Comments on: Stop Making Excuses, Start Making Changes

By: Jenn Mattern

Jenn Mattern — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:11:42 +0000

I actually disagree about that. I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to wonder if you’ll be able to pay your rent or put food on the table at any given time. But doing potentially irreparable damage to your freelance career by taking shit gigs is not the way to go about it. It’s just another excuse.

If someone is doing so poorly that they can’t pay their electric bill, frankly they’re not equipped to be a freelancer — at least not full-time, and at least not yet. If the situation is that dire, get a part-time job while you get your freelance career off the ground.

By taking the “I’ll take any gig that comes along to make ends meet” approach, you put yourself into that rut of having to take on more and more low-paying freelance writing jobs just to pay the bills, leaving little time to pursue more serious opportunities.

This is precisely how so many of the writers I meet in the webmaster communities end up burning out and quitting altogether, and how the word gets spread that there’s no good money in freelance writing. People jump in with out a well thought out business plan, and then they find themselves scraping the bottom of the barrel for gigs, and losing the ambition to do any better because it’s a constant race to earn the bare minimum they need to survive in any given month. That’s not a freelance career. That’s hell.

No matter what a writer’s excuse is for not doing something better, it’s just that — an excuse. It’s not a solution. It’s not even a temporary one when it condemns them to repeating that same cycle far longer than necessary.

Just my $.02 on that issue.

By: Veronica

Veronica — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:37:32 +0000

I completely agree on these. As a freelancer you have to know where to set the boundaries and you have to know what you need to live the lifestyle you want. However, with that being said, when someone starts out wrong it isn’t always that easy. It isn’t easy when doing these mean the electric getting shut off or not being able to get diapers. It’s great for the long-run, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to in order to make it through tomorrow. Even if it means making $20 or $50 that day.

By: Dan Smith

Dan Smith — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:59:51 +0000

If I could only pick one of these four points to pass on, it would without doubt be the first – changing the hours you work.

Like you Jenn, I used to think I was a night owl. When I got the opportunity, i’d stay up until the early hours of the morning, get up at lunch and then proceed to work.

It started to dawn on me, however, that when I started hitting 9pm, my work production was decreasing massively. Whereas I might have been producing one or two articles an hour before 9pm, it would take me around 2 hours to produce one after this time.

Whether it’s because there’s a few added distractions after this time for me or simply that my brain starts to think it’s too late to work, either way I know that I get far more work done if I make an early start.

Great post – tweeted.

By: Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer Mattern — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:09:05 +0000

The real shame of it is that some writers think marketing is so much more difficult than it really is, so they avoid it. They get this image in their heads that if you market yourself you’ll come across as some skeezy self-promoter. Networking is marketing. Blogging is marketing. Just about everything you do with social media these days is marketing. There’s no excuse not to have a marketing plan, but because an occasional fool makes folks think marketing is all hard selling, it’s one of the most neglected necessities in freelancing.

By: Lori

Lori — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:51:56 +0000

Super post, Jenn! I tweeted it.

I especially agree with the marketing advice. I hear writers complain that they can’t find higher-paying work, but if they’re looking in the same places, that stands to reason. More often, it’s because they’ve not bothered to put together a marketing plan.

I’m about to change my hours. I dropped a dead-end client and have my mornings free again. Time to put the work into the morning and save the afternoon for phone calls and marketing.