Freelance Jobs

Finding real, paying, safe freelance jobs can often be a daunting, time-consuming, stressful, disheartening task.

I know. I lived through it on a daily basis for years.

It really wasn’t until I learned to spot types of clients who could be problematic, then screen potential new clients with specific criteria, conversational onboarding, learn to openly and fearlessly discuss the “five hundred pound gorilla in the room” which inevitably is always price versus value, and how to recognize (and try to work through, quickly) the stages of denial that most business owners find themselves locked in (at some point or another) before we could move forward building a plan for tangible growth.

Balancing new client intake, while managing freelance jobs, while applying for full-time agency positions, was overwhelming at times to be sure. 

Freelancing Beyond the Stress

Struggling freelancers who want to get past cheap, broke, controlling or petty clients with unrealistic budgets who carry “pie in the sky” unattainable expectations, have to break the scarcity mindset that focused and serious clients exist first. Then they need to rehearse repeatedly the information and procedures discussed in this post until they come to a point where they can discuss budget, value, know how to screen and onboard without drama or uncertainty.

And even once those steps were worked out and tested, I still had to be able to find authentic (as in non-phishing scam “offers”) work that could pay the mortgage either in-between those agency jobs or in some cases during agency work.

Balancing Freelance Jobs with Agency Full-Time Work

I had to balance freelancing with agency work, and finally building my own digital marketing LLC (small but distributed and capable) agency.

Often I taught workshops during these times to matriculate new clients as well as build a network of contacts with professional associations.

How to Use Workshops to Grow Your Business

It required a committed level of organization and deliberate pre-planning that admittedly was new to me at that time. I’ve since refined these processes out of necessity and now that I’m (at least partially) retired, it’s cathartic to often revisit what I’ve learned and try to help others stuck somewhere between those phases.

Freelancing Made Easy

When I was at that point personally and professionally, where the anxiety of discussing budgets, project development, design standards, and essentially be able to address any possible obstacle that a potential client could come up (and let’s get real here, after a dozen or so conversations you quickly see that price is at the top followed by questions about how work is done, which revolves around boundaries and creating a way to work efficiently that many freelancers simply don’t develop early on) was resolved, all that remained was developing a systematic way to find, secure, and take on remote freelance work.

Freelance Jobs with Purpose

It sounds like a difficult task but I realized from already having worked at agencies in different capacities (web designer, developer, content writer, SEO consultant, and later project manager and small agency owner along with running a small NPO), that the best way to proceed was to build a system the way an agency would do it.

Freelance Jobs Summarized

I created a “super” list of resources, created a folder with different resumes to match each type of job I’d apply for, another sub-folder for cover letters, another for portfolio work, another for test-taking (which I later decided to avoid as time-wasters and wildly inaccurate way of assessing skill), another containing references and testimonials, another for links, and you get the general idea here.

I streamlined the processes of finding work that fit my skills and interests, then the process of applying, the process of interviewing and being vetted, and documented each step in a spreadsheet that contained who I spoke with, when, what was said, by what timetable, where I was in terms of hearing back or being enrolled in their HR process, and whether or not something was promised. I kept all email correspondence in a separate folder, and worked that way at all times.

Just as I worked with clients, I vetted, onboarded, trained, and set firm boundaries with each of them. I expected agencies I’d applied to to also do the same and set up similar procedures to smooth out the road to the final destination of financial independence if not prosperity.

So in this ebook, that I make available to you, gentle reader and freelancer, I try to put some of this out for you to benefit from.

If you enjoy and benefit from this ebook, share it, link to this blog post, review it online, mention this site, and let it get out there and breathe life into struggling freelancers.