People hear freelancing and they think, sitting around at home all day doing barely any work and making good money out of it. They think that it’s easy and everybody that does it is doing great. If that were true, why isn’t everybody doing it? Because that isn’t true.
There are so many myths about freelancing and people are drawn in by them, only to find that it really isn’t for them and they’re struggling a lot. If you’re thinking about going freelance, make sure it isn’t for one of these reasons.
freelance writing
Freelancing is Easy Money
This is by far the most common mistake that people make about freelancing. They think that you can just get a load of clients and start making easy money straight away.
There are two problems there.
Getting clients takes work, and even when you do, you still have to work for your money. When you’re first starting out you’re going to be tight for money for a while. It might even be worth considering borrowing a bit from somewhere like smallbusinessloans.co to get you started or to save up a few months worth of savings. It acts as a good buffer, which you’ll need.
So many people leave full-time work to go freelance, only to find that they can’t get any work in and they’ve run out of money. It’s going to take a while to build a customer base and start earning a decent amount and if you aren’t prepared for that, you won’t last long. Here's how to get started finding clients.
Freelancing Is For Lazy People
A lot of people look down on freelancers because they think that they’re layabouts that sit around at home all day doing nothing. That’s probably true of some people, but most freelancers often work harder than people in a traditional 9 to 5 job.
The main difference is that we just work different hours. The amount of work that we’re doing is usually the same or even more than somebody that is limited to 8 hours a day in the office. We also have way more responsibility to deal with. When you’re working a normal job, there’s somebody else that is responsible for handling all of the finances and finding clients for the company, but a freelancer does that all themselves.
Freelancing Is Less Stressful
Everybody gets stressed about work and people think that freelancing is far less stressful than traditional work hours. That’s not the case at all. When you don’t have a regular paycheck you’ll have to deal with the stress of managing your finances and finding enough work to pay your rent.
There’s also the added stress of meeting deadlines that are often strict and at strange times of the day if you’re working with somebody halfway across the world. When money is tight and you’re trying to keep yourself motivated and finish projects as quickly as possible so you can get paid, stress levels are off the scale.
Freelancing is a great career option for some people, but if you’re only considering it because you think you can do minimal work for maximum payout, think again.
