The ability to work from home, a fexible timetable and moving towards an independant career: Working as a freelance designer seems pretty appealing to a lot of people. But every deal of working as a freelancer should be considered well before a decision is made. For being successful the idea of the every day-work life should be brought down to a round figure.

Today we introduce 10 keys to work successfully as a freelance designer:

1. Diciplin and commitment

Working as a freelancer is quiet diffrent as working as an employee. Everything is up to you: no one sets you working hours or gives you tasks to work on. Your career is your own responsibility now, wich can be great but also difficult sometimes. You need to work disciplined and hit it up. That’s why the first years as a freelancer are probably the most exhausting ones. Hold the line!

2. Time management

This is a pretty large topic, but to put it in a nutshell: A to-do-list seems old fashioned but helps you to work efficiantly. What I mean is, that it is important to organize your working hours. Being well organized also helps to maximize your strenghts and minimize your distractions.

3. Communication

It is a keenly important skill to be able to communicate effectively with clients and customers. Therefore it will help you to understand their needs and wants as well as to understand their business. In addition to that you need to land your business in first place. Here it is helpful to build up a customer service. Give your customers and clients the feeling of being reliable and accessable.

4. Financial management

Part of running your own business always involves financial management. You should have a grasp of your fanancial situation. Here are some typical financial issues, freelancer have to deal with:

• You will probably not have a consistent income
• You alone will be managing the business expenses
• You will need to track income and expenses yourself
• You need to keep the tax issues in mind
• You will have a certain impact on pricing your services
• You will be paying for insurance or other benefits, not your employer
• You must always have an eye on keeping your business and personal finances separate

5. Organization

Pretty important parts of organization are time and financial management. Beyond that you need to develop you own plan how to run your business. Which organizing system you use or which way of organization you choose is up to you. Different things work for different people. The most important thing is to keep your thoughts altoghether.

6. Prioritization

That you havte to work on different things at the same time is one main reason why freelancing can be difficult. To avoid struggles it is important to prioritize between things which are urgent and things you can attend later on. To organize multi tasks a to-do-list is a helpful option again. A plan with which you have an eye on your deadlines and currently running project can be an akin facility.

7. Experience and ability

A problem of beeing a freelancing designer can be that talent is not the only skill you need for running you own business. Beeing a extraordinary designer is just one requirement. So it would be conducive to gain some decent experiences, e.g. at a design agency. You don’t need to jump into full-time-freelancing in the beginning. It might be easier to checkout how it can work and after beeing able to organize everything yourself dare the next step. Step by step you will reach your amins maybe slower but even more secure.

8. Marketing

There are noumerous ways to make your business become more established:

• You can get your work showcased in different design galleries
  
• An upcomeing strategy is Pay-Per-Click advertising online
• Or you choose the usual banner advertising on websites
• Blogging is a personal and cummunicative way for you and your business to become known
• If you don’t have the time to run you own blog, you can write articles for other blogs
• Attending local networking events is a good way to get to know your branch
• To network with providers of related services might be helpful as well
• You should distribute your own business cards
• and even cold calling local businesses is an option to get people to know you

9. Sales

If you take the upper points to your heart, you will not have a problem to land new customers. Especially the communication- and marketing-strategies are important here!

10. Continued improving

Designers should always stand on the top of the design industrie, epecially because it a constntly changeing business. So try to improve and develop new skills and ideas, or others will pass you by. For that you need to be able to dedicate to improve your skills and learn new things. Here the tutorials of other designer can be helpful. Rather you can start your personal projects which is administrable in the real world business.

Have some experiences as a freelancing designer or any other way of freelancing? We would be happy if you share your knowledge with us. Feel free to add a comment and leave a reply!