In the corporate world, it’s easy to track positive mobility in your career. You could get a promotion (a move upward to a position of higher rank or pay), or laterally to a position of similar rank, but with different tasks or projects. Advancement in a freelancing career is not so easy to track, possibly because we each have different definitions of what a freelance “promotion” consists of.
Here are some ways you can climb the freelance career ladder: Read the rest of this entry »
There are many symptoms of a stagnant freelancing career. They include boredom, complacency, apathy and the inability to picture what your work should be like a year from now. If you can relate to these symptoms, then it’s time to face facts: you’re stuck. Additionally, you need to do something to get unstuck.
So how can you get a stagnant career moving again?
Know where you want to be. Sometimes, the reason behind a stagnant career is that you don’t know what you want. This doesn’t mean that you’re indecisive, but maybe you didn’t give ourselves the chance to plan. Read the rest of this entry »
Competing with other web workers might not be as cut-throat as corporate competition, but the spirit of competition in web working be dismissed as nonexistent. In fact, it’s a big mistake to ignore your competitors completely. So how should we use our competitors to our advantage without getting dirty?
Identify your competitors. This may seem elementary, but in the thriving online freelancing world, at first glance, everyone else seems like your competitor. But this is hardly the case. In fact, you might even be hard pressed to find your real competitors through a simple Google search. Just because another freelancer’s website shows up in search results targeting the same keywords you do, it doesn’t mean they’re your potential client’s other options. This freelancer is just your competitor in terms of search results, and probably nothing else.
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During my creative writing classes in college, many of my classmates dreaded the workshops. These workshops required us to send each other a copy of our work, then, the following week, we’d tear each other apart. We used to spend hours spotting mixed metaphors, grammatical errors, and lack of characterization. One of my professors would even bring in two established authors to help facilitate in the literary carnage. Many people cried.
I, on the other hand, looked forward to these workshops. I believe that this was the activity that gave me the best preparation for web working. Like those workshops, online freelance work tends to be a public affair. Your blog posts, design work, marketing efforts, and most of your business output is done where the public can see them. In a way, you’re putting your work in front of a firing squad.
Believe it or not, this is a great thing.
Criticism is the best way to see the flaws you’ve overlooked in your work, especially when you’re not expecting it (through an email from a random site visitor, for example). It’s very easy to overlook your own mistakes since your mind is so familiar with what you’re doing. But, as web workers, the platform we use for our work isn’t just in our minds – it’s on the computer screen. Sometimes, there’s a discrepancy between what we’re trying to do and what we actually did.
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You can’t please everybody. There’s a reason why that line is a cliché. I’ve yet to hear of a freelancer who never encountered a client who was disappointed in their work. Some clients keep their frustrations to themselves or simply stop working with you. Others, however, expect you to hear out an entire rant about what went wrong and how they feel about it.
In cases like those, it’s important to take calculated steps in fixing what went wrong.
Don’t panic. Your client is probably emotional the first time they contact you about a problem. Since that’s the case, it’s your job to be calm and logical. No good can come from having a shouting match about who’s right and who’s wrong.
Of course, this is easier to say than it is to do – especially if the client calls you on the phone. It’s easier to be calm and collected (or at least to seem that way) when you’re communicating via chat or email. On the phone, it takes more willpower.
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December is fast approaching – this is the perfect time to tighten up portfolios for the incoming year. In the coming weeks, I know that I’ll be preoccupied with this, especially since I’ve gained some new clients this year.
Here are some things we should consider when tweaking our portfolios:
Quality of Work
By now, your standards might be different from what they were when you last put your portfolio together. What was a masterpiece yesterday might seem like your worst project today. It might hurt you to take down projects that you had fond memories of, but if it’s not your best work, it’s also going to hurt your chances of getting new clients.
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Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
