Freelance myth 1 - it’s feast or famine!
I first heard this phrase when I was working as an editor for my longest-serving client. The writer I was chatting with asked if I had any more work for them.
Side note: there is no shame in this. If you have time free, telling people is the best way to fill that time. There’s this horrible stigma about looking weak because you might not have enough work to fill your week/month. My only advice in this situation is: ignore it.
I asked the writer what they had on and who they were working with. The previous month they’d had more work than ever. This month they only had half their normal workload. While I did provide them with some more articles to write, I also thought about how they got there in the first place.
The feast or famine scenario is one I’ve never wanted to end up in. Feast, sure. I often take on more work than I can complete (on paper).
This may seem alien to you. Lots of people think it’s unethical. Some people think it leads to burnout. But there are several tactics to apply here.
It’s part of this feast process that helps dispel the feast or famine myth.
In the simplest form, saying yes to more work makes up for potential work you don’t get later on. It also gives you the opportunity to impress and secure more work from existing clients. That doesn’t mean you have to work 15 hours a day to get it done, either. You can say yes now and set your delivery time. And we’ll build on saving up more time for delivery instead of admin later in the book.
To dispel the feast or famine myth, we must dig into preparation, self-marketing, and setting ourselves up for autonomy. If you’re forever waiting for clients to sign and creating proposals, you reduce your time for executing your skills and deliverables.
This is where personal branding, sharing your work, and sharing your success comes into play.
For context, I’ve never cold-pitched a client. I’ve never sent a proposal more than five slides long and that took more than 30 minutes to create.
How?
By literally sharing my work and sharing my success. There is very little to unpack here.
People hire me because of the quality of my work and the success it brings people that pay for it. And they know about this because I share it.
Here are some examples of what I share (on social media, in proposals, on my website, quite literally anywhere):
- A link to my latest article
- % conversion of blog views to sign ups
- $$$ generated per article after 6 months
- Behind-the-scenes snippets when creating content
- Major client acquisitions attributed to content I created
- A graph showcasing results of my latest content refresh
- A highlights reel of featured snippets and #1 ranking posts on Google
Some of these need input from clients. Not every freelancer has access to analytics and sales figures.
Unless they ask.
Imposter syndrome or not, there’s no excuse not to ask and no disbenefit from asking to see how your content is performing.
Now, I understand imposter syndrome. And sympathize immensely. In fact, until I went freelance and represented myself, I greatly suffered from imposter syndrome.
I was a twenty-something (looking more like 17) person in a suit tagging along to meetings with CEOs, technical experts, and extroverted “salespeople” who would quite literally fight over meeting room tables.
It’s not that I didn’t want to interject. It’s more that I didn’t have anything to add. I’d do my demo or present what I came to do; then carnage would ensue. So it was best to stay out of the way.
People preach “don't say anything if you don't have anything nice to say” and that “it’s okay to be quiet in meetings”. But in a corporate setting, try telling that to the dinosaurs who’ve always done it their way. You must dominate the room and make sure your customer speaks first.
You know, all those sales tactics that don’t actually work. “Selling” my own services since becoming a freelancer has been much softer.
It’s three quarters sharing what I do and one quarter making sure I want to work with a new client.
The latter part (making sure I want to work with them) is something I get asked a lot.
“How do you qualify your customers?”
I have three parts to my answer:
- Am I going to enjoy working with this new client?
- Are they going to help me grow as a freelancer?
- Can they afford me?
I normally start with the end of this process by sending my services page over before we chat further. That’s right… I show them my pricing before wasting half an hour on a discovery call.
You wouldn’t believe (or maybe you would) how many people I’ve seen moan about time wasted either on pointless calls or waiting for prospects to not show up.
The remedy? Don’t have them until your customer is committed. With over half my customers, I’ve never had a real-time call with them. With some, I’ve quite literally never spoken to them. There’s a lot to be said for asynchronous work. The sooner you get comfortable with being genuinely independent and providing updates and proposals without explaining your work in a real-time call, the sooner you move towards autonomy.
And this plays a huge part in qualifications 1 and 2. If the customer isn’t invested in working asynchronously, I’m not going to enjoy myself and I’m not going to grow as a freelancer.
Of course, the topics, audience, scope of work, and potential upside all play their part here too.
If you aren’t interested in the topic, it’s not the right niche for you.
Freelance myth 2 - freelancing gives you all the time in the world
When I asked my Twitter followers for examples of freelance myths, Nikki Pilkington, a freelance writer, provided the following:
“Freelancers that work from home are available for lifts, phone calls, coffee, etc. at the drop of a hat.”
Potentially due to films and books about freelance artists and photographers who swan all over the world, there’s a huge assumption that freelancers don’t actually spend any time working.
And some of us, me included, enjoy the free time we manufacture so much that we share it on social media.
I like to balance this with tweets covering how blimen busy I am and when some projects take up much more time than anticipated. I’ve also spent a lot of time streamlining my processes.
From writing a blog post to chasing up invoices, I’ve made every step of my working week as efficient as it can be. The only variable is me.
Sure, if you charge a huge amount for your deliverables, you may not need to work as much as others. And to that, if the fee is justified, I say well done. But for others who’re busy being busy, there are some simple tweaks you can make to your process that help you become more efficient and get you a step closer to autonomy.
Automate tasks that don’t need human intervention
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here and there’s no need to spend any money to achieve this either.
If an invoice is overdue, I’ve heard of freelancers sending lengthy chaser emails that offer alternatives to payment, proposing new timelines, and all sorts. Even a call to check in on how your client’s business is doing and see if there is a problem.
Now, this might seem friendly and ticks the boxes for relationship-building (sort of) but you need to get paid within the parameters you set (more on setting up contracts later).
If an invoice is overdue, make sure your invoicing software allows you to click “Send Reminder” with the click of a button.
I don’t have many clients who don’t pay me on time. But one regular client has a lot of long-winded processes to protect itself due to the number of invoices it pays. I don’t mind getting paid a few days late as long as I do get paid. And I make sure of that by clicking the “Send Reminder” button on FreeAgent, my accounting software. In fact, I’ve now automated it so I don’t even need to click it.
Nobody likes receiving reminders so it gets paid within hours. No detailed email. No call. No offer to defer payment.
And, sure, this might not work for every client. But these are the clients you need to think twice about if your goal is reaching autonomy. If you spend time on tasks that don’t pay the bills, remove as many of those tasks as you can.
And, yes, that might mean being a bit ruthless at times. But you’re not a charity. This is your livelihood, your career, and how you keep food on the table.
Outside of invoicing, you can schedule or automate social media posts. Free tools like Buffer, Typefully, Hypefury, and even Twitter’s native scheduler help me always have tweets and LinkedIn posts ready to go. In general, I have one post per platform queued up at least two weeks before.
I don’t go overboard here. This ensures I appear active on social media without me needing to be “always-on”. But it also means my feeds aren’t so full that I can post something spontaneous.
If you opt for Hypefury, you don’t even need to think up a new tweet. The tool mines your best-performing tweets and suggests a time to post them.
Scheduling meetings is another big time suck. How many minutes do you think you lose per year due to meeting scheduling?
According to research by Charles Kergaravat, an experienced collaboration technology marketing leader, and Propeller Insight, over 31% of workers spend 30 minutes or more preparing for each meeting. On top of this, 36% spend over 15 minutes doing the “coordinating calendars dance” to schedule a time that works for everyone.
An easy way to reduce this insane amount of unbillable time is to automate meeting scheduling. You can use tools like Calendly for free to either send your calendar to potential meeting guest or let people book meetings directly from your website or content.
If you’ve optimized your site to drive organic traffic and convert it to a meeting, the ability for your potential customer to book a meeting removes several steps of email intros and finding a time slot.
With all this said, automation of tasks like these isn’t a must. If you’re effective in these areas already, bucking to peer pressure of “productivity” is often counterproductive. Andrew Brethauer, a B2B SaaS Content Marketer, asks “Is it odd to say... nothing? I've started using Asana to keep track of four clients, but I've mostly just done everything in my head because the more programs and software you add, the more time you have to spend using it. I just keep things as simple as possible.”
If the task or automation adds no value, ask yourself: what’s the benefit?
Cut tasks that add no value
Here’s everyone’s favorite and least favorite topic: actually having meetings. We preach the few meetings mentality and work style but how many of us end up still having countless intro calls and catch-up meetings that don’t result in new business or acceptance of a deliverable?
These, by the way, are the only genuine needs for meetings (in both my literal and figurative books).
Other than meetings, tasks like weekly updates don’t need to exist when you’re delivering short-term deliverables. For example, if you submit a blog post every week, there’s no need to provide an update on the work you’ve done for that client. They can literally see the output.
If you’re unsure of which tasks you can remove from your process, document your entire week next week.
On paper (or a weekly planner), note down every task you do in one column. Then, in the next column, write down the time you spent on this. In the final column, add a monetary amount to denote how much money that task and time earned you.
Halfway through your week, you’ll discover there’s a lot of zero-revenue work in your week. What comes next is a natural defense of your own actions. You started doing them through a conscious choice so your brain will defend itself.
Be ruthless with yourself. Commit to change. If these tasks don’t offer any monetary value, they better have a bloody good reason for existence. Otherwise, remove them from your routine.
Find a routine that works for you
Lots of people ask me how I work so fast. The key isn’t working fast. The key is working efficiently. And I do this by finding what works best for me at the time.
Sometimes, I finish working by 9am and feel no guilt whatsoever. Sometimes, I work until nearer midnight because I’m in the zone and/or I have committed to a ridiculous deadline (charge more for these!).
For the most part, the combination of enjoyable work that will help me grow as a freelancer, in my niche where I am a subject matter expert, and that is well-paid, is all I need to be efficient.
The work put in ahead of time (in the sales process) pays dividends when it comes to delivery.
I start every day at 7.30am. That’s because I know that’s when I’m most productive. If any customer asked me to work from 9-5, it would remove the most productive hour and a half of my day. When communicating this, it’s always been enough to convince a customer to let me work in my own time.
(For the most part, customers don’t care when you work.)
On the occasions where I’m working collaboratively with other team members, I factor in time for this, obviously. But I would never compromise my own productivity for the sake of “the norm”.
And you shouldn’t either. Find your routine, your motivation, or whatever makes you most productive.
You probably won’t end up like those freelance artists in the films. But, hey, it’s Tuesday and I’m sitting in the woods writing my book because I’ve finished all my deliverables for the month.
Trust the process.
Freelance myth 3 - freelancers will work for free
I’m really not sure where this one came from. Maybe it’s the “free” in freelancer. But I prefer to label that as free for freedom.
Sure, some freelancers do work for free at times. There’s a blurry line around when you should and shouldn’t work for free.
The high-earning freelancer in me, who abides by growth principles of turning away low-paying clients and raising my prices regularly, wants to say you should never work for free.
But my personal growth and freelance success have been contrary to this. In fact, in some cases, my best work has been work I’ve completed without a paying client.
Let’s walk through when it’s okay to work for free. Actually, let’s start by making it clear when it’s not okay to work for free.
When is it not okay to work for free?
The most common request for free work is “the test” or “the sample”. There are differences between the two so it’s important to establish these first.
A test is an assignment to prove your skills are what you sell them to be. This is a gamble on the employer/client’s side just like making a new hire. You wouldn’t hire a new barista without checking they could make coffee. So you likely won’t hire a writer unless they can write.
Yes, there are circumstances where you hire trainees. And that’s great. But, for this example, let’s assume you’re pitching yourself as a skilled freelancer.
When a prospective client proposes you complete a free test, they are de-risking themselves entirely. You could create a 2,500-word blog post that takes 5 days of your time, a ton of effort, exhausting resources, and stressing you out. And your end result? They go with someone else who submits a test blog post earlier.
My best advice for dealing with clients who ask for test assignments is to suggest they pay for your time.
Seriously.
Better clients will offer to pay for your time/service anyway. These are good clients. The ones who respect your time. The ones you want to win.
They’re the opposite of the free test merchants, whose mantra will flow into your ongoing work with them. Clients who ask for free tests end up being those who are more than happy with scope creep, ask for edits of their own edits, then throw the whole project out, and expect your fee to cover their own confusion. More on scope creep when you’ve signed a customer later.
What you can say in these situations is: “I’d love to complete the test assignment and can complete it by XYZ. However, I would need compensating for my time at a rate of $$XYZ. This reflects my standard rate and will guarantee the work submitted will be of that caliber. I look forward to working on the project.”
If they argue this further or get upset or offended, run away. These clients are rarely worth the effort. You could be spending this time winning real clients that make you happy.
It’s hard to say no, at first. But when you redirect your energy into clients and work that makes you productive, makes you good money, and makes you happy, you’re on the path to freelance autonomy.
A good example of a hiring test process is that of Kyle Byers, Director of Organic Search at Semrush. He shared his process of paid tests on his LinkedIn:
“My favorite way to evaluate and hire content writers, whether full-time or freelance:
(Two major steps, with two twists.)
First, always start with a paid trial assignment.
You can use content samples to filter out bad-fit candidates. But to choose who to hire in the end, you need paid trial assignments.
Why?
A writer's past work samples may have been:
- Heavily edited by someone else
- Turned in 3 months late
- Written based on an incredibly detailed outline/content brief
For the trial assignment, give the candidate clear expectations about what you want.
- Style
- Content goals and target audience/keyword
- Examples of what you're looking for
Best if you can provide a full content brief at this point, too.
Then, ask them to quote you their fee for the assignment.
Their quote will give you insight into how they think about their work and how much you can expect from them.
So you shouldn't be looking for the cheapest quotes you can find here. In fact, it's a good idea to remind them before their quote that you're looking for quality--not quantity.
Twist number 1:
If their quote is too low, tell them why and let them revise it! (Assuming you're looking for a long-term partner who you can rely on for great work.)
Twist number 2:
After approving their quote, ask them to write only the first ~400-600 words of the article to start. Along with a basic outline of the remaining sections.
This way, you can give them feedback on their writing style and where the article is heading before they write the whole article.
If you have high standards, you'll find that 99% of writers can't nail it on the first try. And that's okay, as long as they're roughly in the right ballpark.
The more important thing is:
Can they take your feedback and quickly improve?
So give them early feedback on their work, and watch how they apply your thinking to the rest of the article.
If it goes well, give them more feedback and a second paid trial assignment. By the end of the second assignment, you'll have a clear sense of how close they are to your standards and whether they're improving fast enough to work with.
Final tip:
In the long run, a "pretty good" writer who *wants* feedback (and is good at implementing it) is always better than a "really good" writer who gets offended or doesn't want to improve.
The process above is specifically designed to find folks who are already good AND care enough to get a lot better over time.”
A sample, on the other hand, is a simpler matter. When a prospective client asks for a sample, you should already have one prepared.
If you’re an experienced freelancer with relevant examples to the client you’re pitching, you’ve already got samples.
I keep mine on my Medium site ready to cherry-pick or send the entire batch. See www.bit.ly/exampleportfoliodk
Pretty basic, right? That’s for effort’s sake. Your clients want to see samples of the work you’re proposing to do for them. If you’re a designer, they aren’t judging you on your back-end SEO coding. If you’re a writer, they want the quickest route to reading something you’ve written.
Links are just fine.
You can use any type of free site for this. There are portfolio-sharing sites designed specifically for this.
Here are a few to consider:
- Carrd
- Canva
- Notion
- read.cv
- Authory
- Clippings
- Contently
- Adobe Portfolio
- Journo Portfolio
You might want to include a portfolio on your own site if you have one. Web visitors who find you but don’t know you can then see how great you are without needing to arrange a call or ask for a test assignment.
Do you see a common theme here? Every small change we make impacts the overall freelance experience. By simply collating your portfolio in one place, you don’t need to go hunting for samples every time a client asks for one. By adding them to your website, you show potential clients that you’re the real deal. The sales process becomes slicker. Trust is built immediately.
Keep your samples safe and public. You’ll thank yourself in the future.
When is it okay to work for free?
I’ve completed free work in three scenarios (that I can recall):
- Guest posts that will benefit me in the short or long term.
- Favors for friends that might one day return the favor.
- Community projects that make me feel good.
With guest posts, some freelance marketers might think this is something you only write for clients to help improve their SEO. But there are tons of benefits for guest posting when you’re building an audience or raising your own profile.
I’ve included a guest post later in this book that I wrote for Superpath, a community for content marketers. I did this for free for several reasons:
- I love the community and enjoy giving back.
- I was going to repurpose it in this book so it was time well invested.
- Writing such a post would increase my potential audience for products and services.
When you think of free work as genuine marketing, the “free” element becomes okay. As long as it’s relevant to the niche, community, or industry you’re in. This does mean, however, that you should be selective with free or guest posts. For example, writing a post to get a backlink to your site from an unknown site is almost worthless. But posting in a community that regularly looks for help with sourcing freelancers puts your name front and center.
I feel that “doing friends favors” needs some clarity. I don’t endorse mates rates or free work just because someone is a friend. (Exception for small favors; but we’re going to discuss mid to long-term projects.) At the end of the day, you are a business. And if you’re doing work for free, you could be missing out on income or the opportunity to find income.
Doing friends favors does pay dividends when you stand a chance of receiving something back one day. That might be a referral, some business with them, or a case study.
One example I have is conducting an SEO audit for my friend Tom. We’d been online friends for a while after hanging around in the same industry. I did this for free when he asked for help for three reasons:
- I like Tom very much; he’s a really nice guy.
- We have this unwritten agreement where we can DM each other almost anything and we’ll help each other out.
- One day, the company he works for might need my services and he has the confidence of referring someone he’s tried and tested.
- One day, he might go independent and need my services and he has the confidence of using someone he’s tried and tested.
- One day, he might get asked by a customer, friend, or colleague and he has the confidence of referring someone he’s tried and tested.
All of these are true. Tom is really nice. We still help each other out almost every day. He did refer me to the company he was working for (resulting in over $80,000 worth of business). He did hire me when he went independent. He did refer me to another business in the same industry (resulting in $10,000 worth of work). I’d say that’s making good of doing Tom a favor.
Oh, and he bought me a case of cider too. Told you he was nice!
Side note: you need to deliver here too. Just because you’re doing a friend a favor doesn’t mean you can drop your standards. Otherwise, it becomes a favor and nothing more.
I approach any work I do with that mindset. Be it a new customer, existing customer, customer who’s given notice, a guest post on a publication that doesn’t know me, or my personal site, recognizing that everything you post online (or offline if that’s your line of work) is a potential business opportunity. How you present yourself and your work is part of what gets you hired.
This, really, is a story about the success of community. Without embedding myself into the industry I work in, I would only know Tom from afar. But our constant interactions, showing up in the same places, and having common interests made us obvious friends.
When you give to a community, you’re one step closer to receiving something back.
And that doesn’t have to be the niche you’re in or the community you hang out in. It might be something close to your heart. For example, Maheen Kanwal, a freelance writer, says it’s okay to work for free when “you’re volunteering or for writing for an organization supporting a good cause. Be their voice. Give to the community.”
Cici Asanga, another freelance writer, provided me with this nice list of when it’s okay to work for free as a freelancer. I think #6 overrides them all.
1. When you are starting out
2. When you are taking a calculated risk
3. When you want a portfolio item
4. When you are struggling to get work and that might open doors
5. When you care about the cause e.g. charities
6. When you want to
7. To build goodwill
I replied to her comment with “I think #6 overrides them all! Only do free work when you want to!
I'm a big advocate of not working for free but there are circumstances where I do—and really quite a lot of them. But only because I WANT to.”
“Working” also doesn’t have to be exactly the services you offer either. Next year, I’m volunteering at a game reserve in Africa because I want to. Endangered animals can’t protect themselves from at-distance poachers and their natural habitats are being destroyed. Me writing a blog about this would have very little impact given my audience. But volunteering in the game reserve might.
Freelance myth 4 - freelancers don’t pay tax
While it would be nice, freelancers do pay tax. However, becoming a “limited company” in the UK means you operate like a real business. It’s not dodging tax or doing anything shady. You genuinely are a business. So you must act like one.
If you hire an accountant, they look after all this for you. And I’m quite tempted to leave this section at that.
But for the sake of being helpful, I’ve drafted in my own accountant, Martin Brooks of Gold Stag Accounts, to author the next section…
It can be more tax efficient to become a Limited (Ltd) company in the UK, but you should always discuss the best setup with an accountant to see if it’s the best route for you.
For tax saving reasons, it usually makes sense to go Ltd once your profits exceed £30,000 and other than the tax savings that can be made, you can also increase your cash flow as you don't have to make the large payments on account you would as operating as a sole trader.
Operating as a sole trader is still a great option for people looking to keep things simple and generally earning £30,000 or below, as there is only one tax return due each year.
Some freelancers feel they are too small or can’t afford to hire an accountant and do their own taxes. In reality, self-assessment tax returns usually cost under £200, and accountants can often save hundreds or sometimes thousands with tax savings and planning, which pays for itself.
It’s also worth noting that the timing is important if you’re looking to mortgage or remortgage as most lenders will want to see two years' books in either sole trader or Ltd company format, and more and more lenders are requesting accountant verification of earnings these days.
My top three tips for any freelancer operating as a sole trader or Ltd company are:
- Open a business bank account - the good ones are all free
- Use cloud accounting software
- Work with an accountant
Being organized is key to staying on top of your own finances, and following the steps above will put you in good stead.
Tax saving tips for Ltd companies:
- Trivial benefits up to £300 per tax year as long as each transaction doesn't exceed £50
- Company pension contributions (reduces profit and corporation tax)
Use of home allowance (claim actual percentages of your household costs rather than a simple flat rate)
Sole traders can also claim a decent amount of working-from-home expenses, so it’s definitely worth taking the time to calculate this and include it in your accounts.
Since using Martin as my accountant, he’s opened my eyes to the things I can legitimately claim expenses on. And by simply having a business bank account and cloud accounting software, I’m more aware of claiming for everything I’m entitled to; which in the long term saves me thousands per year.
When you start to earn good money and have “spare” money, this is crucial to building a buffer for the times when you might not have any work. We’ll introduce how and when to set money aside later in the book.
This is an extract from my book, The Autonomous Freelancer.
