business of freelancing

Freelancing offers significant advantages, but too many freelancers never see those benefits. While there are sometimes practical obstacles, one of the most common reasons freelancers don’t fully enjoy the freedom the gig economy offers is that they’re unable (or unwilling) to let go of the employee mentality.

We’ve already looked at the importance of running your freelancing business like a business, but didn’t touch on one of the most important aspects: understanding that you are your own boss and acting like it.

Think for a moment about the businesses you frequent. Has your local mechanic ever stayed open all night because you announced at 4:30 p.m. that you needed your car back by 6 a.m.? Has your doctor ever asked how much you’d like to pay for your visit? Has a hotel clerk ever said, “Well, we’re fully booked for tomorrow night, but since you decided at the last minute that you want to stay another night, I’ll just kick someone else out”? Continue reading “Taking Charge of Client Relationships”

Though freelancing is spreading to a wide range of industries, U.S. freelancers are still heavily concentrated in creative fields. While a small percentage are savvy business people focusing significant energy on growing and managing their businesses, most of us are not. As a general rule, writers want to write and designers want to design and so on. Few of us want to market, keep the books, sort out our tax deductible expenses, track our effective hourly rates, cultivate client relationships, or assess the return on our investment of time, money, and effort.

We do, however, want to make money, get referrals and repeat business from past clients, and otherwise succeed in whatever field we’ve chosen.

Approaching freelance work like the business it offers many benefits, including: Continue reading “9 Reasons to Run Your Freelancing Business Like a Business”