Everything you need to know to be freelance

A freelancer is a professional who works for one or several companies, without there being a temporary or permanent employment contract. In this guide we’ll talk about the advantages of being a freelancer, but also the disadvantages.

When you consider working as a freelancer, everything seems like advantages:

• Schedule flexibility.
• Having a business.
• Being your own boss.
• Working remotely from your home or from any other place.
• Choosing the projects you want to work on.
• ….

But when you really start, you realize that being a freelancer has some disadvantages. One of the clearest examples is working hours, because you work many more hours than any employed worker. And everything goes well as long as you can work on projects you like and that give you work, but this is far from being a piece of cake.

In this guide you’ll find the main challenges that await you working as a Freelancer. Let it be noted that we don’t intend to discourage you, just to be well aware of what reality you’re going to encounter from now on.

1- Being a salesperson isn’t easy

especially if this isn’t your job. When you’re alone, getting new projects is complicated. You’re going to have to dedicate part of your schedule and your energy to looking for new projects.

Check out this article with 8 strategies to get projects if you’re a freelancer.

It’s also very difficult to get projects regularly. You’re going to have times with 5 projects at once and others where you won’t work on any. The challenge is to achieve a certain stability.

2- Price, that great doubt

One of the great existential doubts of any freelancer is their price. That is, what their hours are worth. It’s a fine balance between being competitive and being able to pay yourself a salary, which isn’t easy to find. But don’t worry, establishing the right price is a matter of time, you’ll soon find your personal strategy.

3- Self-motivation is essential

When you work alone there’s no one to pat you on the back, for this reason self-motivation is so important. In our blog we always try to talk about things that can help you achieve it, but one thing is very clear: taking care of your health and your mind is indispensable to avoid being blinded by work.

4- Productivity

Another key to success for any freelancer is productivity. Not having schedules and working at home can be chaotic if you don’t control it. Making the most of each work hour is essential to be able to make a living and not spend 24 hours a day working.

5- Nobody pays you for quotes

Learning to respond to your quotes quickly, effectively and professionally is key to getting projects. Unfortunately, the reality is that 75-80% of your quotes won’t prosper and the time you’ve dedicated to them (sometimes hours or days) you won’t recover or invoice.

For this reason the conversion of quotes to projects is so important, and client selection is so critical for any business.

Check out our guide on how to create quotes that sell.

6- Nobody pays you for vacations

As a freelancer, your business is mainly based on selling your time. If you’re not at your post because you’re sick, you want to take a few days off or you go on vacation; no one is going to pay you for your time.

7- In search of the business model

Looking for new ways to generate income is important to survive. Many freelancers choose to add training to their service portfolio and it’s something interesting to be able to enjoy a bit of stability.

But there are also other alternatives, which aren’t as directly related to the freelancer’s time, such as: selling digital products (ebooks, online courses), selling services as products or affiliate marketing.

8- Work-life balance

The fact of working remotely allows you to work at any time and from anywhere, which makes it difficult to be able to draw the boundaries between your professional and work life. Defining when your work hours end and when your personal time begins is an important challenge.

9- The damn due dates

There are many projects that you won’t get paid for (not even a part) until you finish them. In fact, on most occasions, you won’t get paid for your work until 60 or 90 days after issuing the invoice. These are unfortunately, the due dates that most companies handle.

10- Multitasking

When you work as a freelancer, you have to do everything. You need to sell, manage a company, give support to your current clients, and find hours to be able to deliver the projects you have at hand.

It’s essential that you have the agility and flexibility necessary to make these hat changes quickly and effectively.

11- Learning to manage your business

Being a freelancer means having your own business, so you’ll have to manage your invoicing, file your tax returns, control your expenses,… But don’t worry, we can help you with this: FacturaDirecta is the ideal online program to manage a freelancer’s invoicing. Try the program for 30 days free and discover a new way to automate your invoicing.

12- Taxes

More than half of everything you invoice goes to paying taxes. That simple and crude.

In Spain the conditions we have to face as freelancers are among the toughest in all of Europe. When doing your numbers you must take into account that there’s a big difference between what you invoice and what you’ll be able to charge as a freelancer.

Conclusion

Working as a freelancer is a great challenge, it’s no panacea (although some try to sell it this way), but it’s a really exciting lifestyle.

It’s a way of understanding the world and adapting your work to your life instead of doing it the other way around. So we hope this guide helps you anticipate and foresee mistakes that we’ve all made at the beginning.

Good luck in your business!