Jumping back into freelance projects again

Back around this time last year, I was just start­ing to take free­lance projects on. I have to say, I was just get­ting my head wrapped around the idea of how the whole free­lanc­ing thing worked.

In the whole, like month or two I think I got like 4 clients and made some decent money. But I had to stop because my stu­pid com­puter died, and it wouldn’t be pos­si­ble for me to actu­ally do any of my work on a com­puter with a destroyed battery.

I’m no expert when it comes to free­lanc­ing because I have only taken on a small hand­ful of projects. Some of them, I have been more ded­i­cated to and oth­ers not so much. I learned lessons in busi­ness and mar­ket­ing from doing free­lanc­ing for a short period of time, and I feel like I can learn so much more if I started it up again. But this time, I am smarter with doing busi­ness with peo­ple, and my skills in all fields I spe­cial­ize in have got­ten much better.

My one prob­lem with free­lanc­ing before (besides my com­puter issues) was that I was not that moti­vated on some projects. Out of the 4 clients, I only took 2 very seri­ously. I put a lot of work into those two (my first two) because I was design­ing a web­site for clients in a niche I am famil­iar with. The other two, I was not so famil­iar with it and I feel like I didn’t do my best.

Things have changed. After almost a year of quit­ting free­lanc­ing, I have decided I want to get back into it a lit­tle. With new knowl­edge in mind, how­ever, I feel like I will become a lot better.

The time I have not been free­lanc­ing, I have picked up on some things:

• You have to get out there
  You can’t just start a web­site and expect to get clients. You have to really get your name out there and make peo­ple want to choose you to work on their project over some­one else. You can’t be shy, you have to assert your­self. Some­thing I have learned from blog­ging.
• You don’t have to take on every project

  For the best of those 2 clients I didn’t really relate to, I prob­a­bly should have turned them down instead of going through. I had absolutely no idea about the niche, and even doing research on it didn’t help.

  I didn’t decline the project, I tried it, but didn’t do my best. Prob­a­bly should have declined it for the best inter­est of the client. At my age, where I don’t need money to live, I prob­a­bly should have done seen that. But I know bet­ter now.

• Do your best always. YOU’RE GETTING PAID. WITH REAL MONEY! (hope­fully)
  You can’t half-ass any­thing when it comes to being a free­lancer. You are being paid to do some­thing, you have to give it your fullest. Besides, if you do an amaz­ing job then the chances are you have just cre­ated a recur­ring client who will come back to you with more money.
• Always look to improve your­self
  You can always be bet­ter at what you do. Always look to improve your­self, because if you can find a new way to do some­thing that is not only more effi­cient, but is above indus­try stan­dard — then, going back to the above point, you can cre­ate recur­ring clients.
• Don’t ever deliver until you get paid

  No mat­ter how much you can trust a per­son (take it from me), never ever deliver your con­tent until you are paid every last cent. That means you have to do all of the work on your server, out of reach from your clients with­out them get­ting into the files, or what­ever it is you’re freelancing.

  This has hap­pened to me. I had a client, fin­ished his project in July 2009 and didn’t see the last 50% of the money until Sep­tem­ber 2008. He was my friend, so I fig­ured I could trust him and give him the stuff, then let him pay his last deposit. Hell no, never again!

The site where I will be free­lanc­ing at — Kolakube.com

I have owned this domain for a long time now, This was where I did my free­lanc­ing at before. This is where I will be doing it again. Same logo, same col­ors, bet­ter qual­ity of service.

Right now, I just threw together a lit­tle splash page on it. I am going to be devel­op­ing a full blown web­site for it when I clear up my sched­ule a lit­tle. Now, I’m talk­ing some­time in the summer!

As I have men­tioned on the web­site, if you wish to work with me on a project then just go to my Con­tact page and fill out the order form. I may or may not accept due to my busy sched­ule both on and offline, but I will try my hardest!

Thanks for read­ing guys, I hope I didn’t bore you!

Tagged as: clients, freelance, web design