The trouble with freelancing is that it involves a lot of organisation. You need to get your head around a few basics or you’ll end up procrastinating or worse, failing your degree because of your freelance work. So let’s prevent that, shall we?
This is part two of our guide: Getting Started - Part 1
Get Organised
Good organisation is the backbone of freelancing and the best prevention for procrastination or worse, failure. Here’s how to organise yourself into becoming a successful student freelancer:
- Treat freelancing exactly the same as your assignments. You need a clean tidy workspace. Why not use your university’s facilities where possible.
- You need to set yourself deadlines and stick to them.
- Keep a diary (or set reminders on your phone or computer). I have a massive year planner with all of my deadlines and appointments. You could also use Microsoft Outlook to set yourself reminders.
- Sort out a formal invoicing system. Check out our guide: Invoicing - Get Paid The Right Way.
- Use databases. I use excel spreadsheets and Google Documents to keep my projects, my invoices and my taxes organised. This is great for physically keeping track of what work you have, the deadlines, and the amount of time you spend on each project - awesome for time-management. Keeping records of this nature helps for future reference. This allows you to give clients realistic quotes on time and cost. You’ll also be able to compare the quoted role with similar prior jobs from your records.
- Time Management – make a list of all of the daily tasks, such as emails and make sure you do them. Next make a list of everything else and start the most unpleasant tasks first. Set yourself tight time limits for each task – this way you can work how long it takes to complete each job and budget accordingly. Remember, you can’t charge the client for ‘research’ when you really spent the time Facebooking!
Stay Focused
If after deciding ‘today is the day I go freelance’ you find that after 2 hours you’ve seen all the ‘funny cat’ videos on YouTube, folded all your clothes in neat little piles and alphabetized your Textbooks. But still haven’t made your first steps to getting or doing any work. You might want to read this: Procrastination
Alas, the irregular nature of freelancing means that one month you’ll be eating at Nando’s every night (we really don’t advise this – you need a varied diet etc to ensure the longevity of your ‘work hard/play hard’ lifestyle etc), the next month you’ll be eating dog food. So don’t go blowing all your student loan in the first week because your have freelance work. It’s irregular and clients sometimes change their mind.
Sort out your portfolio
I keep banging on about portfolios but they are of utmost importance, not only as a mouthpiece to prove how great you are at what you do, not only to collate your best work in a kind of retrospective, but also to keep you organised and focused as doing what it is you do.
More Organisation - Risk Assessment
All businesses have plans in place things go wrong, so why not you. Here are a few ways to prevent problems:
- Data Backup - The worst thing ever is a deadline day error. – Back it up in triplicate! Save to computer, save to a memory stick or external hard drive and email a copy of the work to yourself. Better safe than sorry.
- Records – Firstly, set up a separate email account for your freelancing then keep records of any communication with clients in a separate folder for each. This way you can easily find any instructions or settle any disputes without spending hours searching your inbox. Having to ask clients’ to resend emails will make you seem disorganised, you may lose further contracts to competitors who do file their emails properly.
- Deadlines – Asking clients for extensions on deadlines is not rare but you need to realise the implications. You could lose the contract or seriously delay the client. If this is a problem read our guide: Work/Uni Balance - Get It Right
