The good habits of good freelancers

Ive been working as a freelancer for almost a year now, its had been quite a ride, I have learned a lot of new things and meet a lot of awesome people, and most important of all: I have found a way of making money and making a living out of it.

In that journey, one of the most valuable things I have learned is the important of having good habits, this jobs comes with a lot of benefits, but one of its main disadvantages is that if you dont learn how to control yourself and create good habits, you will never succeed.

In classic jobs, this is actually quite simple, employeers control their workers so that they wont get behind schedules and things like that, but if you are a freelancer, you need to control your self, and that is never easy.

Here are some of the best habits I consider a Freelancer should have:

A freelancer must be very organised

Disorganization can be the worst enemy in this industry, this is one of the first things I learned when I started, and I learn it the rough way, I didnt keep any agenda, or task lists, I didnt book the numbers of important clients, or write down important information, I was a mess, and that cause me to loose many jobs and opportunities.

With time, I learned that I needed to organised myself if I wanted to succeed, so I started using Google Calendar as an agenda, for controlling how much time I was going to spend working everyday, and how much time I was going to use for each project, I discover Asana and Trello, as two amazing tools for keeping task lists and controlling my progress on each job. I even organised my gmail with labels and stuff so it wouldnt be a mess every morning.

But one of the best discoveries I made is the Pomodoro technique, a working technique in which you divide your work in 25 minutes segments, with small breaks between each segment, to boost your productivity and make sure each minutes counts, Ive been using it for my projects and since then my productivity has gone through the roof, tasks that used to take me hours or even days now I can do in two or three 25 minutes segments.

A good Freelancer always keep good relationships with clients


This is another thing I learned the rough way, it took me a lot of time to discover that it was very important to keep good relationships with my clients, with all of them, even the ones I dislike or those who were mean to me.

In the end, I believe one of our most valuable assets is our clients network, and the relationships we build with each one of them, a client can recommend our work and help us get new client, or even better, they can came back with new assignments and jobs, thats why we need to keep them happy and build trustworthy relations with them.

And I think this also goes for bad clients, why? because bad clients can also be a good source of new clients and projects if we know how to deal with them, but be aware! im not saying we should ignore them when they mistreat us or things like that, we need to make them respect us and respect our work, without getting aggressive or breaking up the bonds with them.

Just recently, I broke up a working relationship I had with a client for five months, we had some creative and strategy differences, so we both end up agreeing that the best thing would be to en our collaboration, the project ended, but we keep in touch, and im sure I will get something of value from that relationship sooner or later.

A good Freelancer never misses a deadline

Yea, I know, this sounds like something related to my first point, but I think it deserve a point of it own, deadline are extremely important in our industry, and every time we miss one, our credibility as freelancers decreases, keeping every deadline religiously is the best way to ensure our reputation will not be harmed.

This is yet another thing I learned the hard way, when I began, I literally miss every deadline I had, sometimes be weeks, and it cost me a lot of jobs and clients, until I started to make sure I kept all my projects well organised. Know, Im not going to say I have a 100% efficiency, but im pretty closed to it.

In the first point I mentioned Asana and Trello as good tools that could help you to never miss a deadline, if you havent tried them yet, this could be a good time to start.

A good freelancer knows how much to charge

Everyday I came across freelancers that are charging 10 dollars or 30 dollars for big and complicated projects, and I always ask my self: what are they thinking?

By charging so low, they are not only bringing down the value on their own effort and work, they are also putting our own jobs at the line, of course, there must be some space for competition, after all, this is a market, but when people charge so little for big jobs, thats unfair for everyone.

I mean, whats the point in winning a big job if you are not going to make any profit out of it? it just doesnt make any sense.

We need to keep our prices competitive, but without doing such extreme things.

A good freelancers keeps learning new things


Thats right, and its may be the most important habit of all, we must keep learning new things every day, discovering new skills and knowledge with each task and project we take, thats the best habit a good freelancer can have, the habit that will truly allow you to succeed at this market.

What other habits would you add to this lists? Im really eager to hear your suggestions.