What I Learned in my Second Year As a Freelance Writer
Independence is both the best and worst part of being a full-time freelancer. On the one hand, I have total autonomy over my projects and schedule. On the other hand, I don’t have a team of people to learn from or bounce ideas off of. Which is why my first few years have been such a learning experience. Most seasoned freelancers will tell you that they learned the best ways to run their business from trial and error. *emphasis on error*
Last year, I shared What I Learned in my First Year as a Freelance Writer. Looking back, I felt so confident with a full year of business ownership under my belt. I certainly wasn’t expecting smooth sailing from there, but I did feel like I had learned the difficult lessons of business ownership.
It’s now been two years since I left my full-time job for a career in freelance writing. While I started the year with a stronger foundation as a business owner, this past year taught me so much about not just building a business but building my dream business—one that is sustainable, enjoyable, creative, flexible, and lucrative.
Whether you’re an experienced or aspiring freelancer, I think we can all learn from each other's experiences. Here are my key takeaways from the past year.
Focus On Your Bread and Butter Clients
When I first started taking freelance projects, I was pretty much open to any client who would have me. This ended up being helpful, because it gave me a wide range of clients, industries, and pricing models. Over time, I figured out which clients were the best fit in terms of communication, pay range, and the project itself.
For example, I love working with marketing agencies. The communication is often low maintenance, they understand the value of content and tend to pay well, and they offer a steady stream of projects without me having to do business development (i.e. my least favorite part of my job). Agencies are my “bread and butter” clients.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t take on projects outside of your niche. However, your marketing and business development efforts should focus primarily on the clients that make your business the most enjoyable and profitable.
Charge More
At the very beginning of my second year in business, I found myself in every freelancer’s nightmare: I had spread myself too thin across too many projects, I was working long days seven days per week, and my bank statements didn’t seem to reflect how hard I was working. I started to notice that my high-paying projects made me feel good about the time I spent on them, while my lower-paying contracts often left me feeling frustrated and taken advantage of.
So, I stopped taking low-ball projects. Instead of meeting clients at their budget, I started asking clients to meet me at my value. Did I lose projects? Yes. Did I break up with a few clients? Sure did. However, I also found clients who value my time and expertise and are happy to pay my rates.
This was one of the harder business shifts to navigate, so here are a few quick and dirty tips for charging what you’re worth:
Raise your fees annually. Remember the cost-of-living bumps at full-time gigs? Well, freelancers get those too. To be clear, you shouldn’t bump your rate in the middle of a project. However, if you have an ongoing client or new projects in the pipeline, remember to factor in a cost-of-living increase at the beginning of every year.
Never work for free! Your time is your most valuable asset. You should never, under any circumstance, have to do a project for free in order to get paid work. Repeat after me: We do not do favors. We do not go “above and beyond” our contracts. Our time is valuable, and anyone who cannot or will not pay for it can kindly leave.
Always push back on low offers. This is uncomfy. There’s no way around it. But if a client offers you a low project fee, it’s perfectly reasonable to come back with your pricing and a breakdown of why you charge that much. Be prepared to walk away. However, it might surprise you how many clients will accept your counter offer.
Monitor scope creep. If a project starts to become more work than originally agreed upon, check in with your client. You can offer to adjust the scope of the contract or bill them hourly for any additional time. Scope creep happens to the best of us, but that doesn’t mean it’s free.
Set Work/Life Boundaries
Work/life balance is tricky for everyone. But when you are your business, it can be even harder to separate your work life from your personal life, especially if you work from home. As freelancers, we don't always work fixed hours. However, I’ve learned that you can still have fixed hours of operation. These are hours that you are available to clients for meetings and communication.
My hours of operation are Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm ET. Even if I choose to work outside of my set hours, I only respond to client messages, emails, or meeting requests during my hours of operation. This sets a clear boundary that I am not available around the clock simply because I have a flexible schedule.
It can also be helpful to block off time in your calendar for client work, administrative tasks, professional development, business development, creative projects, and breaks. I’ve found this helpful to have clear boundaries around my time, so that client communication and meetings can fit into my workday rather than governing my schedule.
Physical space is another important piece of setting boundaries. If possible, separate your workspace from the rest of your home. A spare bedroom or alcove is perfect, as long as you can walk away from your work environment and relax. Avoid having email notifications on your personal devices, so that your downtime really is separate from work.
Embrace Flexibility
I love a routine. So, unlearning the rigid 9-5 schedule has been one of the most difficult perks of freelancing for me to embrace.
I found that if I started work late, finished early, or took a break in the middle of the day, that I felt guilty for not being productive during that time. Recently, my therapist asked me what was the point of owning my own business if I couldn’t enjoy the flexibility it provided. This was when I first started to shift my perspective around my work schedule.
Sometimes I plan for flexible time, like lunch breaks, midday walks, or reading time. Other times, I take unplanned flexible time, like when I’m tired, sick, or have a particularly light workload. It turns out that when my work days are shorter, I have a much easier time focusing and can often accomplish the same amount of work, if not more, in fewer hours. This leaves me with more spare time throughout the week to relax or pour time into activities that bring me joy, like creative writing, playing music, and reading.
Work Smarter
Efficient processes are a boring but essential part of any business. I am a self-proclaimed process gal, mostly because I enjoy doing things the easy, even lazy, way. Every business owner needs to find the tools and processes that work best for them.
For me, this is a joint effort from my QuickBooks account, several tracking spreadsheets, an obsessively organized Google Drive, and my color-coded Google Calendar (inspired by this YouTube video from Jules Acree).
QuickBooks - My QuickBooks account is linked to my business banking account. It auto pulls and tags every transaction from my account. I also invoice my clients, track my income, and pay my quarterly taxes through QuickBooks.
Spreadsheets - Fair warning: too many spreadsheets is never a good thing. However, I use a few select spreadsheets to keep track of my monthly projects, business development activities, and my content calendar. This is particularly helpful to track year-over-year changes.
Google Drive - Nothing in my business exists outside of Google Drive. I have a folder for every client and project, plus folders for my creative projects, administrative activities, and more. I can easily search for old documents, and I never have to worry about losing files.
Google Calendar - Nearly every minute of my work day is accounted for in my Google Calendar. I typically plan out the following week on Fridays and everything is color coded by client work, meetings, creative projects, professional development, personal time, self care, etc. This helps me keep track of my various deadlines and prioritize my time. It also helps me build in and structure my downtime.
Find Your Community
As an introvert, I have struggled with finding a community as a business owner. This is definitely my “weakest link” and a skill I’m actively working to develop. Having a community is the best way to surround yourself with friends, colleagues, mentors, and clients, which are all essential pieces of long-term success.
I am currently in the “see what sticks'' phase of finding my community. So far, efforts have included joining a coworking space, attending local networking events, starting a small Slack channel of female friends in my industry, joining a giant Slack channel of content marketers, connecting with other writers and freelancers on social media, posting about my business on social media, and reaching out to people in my network about potential projects via email or LinkedIn.
Some of these efforts were harder than others, but I’ve learned that while community building can be scary, it’s more than worth the effort. Your business cannot thrive as an island. Connection is essential to learning, building a steady stream of new business, and feeling less alone in a job that can be pretty isolating.
Thank you for reading. I hope what I’ve learned the hard way can help you learn the easier way. For any freelancers or small business owners, I’m curious what you’ve learned about running your business in the last year! Leave a comment below or email me at sarahrearickroy@gmail.com.