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Things you SHOULD know before starting a freelancer career

aggelosmariospa

By aggelosmariospa
in Tips from Sellers

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aggelosmariospa Rookie

aggelosmariospa

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I wanted for a long time to start this topic after my experience here on Fiverr. I wanted to share what I have been threw, what I learned and I strongly believe that those stuff can help somebody to decide whether they want a freelance career or not.
There are many things that can be said for that category so in order not to waste your time I narrowed them down so I would share the most important.

1.Working alone.
Working as a freelancer is so lonely. I remember waking up, making a coffee and some breakfast and started working. I wanted company and I had none while working, so I had to do something about it. I downloaded books in audio form so I could listen someone while working 😃 . Of course you can work with a partner if you have a larger business running but I couldn’t afford it.
On the other hand it has some benefits, like distractions are minimized, there is no boss yelling or pressuring you but this is a trap that I will continue in number 2.

2. Self Discipline
While working as a freelancer you may be so relaxed that you stay up all night and wake up late or you wake up early with a serious difficulty waking up and ruin your biological clock. Working alone doesn’t mean you can do that. You must be a professional and of course be able to deliver the best the possible quality of work to your clients if you want to succeed.

3.Make an Everyday Todo List and Make Sure you Achieve your Goals
As previously said, there is no one around you to keep you on track and this may end up you being on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram all day. You must make a todo list of what jobs you have to complete and make sure you complete it. Also, set goals for the future so you keep being motivated each day.

4.You Deal with Customers.
Whether you like it or not, you have to deal with your customers. You must keep your phone close so you won’t miss an opportunity working with a new customer or solve questions of your existing customers but don’t over do it. Set some hours of the day just for you with no phone. Being a freelancer doesn’t mean you don’t have a personal life and live only for your clients.

5. Learn to Negotiate.
This is very interesting thing I learned working on fiverr. Learn to sell your skills. Check this out, it has many information that are like GOLD (Art of Negotiation). We all work for making money right? Why can’t we make more from doing the same job? This is the power of negotiation.

6. Don’t Let Anger Take Over.
An unreasonably demanding customer that rejects your work or a buyer that uses abusive language is something that will probably piss you off and may end up exchanging “french” between you and the buyer. I did once and I regret it. There will always be a person that will piss you off but you have to be professional. You will probably spend your creative hours of making cash by swearing a low iq person. Does it really worth it? Try to calm the buyer but he/she doesn’t retreat just move on.

7. Keep a Budget for Dry Season.
You get 5-10 sales per day, make 100+ $ per day and you feel great, so you start spending with no limit because you think that money will keep coming back day after day. What I learned the hard way is that something may happen and your sales will drop to 0 for long and then will back again. Keep some money for that hard days. There will come don’t fool yourself.

This is some experiences I had and I wanted to share with you. I hope I am helping people that are considering entering freelancing career. Older sellers, please share advice in comments.
Thank you.
aggelosmariospa

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writer99025 Collaborator

writer99025

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I personally feel the most important thing is to maintain focus when you are freelancing. Since you are on your laptop most of the day and work alone as a freelancer, there is a good chance that your attention will get diverted by Twitter, Facebook, blogs, websites, YouTube etc. I’m still struggling with this part. Once I get this right, I will become twice as productive as I am today.

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gig_freak Collaborator

gig_freak

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I personally feel the most important thing is to maintain focus when you are freelancing. Since you are on your laptop most of the day and work alone as a freelancer, there is a good chance that your attention will get diverted by Twitter, Facebook, blogs, websites, YouTube etc. I’m still struggling with this part. Once I get this right, I will become twice as productive as I am today.

Once, at one point of my life, I was thinking to block all of the social media pages by calling my ISP. But it never happened. Today, I watched YouTube for 2 hours, on videos about the strangest borders in the world. Also, I have spent some time in watching the process of phone calls and international underwater communication cables. Then, I started watching UN speeches, and I realized that two hours had passed and jumped on the forum. And just know I realized that I have wasted a lot of time that I could’ve used for productive stuff.

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aggelosmariospa Rookie

aggelosmariospa

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Once, at one point of my life, I was thinking to block all of the social media pages by calling my ISP. But it never happened. Today, I watched YouTube for 2 hours, on videos about the strangest borders in the world. Also, I have spent some time in watching the process of phone calls and international underwater communication cables. Then, I started watching UN speeches, and I realized that two hours had passed and jumped on the forum. And just know I realized that I have wasted a lot of time that I could’ve used for productive stuff.

I totally feel you…

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indieoven Newbie

indieoven

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I wanted for a long time to start this topic after my experience here on Fiverr. I wanted to share what I have been threw, what I learned and I strongly believe that those stuff can help somebody to decide whether they want a freelance career or not.

There are many things that can be said for that category so in order not to waste your time I narrowed them down so I would share the most important.

1.Working alone.

Working as a freelancer is so lonely. I remember waking up, making a coffee and some breakfast and started working. I wanted company and I had none while working, so I had to do something about it. I downloaded books in audio form so I could listen someone while working 😃 . Of course you can work with a partner if you have a larger business running but I couldn’t afford it.

On the other hand it has some benefits, like distractions are minimized, there is no boss yelling or pressuring you but this is a trap that I will continue in number 2.

2. Self Discipline

While working as a freelancer you may be so relaxed that you stay up all night and wake up late or you wake up early with a serious difficulty waking up and ruin your biological clock. Working alone doesn’t mean you can do that. You must be a professional and of course be able to deliver the best the possible quality of work to your clients if you want to succeed.

3.Make an Everyday Todo List and Make Sure you Achieve your Goals

As previously said, there is no one around you to keep you on track and this may end up you being on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram all day. You must make a todo list of what jobs you have to complete and make sure you complete it. Also, set goals for the future so you keep being motivated each day.

4.You Deal with Customers.

Whether you like it or not, you have to deal with your customers. You must keep your phone close so you won’t miss an opportunity working with a new customer or solve questions of your existing customers but don’t over do it. Set some hours of the day just for you with no phone. Being a freelancer doesn’t mean you don’t have a personal life and live only for your clients.

5. Learn to Negotiate.

This is very interesting thing I learned working on fiverr. Learn to sell your skills. Check this out, it has many information that are like GOLD (Art of Negotiation). We all work for making money right? Why can’t we make more from doing the same job? This is the power of negotiation.

6. Don’t Let Anger Take Over.

An unreasonably demanding customer that rejects your work or a buyer that uses abusive language is something that will probably piss you off and may end up exchanging “french” between you and the buyer. I did once and I regret it. There will always be a person that will piss you off but you have to be professional. You will probably spend your creative hours of making cash by swearing a low iq person. Does it really worth it? Try to calm the buyer but he/she doesn’t retreat just move on.

7. Keep a Budget for Dry Season.

You get 5-10 sales per day, make 100+ $ per day and you feel great, so you start spending with no limit because you think that money will keep coming back day after day. What I learned the hard way is that something may happen and your sales will drop to 0 for long and then will back again. Keep some money for that hard days. There will come don’t fool yourself.

This is some experiences I had and I wanted to share with you. I hope I am helping people that are considering entering freelancing career. Older sellers, please share advice in comments.

Thank you.

aggelosmariospa

1.Working alone.

Working as a freelancer is so lonely.

You can try coworking.

When I have to work solo sometimes I have friends (also solo freelancers) come to my place or I go to theirs - and we all work on our own projects. I love this because we can give feedback to each other works, and have a 2nd opinion before getting the project to the client. We are not partners, but having the same ´´modus operandy´´ freelance life makes it flexible to move from here and there and not die trying.

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ghemachandar1 Rookie

ghemachandar1

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I personally feel the most important thing is to maintain focus when you are freelancing. Since you are on your laptop most of the day and work alone as a freelancer, there is a good chance that your attention will get diverted by Twitter, Facebook, blogs, websites, YouTube etc. I’m still struggling with this part. Once I get this right, I will become twice as productive as I am today.

Hey, @writer99025! It’s amazing how similar we are. 😂

I had this problem too! Like, big time. I was addidcted to casual Internet surfing, particularly news sites. It was effecting my work, friendships and most importantly it was creeping into my sleeptime. I was sleeping late and waking-up grumpy.

What I did was to install QUSTODIO. It’s a free parental control software where you can block your computer/internet access at specified times. (I blocked 11PM - 8AM). In your case, it also has a feature to block selected sites like Twitter, Facebook completely. You’ll have to unblock in dashboard to view them again (which impulsive surfers don’t do) Or, one can ask somebody else to keep the password to make it totally impulse proof.

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fastcopywriter Mentor

fastcopywriter

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Working alone is not a big deal for me. Working with people means everyone must be on the same page, ready to work, know what’s going on. It usually means meetings, presentations, etc. It means being interrupted by a producer who doesn’t care that you’re working, or having your partner distracted because the account executive needs the price on an ad changed right away.

I don’t know why some people crave to work with people. People can be extremely vexing, even online it can be difficult to deal with people.

But I understand, some people crave people, some will pay rent at one of those WeWork buildings, or they will join some other incubator, just to be around people. Others do Fiverr from Starbucks, which to me is ridiculous, but whatever. If paying for overprice coffee is your thing, go for it.

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misscrystal Grand Master

misscrystal

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Working alone is not a big deal for me. Working with people means everyone must be on the same page, ready to work, know what’s going on. It usually means meetings, presentations, etc. It means being interrupted by a producer who doesn’t care that you’re working, or having your partner distracted because the account executive needs the price on an ad changed right away.

I don’t know why some people crave to work with people. People can be extremely vexing, even online it can be difficult to deal with people.

But I understand, some people crave people, some will pay rent at one of those WeWork buildings, or they will join some other incubator, just to be around people. Others do Fiverr from Starbucks, which to me is ridiculous, but whatever. If paying for overprice coffee is your thing, go for it.

Some people can’t stand to be alone for a minute.

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aggelosmariospa Rookie

aggelosmariospa

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1.Working alone.

Working as a freelancer is so lonely.

You can try coworking.

When I have to work solo sometimes I have friends (also solo freelancers) come to my place or I go to theirs - and we all work on our own projects. I love this because we can give feedback to each other works, and have a 2nd opinion before getting the project to the client. We are not partners, but having the same ´´modus operandy´´ freelance life makes it flexible to move from here and there and not die trying.

It is a great idea. I used to do this for a while with my brother. He was working as freelancer but then he found an another job so I left alone again. Finding a coworker would be fun but still you have to have discipline and work on your projects, not foolimg around 😃

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aggelosmariospa Rookie

aggelosmariospa

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Hey, @writer99025! It’s amazing how similar we are. 😂

I had this problem too! Like, big time. I was addidcted to casual Internet surfing, particularly news sites. It was effecting my work, friendships and most importantly it was creeping into my sleeptime. I was sleeping late and waking-up grumpy.

What I did was to install QUSTODIO. It’s a free parental control software where you can block your computer/internet access at specified times. (I blocked 11PM - 8AM). In your case, it also has a feature to block selected sites like Twitter, Facebook completely. You’ll have to unblock in dashboard to view them again (which impulsive surfers don’t do) Or, one can ask somebody else to keep the password to make it totally impulse proof.

That is a good piece of advice 😃

Fortunatelly, I fought this without any app 😛 . It may be hard in the beggining but if you set some goals each day you don’t feel like you need the social media untill you fullfill the goals. At least it worked for me…

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