Social media management, graphic design, motion graphics, marketing strategies – these are all some of the many skills I possess and have decided to use to my own financial benefit by becoming – you guessed it – a freelancer.
With a fairly wide array of skills as I have, one should be comfortably living life, right? Right? Makes sense, but nah. The life of a freelancer can be very tough and now I’ll be sharing some of my own struggles as a freelancer.
1. Pricing:
This I know for sure is one thing that pretty much all freelancers have their conscience constantly ripping them apart for. Many times you can literally feel the questions “should I be charging more” and “am I even good enough to be charging this” tugging away at your brain. For many creatives, we spend a lot of time on our craft but is the end result actually good enough to still be charging the cost plus profit of our time? It’s a struggle.
2. The Popular Skill:
For people who specialise in multiple skills, this may bother you. It bothers me a lot. The popular skill – there’s always that one skill that people know you for a bit or a lot more than the others. Maybe not as profitable as the others or enjoyable but… the people know it and the people want it and that’s what you’re known for. Usually the popular skill is your first skill and so the people around you got to know you more for that rather than your other awesome skills. In my case, that’s graphic designing. While I do enjoy creating the look for different brands, I prefer my graphic design skills more as a supportive skill to assist me with the skills I enjoy more like social media management and brand development. But nope! People want posters. I make posters. Why does an ordinary person even need social media management? (Some of you actually do *insert eyes emoji*). It’s a struggle.
3. My Brand VS Me:
Similar to the last struggle identified (The Popular Skill), we could say that there is also a popular entity. In most cases initially, that entity is you… not your brand. We got our skills, we have our support team (friends) and then we finally invest a little time and effort – maybe a lot even – into finally establishing our own brand. Then it’s time to take the credit:
– “Big thanks to Aaron for writing this article for me”
– “Hey, could you please tag #TweetBoss instead?”
Hello? I’m trying to get my brand name out there… not “Aaron”! So next time a creative does something nice for you and you want to give them a shout out, find out if they have a brand first. It will mean a lot more to them because it’s a struggle.
4. Communication: 
– *phone rings and wakes you up out of sleep*
– “Hello?
– *full conversation continues then you fall back asleep after then wake up and forget everything*
Maybe this only happens to me… but it happens. Many times we receive calls for business while we’re off-guard and leaves us worrying about our customer service and brand representation. Of course, the smart way to avoid this is by having a business phone set aside from your personal phone, but of course, life has a funny way of adding more stress. When people really want something, they really want something and it’s not so easy hiding from your friends who all have your personal number. I’ve tried it. It’s a struggle.
5. The Off-Switch:
This basically follows up from the communication struggle. Imagine being on a dinner date, trying to get to know your potential partner, vibing with them and then there goes the phone. Movie night… phone. Cooking together… phone. Argument… phone. Bed… phone. Can I really just turn off my business though for just a few hours? But… it’s money. It’s a struggle. *phone rings*
6. “Is This En
ough?”:
Another question that often haunts the mind of freelancers and this question may refer to many things including money, creativity, effort, promotion, etc. We usually sacrifice a lot just for the sake of our business – enduring all of these struggles; but is it enough to keep us going? I know one thing that it is for sure – it’s a struggle.
7. And last but definitely not least, Friends & Business:
Let’s face it, we love our friends and we want to see them have good things and do well. However, we can’t keep doing favours forever and for those who have trouble saying that two-letter word (like me), yuh betta learn! On the other hand though, I think our friends need to also understand the time and effort that goes into our craft. For me, it takes at least 4 hours to do a good poster which is a lot of time to give up for free when there’s still so much more that could be done. Sure I could just do something really simple (“nothing fancy”) which “nah go tek long” but then, it’s my work and whoever sees this infra dig representation of my work might not be impressed. Especially if the persons seeing it could be potential customers. I prefer to be proud of whatever I do and not have to disown something I spent valuable time doing. Also, friends often don’t take our business serious enough and this sometimes leads to either bad publicity for our business or just the usual annoying requests. Yes, asking me to just use my business page to spy on someone for you is annoying. It’s a struggle.
So there they are, some of the struggles I experience as a freelancer. All I have to say now is this: Respect our time. Respect our effort. Respect our brand. It’s not all as simple as you think. It’s a struggle.
Oh yea… and no more free designs.
Look out for my next blog as I introduce my brands.
