For today’s open thread, I’d love to know what you consider your biggest challenge as a freelancer. Is it managing the ups and downs of an uncertain cash flow situation? Finding new clients? Battling self-confidence issues?
For me, it’s maintaining a healthy work/life balance. When the assignments are flowing in and the money is looking pretty good, I sometimes feel like Ado Annie from Oklahoma! (she’s the girl who “cain’t say no”) and find myself overcommitting to work, neglecting my workouts, sometimes even forgetting to eat! Which is why I was interested in Michelle Rafter’s Word Count Last Wednesday chat on this very topic a few weeks ago.
But enough about me. What’s your biggest challenge these days? I’d love to know!
I'm the same way: total overachiever who can't say no–except of course, to people who STILL think it's ok to ask if I'll write something for free.
I am still a college student and haven't gotten into freelancing. However, freelance writing is often associated with, like you said, a rocky monetary situation and I imagine for me that would be the most difficult challenge to have to deal with.
~TRA
http://xtheredangelx.blogspot.com
I'm a new freelancer (less than 6 months) and my biggest challenge is still self confidence. I find myself feeling very nervous when waiting for clients to get back to me, waiting for pieces to get published, and that sort of thing. It sometimes takes time and energy away from what I should be doing: going for bigger and better projects, pitching new ideas, writing my heart out, etc.
Essays like this are so important to barodnieng people’s horizons.
I do a Mikel Blomkvist – totally absorbed in the material and work to the point where I forget to eat or work out. I have to force myself to take a break.
Finding new clients is my biggest challenge.
I've gotten much better at multi-tasking, so I'm good at juggling a bunch of assignments at once. But I find that I focus so much on the assignments at hand that I let the client search slide.
Biggest challenge – finding the time / gigs to concentrate on scaling my business in the direction I want it to go in. My dream is to write about food, one of the most competitive markets there is. So I pay the bills through copywriting and corporate blogging. Trouble is, it's so easy to just take the easy money that I don't allocate time to pursue other projects I'd rather be working on.
I also have a tough time saying no, but I think my biggest challenge is not getting overwhelmed when I need to integrate large projects into my steadier, smaller ones. Getting better at it, but still have a ways to go.
Work/Life balance is a biggie. It's terrible when you forget what a weekend is like and you have to resist the urge to work when you should be relaxing.
It has finally clicked that work – while fantastic and fulfilling – can become this octopus that strangleholds everything else.
My biggest challenge is staying focused on work instead of getting distracted by the internet. Like I'm doing now… I'm sure that will change as I'm still a relative newbie.
Mine is a variant on the work-life balance: my biggest challenge is staying in the moment. I have small kids so even when I'm in the midst of a project I love, I'm wondering if I'm giving them the short shrift, whether they've eaten their vegetables – and what was the loud thud in the other room?
When I'm with the kids, I enjoy it, except I'm often sneaking looks at my iPhone. I hate that. I don't really *need* to, I am just compelled to squeeze work into the tiniest cracks. And my kids notice. My 20-month old will slap the phone out of my hands if I peek at it at the wrong moment!
For me it's the back-office stuff, sending invoices, calculating quarterly taxes, those routine things that are critical but not fun. My right brain doesn't like to let my left brain in on the action, it seems.
Wow, Susan, I think you hit the nail on the head. Work/life balance is my biggest problem also. I stay home with my 1-year-old daughter, work from home and attend school online. Some days I feel like my butt is glued to my office chair unless I'm changing diapers, making bottles and misc. other mommy duties. But it is so hard to say no to extra work when you never know how long it will last! Dry spells are scary. It would be nice if the bills would take a break when the jobs do!
Mine, by far, is organization; following up on pitches, finding contact info for someone I want to pitch, remembering who the PR person is I need to talk to…. suggestions welcome!