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Starting a freelance writing business can be overwhelming. As you start to look for those all-important first clients, you may second guess your every move.

Making some freelance mistakes are inevitable and even beneficial. Remember the old adage that you learn from your mistakes? However many mistakes are avoidable if you know what to look out for.

In this post I’ll explain the top six mistakes that new freelancer writers make and give you tips on how to dodge them.

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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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I was recently involved with a web magazine that used the Freelance Switch job board to advertise for a few positions. The quality of applicants was fantastic, compared with those some other sources referred.

The positions were ideal for freelancers who wanted some of their work to be regular, without having a ‘job’ and losing the benefits of a freelance career. They involved doing some writing and self-editing two or three times a week, taking up maybe an hour at a time.

We got far more submissions than we had jobs to fill, of course, and I spent most of the week going through applications and sorting the best from the rest.

It wasn’t a particularly fun experience—writing and editing is what I do best—but I did learn a lot about why some freelancers aren’t getting the jobs they apply for. Here are some tips on landing them—a list based on the things that applicants at our magazine impressed us with and annoyed us with. Consider this practical feedback!

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A few days ago, Marie Baca wrote a wonderful and well-intentioned post called The Five Most Common Mistakes of Female Freelancers that turned out to be somewhat controversial in the comments.

So, why don’t we even the imbalance up a bit with the five most common mistakes that male freelancers make?

1. Your desk is not your home

“You men,” my wife once said, as I slaved over some copy late at night, “are so prone to workaholism.”

There’s no denying that women do this too, but for every workaholic female I’ve met, there have been five guys burning the midnight oil. Women are better at this thing called “having rational boundaries.”

That groove in your chair? That’s not meant to be there. Just because you work from home does not mean you have to check your email within five minutes of waking up, or stick around until midnight because your clients in other countries are only just waking up. Email exists for a reason. Continue Reading

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I’m not a big fan of generalizations, but I’m also painfully aware that when it comes to freelancing, there are a number of women out there who aren’t getting the gigs and compensation commensurate with their experience.

You can blame society, you can blame your clients—and who am I to tell you that you are wrong? —But at the end of the day, there’s nothing you can really do except change the way you approach your business. In order to do that, you need to know the top five most common mistakes made by female freelancers and how to avoid them.

Of course, male freelancers make these mistakes as well, but in my experience these missteps are particularly detrimental for women. Continue Reading

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Most new freelancers make one vital error: we catch ourselves acting like employees.

But even as we become more seasoned, even the best of us can fall into the ‘employee’ mindset trap that is at the foundation of virtually every major freelance mistake:

“As long as I do the specific job I was hired to do, and I do it well, everything will be fine.”

But unfortunately for us, when something goes wrong with any portion of a project we’re working on, somehow it’s always our butt on the line.

So how can you approach each client’s project in a way that protects you, protects their interests, and helps secure overall success and fuzzy feelings?

Well let’s look at common mistakes we make, and how to prevent them. Continue Reading

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Freelancing can be a rewarding career, with many benefits over being a salaried employee. But success in freelancing means there are a lot of things you shouldn’t do – things I’ve done over the past twenty years and learned from the hard way.

Some of these are relevant to web workers, others to those of us that still visit clients on-site.

Are you making your freelance career tougher than it needs to be? Continue Reading

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I’ve been creating websites for about half of my life now — nearly 14 years focused on creating comps, writing code, and, of course, making designs look right in Internet Explorer. I’ve spent many of those years moonlighting, creating websites for clients who didn’t mind me working only at night. But it was only eight months ago that I decided to quit my third job in four years (all of which were decent jobs by the way) and launch out on my own.

Although I’ve really enjoyed the last eight months, I will say that I’ve learned quite a bit about freelancing and myself. Many of these lessons are the more obvious ones like “Work Hard” or “Budget Well,” but there are a number of lessons that are probably not so apparent. Here are eight that I’ve learned:

1. Focus Your Offering
An easy trap to fall into as a freelancer is to accept any work that is offered, even if the skill necessary is not really related to your field. You quickly find yourself promising the finest work in not only web design, but also in print work, content writing, photography, and business consultation. I guarantee that no individual can be all these things, and potential clients that hear you say this will be equally skeptical. Though there may be times when wearing multiple hats is necessary, in general, try to keep your offered skills focused. If your talent and skillset are up to snuff, there will always be work in your niche.

2. Business Skills Are More Important Than Freelancing Skills
A talented businessperson with subpar freelance skills (in whatever field) can still make a pretty good living. But a talented freelancer with subpar business skills is often found working 80-hour weeks for much less than what he/she could earn in the 40-hour corporate world. When you’re freelancing, you’re running a business, and thus, you need to develop those business skills (or find someone who can help or do it for you). There’s no reason why a freelancer should not be able to make a good salary. Continue Reading

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1. “I can do it for cheaper” — If you could do it for cheaper, why did you quote me a higher price in the first place? You may think that this is what a client wants, but it can really undermine your professional standing in their eyes. Don’t drop your prices if you are confident in your abilities. It will backfire.

2. “I am not the best…” — You may not be the best, but this isn’t exactly awe-inspiring for a client to hear, is it? I see lots of very successful independent professionals play down their strengths — sometimes to the point where the client looses confidence in them. If you have a hard time talking about yourself, check out the book Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn, Without Blowing It by Peggy Klaus.

3. “Umm…uh..” — Okay, it’s not exactly a phrase, but umms and uhs can really kill a conversation. One of my MBA professors would never let us finish a sentence if we used sound fillers. It was agonizing at first, but really paid off by the end of the semester. If you feel speech is really a problem for you, get some coaching. Most universities with communication programs have PhD students who work with the general public for a great price. Continue Reading