How I’m Learning to Get Great Freelance Gigs By Turning Down “Good” Ones

I stumbled Forrest Gump style into the world of freelancing. It wasn’t the result of a plan, like a treasure map with “X - freelancing career!” on one end of it. It was more the opposite, me avoiding the dreadful, terrible idea of the steady full-time job.

There’s too much shit to do for me to take a Monday-Friday, 40 hours a week kind of gig. I need to do studio sessions, go on tour, post on Steemit.

Like most freelancers, I started out thinking I needed to take whatever gigs I could get. This manifested as a $5 an hour text-mill writing gig, but escalated into more of a $10 / hour writing gig that actually felt pretty good.

Hey, now I’m earning the same as any shitty retail job, but I work on my own schedule and from any location I choose! This is pretty sweet.

How Do We Measure Progress as Freelancers?

This is where I started to make mistakes. I figured the next logical step was to simply increase my wages to the highest possible hourly rate. I’d take whatever gig that I could as long as it paid well.

I got offered a gig that equated to about $40 per hour, accepting it on the spot. When I saw the list of writing subjects, I was caught off-guard by how technical and advanced they were. It was a lot of stuff about advanced B2B business, programming, stuff that I don't know about. But the hourly was good, and my friend convinced me that it was doable.

One month later, I had to quit the gig. And I’ve turned down a few others besides that. Here’s what I learned:

Progress as a Freelancer Shouldn’t Be Measured in Money

This may sound crazy, but I stand by it. My philosophy is that once a freelancer has enough income to survive on, they should stop aiming for more money. Two reasons for this:

(1) More money happens naturally. Focusing on it doesn’t really help. If your goal is to just “upgrade” to better gigs over time, all you have to do is keep an eye out and do good work.

(2) The real thing to measure is job satisfaction. This doesn’t really have to mean “loving your job”, for me it’s more about having low stress levels and moving towards my long-term goals. If a job would earn me more money in the short term, but it isn’t a step in the right direction towards where I want to be in 10 years, I should not take it.

You Have Less Time Than You Think

It’s amazing how easily we can spread ourselves too thin. One or two “decent” extra gigs will absolutely fill up your schedule. In our heads, we think it’ll be “a few hours now and then”, but in reality that new job takes up 5-10 hours per week.

If a gig won’t take any of your time, is it really worth doing? Do you need another “good” client offering you $100 per month for occasional work? It would be nice in the short term, but our brains quickly get overwhelmed when we have too much to keep track of.

As Derek Sivers says, “If you’re not saying ‘HELL YEAH!’ about something, say ‘no’.”

None of us can juggle more than a few jobs at once without getting stressed out. The best strategy is to take the minimum amount of work that we can to start, and then crush those gigs and keep an eye out for the “HELL YEAH!” stuff.

What is a Great Gig?

You might think “what are these hell yeah gigs anyway? What’s so great about them?”

I’d say - Look at Steemit! This is the ultimate definition of a hell yeah gig for me. I write about topics that I care about, discuss them with friends in the comments, and earn decent money doing it. I am my own boss, I set my schedule, and I can travel while I work - in fact, I can post travel blogs and earn money for that too!

Another one for me is my band The Walding Family, which is in the process of setting up our first paid gigs. Get paid to perform original music? Hell yeah!

But if I took a bunch of “good” gigs, writing for $20-30 an hour, I wouldn’t have as much time for Steemit. I wouldn’t be able to practice music as much. I’d be way less good at those things, which would make it less likely for me to succeed in them. The good gig becomes the antithesis of the great gig.

Time Will Tell

This mindset is new to me - we’ll see if it sticks. Right now I am feeling optimistic that I can have a relaxed, enjoyable life while still earning decent bucks as a freelancer.

What do you think?

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