Web work can be an unstable ride. Since we are all independent, we have varying ways of dealing with challenges and opportunities that arise in our work. I don’t think there’s one strategy that fits us all, but there are four aspects of our careers  —I think of them as pillars — that need to be established to create a sense of security. If you’re lacking any of these pillars, any unexpected event can be damaging.

So what are my four pillars of web working?

Productivity

The first thing we often have to grasp as web workers is the ability to manage our time and tasks well. Having the freedom to schedule your workday sounds like a dream to most people, but it’s actually a big responsibility. We need to find our time sinks and make them more manageable. Idle distractions are OK, but not when you spend five hours a day on them.

Conversely, be aware of “too much” productivity. While there are many of us web workers who truly love and enjoy our jobs, there might be some more important things that we sacrifice for it. These may include our health, relationships — even the necessary time to relax. Yes, it’s good to be productive, but the things we do are only as good as how we are when we do them.

Finance

One of the common impressions that people have about web working is that it’s financially unstable. This is often true. We all know that income from freelancing or contractual work fluctuates. Even if you’re a regular employee working from home, there are still those supervisors who judge employees on the basis of their presence rather than their performance. That’s why it’s essential for all web workers to keep their finances straight.

Another financial issue that many web workers face is the lack of separation between personal and professional expenses. While the line is more blurry with freelancers, even telecommuting employees may need to consider it, especially if there’s an overlap in their personal and work resources (such as equipment, subscriptions, etc.).

Also, do you have a web working expansion fund? This is meant to pay for any work related emergencies such as equipment repair and replacement. You could also use it to purchase books and tools that will help boost your career.

While you’re at it, set up ways to protect your income as well, in case you won’t be able to work. You can do this by saving up for an emergency fund that covers a few months of your living expenses. Don’t forget to make sure that you have adequate insurance coverage for medical emergencies as well. That type of emergency tends to eat up any savings you have tucked away.

Job Security

A pillar that is somewhat related to your finances is your job security. Apart from being a source of income, job security is also essential since it’s your track record. You need to be able to explain any large gaps in your resume to future prospects. Plus, if you’re passionate about your work you probably want to keep doing it.

For employees, do you feel like your company is stable enough to keep you for as long as you want to work there? According to Jonathan Fields, author of Career Renegade, you need to be a creator-operator to be indispensable at work. You need to have the ability to create new solutions and innovations, as well as have the stamina to execute them.

For freelancers, how can you ensure that you’ll have regular work? You can use some ideas from this long list from Freelance Switch. It might also make sense to review what promotion or sales techniques have worked for you in the past and try to replicate or refine them.

Passion and Purpose

Apart from the pragmatic side of things, there are other aspects of our work that need to be there even if they aren’t as measurable. We need to feel a sense of fulfillment to keep the engine running. This doesn’t necessarily have to come from every task you do. Even side projects and hobbies can be a good source. Without it, everything else will seem empty.

How are you doing with each of these pillars? Are you satisfied with what you’ve achieved in this areas or is there room for improvement?

Image by winjohn from sxc.hu

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In the corporate world, it’s easy to track positive mobility in your career. You could get a promotion (a move upward to a position of higher rank or pay), or laterally to a position of similar rank, but with different tasks or projects. Advancement in a freelancing career is not so easy to track, possibly because we each have different definitions of what a freelance “promotion” consists of.

Here are some ways you can climb the freelance career ladder:

Rates. The most obvious way to climb your career ladder is to raise your rates as you gain more experience and skills. The quality of your work, client support, and even your online presence should reflect these changes. If you want some tips on how to raise your rates, check out the following resources:

• “How to Raise Your Rates Without Losing Clients” at Freelance Switch
• “How to Increase Your Rates for the New Year” from Men With Pens

Of course, just relying on increasing your rates has its limits. Just because you’re increasing your hourly rate by $5, it doesn’t mean that you’ll eventually get away with charging $1,000 per hour. The good news is that there are other ways to give yourself a “promotion.”

Projects and clients. One of the signs that you’re doing well as a freelancer is that you occasionally turn down projects. Still, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you should only take on projects with a bigger scope or work only with high-profile clients. What’s important is to look out for new projects that we’re passionate about. This could mean the following:

• Taking on projects that will allow you to learn and explore additional skills you’ve always wanted.
• Working with people in an industry or field that you’ve always wanted to get involved with.
• Choosing challenging projects that excite you and allow you to push your work quality a notch higher.
• Having the time and resources to work on passion projects that may not be financially rewarding, but are personally fulfilling.

Tasks. If you take a look at your daily tasks, which ones do you like the least? Out of these, which ones can you automate with an app, delegate to an assistant or subcontract to others? Sometimes, advancement in your career means focusing your time and energy on your preferred tasks.

Leisure. It seems like many freelancers work during the weekends or fail to take some time off. While we may be passionate about our work, it doesn’t mean we can’t professionally benefit from leisure time. In one of his TED talks, Stefan Sagmeister discussed the power of taking time off. The benefits include the following:

• We can pursue creative experiments that we don’t have the time or energy for during the regular work week.
• We get fresh ideas and innovate. This prevents repetition and keeps our work from becoming stagnant.

Learning opportunities. Career mobility should also involve learning new skills and becoming acquainted with developments in your field. You can do this via seminars, workshops, reading materials, and even attending conferences. On a smaller scale, you can subscribe to relevant blogs and sign up for online courses. By pushing ourselves to learn more, we improve the quality of our work, hear new ideas, and interact with other professionals.

Business building. For some people, being a lone freelancer isn’t enough. Sometimes we want our jobs to evolve into a business. This doesn’t necessarily mean renting an office or owning a building, but it can mean setting up our own teams, having dedicated staff for client support, or simply getting the right paperwork.

Getting a promotion as a freelancer may not be simple, but as I’ve illustrated with the points above, the freedom and options we have more than make up for that.

How are you climbing the freelance career ladder? Do you do this deliberately or do you find that your career path forges naturally with very little planning?

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In her blog on the subject, Katie Ledger — co-author of the forthcoming book “And What Do You Do?: 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio Career” — describes portfolio careers as work that “uses all your skills and passions…doing two or more jobs for different employers.”

The turbulence and insecurity of a globalized job market means that many people are, in essence, temporary workers with little assurance of a permanent job. As such, people are seeking security by establishing control over who they work with and what they work on.

The title of Ledger’s book is telling. Like many others, I find myself being asked,  “And what do you do?” frequently. But even after almost three years of self-employment, I struggle to find a concise response without rambling through a range of consultancy projects, advisory board roles, startup investments, writing gigs and conference development. Perhaps “a portfolio of digital technology projects” should suffice as an answer?

Though each of my activities and roles requires a different range of skills and attitudes, sometimes with no overlap between them, somehow it adds up to a cohesive career. Although outwardly it might seem unfocused and fragmented, I can now deploy “portfolio working” as a useful umbrella term.

Most significantly, people discussing portfolio careers often underline motivation as the key element in this mode of working — people use a portfolio of options when seeking a better work/life balance, to learn new skills, to extract themselves from office politics or simply for fulfillment.

Career coach Marianne Cantwell defines portfolio careerists as “free-range humans“ who are not “penned into an unhappy job-cage.” Contrast this with Cantwell’s “battery-cage humans” who see limited options for their careers, forced only to seek out particular types of jobs. It’s perhaps an unfair contrast, but fundamentally, it’s about choosing who you work for and what you do, as opposed to being imprisoned by rigidly defined roles.

Elsewhere, Ledger suggests there are common qualities shared by successful practitioners of portfolio careers and helps readers evaluate whether they’re suitable for such a mode of work.

Read more at “Portfolio Careers: Creating a Career of Multiple Part-Time Jobs” and subscribe to the Portfolio Careers blog.

Do you have a portfolio career? How do you manage your various portfolio roles?

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In art and music, the term “minimalist” describes work that is stripped down to its fundamental elements. Everything is simplified. This approach has its benefits on the web, where there are thousands of freelancers making themselves heard. There’s just so much noise out there that it never hurts to keep things simple.

People who are just starting with their freelancing career will benefit from applying minimalism, especially if they’re only planning to freelance part-time. Minimalist values will allow you to focus only on the essentials, convey a clear message, and keep maintenance tasks to a minimum.

So how can we apply minimalism to our freelancing practice?

Provide only one product or service. While most web workers are multitalented, it’s best to start with just one venture to focus on. For example, if you’re launching your freelance career as a press release writer, focus on this field first before you decide to profit from your SEO skills. Working on only one narrow field at a time will allow you to become known as an expert in that field because you won’t be distracted by other ventures.

Serve one audience only. One of the most common mistakes new freelancers make is trying to please as many people as they can. I’ve made this mistake myself, thinking that the wider my audience was, the better. The problem with trying to communicate with too many types of people at the same time is that instead of doing a great job of reaching a select handful of prospects, you’ll do a mediocre job of reaching many prospects, with less work as a result.

Whether you’re marketing directly or indirectly, the language you use should be intended for one niche market only. Often, this will lead to repetitive deliverables, processes, and client communication. And if something is repetitive, it will be easier to delegate or automate, saving you the effort of changing your approach with every single client on your list.

Have the simplest web site possible. Many web sites today are cluttered. Apart from the ads, there are sidebar widgets and plug-ins that can be distracting if used unnecessarily.  Every time you think of adding a new element into your professional blog or web site, ask yourself, “If I remove this, will it have a negative effect on my readers?” If your answer is no, then you obviously don’t need that image/widget/thingamajig as much as you thought you did.

Keeping your web site uncluttered will also allow your audience to focus on your message rather than the 101 bells and whistles going off in the background. Also, simpler web sites often load faster.

In the 37Signals book, Getting Real, they have an entire chapter entitled “Stay Lean”. Here’s a relevant quote from that chapter:

“Nimble, agile, less-mass businesses can quickly change their entire business model, product, feature set, and marketing message. They can make mistakes and fix them quickly. They can change their priorities, product mix, and focus. And, most importantly, they can change their minds.”
Source: “Getting Real” by 37Signals

In other words, by keeping things simple, it will also be easier for you to adapt. It’s much harder to do this if you’re providing too many products and services.

When I was starting out, I was a little too eager to provide so many services and do so many things. In some ways, I’m still struggling with this. While it’s safer to have multiple streams of income, sometimes the surest way to be a successful freelancer is to do it one simple step at a time.

Is your freelancing practice minimalist or complex? How is that working for you? What are the advantages and disadvantages of your approach?

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Learn how to collaborate with people who are less tech savvy than we are. As online collaboration becomes more commonplace, we’ll be working with some people who aren’t up to speed with the most practical Web 2.0 tools for their needs.  Knowing how to communicate with them effectively while bridging the tech gap will be a priceless skill.
Offline marketing efforts. I’m willing to bet that most web freelancers – including myself – usually overlook offline marketing.  While the yellow pages might not be a good idea, there are many effective offline marketing tactics that can help us attract new clients.

Differentiation. More and more people are looking for part-time or full-time work online, especially with many layoffs going on.  This means that existing web workers might face more competition in the incoming year.  You need to differentiate yourself from the thousands of other freelancers out there.  Strengthen your personal brand and make sure that you’re delivering a consistent message about the work you provide and the products you create.

Win the loyalty of existing clients. I’ve already mentioned the increase in competitors.  They won’t just be competing with you for new contracts, some of them might even attract your current clients.  Evaluate each of your clients, ask them what their expected needs will be in the incoming year, and see whether you’re still a perfect fit for them.  If there’s a mismatch, you’ll either have to adapt, hire a helping hand, or recommend another web worker to your client.

Redundancy systems. Today’s hottest web app might be tomorrow’s online fossil, something you can only find through Wikipedia or The Wayback Machine.  This can be a nightmare if this happened to the most important app you use for business.  While free tools are abundant, make sure that it won’t kill your business if these tools are suddenly unavailable. To be safe, you either need to regularly backup your data or switch to a more reliable, mainstream tool.

The art of rigorous filtering. From unwanted emails to difficult clients, from distractions at home to hundreds of unread blog posts, we need to be more discriminating of the things that we devote our time and attention to.  With a new year comes more websites and blogs, leading to more content we have to digest.  There will also be new clients, some of them will be regular, and this means you’ll be adding extra hours of your workday doing client support.  Is all the content important?  Are all your clients worth the hours you put in?

Don’t get me wrong – information, projects, clients, hobbies, and random activities are all great.  Just make sure that the things that grab your time are the things that you really want to do.  Otherwise, you’ll feel unnecessarily fatigued and full all the time.

A high financial IQ and the ability to make use of it. Being practical with money has always been important, even more so during times when the economy is slow (eg. now).  Web workers who have an above-average grasp of finances will be much better off than those who don’t.  Her are some ways you can put yourself at a safer financial standing:

• Multiple income streams. There are several ways for freelancers to make money online, other than providing the usual services.
• Cutting down expenses. Equipment, apps, and other tools can be expensive when you add them up.
• Saving for a rainy day. I’m a big fan of emergency funds, that stash of money you’re keeping in the bank in case of large, unexpected expenses, or in case you’re having a low-income month.  Right now I have 5 months’ worth of living expenses saved up, but I want to crank it up a little and save up for a year’s worth.

How about you, what do you think web workers need to do to prepare for the incoming year?  How much different will it be from the preparations you made for 2008?

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