Beware of This before You Start Your Career as A Freelancer
An advice from a beginner freelancer
I have been doing freelancing for about one and half month. There are a lot of bitter and sweet of this field. As I experienced so far, I want to write it down for you.
You will spend more time to build your profile
Freelancing quite challenging at the beginning of its working set up. I need a month to build my profile and learn how to write a proposal. You will probably find it easy to fill your identity but the most important thing actually your portfolio. Your experience matters!
You will hired easily if you have a review but to got a project is not as easy as it seems. Client prefer to choose they who already has a good reviews. It just work vice versa as we bid for a job post from someone trusted after we saw couple of reviews of their last project. Then you will need more time to learn how to write a good proposal too.
More time learn to write a valuable proposal
There first 50 of my proposal was a failure with mistakes on them. After that process about how to hook client to my proposal then I finally got my first client after a month. I read a lot articles to boost my proposal writing skill. You can always find a good one in the platform itself or surf more in google. Bunch of articles will help you out.
Get familiar with the platform
I was unfamiliar with the platform and don’t really know what should I do with them. How they work and how to free from scam or bad clients. The platform served this matter on their articles section. You just need to be a diligent reader to gain information.
You will be in front of the phone addict’s mouth
It’s more addicted than social media. I have quit social media addict but when it’s come about freelancing I found it frustrating just like social media. I curious more and more about job post which I never know when will someone post a job that matched my background.
There’s no use to bid for a job that posted a long time ago as I read from someone’s article that the faster job bidder got more chance to got hired. So, this scenario it’s just like feeding a pool of shark scene, where the faster shark will got the food as soon as the foods thrown to the pool.
Your life cycle suddenly unbalance
The scenario after got the job also not that sweet. There are clients who want to got the project result immediately so I was working like a train, almost non stop with a bit time to sleep. It’s then turn me a lack of sleep. I hardly fall into sleep because I also want to get it done as soon as possible. The more I run faster with bit time of sleep also lowering my working quality.
That’s true that a lot of wise freelancer quit this scenario and find another way of making money but I am not there yet. Most of them are writer and share their experience to inform how to managing time better. How to work better without losing your life, still working productively without sacrificing your time for personal care such as, eating, sleeping, walking outside and more. That’s why to be good at freelancing, you need to shape more time for yourself so it’s not disturbing personal time.
You need to protect your time management
Time managing is the great issue here. The better you manage the time, the better it boost your productivity in high quality. Lack of time managing can damage you not only quality but also you life. So, give the working time limit for yourself.
No rule about your working time preference as freelancer. You can pick the best time you liked. It can be imitating office hour from 9 to 5 job or just take working for several hours.
The only thing to underline is how you can produce your high quality of work in short time for the most heavy part of your job and set aside the simple one for later. This is also a warning to not working multitasking. Be honest to your self, which job you can handle, always only work for one things at a time. There’s no pressure to only working for a client if you find there is time to get another. But remember that you have limit at 24 hours of a day time.
Buy your time back
I just want to share you about my experience as a beginner freelancer and show you how it’s look like as a newbie and not repeat the same mistakes I ever made. Freelance should freeing you from strict working time. Only you will know the best.
We maybe need more money to make but also remember to respect your life than all those money you make. Because time has more value than the money itself. Give your life reward to spend more your time to family and others. An honest laugh in your house while hangout together will much better than sitting down in front of your laptop and quite.
Look for money and buy time with it!