Common Freelancing mistakes that will destroy your bids!

From an average person’s perspective, earning money through Freelancing is the best way to live your life. You don’t have to get up early, you can work right from your living room, there’s no one to boss you around, and certainly no peer-pressure. This impression might not be too far off, as there are definitely a lot of advantages associated with Freelancing. But these days, some freelancers are making mistakes that are jeopardising their own jobs as well as the industry as a whole, and this is draining out the value from freelancing, not to mention destroying many a career. Here are some of these most common freelancing mistakes that you need to avoid if you’re a freelancer yourself.

A lot of work required

Freelancing isn’t just about winning jobs, and then completing them to get a pay check. There’s usually a lot more involved, and freelancers often tend to forget that. There’a lot that needs to be planned out before the actual assignment. The first thing you need to ask yourself is, will I be able to do this work comfortably? Do I have the skills? More importantly, am I thinking what my employer is thinking? After all, you don’t want your client to reject your work, or ask you to redo it just because they had something different in mind, now do you? Getting your work returned/rejected is a terrible waste of time. So make sure you understand the requirement specification beforehand.

Poor planning 

The next most important reason why the freelancer is not paid what he deserve is his low estimating skills and because of this they lose much more than what they expected. For example, the freelancer estimate that the project which is being given to him requires 2 hours and would fetch him 50$ but actually that project takes 4 hours instead of two hours, so here the freelancer lose much of his time and end up earning less than what he actually deserve to earn.

Miscellaneous costs

This is very general and obvious problem associated with the freelancer. Sometimes many freelancers underestimate the amount of effort and cost required by a project. A phone and a computer system with working internet connection is must for a freelancer as he required to connect with his clients to get the project information and also to obtain necessary requirements about the project and to ask if any kind of queries he has anytime. This is just the general cost he has to have it with him, other cost includes expense of electricity. He has to keep these expenses in mind before he set his hourly rates. Moreover, they also don’t have good negotiating skills and due to this reason they are unable to earn enough according to their efforts.

Improper Negotiating skills

The next vital reason why the freelancer don’t earn what they deserve is the bargaining power of the freelancer because in some cases it happens that clients have an upper hand in case of price & scheduling and if the freelancer does not bargain properly than it would result in the buyer ending up settling the project for lower price and the freelancer would be underpaid than what he actually deserve. So, they should bring the effective power of negotiating with their client in order to get better pay rates by their client. They should also have good power of communication to deal with their client.

Being Liberal on late payments

No Time is fixed for the freelancer, many of them receive late payments and many of them are scared of speaking about the money which they owe to their clients, so the late payment effect his timely schedule. As due to this they are not able to pay their timely bill and sometimes they are even charged for late fees or additional expenses for late payment. For instance, in case of phone bill or electricity bill if the bill is not paid on due date penalty has to be paid for making late payment. So ultimately the freelancer has to suffer this because he cannot stand for his own hard work and effort which he has allotted in the project which is being given to him. As a result he is paid less or rather do not earn what he actually deserve.  So this all are the reasons behind the less earning of the freelancer than what he deserves.

So, how is your freelancing career? Do you feel that you’re paid adequately for the work you do? And what more would you suggest to other freelancers? Leave your responses in the comments section below. Happy freelancing 🙂