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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Thanks for sharing your passions here. I think this is great advice.
Last year I left a retail management job that was paying me $25/hour. It was paying me pretty fairly, but I found myself hating getting up in the morning, and contemplating whether I should just drive my car off the bridge on the way to work. Life is too short to feel that way every day.
I may have to go back to "regular work" at some point, but I'm confident that by being creative and persistent I may be able to put that off, hopefully indefinitely.
Of course, it's much easier to take these chances as a married guy with no kids. (The wife has a couple successful hustles of her own.) In America, though, this means going without health insurance, and then paying a penalty on our taxes for the fact that we can't afford it!
Ya not having kids is a big benefit when it comes to being picky about jobs!! Sounds like you made the right choice, I think tons of people just resign themselves to hating every work day of their lives and it is super sad to see.
If Steemit is able to grow even modestly for the next 12 months, I think users like us will be in a GREAT place. Imagine the value of Steem grows slowly to $4 in the next year - hardly a crazy idea - this post would be worth around $70! And looking at your blog, you'd have quite a few similarly valuable posts.
When one or two posts a day can generate $50-$100 for mid-level Steemians, there will be a TON of us who are earning a comfortable living or baseline income from this site. In the meantime, we all wait and pray for the "hell yea!" to kick in :-D
I hope you're right! All we can do until then is to keep writing as well we can and hope for the best.
Thanks for taking the time to check out my feed!
Another great post man! I love hearing about your progression - It serves as great determination for my own :)
Glad to hear it, we're all in this together. Thanks dude!
This is good advice man. Freelancing and self-employment are the only jobs I feel comfortable doing. My only problem is a complete lack of talent and business sense, haha.
I completely agree that there's more to life than money, in fact I really dislike money and only want it because the way society works requires me to have money to be comfortable.
I need to find myself one of those hell yeah gigs that will pay me enough to get my ass off the dole, haha.
To be fair I do think the first step is to take any gig you can get. "Hell Yeah!" gigs are kinda step two - after someone is earning a basic income to live off of, then it's time to get picky. Before that, sadly its more like "beggars can't be choosers!" at least in my experience
Fair point, although right now anything that's not a 9-5 workaday job would be a hell yeah gig to me, haha.
YOU MIGHT BE SURPRISED O_O these things have a way of sucking sometimes! try being a brand ambassador maybe, some love it some hate it
Ok, you got me again, haha. Being a brand ambassador sounds like a horrible job, even the title is icky, "brand ambassador"... I don't know though, maybe I'll look into it and find something worthwhile.
Man, I'd say you're probably getting pretty tired of constantly seeing me comment on your posts, and I just want to say thank you for so patiently putting up with my nonsense, haha.
It is no problem my man. I appreciate having you around and resteeming my posts so often. Cheers 🍻
Well I'm happy to resteem the things I'm interested in. I doubt it has made any sort of impact though, but hopefully I've sent one or two of my followers in your direction.
Sometimes I get better paying work in the northern hemisphere summer months because many freelancers are on holiday, but businesses keep needing me.
Hey Matt. Are you of Slovak or Slavic decend?
I'm not super sure about my ancestry - my family has been in America for many generations - but I do know it goes back a lot to Poland, right next to Slovakia. I wouldn't be surprised if I have some ancestors from there!
Why do you ask - is it my last name? I see a lot of "Sokolov" and "Sokolowski" in life, not so many "Sokol" though.
Maaaan you just made me really happy :D I thought you would know.
Sokol means Falcon in Slovak language :D
I need to take this advice to heart. The day job can suck the very life and creativity out of us. I like the concept of letting go, and letting it happen. Thanks for posting!
Day jobs are the enemy of creativity!!! Ya thanks for reading
Good read.. You deserve for getting Upvote from me. . Waiting for your latest post. Keep your good work and steeming on. Let's walk to my blog. I have a latest post. Your upvote is high motivation for me. I have upvoted and followed and hope you will. Keep steeming and earning.
Do the music thing.
definitely am.
Nice view! I was wondering since the Steem price is down and you did a post about that yesterday. Now the Steem price is down are upvotes worth less in steem dollars as they were before when the steem price was higher?
Yeah, the value overall goes down so it'll pay out less SBDs. The value you see on the post at seven days is right around what it should pay you, except minus 25% for the curation slice of rewards.
BUT - if you buy more Steem with SBDs and wait until prices are up, you can basically get the better rate. So if I earn $10 from a post, save that money as Steem until it goes up to $2.00, then I would earn closer to $20 when I actually cash out.
Thanks for your reply very helpful:) So you don't convert the steem you earn into steem power? And if I've understood correct it takes over 2 years to totally convert the steem power you have to steem if you want to power down?
Converting into SP is even better because it makes your upvotes more powerful and earns you more curation rewards. It used to take 2 years to power it all down, now it only takes 13 weeks (~8% per week turns back into Steem while powering down)
Oh wow that is a lot better when I've got some money to spare I'll definitely get some steem to power up thanks a lot, you've been very nice and helpful to me! :)
Thanks this is very helpful to me too. What would you say are the optimal ratios that you should keep in STEEM, SP, SBD, SAVINGS if you are busy building your reputation. I am just converting everything and powering up the whole time.
Great post. Ah, the joys of freelancing.
Thanks for checking it out 🦀
This means everything:
Sometimes the struggle can get so real, the "hustle" and the "between gigs" but so far I've never went to bed without food and I'm thankful for it. Having a 9-to-5 certainly will make you feel safe but also miserable, besides, will not allow you to get some gigs that get you make money while enjoying it. Management is key, both in time invested and in money.
The only thing I really have missed of the 9-to-5 is the steady of the paycheck (although I certainly make more by myself, but I can also be 3 weeks receiving nothing or having late payments) and human contact: I do enjoy a lot freelancing from home, but interacting with other people is something I miss from time to time, especially since from those interactions bonds were created and those bonds have led me to more freelancing. Lots of my income for the past 5 years have come from those relationships.