In these economic times, a lot of businesses are failing. However I believe in taking control and responsibility for your life and not blaming failures on outside conditions (like the economy). People will always need business, so during tough times the trick is to be the business that they need.

There will always be a lot of competition out there and in this day and age of instant communication around the world, there’s more competition than ever. But that doesn’t matter. You should not seek to be angry at your competition, hateful or even watchful. As a matter of fact, you should ignore your competition almost completely.

Is your business failing or slow? Why would you say it is? What if I told you that your business failing is your fault and your fault alone? Yep, the economy has nothing to do with it. I guess you can say I’m pretty tired of all the freelance posts around the web today that blame sucky businesses on everything but the person running it. (Bad clients, no money, “evil” debtors, bad clients, the other guy).

You’re Lazy

For example, I stay pretty scheduled up every day, at least three weeks in advance. And when things start getting slow (I know they are if I’m only scheduled up for a week), it’s always because I’ve been taking it easy for the past couple of weeks. While this is actually a great thing every once in awhile (like I’m hoping my schedule frees up SOON before I explode) if it’s not something you’re careful with, you can actually drive yourself out of business.

When I first started freelancing, I had zero work. So I would sit at my computer for an hour or two just messing around the web and then go upstairs and do the dishes or something. Once I finally realized that clients weren’t just going to come to me when I was a nobody, I started doing some major marketing on the web – and I spent no money on it either.

You’re Invisible

I haven’t done any marketing lately, because most of my clients now find me. How is this? Even if you’re the best in the entire world at what you do, nobody will hire you if they don’t know who you are – so make sure they do.

People have wondered how I’m everywhere and probably think I have no life. How is it that they see me on 7+ different blogs, plus my daily blog, plus twitter and facebook? And I’ve just launched my personal project, Codesnippit, and I actually manage to fit in several client projects a week while maintaining a personal life (yes, how? I need more mes!)??

The key is appearances. Yes I’m on the web a lot, but not all of the time. And no, I don’t use auto or scheduled tweets or anything. But it seems like I’m everywhere to my clients, so they remember my name when they need someone.

Here are some visibility tips:

  • Strive to be on as many social media sites as possible, but only truly update one or two of them. Hook your twitter account to your Facebook and Linkedin accounts so that when you tweet, it updates the others.
  • Write in your own blog and use a plugin to send a tweet whenever a new post goes out
  • Schedule your blog posts in advance so it sends without you having to be at the computer
  • Write one or two guest posts a week and take a week off from client work every once in awhile to write several.
  • Answer all your fan mail  – you never know when one of them wants an interview (yes, people like to interview developers and designers!)
  • Have an optimized portfolio that’s updated daily (normally because of your blog). Clean code, semantics and accessibility have all boosted my SEO naturally without any of those stupid link campaigns.
  • Tweet early, tweet often, but only about relevant topics & links to your area.
  • Follow the RSS feed of tweeters for your area.
  • Talk to people – an amazing marketing trick that no one actually does.

You’re a Stuck Up Know-It-All

People who think they know everything rarely do. While I don’t want to come off mean in this area, last week I wrote a blog post on project rates where 1-2 people tried to tell me what I could or couldn’t charge. Excuse me, but are you running this business? Just because they can’t charge that much, doesn’t mean I can’t or don’t.

It’s great to have opinions and to be sure of what you know. However, if you plug your ears with your fingers and scream “nah nah nah nah nah” like a 2 year old would, not only does it look unprofessional and immature, it also means you aren’t learning anything. When I starting freelancing, I definitely didn’t have all the answers. I still don’t. However, I now have the experience behind me to at least know what worked for me.

If people give you advice (which is what they’re doing when you’re reading their blog) don’t immediately dismiss them as stupid or dumb or lying. While you certainly don’t have to take the person’s advice, you should at least considering the knowledge they’ve just given you.

You Just Don’t Care

Yea I said it. This is the worst out of all the fails I’ve listed. Anyone can be successful at freelancing, but not everyone is. Why? Because most people don’t care enough or at all. They don’t have the drive it takes to sit in their office 8 to 10 to 24 hours a day to make it work. They drag their feet coming into work. They sit there and pout and whine and blame their troubles on dolphins, trolls and the economy.

Everyone has down days. There are certainly days I really don’t want to work at all (today!), but I know that if I take today off, it’s not going to hurt me because I’ll work extra hard tomorrow. I want to succeed and it’s that thought of being a failure that pushes me towards the finish line. 😉

what about you?

Have you figured out what causes others to fail? Are you failing? Do you know why?

image by normalityrelief

Amber Weinberg

Amber is a freelance front-end developer specializing in semantic and accessible custom WordPress themes. She works with agencies and other freelancers to bring their designs to life using custom ACF flexible layout builds - making them more performant and less buggy while allowing the client easy customization without breaking the design system.