5 Mistakes Freelancers Often Make
For a freelancer, the online market is tough. The competition is so high that there is no margin for error. You need to perfect many other aspects other than your niche skills and spend a lot of effort promoting and advertising yourself and your services.
When comes to the dos and don’ts of freelancing, here are the 5 mistakes to avoid as a freelancer.
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Unnecessary Overpricing
Money should not be your first priority as a freelancer. Unnecessary overpricing makes you look arrogant and overconfident which annoys prospective employers and they turn away from you. You must price yourself correctly taking in mind your experience, the quality of your work and your expectations and the final result should always be reduced to create a better pitch of assurance and humility.
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Being Casual with prospective Employers
This is one of the most common mistakes freelancers do. They come into the playing field thinking that professionalism is not required in the freelance work culture. Ironically it is of much greater importance as you do not get to meet most people and clients personally and online etiquette and polite writing are your only character variables available to them. Being informal projects you immediately as an irresponsible person so please do refrain from being so.
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Bidding on just Everything
It’s often seen that many freelancers start bidding on everything they can find as soon as they join a freelancing platform. This creates confusion for both the employer and the freelancer as neither is then sure about his skills and capabilities. It makes you look as desperate and negates all the experience you have instantaneously. Your reputation becomes less and less respectable and you end up being without a gig most of the time. So, do not try and be the jack of all trades… and realize that you are not. Find your niche skills and use your resources efficiently.
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No Efforts to Build a Network or Promote your Skills
If you believe that you will just join a freelancing site and people will somehow find you and serve you up with lucrative jobs, you cannot be more wrong. Freelancing platforms have some of the toughest demand-supply graphs only because the market is tough to penetrate. This is because there is an unlimited supply of freelancers. To get paid for your skill you have to take efforts and make your skill noticeable and marketable by adopting rigorous promotion and marketing plans for yourself as a freelancer. This arena tests your management and intelligence in networking and building long term connections, so make them robust if you think about making it here.
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Unethical Practices
For a freelance platform, it is important that transparency is maintained on both, the employer side and the employee side.
Sometimes it is seen that:
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Freelancers and employers will collude outside the platform and then carry out further negotiations. This proves as a loss to platforms and one should remember that if there is no market… there will be ultimately no business for anyone.
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Sharing of confidential contact information should not be made from either side until a contract has been struck which strictly provides for all work transactions to be carried through the platform.
The basic point is one should always be ethical and legally justified in his doings. This helps you in making your brand trustworthy and reliable which will attract more people to you and build you a strong network with numerous benefits to reap.
One should always plan ahead and be in control when freelancing. Work should be done on perfecting your niche skills and building a strong network of people who endorse that skill with proper professionalism and organizational culture. This requires a plan, a lot of time and struggle and perfect execution.
The freelancing crowd is tough and unforgiving, so to succeed, be alert and ethical.
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