5 Popular Freelancing Tips You Shouldn’t Listen To
If you are looking to start a freelancing career, you may have found yourself overwhelmed with all of the conflicting information out there. There are many articles written on how to become a successful freelancer. You can’t go anywhere without seeing an article about how to be successful at freelancing. But what about those articles or tips that aren’t so helpful?
Some of these tips may be popular, but they’re not effective and should not be followed by freelancers. These 5 popular freelancing tips you shouldn’t listen to will show you some helpful advice and examples of why these tips don’t work for most freelancers.
5 Popular Freelancing Tips You Shouldn’t Listen To
1. “Get a job to make money for your freelancing career.”
2. “You should only work freelance on the side.”
3. “Freelancing is hard because you need to build up your portfolio before people hire you.”
4. “Forget about SEO and social media when you’re starting out.”
5. “It’s all about quantity, not quality.”
Don’t take advice from a freelancer who is not successful
One of the most popular freelancing tips you shouldn’t listen to is advice from a freelancer who is not successful. If a freelancer isn’t successful, don’t listen to their advice. Let’s say you’ve never done a freelance job before and you want to know how to get started. If someone has had no experience and they’re telling you how to do it, then don’t believe them because they’ll give you bad advice that won’t work for your situation.
Don’t make your freelance business a side hustle
Many freelancers start as a side hustle and find themselves juggling jobs. This can be a difficult position to be in, especially if you’re trying to make your freelance business successful. If you’re already working one or more jobs, it will be challenging to maintain a high level of productivity for your freelance work. It’s important to set yourself up for success from the beginning by creating boundaries. Freelancing can be a great way to earn an income outside of your day job, but it should not just be a side hustle.
Don’t waste your time networking
Networking is not a time-consuming task. In fact, it’s one of the most important aspects of freelancing. Freelancers have to network with clients to get jobs and stay in touch with them once they’ve been hired. It doesn’t matter how many hours you spend networking if it’s not effective. If you’re networking without any return on your investment, you should stop networking altogether.
If you love interacting online, then social media networks are perfect for networking. Social media platforms provide a great opportunity to connect with other people in your industry and make connections that can lead to opportunities down the road.
Don’t follow the latest trends in freelancing
Trends in freelancing are constantly changing. But that doesn’t mean you should be following them.
The problem with following trends is that those who want to be successful at freelancing need to find their own path. There are many different ways you can be a successful freelancer, and it’s important to find what works best for you, not what is popular at the moment.
For example, some may say that SEO is the most important part of your work and all other work should be done around SEO. Others may say that PPC advertising is the best way to generate leads for your business. But what if you have no interest in SEO or PPC? You’ll spend a lot of time on something that doesn’t interest you just because it’s trendy.
Don’t invest all of your money into your business
One of the most common mistakes that freelancers make is investing all of their money into their business. This is a huge mistake because now you are financially liable for your company and if it doesn’t work out, you’re out of a lot of money. When starting a business, it’s always best to invest as little money as possible until you know the business will be successful.
As an example, let’s say you start a tutoring service for math students. You spend $1000 on advertising and flyers and have $500 left in your budget for employee salaries. Instead of paying yourself from this budget, you should allocate that money towards tutors’ salaries or other necessary costs for running your business. This way, if your company doesn’t get off the ground, you will still have enough to live off of while trying to find another job or starting up another company.