Why I hate Freelance Designing

• February 11th, 2010
• Articles

A lot of people believe that freelance designing is a life of luxury with late starts and early finishes while drinking several cups of coffee in between, If you really believe this is the life style of freelancer then you’re about to be enlightened.

You Can’t Just Be a Good Designer

Even though your main job role is designing as a freelancer it’s essential to have skills in other areas in order to succeed and generate any sort of income. It’s ok being a good designer but if you lack marketing/promoting skills it’s going to be near enough impossible to find and attracts clients to work alongside. As a freelancer you need to be a jack of all trades know a range of skills (accounting, writing, managing etc) rather than just been good at designing.

Good Reliable Clients Are Impossible To Find

If your just starting out perusing a career as a freelancer it can be weeks or possibly even months before you find your first client to work alongside because your yet to build up a strong portfolio, which means the chances of you working with high profile clients is unlikely. There are always clients which you produce work for and can be waiting for a very long period of time before you received your first pay check from them for the work which you have produced, which is time-consuming and time wasting chasing clients for unpaid work.

Picky Clients Who Are Impossible To Please

Working with clients can be very frustrating because they can be very fussy about how they want the direction of the design project to be go, which is the frustrating part because you’re the expert and that’s why their paying for your assistance. Why I hate picky clients is because they constantly required you to make tweaks and changes to the project, which can waste a lot of valuable time which could be spent working on other projects for higher paying clients.

Very long working hours

When getting approached by several clients at the same time freelancers will refuse to turn away clients, which can lead to designers working ridiculous amounts of hours a week in order to meet clients deadlines for projects which they have accepted. This is aspect of freelancing is one which I it hate because this means sacrificing valuable time with the family and it puts hold on your social life.

You’ve got a work 365 days a year in order to get paid

You’re required to work every day in every month in order to generate an income, where as if you work for a web design company if you’re sick or decide to go on vacation it doesn’t put a halt on your income because you will still be receiving a pay check.

Final Thoughts

Like all jobs freelancing has its pros and cons. Freelancing isn’t for everyone you’ll either love it or hate it. It’s a great chance to be independent and be your own boss , but comes with a ton of challenges, problems and constraints which you will face during your freelancing career.

Why not Share your Thoughts?

What do you hate most about freelancing? What did you think of this article? Feel to leave a comment you’re more than welcome to share your thoughts and opinions on the article.