Freelancefolder

How to Set Personal Boundaries When You Work From Home

Posted January 20, 2012 in How-To, Lifestyle

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Do you crave a balance between your work and your personal life?

Most freelancers do, but the challenges of working from home can sometimes make life/work balance seem unattainable. You may feel like you are constantly being pulled towards both family and work commitments–a bit like being in the middle of a tug-of-war.

One answer that can help you achieve better balance between your work and personal life is boundaries. In this post, I’ll explain how boundaries help freelancers. I’ll also list some of the areas where you should consider establishing boundaries in your own freelancing business.

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How to Find and Apply Vision to Your Freelancing Business

Posted January 18, 2012 in Business

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Fortune 500 companies, non-profits and other “serious” businesses have them. Should your freelancing business have one too?

A vision, that is.

A vision is simply a statement (several paragraphs, actually) of where you’d like your business to be in the next x number of years.

Apparently, a vision is really good for any business, including yours.

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Do You Make These 5 Common Negotiating Mistakes?

Posted January 16, 2012 in How-To, Managing Clients

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Negotiations are key for successful freelancers. Nearly every project starts with negotiations (or if it doesn’t, it should). Freelancers who can’t negotiate a profitable deal are at risk for losing money, or even worse, going out of business.

So, it stands to reason that negotiating skills are also important. In this post, I identify five common negotiating mistakes that freelancers often make. Read the post to make certain that you’re not guilty of making any of these errors yourself.

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10 More Reasons Why Freelancing Is Not for You

Posted January 13, 2012 in Freelance Stories

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On this blog, we normally encourage people to become freelancers. That’s because we believe that for many people, freelancing offers a terrific combination of great opportunities and a great lifestyle.

However, there are a few individuals who just aren’t cut out to be freelancers (and that’s perfectly okay).

In this post, I list some characteristics that I’ve observed over the years of former freelancers who ended up returning to traditional employment. Most of these folks were quite miserable as freelancers. If you see several of these characteristics in yourself, you may want to carefully reconsider whether freelancing is really the right choice for you.

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How to Deal with Freelancing Change

Posted January 11, 2012 in Inspiration, Lifestyle

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Change is inevitable.

This is true whether you’re a freelancer, or not. But, because of the nature of freelancing, we freelancers tend to face change and its consequences a bit more frequently than other folks do. That’s why it’s really important to have a Plan B and to keep that plan up to date. Having an emergency fund does not hurt either.

There’s much more to dealing with freelancing change that just having a Plan B, though. You also need to deal with the emotional toll that freelancing change can take on you. Handling the emotional toll of freelancing change is what this post is all about. In it, I’ll share some practical tips to help you keep the inevitable freelancing changes in perspective so you can stay at your best as a freelancer.

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7 Warning Signs That You Are About to Lose a Client

Posted January 9, 2012 in Managing Clients

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Long-term clients are great for a freelancer’s bottom line. There’s nothing quite like knowing that you have a six-month or even a year contract for the foreseeable future.

It should come as no surprise, then, that losing a long-term client can be traumatic for a freelancer and devastating to a freelancing business. Losing a client that you were counting on for regular work can take many of us from feast to famine in no time.

In this post, I list some of the most common reasons why freelancers lose clients. You can use these reasons to help determine if you are about to lose a client. Also, I invite readers to share their own advice and experiences about losing (and retaining) clients.

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Freelancing Un-resolutions to Make 2012 Your Best Freelancing Year Yet

Posted January 5, 2012 in Marketing

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Everyone will be writing posts about New Year’s resolutions, so how about one with un-resolutions? That is, instead of talking about what you should be doing, how about we talk about what you ought to stop doing instead?

As we ring out the old year, let’s sweep out some bad freelancing practices along with it, shall we? These practices and habits are things that undo freelancers, keeping them small and stopping them from succeeding. I sat down and thought of….

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12 Must-Read Freelancing Predictions for 2012

Posted January 3, 2012 in Inspiration

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Don’t you wish you could see into the future of freelancing? If you could, you’d know what freelancing trends are coming up and what niches to concentrate on. You’d be ahead of the game on social media too.

But seeing into the future, like mind reading, is an imprecise art (at best). However, it is possible to make some educated guesses about the future of freelancing based on current trends.

So, that’s what I’m going to do for 2012. In this post I’ll share twelve predictions about areas that will impact freelancers in the coming year. At the end of the post, I’d like you to share your predictions too.

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8 Metrics Every Freelancer Should Measure at the End of the Year

Posted December 30, 2011 in Business, Productivity

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It’s the end of the year, and you know what that means…end of year reporting! Now’s the time of the year to dig out the Excel sheets, budgets, expense reports and bank statements and start reconciling. A pain, yes…but incredibly valuable.

Freelancers and independent workers often skip this critical exercise. Moving from the end of one year to the next is approached with a somewhat oozing type of existence, only slightly punctuated by a couple weeks of either reduced or insane workloads (industry dependent, for sure).

One of the best things you can do for your business – whether you’re a solo shop or a multi-national concern, is to stop at the end of the year and take a look at how things went. For freelancers and independents, you should be looking at the following metrics:
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