How To Deal With Freelancing Anxiety
It’s easy to get anxiety when you’re a freelancer. Your income isn’t secure and unlike when you’re an employee, you don’t have the benefits and securities that other people take for granted.
I don’t have much time, so this will be a short article.
There are three major ways to alleviate the anxiety of freelancing.
- Get your own projects going
- Widen your customer base
- Put your prices up
I’d recommend doing them in that order.
Here’s why.
Get Your Own Projects
You need to start your own projects in your skill area yesterday.
You are in charge of your personal development. If you are a copywriter, then you need to write a lot of copy to get better. If you’re a web designer, you need to design websites.
You can either wait for hundreds of clients to come knocking at your door, which I don’t recommend, or you can do your own projects.
This can be as simple as a simple website. It can be as complicated as building some piece of software that’ll automate your home.
Pick and choose your own projects because:
- You will get smarter and your skills will have more valuable
- The projects you create will earn you money
- This in turn makes everything easier
If you are successful with your own projects, there will come a day when client work takes a backseat and ultimately there’ll come a day where you don’t need clients anymore.
This will kill your anxiety over freelancing.
Widen Your Customer Base
If you have one client, you are dependent on that one client.
When you have fifty clients and a waiting list, you can hit the EXIT button on any of them.
It blows my mind that there are freelancers who say, “I have a client and someone else is approaching me… what should I do?”
Your client is not your boss. Trust me, they’re not your boss because it benefits them not to be. If they wanted an employee they’d get one. You’re either cheaper, less hassle or more skilled than they could otherwise get.
Otherwise they wouldn’t hire you.
But they are not your boss. You can field offers from other clients. You can set up a waiting list.
And you should.
The more in demand you are, the better it is for you and the lower your stress.
If your client is stressed because you’re too busy, that’s a great problem for you to have.
So get to it.
Raise Your Prices
If you’ve done the above two things, your prices will rise as a consequence.
Still, the best way to decrease your anxiety is to put your prices up. Most freelancers are worried about job security. Or so they’ll tell you. Really, they’re worried at a base level that they can’t pay the bills.
How do you pay the bills?
With money.
Put your prices up. If you can’t justify higher prices, work at increasing the skills and services you offer until you can.
You can start by charging $5 an article and within a couple of years you can charge one hundred times that or more. You’ll be amazed at how the right people will spend that much money in a blink of an eye, without any questions asked.
If you are worth more money, you’ll get paid more.
If you earn more money, you’ll be less stressed and anxious about the lean times because the work you do when you are working will cover it.
Oh, and if you take on high-end client work and run your own projects then you won’t have lean times anyway.
Final Thoughts
Busting anxiety is a tough business, but a necessary one.
We’re living in times where it’s never been easier to survive. We have unlimited energy, unlimited food and unlimited entertainment. We have healthcare and magical everything and every whim and desire is catered towards us.
Yet we’re all dying of stress.
The best way to combat stress is to a) increase your position in life and b) create a lifestyle that’s conducive to avoiding stress.
If you follow the three simple steps above, you will achieve that.