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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There are many symptoms of a stagnant freelancing career. They include boredom, complacency, apathy and the inability to picture what your work should be like a year from now. If you can relate to these symptoms, then it’s time to face facts: you’re stuck. Additionally, you need to do something to get unstuck.

So how can you get a stagnant career moving again?

Know where you want to be. Sometimes, the reason behind a stagnant career is that you don’t know what you want. This doesn’t mean that you’re indecisive, but maybe you didn’t give ourselves the chance to plan. Without the existence of a traditional corporate ladder, freelancers can have a hard time knowing what the next step is and how to get there. Here are two articles from our archives which might help you figure it out:

• “Plan Your Web Working Career Path“
• “Plotting Your Career When You’ve Jumped Off the Corporate Ladder”

Write a book. Many freelancers have improved their reputation by self-publishing books about their field. As Darrell noted in a previous post, doing so can be seen as a proof of competency. Through your book, potential clients can verify your expertise. Print-on-demand services such as Lulu and Blurb make it easy to self-publish your book.

But this doesn’t mean that you should aim to print a costly paperback or hardbound version of your book. In most cases, an e-book will do, even if you’ll just give it away for free. If a full-length book sounds too labor-intensive, start with a 10 to 20 page guide or manifesto. Review this list if you need inspiration.

Submit guest posts to authority blogs in your niche. Guest posting, when done right, can help spread the word about your work. You’ll be sharing your ideas with your target market while promoting yourself at the same time. To learn more about guest posting, visit the following:

• Ramit Sethi wrote some guidelines on how to write guest posts for his blog, but the advice is applicable to guest posting in general.
• “How to Maximize the Benefits of Guest Posting” from Problogger.net.
• Men with Pens has a seven part series on guest posting, starting with this piece.

Make one to three valuable new contacts. Think about the top three people you’d love to show your work to. They could be potential clients, professionals you respect, or even people working in a completely different field altogether. It’s easy to forget about networking when you’re spending several months talking to the same clients and colleagues. There’s an entire world of web workers out there. Many of them could be a source of inspiration, advice and referrals.

Help others. As a side effect of blogging, I end up answering emails and queries from new teleworkers looking for advice. Look for opportunities to help those who are new in your field, whether it’s through your blog, online messageboards or social networks. It’s a good way to remind yourself of the basics and establish your reputation as an expert.

While teaching can feel rewarding at first, it can also be exhausting in the long run if you’re doing it pro bono. Just remember to set your boundaries. If you can teach a paid class, that’s even better.

Get a mentor. Apart from teaching others, we also need to be taught. Is there a colleague or a leading expert who can serve as your mentor? It could be someone you’re already in contact with, or someone whose work you’ve followed over the years.

Of course, if you pick someone who already knows you, you’ll benefit from having two-way communication. Your mentor can give you advice on your career options, as well as help you spot professional weaknesses.

Acquire new skills and apply them. Whether you attend formal classes or become self-taught, continuous learning can help you get to the next level of your career. If you don’t know where to start, ask yourself which skills will improve the quality of your work.

It’s worth remembering that signing up for a class or seminar doesn’t automatically enhance your career. Make sure that you also build working experience with the skills you’ve learned.

As online freelancing becomes increasingly competitive, we need to make sure that our careers are moving forward. How do you prevent stagnation in your own freelancing practice?

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Ever heard the phrase “Spend less than you earn?” Personally, I like to take it a notch higher and spend much, much less than I earn. I can’t help it. I think I’m frugal by nature and that contributes a lot to my feeling of security with online work.

Frugality and web working go hand in hand, especially in a tough economy. Even if you find your business thriving, the cost of commodities tends to go up and some clients might unexpectedly close up shop. I also find that frugality comes with freedom — any extra money I can set aside goes to fund new opportunities or allows me to take some time off.

So whether the economy is struggling or thriving, it’s still a good idea to keep your expenses as low as possible, without sacrificing the quality of your work or your life. Here are some things you can do to keep the cost of web working as low as possible:

Tap your network to get deals and advice. Have many friends and contacts on social networks? Great! Ask them for advice whenever you’re looking to purchase a new item for your office or computer. Sometimes, you might be lucky enough to get some coupons or freebies.

Take advantage of garage sales and second-hand stores. Rather than buying new items from the store, it often makes sense to buy second-hand furniture.

Watch your electricity and phone bills. Nothing gives me a headache like an unexpected spike in my bills. Because of this, I tend to be mindful of overconsumption. Here are some ways to keep bills low:

• If you’re using a laptop, be mindful of when it’s completely charged, then unplug it from the socket.
• When an electrical gadget is broken and can’t be fixed, find energy-efficient replacements.
• Use VoIP rather than a landline for international calls.
• For home offices with closets and cabinets, be sure to keep them closed to lessen the area that needs cooling/heating.

Know how to balance free and paid web apps. The cost of web apps can add up to a lot. If you can’t afford to subscribe to every app you want, you need to better evaluate your needs.

Get your office space as a tax deduction. Talk to an accountant to see the possibility of making your home office tax deductible. If you live in the U.S., you can visit this page from the IRS for more information.

Upgrade rather than replace old equipment. Instead of buying a new computer why not find cheaper ways to boost its performance? Sometimes, just purchasing additional memory can make an old computer work as smoothly as a brand new one.

Have a work-related emergency fund. Why is this frugal? Well, having cash ready means that you won’t have to get into credit card debt for emergency work expenses. I often save 2 percent of my income for work-related emergencies like replacing irreparable computer components. That may seem like a small amount, but it adds up to quite a lot over a few months.

Use your computer as your entertainment system. The only reason why my house has cable TV subscription — and the only reason why we have a TV at all — is my housemates. They aren’t very computer-savvy. If I lived alone, I’d do away with both the TV and the cable subscription. I can easily replace it with something like Hulu or iTunes. Most of the downloads from iTunes are paid, so you might be wondering what makes it frugal. For me, ordering entertainment “à la carte” can often be cheaper, especially since I’ll be careful about where both my time and my money go.

Since needs and experiences vary from person to person, I suggest that you take the advice you can use and forget the rest. After all, there’s no such thing as the right way to save money — there’s only what’s right for you.

Do you think you’re frugal? How do you keep your work expenses low?

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Still, it’s tough to keep an effective relationship between the primary contractor (you) and the subcontractor (your hired help). Subcontractors can make mistakes that interrupt your workflow, hurt the project, or altogether defeat the purpose of hiring them.

So, what are these subcontractor mistakes you need to watch out for?

They defer all decisions to you. What’s the point of hiring a subcontractor if they’re going to email you every time a minor decision needs to be made? I’ve had subcontractors who contacted me several times each day, asking me to decide on things that they should take care of on their own. This made me feel like I might as well have done the work myself if I was going to spend several hours guiding them step-by-step.

While it’s possible that the subcontractor you hired may be indecisive by nature, you can minimize this problem by creating rules that your subcontractors can use whenever they’re hesitant to make decisions. Let them know the boundaries that separate your area of responsibility from theirs.

For example, during a recent e-book project, I told my writer that adding, subtracting and rearranging sections of the e-book was fine, if she thought such modifications would improve the final product. But if she was going to add or remove whole chapters, she should let me know and wait for my approval before proceeding.

Establishing a clear line between the things I hired her to control (sections and smaller units of the e-book) and the things I want to control (chapters and larger units), meant that she knew whether a particular issue was important enough to defer to me.

If you’re worried about losing control, don’t establish boundaries that are outside your comfort zone. Let your subcontractor’s area of responsibility start as something small, then give them more decision-making power once they gain your trust. But as you’re doing this, be clear with them about the changing boundaries.

They break their contract. They might try to steal your clients, break your non-disclosure agreement, or re-sell their work to others. Prevention is always the best way to get deal with this problem. Before hiring someone, do an extensive online search and ask for a list of references you can talk to on the phone or via Skype.

Establishing a solid two-way relationship between you and the subcontractor is also a good way to prevent them from harming your business. Remind them that they need you more than you need them. Let them know that you can refer them to your friends, give them bonuses for very successful projects and provide them with stable long-term work.

They miss their deadlines. I’ve been disappointed several times with subcontractors who miss deadlines. One of them even took the responsibility of hitting the deadline so lightly that she said to me, “Oops! I forgot to do it, I’m so so sorry.”

So was I. I never hired her again. I avoided this problem with succeeding subcontractors by emphasizing the deadline using boldface or capital letters. I’ve also moved it from the last line to the first line of my project specifications template. It also helps to include a line or two about the consequences of missing the deadline.

For large projects, you can request regular updates, say, every day or twice a week. If you’re working with a particular subcontractor for the first time, don’t just ask for a report, see the actual draft — even if it is far from perfect. Let your subcontractor know that the point of regular reporting isn’t necessarily to correct mistakes. You only want to ensure that the project is progressing at a reasonable pace.

Hiring subcontractors doesn’t have to mean that you’re leaving yourself open to these types of problems. By taking the right preventive measures, you can treat your subcontractor as your partner rather than just someone who does the grunt work for you.

Have you ever hired a subcontractor? If so, what experience did you have with them?

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It’s good to remember that everyone has felt like that at least once in their career. Almost all freelancers have a story to tell about the mistakes they made and what they could have done to avoid them.

Equipment and the Home Office

After one of his first meetings with a client, fellow WWD blogger Scott Blitstein wanted to send his client a questionnaire to assess their needs. When he asked them how they preferred to receive the questionnaire, they opted for fax instead of email.

Realizing that he didn’t have a fax machine handy, Scott decided to buy one on the way home. “I think I’ve only used it two or three times since then, and only because I had it,” Scott said.

While it’s important to have a fully-equipped home office, we should also have a realistic idea about how often we’re going to use each item before purchasing. This prevents us from overspending on equipment when we’re starting out, without under-equipping ourselves.

Dealing with Clients

Ruth Thaler-Carter is a freelance writer and editor. When starting out, she worked on a project where she made a profit of “next to nothing.” She explains, “I didn’t confirm who would be responsible for printing and mailing a newsletter I was contracted to write, edit, lay out and produce for print. It never occurred to me that the client would expect me to pay for printing and mailing.”

As Ruth’s example illustrates, one of the most important aspects of client-consultant relationships is the list of deliverables. This list indicates who is accountable for a task and when it is due. Without this list, it’s hard for both the client and the freelancer to identify what their areas of responsibility are.

Money Matters

Elena has been a freelance writer and editor for 11 years, but when she started out she was a far cry from the veteran she is now. Initially, she was billing her clients after every long-term project was completed. This left her with poor cash flow and clients who weren’t submitting their deliverables on time.

Elena decided to bill clients monthly. “Every month, I bill for work I’ve done in the last month. That way, if things sit, at least you got paid, or you can refuse to continue the work until you get paid,” she said.

How to charge for one’s services is a decision that beginning freelancers face. As Elena notes in her story, it’s important to bill regularly for big projects. But how do you charge? Charging by the hour is hard for both parties to track.

One thing that has worked for me all these years is charging per milestone. This is because the deliverables are defined, and the client pays based on the results I produce, not how much time I spent on it. If you set the rates right, your fees per milestone can reflect your ideal hourly rate anyway.

After you’ve decided how to charge, another question comes up: how much? This tends to be a hotly debated topic among freelancers.

David, a legal consultant, said that he was embarrassed to find that he was charging half as much as his competitors. “Upon mature reflection, I left my rates unchanged. I have never been short of work and I have always earned enough,” David said.

I have an alternative story to tell about undercharging. Early in my online writing career, I would see other writers take jobs for $1-$2 per article. This made me nervous as I was charging $8 to $10. If I had cut my rates, I would be taking a loss. So I stuck to my rates and focused on finding the types of clients who wouldn’t be swayed by price alone.

Perhaps the best amount to charge isn’t a specific number. After all, several factors come into play:

• how much your client is willing to pay;
• what everyone else is charging;
• how much you’ll need for business and living expenses;
• and what rates you feel are “fair” to both you and the client.

Keeping this in mind, there is no right amount to charge, there’s only what’s right for you.

Your early web working career will always be unsure and full of mistakes, no matter how well you plan or research. By learning through other people’s experiences and hearing about their humble beginnings, then maybe your first steps as web workers won’t be as awkward – and even if they are, rest assured that it’s quite normal.

What about you? What mistakes did you make as a beginning web worker? What could you have done to avoid them?

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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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For a couple of days, I was like a parasite in art class, going from classmate to classmate, asking them if I could have a drop of this color or that.  After all, I didn’t want to use the colors that remained in my toolbox.  I’d rather deal with the embarrassment of begging.

Then came the turning point: I realized that the reason why I didn’t like those colors was not because I hated the way they looked. I hated them because I didn’t know how to use them.  With those colors, my paintings sucked.  Knowing this now, should I keep begging for the colors that fit in my comfort zone, or should I dare to use the more difficult colors?

Not wanting to back out from a challenge, I chose the latter.  While my initial paintings with these difficult colors weren’t good, they got better as I became more comfortable with them.  With the “easy” paint colors out of my reach, I was forced to learn how to use these difficult colors.  By the time I had the money to buy new tubes, it didn’t matter so much what I bought – I knew I could paint with almost anything!

Web workers regularly face similar obstacles.  There are some months where you have more down time, your internet gets disconnected, or you’re simply not inspired.  These things get in the way of your plans and it seems like you’re not going to get any work done.  You’ll be faced with the same crossroads I faced.  Will you wait until things go your way or will you work through the tough times?

I find that although it’s difficult to work through challenges and limitations, doing so has its own rewards.  First, you’ll be exposed to a new working process that allows you to refine your existing one. Your computer’s not working?  Then write that blog post by hand.  This might even force you to process your thoughts more slowly and to do a more thorough edit before it goes live.  Or do a thumbnail of that design by hand so you can try alternative approaches that don’t come so easily to you via your favorite graphics program.

For me, the more important benefit is that you’ll gain the confidence to work even when the chips are down.  There’s no better test of your quality as a web worker than seeing what you’ll accomplish when you have all these obstacles before you.

For example, if you have poor cash flow, this will force you to reconsider how essential all your business expenses are and what you can do to increase income.  After this, you’ll know you can weather another economic downturn, if it happens.  You won’t be vulnerable.  While your competition is moping in a corner and grunting about “the economy”, you’re out there discovering the opportunities that she’ll never find.

By working through the tough times, you’ll feel like you’re a better web worker – and it’s not just in your head.  You’ll know that you’re better because you were tested.  Like me, you’d be forced to work with the difficult colors.

What tough times have you encountered as a web worker?  How did you work through them?  What lessons did you learn?

Note: This post is part 2 of a 3-part series on “Better Web Working”.  Part 1 can be found here.  Stay tuned this week for part 3.

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I, on the other hand, looked forward to these workshops.  I believe that this was the activity that gave me the best preparation for web working.  Like those workshops, online freelance work tends to be a public affair.  Your blog posts, design work, marketing efforts, and most of your business output is done where the public can see them.  In a way, you’re putting your work in front of a firing squad.

Believe it or not, this is a great thing.

Criticism is the best way to see the flaws you’ve overlooked in your work, especially when you’re not expecting it (through an email from a random site visitor, for example).  It’s very easy to overlook your own mistakes since your mind is so familiar with what you’re doing.  But, as web workers, the platform we use for our work isn’t just in our minds – it’s on the computer screen.  Sometimes, there’s a discrepancy between what we’re trying to do and what we actually did.

This is why many people – writers, programmers, and designers – sometimes step away from their computer after working for several hours.  It’s easier to spot errors when you distance yourself from the work you’re doing and you return later with a fresh perspective.  And what could be fresher than someone else’s opinion?  Especially the opinion of someone who is unfamiliar with the details of your work.

This is where your personal firing squad comes in.  They’re the ones who can tell you what you actually did and what you failed to do.  It’s better to get their opinion and correct your flaws before the client or the general public sees your work.

Another important thing you’d learn from critics and naysayers is the difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism.  If you listen to every single troll out there who yells “FAIL!” at you, then you’re accepting the impossible task of trying to please everybody.  When people trash you enough, in time you’ll know who’s giving helpful advice and who just loves kicking you when you’re down.

If you’re looking for your own constructive firing squad, here are some people you can approach: mentors, respected leaders in your field, and your colleagues.  If it doesn’t violate any contracts or policies, show them your work before you put the final version out there.  It’s like having a personal group of beta testers.

You can also request for a critique from your clients through a client satisfaction survey when you’ve sent in your final work.  But by the time they receive it, hopefully your beta testers have helped you weed out the problems.

I’ve also noticed that the more workshops I participated in, and the more negative comments I received from my work, I gradually became immune to the pain of rejection.  You think this blog post sucks?  Okay.  Please let me know why.

One of the editors I worked with told me that other writers he’s handled would have fits if he changed something as simple as a comma.  He was surprised that I was open to hearing him out.  What was it that made me open?  I found out that the more criticism I received, the more I knew I could handle it.  Sure, I don’t have to listen to everything he says, but most of the time, his points are valid and essential.

By regularly exposing yourself to critics, you start taking criticism as a chance to improve yourself rather than something to hide from.  What was once a painful experience becomes a useful one.  The ability to do this is one significant step to making your work better.

How do you hear about criticism of your work?  How do you react to your critics?

Note: This post is the first part in a 3-part series on better web working.  Please stay tuned this week for parts 2 and 3.

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