What Is The Secret To Being A Highly Successful Freelancer?

I’ve been asked this question so many times that it’s about time I wrote an answer for it.

I’ve tried to create a one-liner response but it’s far more detailed than that. And while I appreciate every freelancer is different, it boils down to five main criteria for me:

While writing this blog post, I’ve made several attempts at turning this into a one-liner but it’s proving impossible. I might come back to it at the end. So stick around for that.

What qualifies as highly successful?

Before we can uncover the secret to successful freelancing, we must first define success.

In no particular order, here are the five criteria I use to gauge whether I am, in fact, a successful freelancer.

Earnings

If you’re not earning enough money to satisfy your lifestyle, you shouldn’t consider yourself a success.

Disclaimer: You might be on your way to becoming a success — and that’s just fine.

I must also point out that earning enough to satisfy your current lifestyle is great too. When I first went freelance, I decided my day rate would be exactly what I was earning as a full-time employee.

I took my salary and divided it by the number of days I thought I’d work a year.

After not long at all, I realized this was the wrong way to go about pricing my services. My earnings dramatically increased when I learned about pricing freelance projects.

In summary, when you earn enough money to cover off your needs, you’re a successful freelancer. But why stop there? I’ve upped my rates with new and existing customers on a regular basis. This isn’t just to account for inflation, but to reflect my experience and skill set.

Every time someone pays for your service — at the price you ask — it’s confirmation that you’re worth the fee you’re valuing yourself at. So why not ask for more?

What you do with your money

An extension of earnings must be the actual take-home amount. Here, we’re comparing the amount of money in the door from clients or sales and removing any expenses.

These might be subcontractors, tools, or anything else you spend money on.

When calculating this, I wouldn’t worry about subtracting things like pension contributions or salary. These are investments and payments to yourself. It’s your money; just in a different pot.

To evolve from a successful freelancer to a successful business/individual when it comes to money, we dive into the world of banking, tax, and investments.

This is where learning about what you can claim as a business expense comes up trumps. I highly recommend reading this guide to self-employed expenses by Xero.

While I’m not qualified to give financial advice, I feel appropriately experienced to provide freelance advice.

I have two resources on just that here:

Happiness

I quit my 9 to 5 not because I didn’t like my job. I quit my 9 to 5 because I had a tremendous feeling that choosing my own job would be even better.

While doing some freelance work on a very part-time basis, I had the epiphany that if I could do this (writing blog posts) all day every day for the rest of my life, my happiness would skyrocket.

Imagine being able to say that about work!

I’d been somewhat conditioned into “loving” my industry. After 10 years of not knowing anything else. But even six and a half years on, I still hold that same mindset.

I love the technology I write about and the way it changes businesses. I love how it improves my day to day life and I love being able to articulate it to other people. I love being a subject matter expert and talking with confidence.

My industry makes me happy.

The second part of my happiness stems from the way I work. Achieving freelance autonomy wasn’t something I set out to achieve. I didn’t really know it was a thing until I invented it.

But I always knew I would work better somewhere other than an office surrounded by people with different views on what their workday would look like.

So, as I wrote in my book, I just went home. I decided to try working from home and it worked. I was more productive than I’d ever been.

Since being freelance, I've played around with what works best for me. That’s one of the biggest benefits of being a freelancer. You set the rules. You are in charge of your happiness.

Productivity

If someone asked me to work 9 to 5 Monday to Friday again, I'd say no. Even if they offered triple my date rate, I wouldn’t trade my happiness.

Neither would I trade my productivity.

Through working out how I work most efficiently (not quickly - efficiently is different), I satisfy both my first two success criteria — earnings and happiness.

These lend themselves to each other:

I know, for a fact, I will earn more money and make my customer’s business more money if I work my flexible schedule.

Most of the time, that looks like 7 til 2 Monday to Thursday. Some of the time, I work an hour or two a day. One week, I worked a total of five hours over four days and earned over £10,000. The assets I created in that time subsequently made my customers hundreds of thousands.

Time does not equal value. The value you provide equals value. A micro-lesson in pricing right there. If you’re being productive to the point where you can complete your work in the timeframe you desire, you’re a highly successful freelancer.

For example, sometimes blog posts take me three days. That’s why I charge a premium for long-form content.

But, sometimes, a blog post might take me three hours. I still want to earn that premium and the asset is still worth that amount to my customer. So, why would I change it?

Pipeline

I lose my temper when freelancers say their least favorite thing about being a freelancer is finding customers.

These are the freelancers who haven’t found a niche, haven’t promoted their work, and haven’t changed their strategy despite their protestations.

You won’t grow as a freelancer until you become known for something.

As referenced in my book, Jason Patterson, a freelance content marketer, defines being niche as “means all the clients in your industry know your name.”

So, when your target client needs the craft you excel in providing, you’re top of mind. They come to you.

I’ve been freelance for six and a half years now and I’ve never done any cold prospecting. I’ve also never had a day without work.

All my customers come to me.

I attribute my inbound customers to two sources:

That’s quite literally all I do.

Sometimes, people protest that they can’t share the work they produce. That’s fine.

Share how you made it, what you learned, the impact it had. You get the point. Show something about the last project/article/website you worked on and tell people how great you are.

Get my free playbook: Create a never-ending pipeline

Work-life balance

When you earn enough money, are happy with your job, do it in a productive manner, and don’t have to worry about constant outreach or fear of not having work, you create an ideal work-life balance.

As already mentioned in this post, and many times in my book, I work four days a week. Often not for many hours at all. Certainly never 9 to 5.

*Note: If you find that working 9 to 5 as a freelancer works for you, go for it. I’m not here telling you when to work. I am here telling you to find out what makes you profitable, happy, and productive.

What is the secret to being a highly successful freelancer?

Here’s the aforementioned one-liner I’ve been working on for the duration of this blog post (and the last six and a half years if truth be told).

The secret to being a highly successful freelancer is knowing how to attract the right customers for you.

It’s amazing how that just flowed. It only took me 1,568 words to get there.

There’s a caveat, however:

You must also have the drive and discipline to get to this stage.

Some hard truths about freelancing:

Want to chat more about improving your freelance career? Reach out to me on Twitter. I talk almost exclusively about freelancing there.

Serious about becoming a highly successful freelancer?

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