Published on May 2nd, 2016 | by Sunit Nandi

Know Some of the Common Mistakes Made By Freelancers

Becoming a freelancer is not always easy and can be intimidating, even to the most talented professionals. Freelancers are responsible for their entire business, from the work itself to marketing and sales, so it is important you know what should be done and avoided – in order to help, here are some of the common mistakes.

Not saving enough money

With few exceptions, a freelancer does not know how much money will be made within the first months of work, mainly because those are used to find customers and establish a career. To avoid failing even before really starting, it is important to have some savings to get through those first few months, were work can be scarce and the income can be low.

Accepting all jobs

As a consequence of the previous item, this is probably one of the major problems of freelancers starting their business. In order to grow the customer base and with the desire to appear on the market, there are many freelancers who accept all the jobs that appear – however, not all projects are good.

It is important that the freelancer can, early in the career, make a preliminary selection of the type of projects to work on, and it may very well be that these kind of choices will throw them in the market the right way.

Not having contracts and pre-established payment methods

It is essential that all projects have a contract where all the clauses are described in detail, in order to avoid any kind of problem both to the freelancer and the customers. The percentage payment of the work is equally important, thus avoiding any kind of missing payments by clients (a very common problem these days). Ideally, payments should be divided through the various phases of the project.

Bad time management

As freelancer, it is the professional’s responsibility to manage time. There are many aspects to consider, but one of the most important one is how that is done, in order to avoid spending too much time on tasks that are not really important.

Toptal, the world’s leading network of elite freelance software engineers and designers, has recently released the findings of its 2016 Freelancer Lifestyle survey, and it revealed some interesting numbers. 95% of freelancers feel more productive when they work from home, and 93% enjoy the flexibility of their lifestyle, which surely gives interesting insights on how they manage their time.

Also, 42% said they work long hours, but take frequent breaks, and a similar amount of freelancers stated they mostly stick to regular office hours (9am-5pm). Interestingly enough, almost a third of the respondents (31%) decided to go to freelancing in order to spend time with their kids.

Tags: freelancing, tips, work

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.