principle 80 20 Rule
- Use the 80-20 Rule to Increase Your Website’s Effectiveness
8. You Must Work With an Authentic Source
Whether you’re a freelance copywriter or a freelance graphic designer, you need a contract in place to protect yourself and let your clients know exactly what they get from you. To learn how to create contract documents and anything that needs to be done you can see here:
From Marketing
9. Make Use of Social Networking for Marketing Purposes
It is advisable here that as a freelancer, you need to advertise your services as much as your possibly can, and when we talk about the most cost effective mode of marketing over the internet then there is nothing better than social networking websites. As a freelancer, you must make full use of such websites by advertising your services in an effective manner and for free of cost at the same time as well.
- How To Use Social Networks To Find Gigs
- Social Networking Is Smart
- 10 Great Tips For Using Twitter As A Designer
10. Consider Doing Email Marketing
As a freelancer (or prospective freelancers), you live and die by your ability to sell your services. Email marketing is a way to explain how you work, your services, your skills, your passion and etc. Web applications such as Campaign Monitor, MailChimp and My Emma can handle such administrative unsubscribe, maintain and even invoice deliverability. This allows you and your client to just hang out with those things pleasant – sweet email creative design and optimize your campaign.
From Invoicing
11. Manage a Proper Client Database
Make a record of all your clients’ information such as contact numbers, email addresses, and so forth can be common sense, but it is imperative to maintain a database of all your clients and potential clients information. Managing a proper database will help you at times when you would be in need of communicating with your clients for some specific purposes or reasons.
From Communication
12. Save Your Conversation Completed With the Client
It’s surprising how many people when working for an online client only works directly from a brief in an email format. Storing all the necessary information in your inbox is not a good idea when it comes to data security. The best thing to do in such situations is to simply copy and paste all the important information in a variety of electronic documents.
13. Provide Suitable Medium for Clients to Communicate
Providing suitable medium for clients to communicate as an important part of effective freelancing. For clients, it is not so difficult to find freelancers, but for freelancers, finding clients is surely a difficult task. So here, you cannot take anything for granted, provide suitable medium such as instant email address, link and etc to the clients, so that they can communicate with you with ease.
14. Professionalism should be Present All the Times
As a freelancer, you must remain professional all the times because freelancing is nothing less than a business and when it comes to business then professionalism is something which cannot be taken for granted by any means.
15. Remain Polite all the Times
Lastly, as a freelancer, you must remain polite all the times. Anger and frustrations are something which must not be involved within your work because these things won’t be doing any good to your freelancing career.
So, above mentioned are 15 ways with the help of of which you can become a successful freelancer, I am sure that if you are a freelancer then you must already be aware of some of the ways but if not, then now you are aware, so make full use of these. Plus, if you are aware of some other ways, then feel free to share your thoughts, so that we all can make use of these for our own benefits.
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- Thumbs Up
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- Close-up Picture of an Invoice
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- Paper Fortune Teller
Very good article mate! Thanks
Nice post, im just starting for myself. Good check list to look at, on a day of chaos :P
Well depicted ways, really left me asking for more, expecting a lot of similar stuff from your blog in the near future!!..
Thank you Yanuar. Your post is very usefull, I’m looking forward to your next cool post.
Thanks.
Great article, especially in try to be productive section…very useful for me
Anyway, we also have another article about time management tips from successful designers, here
Hope it useful
This was very helpful. very good article..
Very very useful article. Thanks a lot!
excellent writing Den, with useful informations. thanks
Very nice article
Thank you Yanuar
I love freelance! Thanks for the cool article.
really useful information, educative, informative and inspiring hope could be reference for others.
Great and a very useful article. It proves why being a freelancer is a dream job for aalmost any individual out there.
Hey! Thanks for the article! It’s kind of the things i knew but it’s good to refresh. Cause freelansing becomes hard sometimes.
And there are lots really useful links to other articles!
So thank you once more!