Freelancer Mistakes: 3 Career-Ending Blunders

Those of us who have been in freelancing for awhile have watched other writers come and go. Some last only a few weeks while others come and go repeatedly as they need a bit of spare cash or try to restart a fledgling career. The truth of the matter is, however, when you’re a freelancer, you’re a small business owner.

You might be selling a service instead of widgets, and you might be marketing yourself on a single forum in a single thread instead of billboards and landing pages, but you’re most certainly a business. The current statistics show that a new business has about a 50/50 shot of making it – are you working to stay in the right 50%?

Starting a Business for the Wrong Reason
There are all kinds of freelance businesses and many freelancers take on a very part-time role initially to get a few extra dollars. However, if you don’t love what you’re doing, the initial interest fades and you’re working considerably more time than you ever wanted to in a position you don’t really like, and you might not be able to figure out how to back out of the commitments gracefully.

If you’re working for a few dollars here and there, there is certainly nothing wrong with that, especially in today’s economy. But starting a full-fledged freelance business in a field you don’t like doing things you’d rather not is setting yourself up for failure.

Failure to Plan and Drive the Business Forward
A business must grow and thrive to be successful in the long-term. If you slap your name on a post offering a basic service, you’ll likely find takers. However you might become embroiled in small projects leaving you no time to build up your business or even finish the website or blog you meant to create a few months ago to give yourself more credibility.

Failure to treat your business like a business is the most crucial mistake freelancers make. It doesn’t matter if you’re in school or just working part-time, you should be handling yourself and your future professionally and always thinking of what you want to do next.

The most common mistake that falls under a failure to plan is the large numbers of freelancers that enter the market, take on huge numbers of poorly paid projects, burn out and then disappear – often without being able to complete the projects they promised. This is simply bad business all around – you can always push out deadlines and plan into the future to accommodate new work.

Lack of Marking and Management Knowledge
You can be the best designer or writer in the world, but if you can’t sell yourself to others, nobody will ever know. Selling yourself and managing your business are two of the most critical elements of success. Not only do you need an initial push to find clients, but you’ll need to continue marketing on a regular basis looking for new projects and growing with new exposure.

If you fail to prepare for your own version of the future and continue to seek out new projects and clients, you’ll fail to grow as a business and become stagnant or fail over time.

This article was first released on GoingFreelance.com