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CRITICAL MISTAKES OF FREELANCERS
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Everyone make mistakes but smarter one try to overcome. But looking into freelancers’ life, mistakes will cause serious effects. Because of small mistakes they face problems like decline in quality work, sub sequential cut in income, loss of reputation and the list goes on endlessly. Many freelancers know tips and strategies to beat mistakes. But very few use it practically. Now I take an opportunity to highlight few mistakes, I did as freelancer and methods to rectify it.
Here is the list of mistakes, often done by freelancers. I hope freelancers will start following the remedies after reading this piece of writing.
Missing Time Limits:
Some freelancers don’t pay attention on deadline. They try to give excuses for not reaching their target. Remember that, if you fail to meet the deadline, clients will not hire you again. Therefore you lose many freelancing jobs and fail in competition.
How to avoid: prepare daily target according to work priorities and schedule time for each work including testing of project and fixing the bug. Make sure of working on your goals and completing it within deadline. Give first priority for main and difficult task. So you can complete and work with other small assignments easily.
Taking Clients for Granted:
Many of your clients are from small; medium businesses. Usually they have their own production to take care of. They proceed with other business works after assigning project to you. It doesn’t mean clients won’t notice your work.
How to avoid: never under estimate clients. Put your constant efforts and work sincerely to show them you are trust worthy. This helps to maintain a good client/freelancer relationship. Be friendly and put forth your interest to work on their project.
Lack of Exploration:
Often freelancers work for a project without making a research on it. They work by just following the similar task done by other freelancers. If you are innovative, you can bring unique results. Creativity and knowledge is obtained only by learning about that work. Failing to learn will surely result in poor quality end result.
How to avoid: The next step after signing a contract is to make a study on it. Get clients need completely, make a list and start working on it in your own style. Utilize tutorials to understand techniques and apply your own ideas to design a project work. Determine methods of doing things which work well for you, and practice it regularly to improve your standard.
Working in Irregular Hours:
This mistake will lead to health hazard for a freelancer. If a service provider is working for large scale projects, he/she tend to work hours together without eating and taking proper rest. This makes them feel tired and frustrated. Productivity gets reduced when you strain yourself to work in night hours without sleep.
How to avoid: Take a break when you are struck up with a work. Recharge yourself and continue with daily routines. This will surely increase your efficiency. It’s necessary to balance your work and life. Do your work on week days and enjoy life by taking off on weekends. Your mind needs a break for sometime or it eventually burst out.
Charging Too Little:
While starting a freelance career, service provider claim small amount for doing a work. Initially you face difficulties of making a correct bid. Clients will not hire you if you charge too high and you will starve if its low bid.
How to avoid: it’s always good suggestion to charge your services based on work experience. Make sure of
- Current market trend,
- project demand,
- your ability
- Clients you work with
- Competitor’s charges and then bid the fair amount. If you found that your estimation is too high then you might need to lower the charges.
Accepting Many Projects Simultaneously:
Freelancers have a wide chance to choose the projects they like to work for. Accepting two or more projects at same time will make your situation worst. It becomes a tedious task to handle all projects, work on it, and submit before deadline without overlapping. Quality of those works gets affected badly.
How to avoid: accommodate yourself with one project work at a time. If you have too many projects, then accept a project which satisfies following criteria,
- Repeated client’s project,
- project which satisfies your financial position,
- Project which depiction your talent.
Have enough time for marketing your service and to keep track of competition. Use innovative ideas for marketing your skills within limited budget.
Failing to Uphold Records:
Without accurate records your business will be put into risk. This is common problem for all categories of freelancers. It’s necessary to maintain record especially for complex coding, designs etc. Image in what critical position you will be, if your program got struck in between execution and you don’t have backup?
You need to waste time for creating source code again. Accurate backups are important for tax purpose also. You will miss opportunity to do better if you fail to uphold records.
How to avoid: set up a tool for keeping records of your project works. There are many online tools available like dropbox, Genie backup Manager (windows) etc. By using these tools it’s easy and time effective to take backups.
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