The other day, I friend of mine who recently moved out of the area asked for my opinion on a potential freelance client. I’m always happy to share my insight on anything design related – so I happily obliged.
Here’s the thing – I’ve been doing this freelance/side hustle thing for years. Years and Years. And although I’m not quite ready to make the leap into full time freelance, I do know that I have had enough experience in the side-hustle of things to share a few tidbits of what I learned.
So I decided to put together a little blog series called, ” How To Freelance”. Each post will focus on a specific topic and will try to encourage those who are just getting started, offer some friendly advice, and I’ll leave comments open so you can ask me any question you want (I’ll answer it right away or if it’s a really good one I’ll do a whole post on it!)
I hope that through this series you’ll find something that is helpful in your endeavors to creative freedom.
What Are You Worth?
What I mean by this is – how much is your TIME worth = what are you worth to the client? All of us have time, live by time, value time – we need time. It seems like we always need more time. The common misconception when a person begins to freelance is ” Oh I can whip this up in no time, so I’ll only charge x per hour.” The amount that you charge your client shows how much you value your time. If you are charging the right amount for your services, the client will see that you value your time and will not take advantage of it.
What It Looks Like For A Client To Value Your Time
- They will not email you at all hours of the night and expect an immediate response.
- They will not ignore your rules of two rounds of edits only
- They will provide all content when you request it – upfront.
- They will do the homework you assign to them
If this is not happening for you – perhaps you need to rethink what you are charging? If that is not the problem, then you may need to set clear standards for your clients ahead of time, or maybe the solution is to kindly decline to work with your troublesome current clients and be a bit more thorough when taking on new clients.
It’s been many more times than I would like to admit where I’ve regretted taking on certain clients and that was due to the fact that I didn’t present my stipulations up front nor did I stick to them later on.
All this to say, first and foremost, you need to look at what you are charging people for your time.
Another Common Misconception
Another common mistake I’ve seen designers and aspiring entrepreneurs make is, when they are working the side-hustle, it doesn’t mean that since they have a full time job they should undercharge for their freelance work. That devalues your time and the work you do. If anything, your rates should be much more comparable to someone who is a full time entrepreneur. You are taking so much more of your time to create beautiful work for your freelance clients; time that could be spent on a hike with your family, or enjoying drinks with friends, or maybe a concert with your significant other. That time you are sacrificing is VALUABLE, so please make it count monetarily! You do that, and you will get more dream clients, clients that value the work you do and the time you spend to help them out. The more dream clients you have, the closer you are to your dream of complete entrepreneurship – which equals a lot of work along with an incredible sense of pride and accomplishment.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments on how you show other that you value your time!
Leave a Reply