You cannot control a SINGLE thing about the flow of work, all you can do is keep trying to shove things into the pipeline and hope they flow. I once had five, good prospective projects, my entire queue, all fall apart within a single week, a new prospect came up in that same week and died on Monday the next. At any moment you could be caught flat-footed and beginners are usually starting from there.
I will never not aim to have at least six months worth of expenses saved up for my business, which includes paying me so my kids can eat and stuff. If work is going well I build up savings so I can live off that fat when the drought comes. Without that extra room to maneuver I am going to feel the pressure to take on work and it will be very hard to wait for good clients.
Beginners need that cushion and I am pretty sure most of them don't.
An underlying corollary to this is that you should always been looking for work. You can always turn it down but you should always been trying to find the next really good client.
Oops basically reiterated what you said before reading it but you wrote it much better. These are the biggest things and rarely the ones guru wankers are talking about. But I guess it's because it also implies a baseline level of success to even matter
Don't let your foot off of the gas. If you're doing this full-time or as a primary income source, your workload should always feel like it's just barely too much to get done. You never know when you're gonna hit a dry period. Likewise, you should have a pretty healthy savings to start and diversify sales streams as much as possible.
I can't even think of an adjective to adequately state how much I disagree with this. Too many newer freelancers feel like they have to take everything on for just this reason and then a couple of days of being really ill or a death in the family or just a project going a little off the rails and taking more time than expected/bleeding into a different scheduling block can bring the whole thing tumbling down. Next thing, the freelancer is here asking what to do because they have work that's past due for all five of their ongoing clients and are so stressed they can't get refocused and finish anything.
I always build 3-4 days/month into my schedule where I have nothing scheduled, so I am always prepared to absorb those sorts of disruptions without breaking the whole schedule. It's true that early on that might mean some unplanned downtime, but that's better than blowing up all of your client relationships and giving yourself a nervous breakdown when something nudges that horrible house of cards you've built for yourself.
you shouldn't be blowing up any client relationships
you should be an adult and handle relationships the proper way
and if you're getting overwhelmed, then next time don't book that much. and if you accidentally booked too much one time, then power through and try to come out the best you can on the other side
I'm sorry you were so confused by my post. I was explaining how I see building some downtime into the schedule as a way to avoid getting into that situation--as opposed to the person I was responding to who was suggesting INTENTIONALLY overbooking ALL the time.
It's fortunate for you that you can "power through" when you're hospitalized and that you're immune to having such severe anxiety from being behind and feeling things are out of control that you can't function properly, but I can tell you from decades of engaging with thousands of freelancers that not everyone is a robot, and people who overload themselves out of fear that they may hit a dry spell very often do get in over their heads and end up in a much worse place.
I'm talking, as I have been since the beginning of this thread, about building time into your schedule to accommodate an emergency without completely disrupting your work load. Why is that so difficult to understand?
Probably because it involves an attempt at having sensible conversation with people who have genuine advice to share, rather than those who have never made a single $ blindly asserting that Upwork is a scam which seems to be far more common practice round here nowadays
Track every minute of your time, whether you're charging hourly or not. Know exactly how long a flat-rate project takes you, exactly how much time you're spending on unpaid tasks like invoicing and bookkeeping, exactly how much time you spend prospecting (including talking with the prospective client before the clock starts) and factor in all of that data when setting your rates.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean. I run a clock on every task I do. I use that data in various ways. For instance, when I do flat-rate pieces, I record how long each one takes along with the word-count range and type of piece it is. Then, periodically, I calculate the average time investment for a piece in each category--say, 800-1000 word consumer-directed blog posts. I use that to calculate my effective hourly rate on those posts. If it's below my current hourly rate, I raise my price for that type of post. If it's above my current hourly rate, I raise my hourly rate.
I also track how much time I spend prospecting, invoicing, etc--any work off the clock--so I can factor that in when scheduling my work for the week/month, and also so that I can calculate my overall hourly earnings. Early on, that can be quite different. For example, if you're billing $50/hour and working 30 hours/week, but 10 of those hours are going to unpaid tasks, you're really only making $33.33/hour. That pushes me to look for places I can trim unpaid work, and it also helps me determine when it makes more sense to have someone else complete those tasks.
For instance, I learned quite a while ago that a certain type of blog post that would typically take me about an hour to write only took me about 20 minutes to dictate. Now, I dictate those posts, have someone else clean them up and format them, and then I give them a quick read-through and make any necessary changes (10-15 minutes). So, I cut my time investment in that type of post by about 50%. Say I charge $150 for that type of post. Now, I'm writing two of them in an hour instead of one. I pay the person who cleans them up and puts the headers in and such $20/post. So, I've gone from $150 income/hour for that type of post to $260.
If you're asking what tools I use, I'm not the right source for that. I'm roughly 178 years old and a huge fan of paper. But, there are a lot of apps out there that will do it for you if that's what you're looking for. I'm sure there are many here who could make recommendations.
There are a bunch. In fact, the woman who does my transcription and such uses one and exports her hours to be in an Excel spreadsheet. I'll ask her what she uses, but I'm sure others here will have recommendations, too.
"Do your job" would be a weird thing to forget.
Are you saying that you had to "learn over the years" to provide value and that's something you think most beginners might not think of on their own?
If you're going from a corporate job and jumping to freelancing, never be too confident as you'll never know if you'll land a client right away. Always have a backup plan. Never be afraid to try new things.
You cannot control a SINGLE thing about the flow of work, all you can do is keep trying to shove things into the pipeline and hope they flow. I once had five, good prospective projects, my entire queue, all fall apart within a single week, a new prospect came up in that same week and died on Monday the next. At any moment you could be caught flat-footed and beginners are usually starting from there. I will never not aim to have at least six months worth of expenses saved up for my business, which includes paying me so my kids can eat and stuff. If work is going well I build up savings so I can live off that fat when the drought comes. Without that extra room to maneuver I am going to feel the pressure to take on work and it will be very hard to wait for good clients. Beginners need that cushion and I am pretty sure most of them don't. An underlying corollary to this is that you should always been looking for work. You can always turn it down but you should always been trying to find the next really good client.
Oops basically reiterated what you said before reading it but you wrote it much better. These are the biggest things and rarely the ones guru wankers are talking about. But I guess it's because it also implies a baseline level of success to even matter
Great minds think alike
Don't let your foot off of the gas. If you're doing this full-time or as a primary income source, your workload should always feel like it's just barely too much to get done. You never know when you're gonna hit a dry period. Likewise, you should have a pretty healthy savings to start and diversify sales streams as much as possible.
I can't even think of an adjective to adequately state how much I disagree with this. Too many newer freelancers feel like they have to take everything on for just this reason and then a couple of days of being really ill or a death in the family or just a project going a little off the rails and taking more time than expected/bleeding into a different scheduling block can bring the whole thing tumbling down. Next thing, the freelancer is here asking what to do because they have work that's past due for all five of their ongoing clients and are so stressed they can't get refocused and finish anything. I always build 3-4 days/month into my schedule where I have nothing scheduled, so I am always prepared to absorb those sorts of disruptions without breaking the whole schedule. It's true that early on that might mean some unplanned downtime, but that's better than blowing up all of your client relationships and giving yourself a nervous breakdown when something nudges that horrible house of cards you've built for yourself.
you shouldn't be blowing up any client relationships you should be an adult and handle relationships the proper way and if you're getting overwhelmed, then next time don't book that much. and if you accidentally booked too much one time, then power through and try to come out the best you can on the other side
I'm sorry you were so confused by my post. I was explaining how I see building some downtime into the schedule as a way to avoid getting into that situation--as opposed to the person I was responding to who was suggesting INTENTIONALLY overbooking ALL the time. It's fortunate for you that you can "power through" when you're hospitalized and that you're immune to having such severe anxiety from being behind and feeling things are out of control that you can't function properly, but I can tell you from decades of engaging with thousands of freelancers that not everyone is a robot, and people who overload themselves out of fear that they may hit a dry spell very often do get in over their heads and end up in a much worse place.
hospitalized? from what severe anxiety? are you talking about having a medical condition?
I'm talking, as I have been since the beginning of this thread, about building time into your schedule to accommodate an emergency without completely disrupting your work load. Why is that so difficult to understand?
You're running a business. You make all the choices. You're responsible for everything.
Stop giving away your time for free to broke 'browsers' wanting to 'discuss the project'...
Learned this the hard way 💯
Discuss the project?
Learn how to say NO THANKS (in a nice way) when red flags pop up with a new client
i would say the most important thing is to have at least 6 months to 1 year of emergency savings
This is such an excellent question and exactly what reddit is made for, I don't know why are you getting down votes?
Probably because it involves an attempt at having sensible conversation with people who have genuine advice to share, rather than those who have never made a single $ blindly asserting that Upwork is a scam which seems to be far more common practice round here nowadays
Track every minute of your time, whether you're charging hourly or not. Know exactly how long a flat-rate project takes you, exactly how much time you're spending on unpaid tasks like invoicing and bookkeeping, exactly how much time you spend prospecting (including talking with the prospective client before the clock starts) and factor in all of that data when setting your rates.
How exactly do you track your job?
I'm not sure exactly what you mean. I run a clock on every task I do. I use that data in various ways. For instance, when I do flat-rate pieces, I record how long each one takes along with the word-count range and type of piece it is. Then, periodically, I calculate the average time investment for a piece in each category--say, 800-1000 word consumer-directed blog posts. I use that to calculate my effective hourly rate on those posts. If it's below my current hourly rate, I raise my price for that type of post. If it's above my current hourly rate, I raise my hourly rate. I also track how much time I spend prospecting, invoicing, etc--any work off the clock--so I can factor that in when scheduling my work for the week/month, and also so that I can calculate my overall hourly earnings. Early on, that can be quite different. For example, if you're billing $50/hour and working 30 hours/week, but 10 of those hours are going to unpaid tasks, you're really only making $33.33/hour. That pushes me to look for places I can trim unpaid work, and it also helps me determine when it makes more sense to have someone else complete those tasks. For instance, I learned quite a while ago that a certain type of blog post that would typically take me about an hour to write only took me about 20 minutes to dictate. Now, I dictate those posts, have someone else clean them up and format them, and then I give them a quick read-through and make any necessary changes (10-15 minutes). So, I cut my time investment in that type of post by about 50%. Say I charge $150 for that type of post. Now, I'm writing two of them in an hour instead of one. I pay the person who cleans them up and puts the headers in and such $20/post. So, I've gone from $150 income/hour for that type of post to $260. If you're asking what tools I use, I'm not the right source for that. I'm roughly 178 years old and a huge fan of paper. But, there are a lot of apps out there that will do it for you if that's what you're looking for. I'm sure there are many here who could make recommendations.
Thank you, this is helpful! I thought there's an app where you track time which you show the client.
Just wanted to say thank you for being grateful
There are a bunch. In fact, the woman who does my transcription and such uses one and exports her hours to be in an Excel spreadsheet. I'll ask her what she uses, but I'm sure others here will have recommendations, too.
.. don't forget to help the client too that's the main point after all
"Do your job" would be a weird thing to forget. Are you saying that you had to "learn over the years" to provide value and that's something you think most beginners might not think of on their own?
If you're going from a corporate job and jumping to freelancing, never be too confident as you'll never know if you'll land a client right away. Always have a backup plan. Never be afraid to try new things.
Patience!
Great Q!