The top 10 Biggest Mistakes Freelancers Make and How to Solve them
There is a lot of mistakes freelancers make from graph designers, web designers, programmers and etc. Below is a list of some tips that you could go by to help you for your future freelance career.
- Contracts, there is so many freelancers that do not provide contracts with there clients. Now if your working for a company or doing work for someone else by the hour theres really no need for a contract, well maybe a smaller contract, but not as in depth as what a project bases would be.
- Over estimating, The freelancer which I have seen this lots of times they say they can do this, or do that. Then to come and find out there skill set is pretty weak and they don’t have the education to complete the project or resources.
- Deadlines, Don’t ever give your self a deadline unless you know the project will be done on that date and time. If you think there will be a lot of variables to the projects and lose ends always leave your self an out. Be honest with the client and tell them your not sure how long this project would take due to the complexities and the time involved. These type of projects are a pain in the a**, but you charge highest for these due to work hours, research involved, and etc.
- Wrong Clients, Choosing the wrong client can be a headache, you have to learn to deal with certain people. Every one has a good side to them, but some clients can be a major pain. Thats why you need to make sure you provide well written contracts before the project is initiated.
- Keeping the site on thee server, Don’t ever work on a project and have it running on a client website. Always run the project from your server and have them review it by you providing some type of ip address for them to connect to, so host it from your server.
- Payment, Some freelancers are so weak they don’t even ask for 50 percent up front. Generally you want to try to get 50 percent of the money up front, if not all of it. This way it will save any future problems with work performed.
- Changes, I should of mentioned this, but always make sure in your contracts it states that any additional changes will be an additional cost.
- Revisions, Some freelancer will provide so many revisions that its ridiculous and next thing you know you got 100 hours into revisions alone. Always make sure you charge for revisions such as design work and etc.
- Re-inventing the Wheel, A lot of programmer will reinvent the wheel. Don’t ever do this, most of the software / scripts that your client will need is already out there. If not thats why you charge by the hour for custom programming jobs, and not by the job. Then again depends if you think you can map it out in your head go for it, but don’t hurt your self in the long run.
- Targeting your vertical, Lot of freelancers are desperate and target any vertical possible. Quite honestly the best jobs to focus on are jobs that will fit your experience, or something that your famaliar with pricing. It ok to take on any job, but make sure you price it right.
Lot of problems with freelancers is that there not business material, there just labor workers which there is nothing wrong with that. I think were all labor workers one way or another, but a freelancer must be clear with details and stay strong about there job performance. A lot of freelancers let there clients control them, and for a business model thats poor, next thing you know your doing a bunch of work for free. The ideal is to always stay on top of it, and be good at what you do. Set your pricing right for everything, so the jobs get done and completed like they should. If you leave this up to the client to make all the decisions generally it won’t get completed and it will be a miserable night mare.