20 Ways to Survive as a Freelancer

A tent in the middle of nowhere of icy Norway - there is now all over the place plus it looks dark and windy.

I work a as freelancer for many years now. I am a blogger, social media manager, search engine optimizer among many other roles. I survived! How did I do it?

It is difficult at times to freelance, but I pay my bills and I support my family. I’m not filthy rich but I’m not starving either.

Freelancing is also much more rewarding than working for others. As a freelancer you build your own business instead of just earning money.


Surviving and Thriving as Freelancer

Thus I want to share twenty ways to achieve this: 20 ways to survive as a freelancer.

You will need to implement at least several of them to survive, the more the better, but it works!

The more of these survival techniques you use the more thrive beyond mere survival.

1. Don’t compete, cooperate with your peers. It’s ridiculous to compete against the whole world. Cooperation on the Web is easy though.

Write how great others are, create or join existing networks like Behance or Coroflot and soon you’ll be much better off than on your own.

2. Don’t work 24/7! Use two phones numbers. Switch off your office phone and computer after work. To stay sane do not work at night and on holidays. Do not let clients call you after office hours. Communicate those!

3. Charge twice as much as you assume you deserve, you think you should get paid 50$ per hour? Charge 100! People do not value cheap services. When you’re cheap they assume you are worthless.

4. Do not get paid by the hour! You only have 40h per week to sell. This way you’ll never expand. Make sure to get rewarded for results.

5. Get paid for results: You work two hours and get results like others who need ten? Great! The faster you accomplish things the better then.

6. Sell your expertise: You’re an expert for 10 years? Ignore the market, charge accordingly, you don’t have to compete with newbies on Fiverr.

7. Sell your image (the most read web design blogger of your city, state, or even country), charge accordingly. Be a person not just a services page.

8. Diversify your income sources, get at least three of them. Think consulting, writing and affiliate marketing for example.

9. Earn one third of your money by client work

10. Earn one third selling a product

11. Earn one third publishing and earning via fees or advertising revenue

12. Get a good lawyer

13. Get a good book keeper

14. Do not just offer services on saturated markets: Web design? Every kid offers that.

15. Specialize: A friend of mine does no PHP but he’s a Coremedia expert, never heard of it? Huge companies have. He earns accordingly.

16. Anticipate trends and adapt. Offering only what you did in the past may not suffice in the future.

17. Do not solely work at the screen. Work with people to stay sane. At least go to a coworking space from time to time when you work remotely.

18. Offer advice to teach people your know-how. Do not hoard your knowledge or nobody will know that you have it. You are not Coca Cola with a secret recipe.

19. Meet clients instead of working predominantly virtually. Personal contact builds trusts but not let people exploit your time be meeting all the time.

20. Work in teams. You can’t design, do the programming, popularization all at once as the same person. Even in case you can it’s tiresome and error-prone.


Freelancing vs Wage Slavery

Yeah. Freelancing makes you feel much better than working at a company. Wage slavery is an inhuman condition.

Why? You either work for yourself or you tend somebody’s else garden while yours degenerates.

Working full time for one company leaves you at the mercy of them.

When they make you redundant you have nothing. When you lose a client and have a few of them you can always survive until you get a new one.


Add Your Freelancing Success Techniques

Do you have more suggestions on how to survive and ideally thrive as a freelancer on the Web? Share them with us!

Were you able to implement the ones above? Did they work? Please add your feedback in the comments below as well!

I may add the best advice to the post itself with an added link to the source or author of it. You can even elaborate on your own site!