As with anything, you should put your heart and soul into it. Why should freelancing be any different? No matter what your future goals are, you should take your freelancing as serious as anything else in your life. Taking the time to plan out your business, nurturing your freelancing so that it will grow, and managing your freelancing as if you were a brick-and-mortar business should be one of the main priorities as a freelancer/business owner. If you don’t take your own freelancing seriously, then why should your clients take you seriously?
To me, it doesn’t matter if a fellow student freelancer takes their freelancing serious or not, because at the end of the day it doesn’t affect me. However, when an entire population of student freelancers develops the reputation of amateurs or rookies, it can start to have a possible negative effect on everyone else. Clients will start to become closed-minded when it comes to freelancers who are also students, causing them to take their business to who they believe are more serious professionals.
When talking to clients or conducting business with others, you should always act as if your number one priority is your freelancing, how you can help them, and their needs. Not putting your clients first and showing them that you are real and true to what you do, can cost not only you work, but other student freelancers as well by developing a bad perception of non-serious student freelancer-wannabes.
I would have to go as far as saying that every student freelancer should keep this in mind when conducting business. Show your clients how dedicated you are to your freelancing, show them you are real. Showing your clients that you are serious takes practice and dedication, and the methods can vary widely from freelancer to freelancer. No one method is more supreme than the other.
If you wonder why your clients don’t take you seriously, maybe it is because they don’t sense the “realness” in what you are offering. Now may be the best time to take a good hard look at your freelancing. Is your freelancing real to you? To your love ones? To your friends? To your clients?
If the above is not enough reason to start getting serious about your freelancing, maybe this will help. Not getting real about your freelancing could cost you your career. Yep, you heard me right. Routinely letting things slip, such as deadlines and other such aspects of your business, can lead the road to bad referrals, and a bad reputation as a non-serious freelancer. Freelancers already have it hard enough trying to show that they are serious about what they do, but the student freelancer has to work extra hard to get past this perception.
So if you want to be known as a real freelancer, take some time to evaluate how you operate your business and what you should work to improve. Making improvements to your freelance game is sure to help establish you as a real freelancer in the eyes of clients. It is time to get real about your freelancing.
In what ways are you real about your freelancing?
It’s very true…yesterday a current client told me that I’m literally the only freelancer he’s worked with on this project who has not flaked out or disappeared. It’s rather disturbing that other freelancers who don’t take things seriously give us a bad name by their lack of good business sense!