As you get ready to become a freelancer, you may have a few concerns that you need to resolve before you feel like you can actually start. In this post, I’ve outlined two of the most common concerns I hear from other freelancers and I’ll show you how to turn these supposed “weaknesses” into non-issues for you:  

The full-time/part-time conundrum: 

  • Although I advise most people who want to start freelancing to just jump right in full time, that’s not always a practical step for some people. Yet, if you approach freelancing on a part time basis at first, you might be concerned that new clients will ask “are you a full time freelancer?” and you’ll have to answer “no” and watch them move on to another freelancer. How do you get enough business to go full time if people only hire full time freelancers?
  • Fortunately, you don’t have to answer with just a “no, I’m only part time” when people ask about your work schedule. That’s because most clients don’t really care when you work as long as you do the work and have a relatively prompt email response time.
  • In other words, when they ask you “are you full time”, what they are really asking is “will you give my work the attention it deserves or are you only freelancing for an hour between when you leave the dinner table and when you start getting the kids ready for bed?”
  • So your answer should be crafted to address those concerns. Of course you should still tell the truth but you should make sure that your answer addresses their real concern. Try something like: “I don’t work 9-to-5 like a lot of other people. I’m far more productive by working 5 AM to 8 AM and then I also work in the afternoons and evenings. So I work nearly a full time day but it’s broken up over several hours because I have clients in many time zones.” See how you answer truthfully while answering their concern?

 The “no previous experience” conundrum:

  •  Another problem that freelancers face is a lack of previous experience. The thinking is: Why would anyone hire you if you don’t have any experience? That makes sense but there are a few ways to resolve this.
  • You could start with a really really really affordable rate. (Cheap? Free? I’ve seen both). You’ll gain a bunch of customers quickly and although they may be taking advantage of your wealth of skills, they won’t care what your experience has been (because there is no risk for them).
  • You could reposition previous work experience. For example, if you were a marketing manager for 10 years at a business and then moved into freelance writing, there is some overlap between what you did there and what you would be doing as a freelance writer. So you could position your work as having a decade of marketing and copywriting experience. Again, your clients care less about the details of your previous deliverables. Rather, they want to know if you have experience. So if you worked in a shoe store as a shoe clerk prior to becoming a freelancer, you might consider positioning your previous work as “B2C sales consultation experience in a competitive environment”.

In case you’ve got to this point in the post and you’re unclear about one thing, let me be painfully clear: DO NOT LIE. Your clients won’t like it. Your peers won’t like it. And you’ll annoy the heck out of me. But, just remember that any obstacles you think you’re going to face as a freelancer can be addressed by looking at it from the client’s perspective and addressing their underlying concerns.