Great article - thanks for the reminder! I do custom sewing and belly dance - “professional” in both fields. With the sewing, I have certification to back that up as a “Couturier” trained at a private school. With the belly dance, I have years of experience and a variety of training, but no actual certification.

My tip for making money - which is based on the “hone your skills and charge more” concept that you have presented is to remember that it is okay for a potential client to reject you based on your price. Don’t feel you have to drop your rates just because someone has the temerity to ask for a discount by paying cash or whatever excuse they would like to throw your way in search of a cheaper rate.

If they do not have enough respect for the services they are seeking to pay a fair value for them, it won’t matter what level of expertise you offer. If they, without any real knowledge of what they would be getting for the rates you are charging, deem your prices unreasonable, then you really don’t want them as a client.

It has taken me a long time to realize this, as i used to take any work I could get as I was trying to build my business and get a foothold in anywhere I could. But I gradually began to realize that people have no clue. Including me! I only really started to track my time per project a few years back, and realized that in some cases I was earning less than $10/hour for a custom designed garment. No more!

Software was installed to keep track of every moment I work on any clients garment. While I can adjust the cost for mistakes I might make along the way, for which I won’t feel right about charing the client, I am much better at judging advance estimates now.

And I enjoy to creative and fun projects so much more than the boring ones!

I recently took a day away from the computer… I know, I know, scarry! But it was exhilirating and my creative juices were flowing again when I got back to business.

This is excellent. I think it’s always important for every freelancer to hear this. For me, one way to make the most as a freelancer is to find more of your bread and butter jobs but networking and establishing relationships with other development firms. They’ll often have tons of design works to outsource (in my case—being a designer at heart–I love this!). That way you can do the design you love, and let them do the boring coding stuff and time-sucking client interaction.

These kind of short term projects mixed with the large full website design/dev projects provide a nice balance and fairly steady stream of income. Now it’s just time to get bigger clients and start charging more.

As a freelancer starting out, this was an informative read and also very important. Bookmarking …

Thank you! This is great. Now on to the “how”…

When you start to become successful it is easy to start working 16 hour days especially when your office is only 10 feet away.

If that’s what you need to do to in order to make hay while the sun shines just remember to diligently track your time and charge accordingly.

Thanks for the tips. I especially like the last one. One thing that I’ve been learning, mostly from listening and reading, is that a freelancer (or any business) with less skill and good marketing can earn more than a person with more skill and poor marketing. Won’t do you any good if you have top skills, but no one knows about you.

Great article. We’ve all found ourselves stuck on the treadmill before, and even though the advice here isn’t anything groundbreaking, it’s a friendly and inspiring reminder to focus on why we are freelancers in the first place and what we can do to get the most out of our time.

This has given me even more of a boost to develop my own side projects and hopefully get some new (and more passive) income streams and increase awareness of my services.

“Moving up” is always a good advice because it helps you sell your services at a premium. I have recently been going through this dilemma of keeping my rates fixed or fluctuate them according to “how a clients sounds” in a query. I am more inclined towards keeping them fixed and providing a better service so that present and prospective clients don’t mind paying for them.

The freelance life is hard, but nothing can replace the freedom provided by this way of work.

Try to ‘get in’ with the top design agencies in your region - they are more likely to appreciate your value if you both speak the same language in terms of knowledge and know-how.

This post was just what I needed! Great advice. I am at that point where I need to start looking at getting off the treadmill.

Be realistic about your earning potential. While having translator jobs is definitely well-paying as compared with other careers that allow you to work from home in your pajamas on projects that are often very interesting, remember that 25-40% of your income as a freelancer will go to things that your employer normally pays for when you have a full time job. Most people count in the biggies- taxes, health insurance, retirement plan contributions and vacation/personal/sick time, but over the years other expenses like dictionaries, office equipment, continuing education and professional travel add up too.