Long Term Freelancing Success – Part 1 – Dedication

Hi all, welcome to what I hope to be a series about some factors I think will be key to long term success..The first is to address your working discipline.

Read many interviews of freelancers and a common answer to ‘what do you love about being a freelancer?’ – one of the expected answers is the flexibility to work ‘at my own pace or ‘when I want’. I discern that despite this fact your ethic toward your freelancing needs to be regular, wholehearted and consistent if you truly want to be successful.

Chris Brogan also has a wonderful video series called ‘Overnight Success’ which ironically iterates the LONG haul that has gone into his successes.

When one is working for themselves it is easy to get dragged down in distractions (view the post ‘Designing with distractions‘). With this in mind though, it’s difficult when you are working freelance, because so much of your productivity depends on you being self-disciplined enough to know where the line should be. Where in an office you can have the boundaries set for you, when you’re privileged enough to work from home, it can be harder to come up with black and white rules as to what distractions are acceptable.

The more you let laziness, procastination and recreation ahead of your business is the more you allow for the demons of failure to set about their work.

5 Points to adhere to

Work Regularly – Whether this is 9 to 5 or the early hours of the morning – a routine is what most of us programmed little matrix babies need to stay focused in our working lives. The point is, those that I know , who are successful work regular hours of some sort. Yes, there is a few who wake up at 3am – do a logo – go bed at 5am and then sleep till 12pm – go for a walk etc and are doing great! but they are few and far between.

Value time – TIME IS MONEY! – Now that you are your business. No matter how boring the client / project is – you cannot afford to watch the clock go hour through hour just so that you can go away and do something else. If your at your computer – be doing something productive at your computer.

Meet Those Deadlines – As clients mount up and workloads rise – the difference between those who go onto greatness and those who fall into average joeness is those who meet their deadlines – no matter their workload. Customer service is a HUGE factor in freelancing – to date our most reliable form of getting jobs is referrals… It’s easy. Take care of your clients and they will take care of you.

Find something to do – Wallowing in self-pity about not finding clients or not earning what you want, simply… will not help you find clients or help you earn what you want. Doing something will. There is no way you have cold-called every business in the world. There is no way you have e-mailed every business in the world. You haven’t scouted every freelancer forum in the world. You have gone through every statistic in google analytics to tweak your site that little bit more. There is always something that can be done. Work is WORK.

Have a break, have a kit-kat – Despite all my ranting about not letting up on your work ethic – you do however, need to find time to relax away from freelancing. The key is, to find the balance – that perfect weight of both, that allows for both to exist without one compromising the other!

How do you keep yourselves motivated ? Do you work regular hours? Are you guilty of relaxing that little bit too much?

Related Posts:

• December 13, 2009 -- Long Term Freelancing Success – Part 2 – Marketing (8)
• November 25, 2009 -- Factors To Consider When Pricing For A Project (6)
• November 19, 2009 -- Should You Find a Niche To Stand Out From The Pack? (3)
• November 13, 2009 -- Competing Against The Agency – The Freelancer’s Epic Battle (17)
• November 6, 2009 -- When Your Client Wants To Become The Designer (14)
• February 3, 2010 -- How do your organise yourself as a freelance designer? – Part 2 (2)