I'm writing this a few feet from my kitchen, wearing baggy pants and trainers, listening to some music and chatting to my beautiful wife. My commute from the bedroom took seconds; I've no one telling me what to do (except my wife).

So Jealous yet?

I've been #freelancing for 12 years, and I love it to bits I cannot imagine doing anything else, I have total inability to cope with offices and bosses not to mention meetings and waiting around for lunch hours and weekends, I used to live for weekends but being a freelancer you can go anywhere and do most anything anytime you want.

Freelancing is not for everyone but more and more it's becoming an option you should consider as employers are looking more to outsource their work, there are more opportunities, and great tax benefits when working from #home.

All evidence points to a huge increase in freelance work throughout the economy, and the world, Freelancer.com is like eBay for freelances: employer offers work, freelances bid for the job, and they have become one of biggest websites in the world. Some 930,000 + projects have been outsourced to date, for $80m of earnings. "One freelancer in India makes close to $1m a year building $65 websites. He now has 80 people working in three design facilities, thanks to building his reputation as one of their top freelancers.

Are you ready to freelance? Here are some tips to help you along the way:

Dont give up your job just yet

If you're currently working, are you happy to have the weekly wage packet, pension, company of workmates and paid holiday leave rather ease into it by doing a little freelancing on the side.

Is there a market for what you do?

Are you one of many doing what you do, or one of a few? research the market properly find your niche then go full #steem ahead (haha see what I did there)

Beware the computer

You can run your entire business on a laptop now. Unfortunately it's the same place where you can read funny articles from The Onion, tell your Facebook mates what you ate for lunch, and become an expert at Texas Hold 'Em. Don't kid yourself that googling your name and looking up your competitors on Wikipedia is research, or sitting watching the #streemit live streams all day is work. )

You are the company

you can outsource everything you're no good at, but whatever you do you need to understand basic accounts, marketing, publicity and all the other tedious admin that you now have to deal with. With customers, sort out how much you're being paid at the start. Make sure they remember they owe you money. You are your own invoice department as well.

Don't get ill

You're no longer working for The Man, you are now He (or She). The Man never liked you taking the day off for that hangover from hell, and now you're Him, a day off is a day's lost pay. Seriously, if absenteeism is an important part of your work life, don't go freelance.

Bad day at the office?

Now that you're in charge, every bad day feels much worse. Learn to accept that we all have times like this, and tomorrow is another day, Every job is your calling card, every day is a new beginning, you're only as good as your last job.

Plan

Never mind work-life balance, first you must get the work-work balance right. You need to make money now, ideally you're spending two to three days a week doing that. But you also need to know where the work is coming from in six months, and a year's time. So you need to be aiming towards getting more work then. If the next few months are full of gaps where paid work should be, plan what to do with that time. Plan today, tomorrow, next week, month and year.

Have a life

Manage your time well; know when you're going to finish work today, and stop. As a freelancer it's easy to be "on" all day and night, and it's especially annoying when you wake up at 3am composing that fairly dull email reply you meant to send the previous day. Switch off and do something completely unrelated to work. You'll arrive a lot fresher the next day.

Certain extracts of this post accredited to
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/aug/05/how-to-become-successful-freelance

#steemit #money #life #travel #steem #basicincome #startup #introduceyourself

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