Photo by orphanjones.

Freelancers, like their artist and writer predecessors, such as Vincent Van Gogh or Virginia Woolf, may be prone to depression, starving, and self-obsessing. To combat the freelancer blues, you need to schedule some sunshine into your calendar.

Here is a list to save your mind, body and soul from the snake pit.

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Photo by /junku-newcleus.

In 2007, I was an employee working with a great company.

My boss was intelligent and inspiring. My coworkers were amicable and worked well as a team. The office environment was entirely casual; no suit and tie required. The pay was acceptable and vacation time fair.

The work was adequate, with some days more challenging than others. Office communication was radically transparent, as the staff would often meet weekly to review the recent triumphs and discuss the goals ahead. By most accounts, I should have been content with my career.

But something was missing.

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Photo by Antediluvial.

With economic conditions rather on the grim side, it makes sense to look for ways to distinguish yourself from the competition, to strengthen your appeal to existing and potential clients. This goes beyond just a general increase in marketing activity. It is a matter of enhancing your value to your customers, of showing them how doing business with you can stretch their tight budgets a little farther.

Most freelancers can add value to the services they offer by tapping an area of expertise they may not realize they have. The fact is that as you work with clients and complete projects, you become more and more knowledgeable about the world your client contacts live in: their constraints, their needs, their preferences, their goals, their habits, their procedures, their biases and assumptions about working with people just like you.

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If you’re like me, your bank account tends to live by the seat of its pants. Money comes in, money goes out, records are a bit of a blur. And of course a freelance lifestyle doesn’t tend to help either, with its occasional large sums of money and long droughts in between payments.

If you were to ask what my personal brand of financial plan is, I would have to say it’s something like: try to earn so much that it doesn’t matter too much if I have a financial plan. Well as anybody who actually has a bank balance will tell you, that’s a dumb plan. So as of today I’ve decided to do something about this somewhat grave situation, before I have children and mortgages appear to make it all that much harder.

Fortunately for me, web man that I am, there is pretty much everything I need online. This morning I sat down to compile a toolkit for getting my personal finances in order. Since some of our freelance audience will no doubt be in the same boat as me, here it is for your benefit too!

Personal Finance Blogs

I’ve spent 28 years taking my own advice, and frankly it hasn’t gotten me very far. So it’s time to listen to someone else. Here are the best and brightest voices online on money matters:

1. GetRichSlowly

   The big daddy, the big kahuna, the big cheese. Get Rich Slowly has managed to attract some forty thousand subscribers and there’s no doubt why. There is some sharp, quality advice here, see posts like: How to Get Out of Debt and Basic Tips on Tipping (luckily we don’t have tipping here in Australia!). There’s also the odd amusing post like Lifestyles of the Rich and the Stupid (how is that I know that if I ever manage to qualify as the first, that I’ll wind up being the latter)

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With the start of the New Year upon us, the likelihood of you deciding to head off into Freelancing full-time may be tickling your senses. We understand your passion to make it on your own, and present our Top 10 Freelance Resolutions for this coming year. Already freelancing? Hopefully some of these concepts will help you recommit to your endeavor, and subsequently bring you success in the years to come. Continue Reading