This article is the second part of 25 tips showing how to maximize your freelance opportunities.

6. Be Dedicated

If you are taking up a project, you are certainly putting yourself into a commitment with the client and you should do your best (But be logical about your own life as well) to produce optimum result.

7. Keep a Record

It is best to keep a record of every expenses that you have to incur. If you have a dedicated room designated as office in your home premises, then you should have separate record keeping books for home and official expenses.

8. Do not Under-Sell Yourself

It is important to understand that at the initial stage you may not be so successful with high prices per project, but, it is also a fact that if you sell yourself too cheap. It will affect your name in a negative way as well. Thus be logical and use the following formula to go about setting project rates:

• Rate = RM R / H hrs
• R is the desired salary that you expect in a year
• H is the total hour in a year that you think is possible for you to work on projects.

The general trend is to have 15 workable days in a month with 8 hours of work, thus it gives you a total of 1440 hours in a year. The rest of the time will be spent upon other purposes such as administrative tasks, marketing, enhancing skills, having some breaks, etc. Once you know you hourly rate, apply to that in each project to determine the final rate. Besides, you should also increase your rate with time as you grow more experienced and professional.

I recently read on the 4 Reasons Why Freelancing Sometimes is not Desirable. All the while, I am promoting the advantage of full-time freelance life. However, Logan Strain enlighten me on the disadvantage of becoming a full time freelancer. Let’s share her thought with you folks.

Though freelancing has become a revolution in the way people earn their living, some things haven’t changed for years. Many freelancers find it difficult to cope with, which ultimately leads to an abandonment of this avenue. This article will shed light on such 4 reasons, which compels many freelancers to think twice about the prospect of their work.

Children

For those freelancers who are married, it is important to earn enough money to provide sufficient daycare service for the children in the early stages of their lives. Freelancers often do not earn as expected, and they tend to leave out the optional luxuries of life and family. But it is important to remember, ‘daycare’ service is pretty much on the top of importance list for a child. And you must have that extra bit of income to ensure that service for you children.

Free Time

Sometimes freelancers have to work real hard and at a stretch for long hours. If this is done in a regular basis, life can become quite strenuous; which ultimately takes its toll on the health issues. However, with effective time management techniques on a regular basis, this problem can mostly be tackled with good effect.

Insurance

This is another aspect that is vastly important for those freelancers who is having a family. Due to the fluctuation in earning rate and sometimes insufficient revenue, many freelancers might have faced problems affording the insurance. Thus, many freelancer choose to completely ditch this burden of maintaining insurance for his family members, which, in the long run, may not turn out profitable.

Security

The hardest drawback of freelancing is the fact that there may not be any stable pay-cheque at the end of month. If you don’t know in advance how much you are going to earn, it may become pretty problematic to draw up the budget scale. This is one issue that hurt majority of freelancers at some point of their career.

Thus, it’s a mix baggage. If you are truly courageous enough to withstand all this problems with bold virtues, and are ready to deploy counter plans and measures to ameliorate these unwanted situations, you will surely reap the benefit of freelancing.

Photo by Parthshah.