THE REALITY OF FREELANCING
Here’s the difficult ass reality about Freelancing.
Freelancing is harder than a regular job because if you’re in a crowded marketplace where there are plenty of people that do what you do then the only way to stand out or progress is work an insane amount of hours daily. When you overwork you’re literally working to crash out.
When you’re freelancing you’re probably underpaid which is fucked up because you set the price for your services. The weak ass job you left so you can start freelancing probably paid you more and of course paid you consistently. It’s hard to stay consistent with getting pay if you’re freelancing. Until you feel the pain of pending money just sitting waiting for you after a job, you ain’t felt shit. Which is why some artists go back and forth between working a regular job and freelancing. If you break some services down some people are underpaying themselves. If I charge 70 for something but it literally took me 6 hours to finish it. I just got paid $11 an hour. Now imagine if I have 3 clients I want to service that day. I just made $210 that day but damn near spent my whole day and night in front of a computer and as a writer that shit is hard. I spend maybe 2 hours on a blog post and my face feel like it’s going to fall off. Just to get to $500 a week is hard and you have to do nothing but create everyday all day just to reach it.
Freelancing ain’t easy just because artists love to do it. Look at it this way. If your favorite food is pizza and morning, noon, and night all you were allowed to eat was pizza for 2 months straight you would lose your fucking mind and pizza wouldn’t look too appealing to you anymore. You’d literally start to resent pizza. That’s freelance work. When you’re not creating for yourself the work can become stale and mundane and you’re in a position where you hate freelance work the same you hated your previous job. Yes when I’m doing something as a hobby it’s fun because one it’s my idea and two there’s no deadline. I can’t imagine creating a wack idea that a client wants done. I’d literally give them their money back and recommend them to someone else.
The key to freelancing is catching the big fish aka getting big clients. That’s the goal. The more huge clients on your resume the more you get paid of course and the purpose of your work changes. It actually challenges you because now your reputation is on the line and if you do a great job the client will likely come back again and bring another big client with them. That $70-$200 a week shit lame once you gettin $700 to $1000 for just one project. The better the clients the less stress you’ll have because you won’t be juggling 10 projects in one week just to match that payout of the big client.
To get big clients you’ll have to do something that may seem crazy to hard workers. TURN DOWN CLIENTS. Think of it like this. If you’re fishing and you catch a goldfish you’re not keeping it. You can’t eat that. It’s not feeding you. You’ll throw it back. If you catch a bass. You’ve just caught a meal and you’re keeping that bass. You’re not about to waste cooking oil and sides to fry 10 goldfish. You have bigger fish to fry. Small bets don’t get the jackpot. Only play for big stakes. There’s a difference between those who play for big stakes and those who play just to break even. Don’t play for the tie. Play for the win. Some clients just aren’t worth your time. Unless you need to desperately pay rent, sure but if you’re not hurting for money then lead them to someone else.
Difficult clients are another reason why this shit can get real annoying. Niggas want 1000 rough drafts of shit and won’t allow you to work. How the fuck it feels like you over an artist shoulder micro managing and you ain’t even in the room? They set unrealistic turn around times. Some people have no fucking clue what they want. Some ask for some shit beyond the price that’s set. How the fuck you want a wedding shot for $400?? Nigga huh? Telling artists “Do ya thang” or “Go crazy” isn’t doing shit either my nigga. In the words of the great philosopher Big Worm once stated “Boy what the fuck you want?!” Have a clear vision. Clients are supposed to drive and provide the map for the creator. This ain’t our project it’s yours. Act like it. Be specific as possible. Don’t ask for work until you have everything mapped out from A-Z and able to explain it. As a person who hates to redo my own shit I care about I can’t imagine having to constantly redo shit I’m not passionate about.
Setting the price is hard for a lot of freelancers. Mainly because they worried about if people will fuck with them if they set too high of a price. The way people be saying “Fuck Them Kids” apply that energy to this. Your price is your journey. What I mean by that is this. There’s this line that a rapper named Benny The Butcher has where he says “All them nights I had to pray for this, they gone pay for this.” All the lack of sleep, the nights I starved, the times I had to make $12 stretch for almost 2 weeks, the trial and error from relentless practice, the criticism. All of that is the journey to the price you set. Everybody gotta pay. People are paying for your foundation that was built on your back. People gotta pay to brag and represent your brand. If your face card solid they gone gone pay for that privilege. Why you think niggas buy Adidas? They paying for what it stand for in society but how much does it take to make an Adidas shirt? What? $10 at best? They selling that same shirt for $60. Why cause when you put that shirt on you gone feel like the shit when you wear it. People are buying bragging rights and the way the product makes them feel. I’ll use my brother Adrian Walker as an example. If someone wanted to do a photo project with Adrian for an music album and he told him “It’ll cost $500” and their reply is “well this other artist services cost $100 and they might be just as good” His response would probably be “Shop with them and your problem is solved.” The difference is this though. When you promote that album and tag the $100 artist you’ll just give them credit and ask people to stream the album. That’s it. If you buy Adrian’s services you’ll probably tag him in it, he’d repost to a larger network, and you’ll tell people in the post caption that he was an artist featured in the Smithsonian and Steven Spielberg liked his work and now you have that same talent doing your album photo set. The brag is different. Even if Adrian’s work and the $100 artist work is identical the extra cache gets people more interested in Adrian’s work. There’s a story behind it. You see the difference? There’s a difference between me owning art from a person who kinda paints like Kaws and me actually buying an official painting that Kaws created with his 2 hands. Feel me?
Nigga you ain’t going on vacation and if you do you might do some work on that vacation just so you can pay your bills. You constantly have to work as a freelancer. You have to keep up an insane pace especially if you want to make a livable wage. At least at some jobs if you miss money you can pick up shifts and make it back. If you miss a client who knows if they coming back because people so flakey and never know what the fuck they want. Also you ever go on vacation with no paid time off? That shit is gross.
Running the business of you is hard as fuck. When it’s clicking and everything running good it’s rewarding but when you have those down times that shit can get real sad real quick. Taxes are ghetto also. Never forget it.
Peace
Follow us on twitter and instagram
@politeasflannel
@jayjaybenny
@politecoolery
@Treevillarecords
Listen to the blog podcast Polite Coolery
