How to Solve Common Freelancing Concerns

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Freelancing – selling particular services on an hourly or a project basis – is a great way to earn additional income. When you have a valuable skill and you know how to find people that are willing to pay for it, it can set off a domino effect of opportunities.

Having done freelance work both while employed with a full-time income and while self-employed, I’ve put up with different pressures. I’ve been on the other side too – both working for a large company and running my own – I’ve hired freelancers to do certain tasks for me. All of this experience has helped me to understand the relationship between the two and how best to operate. Usually, good communication solves all.

Taking on freelance work will lead to a whole host of concerns. These are the most common ones you’re likely to encounter and how best to manage them:

1. Pricing

Issue: Pricing is a common hurdle to encounter with your first few clients. If you’re running a solo ship, you may feel as though you’re overpricing a task that you feel is too easy, or underpricing something that may take longer than you expect to complete. So what’s best?

Solution: Decide on a firm hourly rate. Oftentimes, your freelance work will stem from something you do in your day job. Work from that as a basis for how you should charge. Figure out what your monthly salary translates into as an hourly rate and tweak that until you find a rate that works. If anyone you know works in this space, find out how much they charge (even as a ballpark) and it will help you come to a sensible price point.

If you’re at the stage where you’re not sure how much a particular task will take to complete, project-based pricing can be an option. However, this often results in you going under rather than over what you deserve to be paid. Keep the client in the loop if you think the project has grown into something larger or longer than you anticipated.

2. Acquiring new clients

Issue: Clients do not fall on trees and most of them seem very scary before you talk to them. It’s all well and good wanting to offer certain services, but actually being able to identify people that need the services is a different issue. No client is forever, so you need to keep your name out there. How have you got time promote if you’re spending all of your time working on client work and potentially doing full-time work for the rest of your week?

Solution: There’s no exact science to this, but networking and self-promotion do a lot of good. First off, let people know what you’re about and what you can do for them. You never know when you may stumble across someone that requires your services.

It’s always good to keep a portfolio or case study pack of things you’ve done with your clients. Request testimonials as social proof for when you’re trying to pitch for future work. Get into a routine of documenting what you’ve done, so if any unexpected opportunities come along, you can move quickly to secure them. Platforms like Behance allow you to feature digital portfolios in clean, presentable formats, so you can attract future clients passively.

3. Overworking

Issue: Freelance work is addictive, once you get the knack for acquiring clients. It can be tempting to take on as much work as you come across. Often enough, you won’t know you’re heading into that situation until it’s too late. Being swamped by deadlines isn’t going to do your work very much justice. The money may sound great, but it’s not if it’s cost you your freedom.

Solution: You have 24 hours in the day. Allocate. Per client, what have you agreed to do? Is there any way you can delay doing some bits of work until you’re less busy? Have you considered outsourcing some of your tasks?

I’m a fan of making other people do the tasks that I’m not built to do, but would just as quickly palm off a bit of writing task to someone on TextBroker because I don’t think my mind is in the game at the time.

4. Self-motivation

Issue: Working for yourself sounds great, but being in a situation where you’re your own manager can go one of two ways. The less than ideal one is that when you’re not in the mood, things go downhill. You may be more inclined to take your foot off the gas, procrastinate and lose your priorities.

Solution: Find your motivation. You’re probably doing this freelance work for the financial gain, so by doing a good job, you’re creating the momentum for even more. No matter how professional your client may be, they will expect good value for money. If that means that you do things quickly, you provide good customer service, or you deliver beyond expectations, it’s going to work in your favour.

Find ways to get yourself in the mood to work and to want to get tasks done. You may want to create incentives, sanctions or spreadsheets that make you more productive. Get plenty of rest, establish the KPIs, and get things done.

5. Working by yourself

Issue: Depending on if this is a full-time or part-time gig will determine how severe this may be, but working by yourself can play with your emotions. Even people that consider themselves to be introverted and enjoy their own company may feel as though they’re not getting enough human interaction, if they’re spending every day whipping through brief after brief.

Solution: Find different spaces to work. Your bedroom, front room or home office may seem like the safest places to get things done, but they’re lonely environments. If you’re still working, perhaps consider staying late to work from there (as someone else will probably be around). If you’re doing things solo now, coffee shops are a strong go-to as a budget option, and co-working spaces like WeWork may be worth considering.

I’m so glad that my first proper work experience took place in a co-working space, as it meant I could interact with people all day, bouncing ideas off creative people that (usually) ran their own businesses. The environment made it easier to work in sometimes. Other times, I’d prefer I was at home on my iMac.

6. Client expectations

Issue: Clients know what they want, and they may not always be the best at communicating this to you. Keeping them happy can be stressful, as it can feel like the slight disagreement may result in them cutting you off. That atmosphere doesn’t exactly lead to the best work.

Solution: Be transparent and clarify all communication. If you have been set a brief, interpret it and have get them to confirm what you’re going to do in writing. Have some sort of documentation you can fall back on to always make sure you’re doing what you ask them to, and that you both understand what work is going to be undertaken.

Keep your client informed about time scales, potential extra budget requirements and anything else, before a situation escalates into something it doesn’t need to be. Keep them in check if they ask more than you stated in the emails/contracts.

7. Payment terms

Issue: In an ideal world, everyone would like to do the work on a Monday and get paid on the Tuesday. Freelancers, however, know that work completed may be paid 30 days after the start date, the end of the following month, 90 days after the work was completed, or however else their accounting team feels is suitable. Even then, there’s the invoice chasing phase afterwards.

Solution: Upfront when you work with a client, it’s good to make a suggestion of how you would like to be paid. No, you probably won’t get the weekly payouts you desire, but try to get yourself in for the best chance of a solid payment 30 days after you start working. The structure works in regular 9-to-5s, so you should probably aim for that here too.

If it’s company policy to pay suppliers after extended periods (60, 90, or I’ve even heard of a mobile operator that does 90-day terms) then make sure your finances are prepared for it. It’s difficult to find loopholes with these things, so just be sure that you know precisely when they’re counting the start period and the payout date as, just so you’re not caught off guard.

8. Chasing Invoices

Issue: The larger the client, the further removed the finance team will be from your main contact. Keep all of that in-mind. While it’s great that you’ve signed up a big brand to work with, if your main contact isn’t friendly with finance, you may encounter issues.

Solution: If the payment terms are longer than you tend to work (usually with large companies) ensure that you get your main contact to provide you with an email or number for someone in finance.

Invoice problems happen frequently at large companies – where they have to ensure that every single detail is given in a very precise format – so issues can happen. Rather than allowing a middle person to slow things down for your further, make sure you’re dealing with something that can get your payment sorted first hand. Have terms in your contract that stipulate interest for late payment, and make sure you enforce them too.

If you’re working with a small company of 1-9 people and you need to chase for invoices, they don’t respect what they’re doing for you, so proceed with caution.