Freelancefolder

5 Exciting Career Tracks for Freelancers

Posted July 20, 2011 in Inspiration

Can a freelancer have a career track?

Back when I was an employee, the company that I worked for decided that each professional-level employee needed to choose a career track as part of their employee development plan.

We were given a choice. Jump on the management track and be groomed to move into middle management. Or, choose to stay in your professional field and continue developing expertise in your field. Eventually those on the expert track would become team leads.

At that particular company, those two choices were pretty much the only ones available to the employees.

The other day I was thinking about freelancing and wondering what freelancers could expect from their freelancing careers. At first glance, it might seem that freelancing exists outside of career development. It might seem that once you’re a freelancer, that’s all there is–you’re a freelance writer, developer, designer, or whatever your field happens to be.

Well, of course staying in exactly the same position is okay if that’s the way you want it, but some freelancers may want to move ahead in the career. As freelancers, can they?

After thinking about this for a while, I became excited when I realized that freelancing actually offers many more career tracks than nearly any other business environment! Here are five career tracks that you may wish to explore.

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Rekindling the Romance of Writing

Posted July 3, 2011 in Inspiration, Writing

Do you remember those days when the thought of escaping the office and the torture of a 9 to 5 pay-the-bills-job to sit at home in your pajamas was enough to make you nearly unbearable to be around?

Remember dreaming of having nothing more pressing to worry about on any given day than sipping coffee and pouring out thoughts on paper after leisurely reading the paper and sending out some very non-urgent Tweets?

Remember the flutter your heart felt when you thought about writing all day long and writing about whatever you wanted to, not what somebody shoved down your throat for you to write?

Remember being flirtatious with your computer? Or maybe even more scandalous–being flirtatious with pen and paper?

If a love of writing was what propelled you into becoming a freelancer, read on.

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7 Top Freelance Survival Tips

Posted June 30, 2011 in Inspiration

These seven freelance survival tips will help to see you through the lean times–and there will be lean times, at least until you have an established, reliable base of regular customers.

Every freelance worker has gone through a bad patch, when none of their job bids are accepted, on-spec submissions are rejected, or rock-solid clients cancel a gig (or go under). How you deal with adversity is critical to the survival of your business.

Here are seven tips to help your freelancing business survive.

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3 Reasons Why You MUST Move Out of Your Comfort Zone

Posted June 24, 2011 in Freelance Stories, Inspiration

Freelancing is great, isn’t it?

If you’ve been freelancing for several years, you may be pretty comfortable by now.

You’ve got an established client base–folks who come to you regularly when they need something done. You know and like them and they know and like you. Plus, you’ve found your ideal niche and as a bonus, you’re really good at it. The niche work that you do is just challenging enough to hold your interest without shaking you up too much.

All in all, after several years of struggling things are getting pretty comfortable in your neck of the freelancing universe. Things are so comfortable, in fact, that you feel like you can relax and take things easy–but should you?

I say “no.” It’s good for everyone, and especially freelancers, to move out of your comfort zone from time to time. Tackle something new. Step outside of the comfortable freelancing cocoon you’ve wrapped around yourself. You can even (gasp!) take the chance that you might fail at something you try.

Here are three reasons why you must move out of your comfort zone.

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So You’re a Failure

Posted June 6, 2011 in Inspiration

Everyone comes to a point in their life where they feel like a failure. Nothing seems to go right, does it? It’s even worse when the failure has to do with your freelance business, as that means everything in your life is in jeopardy–from the mortgage to putting food on the table.

So what do we do when we begin to get the tugging feeling that things aren’t going quite so well? What if we’re already at the brink of quitting?

Everyone fails at something, but the trick is to keep trying to make it a success. No one is a failure until they give up, and there’s always a way to learn from your mistakes and turn the issue into success.
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Discouragement–the Hidden Struggle Many Freelancers Ignore

Posted June 2, 2011 in Inspiration

Freelancers face many challenges:

• Stiff competition in the marketplace
• Ever-changing technology
• Even getting paid on time

Yet, with all those challenges that we face as freelancers, it might surprise you to learn that one of the hardest challenges to overcome is a challenge that may originate from within ourselves. I’m talking about discouragement.

In this post, I’ll discuss discouragement and list some of the reasons why we get discouraged. I’ll also invite you to share your own tips for handling discouragement.

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Ten Freelancing Tactics That You’ve Probably Gotten Right

Posted May 27, 2011 in Inspiration

We spend so much time on Freelance Folder correcting freelancer mistakes, that we sometimes forget to recognize what experienced freelancers are doing right.

With so much focus on mistakes that freelancers make, it’s easy to get discouraged. While it’s important to grow and learn from our mistakes, it’s also important to acknowledge when things are done right.

In this post, I’ll list ten freelancing strategies that you’re probably doing correctly with your freelancing business (especially if you’ve been in business for a while).

You may even be able to recognize most of these good business practices as part of your standard operating procedure.

Next, I’ll go even further by suggesting one or two ideas to help you take each tactic to the next level.

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How Your Freelance Business Is Like The Deadliest Catch

Posted May 26, 2011 in Inspiration

I find it hardest to get motivated just after finishing a big project. Launch-day nerves turn into workday fatigue and it becomes increasingly difficult to sit in the chair in front of my computer when there’s a perfectly good couch in the next room.

It was in just this frame of mind that I decided to turn on the television last week to watch an hour of The Deadliest Catch marathon on the Discovery Channel. (For those of you who don’t know, The Deadliest Catch is a reality TV show about fishing for Alaskan King Crabs in the Bering Sea.)

Eight hours later, I did what any good freelancer would do–justify a day’s worth of billable hours spent on the couch by writing a blog post about what I was watching. (Freshbooks has a ‘research’ category–just kidding.)

Lucky for me, it turns out that Bering Sea fishermen can teach us a lot about running a freelance business.

WARNING: This post contains bad fishing puns and poor maritime clichés. If you have a weak stomach for that sort of thing, or are prone to eye-rolling and grimacing, you may want to skip this one. Proceed at your own risk.

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5 Lessons Being a Private Investigator Taught Me About Freelancing

Posted May 11, 2011 in Inspiration

A decade ago, I worked as a private investigator. It was by far, the riskiest thing I ever did in my life. For a year, I learned how to follow potential criminals, photograph them and even worked undercover. Though the pay was low and the stakes were high, I got the kind of education about working that you can’t learn by reading books or studying in school.

There were actually five major lessons I learned that ten years later I still apply in my freelance writing business. Five things that taught me how to survive while chasing the bad guys and almost as scary, surviving the worsening economy as a writer. It’s funny how I got more warnings and advice from people when they found out I was leaving my cushy corporate job for a lifetime of writing than when I told them I was going to take a job as a private investigator. In some people’s eyes, the risks of fulfilling a dream are far greater than the risk of one’s life.

If you are on your way to pursuing your own freelance business, read this before you jump in. There are lots of life saving tips here. Take it from a past PI and a current freelancer who has done it before and survived.

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