Freelance Apple

There’s a common problem in the freelancing world which I call the “Feast-Starve” cycle. It’s simply the phenomena that you experience whilst freelancing, where one month all your clients will pay your invoices, and you’ll essentially be flooded and content with your earnings for that month (the “feast” month). Because the freelancer then tends to concentrate solely on the work they need to produce after this point, they fail to market their services along the way. This results in a slow following month, or the “starve” month, where you find little to no money coming through.

Develop alternate sources of income

There are a few ways freelancers combat this situation, such as continuously marketing their services, regardless of whether they are receiving many or little jobs, but there are other ways than just doing this as continuously marketing your services can lead to work flooding and you don’t want to end up turning down clients. If, however, you have an alternative source of income, let’s say you run a popular design blog, or have an application that you’re promoting that generates sales, then you can use the revenue from that to combat the slow months. Seeking alternative sources of income is always a good step to take, because it’ll ease up the amount of work required by freelancing and make things a lot easier in general. What tends to happen with freelancers in particular is that their interests shift, and they slowly move out of the freelancing field into more mainstream business where they go on to run their own applications/other businesses related to the web world.

Schedule clients into the next month

If your client isn’t in a hurry (which is pretty rare these days) then you could always push the client’s work to the next month. This ensures that you have an even spread of work through each month, and that you don’t just cram everything into one month, thinking that you can pull it all off. Remember, you’re freelancing to work less, and enjoy a lifestyle without the need for a 9-5 so you can spend more time doing things that matter, like spending time with your family and friends.

It’s always better to keep your work levels steady throughout the year, and always spread your work over the entire amount of time you have. Never work all out during one week and then cruise the next, you’ll find it extremely hard to get down to work the following week so stay consistent and take everything at a nice, steady pace. You’re looking to reduce stress, not develop more, so don’t overwork yourself. Similarly if you’re the lazy type of person, your focus should be on developing a good level of work on a daily basis and then sticking to that for as long as you can.

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