Are Your Current Freelancing Practices Too Boxed In?
Posted February 25, 2011 in Inspiration
You’re doing a great job of following all the freelancing advice you can find─to the letter!
You’re managing your time very well. You’re charging the right rate for your services. You’ve even selected a freelancing specialty.
You’re doing everything right, but something is very wrong! What it could be?
I’ll tell you what it could be. You may have allowed yourself to become so boxed in with advice that you’re failing to enjoy the freedom that drew you to freelancing in the first place.
Advice is great, but enough is enough. In this post, we’ll discuss the importance of sometimes thinking and acting outside of the box.
When Rules and Processes Become Just Too Much
It’s great to learn all that you can and put the very best freelancing advice you can find into practice. Most of the time following good advice is very good for your freelancing business. Good advice can help your freelancing business get ahead and keep you from making costly mistakes. (We wouldn’t be offering so much advice if we didn’t think it was helpful…)
However, sometimes too much advice can be overwhelming. Especially, if that advice is followed too strictly. In fact, trying to follow too much advice too closely can even become overwhelming. The fact is, that many freelancers are far more strict with themselves than any employer would ever be.
Sometimes sticking to the advice is just too much. It’s just too stressful to rigidly follow the same routine. It can make you feel stifled, and in the end it can actually hurt your business.
Innovation Is Often Outside the Box
Innovation a key part of any business, including freelance businesses.
Your business needs to grow and evolve to stay competitive. You need fresh ideas to stay on top of your field. New ideas are also what makes your freelancing work interesting.
The trouble is, innovations are usually developed by those individuals who are willing to step out of the box and try new things. I guarantee you that the industry leaders in your field, those who you look up to, didn’t get where they are today by doing the same old thing over and over again.
Rather, those successful leaders were willing to step outside of the box once in a while. They were willing to try something new (even when they knew that some of those new things that they tried wouldn’t be successful).
Doing the same thing the same way every time may make you more efficient in the short term, but in the long run it won’t help you come up with new ideas or better ways of doing things.
Are You Willing to Step Out of the Box?
Chances are that you become a freelancer because you wanted to be able to do things differently than the average business. Maybe you wanted to provide more personal service to your clients. Maybe you wanted to tackle more challenging or more creative projects. Maybe you wanted the freedom to choose your own projects.
The point is, you stepped out of the box once and broke with the traditional means of earning a living. Now might be the right time to examine your freelancing business to see if you’re too boxed in with your business practices.
Why not try something a little bit different and see what happens? It’s okay to step out of the box.
Sure, your fresh new idea might fail. You might fall flat on your face. That’s a risk that you will be taking if you try something new. But, on the other hand, you might not fail. Your new idea or new way of doing things might be a fabulous success─and wouldn’t that be terrific for you and for your business?
My Advice to You
So, what’s a freelancer to do?
Should they follow the proven advice or should they strike out on their own?
I would say, both.
Go ahead and learn all that you can from the best sources that you can find. Put those ideas and practices that seem most useful to work in your business.
But, at the same time, constantly be re-evaluating your business practices. Stay open to new ideas. Once in a while, try something a little bit differently just to see what happens.
What About You?
What innovations and new ideas have you come up with in your freelancing business lately? Maybe we can inspire each other.
Share your successes in the comments.
Image by Steve Keys
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About the author: Laura Spencer is a freelance writer from North Central Texas with over 20 years of professional business writing experience. If you liked this post, then you may also enjoy Laura’s blog about her freelance writing experiences, WritingThoughts. Laura is also on Google+.
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13 Comments
Samantha Bangayan
February 25th, 2011 at 9:58 amLaura, this rings so true to my heart! I’m finding more and more that I can’t lose the creativity that brought me to writing in the first place. Like you say, creativity and innovation are not just for writing, they’re also for our business practices! I recently read a post about injecting more personality into my Twitter bio and I think I’ll try a few personas. =) That’s how I’m going to start.
Thanks for the inspiration and for a little push in the right direction. =)
Laura Spencer
February 25th, 2011 at 11:33 amThanks Samantha,
Even though we freelancers are free to experiment and try new things, all too often we don’t take advantage of our freedom. Processes work, but they are only guidelines and we should be able to step away from them when we need to.
Some Design Blog
February 25th, 2011 at 11:50 amGood points, Laura. It’s important to remember that freelancing is a form of entrepreneurship, and as such we have plenty of room to build our own business models.
I know a web developer who is “big idea” guy. He’s constantly pitching clients on innovative ideas for their businesses. If they’re nervous to lay out the investment and he’s confident in the idea’s chances of success, then he sometimes offers that he will do the work in exchange for an ongoing percentage of the revenue it produces (eg. 5% of all sales from the e-store he developed). If, at any point the client wants to stop paying him the royalty, they can buy-out the project for the original proposal price (so he gets paid what he would have anyways, plus any royalties he’s paid up until that point).
It moves the risk from the client to him, but it also has the potential to pay out way more than if they just outright hired him. It’s a drastic change from the usual way people run their web development businesses, and has its own pros and cons, but I think it’s a perfect example of freelancing “outside the box”.
Laura Spencer
February 25th, 2011 at 1:54 pmSome Design Blog–Thanks for the example. There are many ways that people can operate outside the “box” and still succeed.
TLC
February 25th, 2011 at 5:47 pmI just got done stepping outside my box. I wanted to be a Web designer, not a programmer. But after a very bad experience with a jerky, incompetent CMS programmer, I stepped out of my comfort zone and am learning WordPress. I took my first PHP class online today, and CSS is next.
I have much to learn, and I probably won’t ever be able to handle this all by myself. But at least I’ll be using a better and easier CMS than the other one, and there are so many more options for support. And I will get to earn the money for programming and site setup. I’ll also get to control my own fate better.
Laura Spencer
February 25th, 2011 at 6:22 pmTLC–Congratulations on stepping out of your box! I know how hard that is. :) It sounds like a positive move, though. Best wishes…
Christina
February 25th, 2011 at 8:10 pm@TLC …. I know enough about programming to be dangerous (since the mid-90s) but I hired out for programmers for some very major websites that I do the design on. At this time it seems like I have the exact same problem you do; the programmers I hire end up flakes. So I’m trying to learn more about programming too.
I’m also guilty of not thinking in different directions when I should be, and on the other hand I sometimes think too much in areas I shouldn’t mess with. So you article has got me thinking a lot more Laura.
Ensemble
February 28th, 2011 at 6:52 amvery true…and i do follow all the advice but i do what i feel comfortable with…i guess this is what freelancing is all about ;)
Issa @ Ajeva
March 2nd, 2011 at 7:09 amLaura, I like thinking out of the box…or more precisely, I get rid of the box and see things – clearer. You’re right about one thing though: that too much advice can be overwhelming. I think there’s no such thing as new idea for we simply take what we choose to learn out there and reshape it into something we call ‘new’.
Jason Hussey
March 2nd, 2011 at 3:06 pmThis is great resource information.
Working as a freelance programmer is so much better than being employed.
I do all my work from home on http://www.iAmAnArtist.com as they seem to have the fairest payment.
As a website developer you can also earn money by developing websites, programs for androids and ipads.
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