My Thoughts on Freelancers a.k.a Digital Workers

I've been freelancing on and off for the past few years already and decided quit my corporate job and go full time and work remotely.

But like any decision, it wasn't easy to drop everything and go a different path. It's not as easy as saying "Oh, I want Japanese food" and then after 1 minute "Oh, maybe pasta would be better". It's a decision that you have to think long and hard. Here's my thoughts and a few stuff I picked up as I go along.

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

My initial advice to some people who I've talked to that are considering working remotely is to think long and hard. If you have a corporate job, especially if you've been working for 5+ years, here are some questions that you ask yourself:

1. Am I ready to take the plunge?
2. Do I have enough savings to support me for AT LEAST 6 months?
3. Am I willing to work probably more hours than what I normally did when I worked in corporate? (It happens)
4. Am I prepared to face the situation where I am desperately looking for clients?
5. Am I prepared to deal with all sorts of clients? Difficult clients? Clients that don't pay?
6. Do I have a plan B?

These are the questions at the top of my head at the moment. If you have other suggestions, feel free to shoot me a comment below.

Now, I'm no expert but here's some advice I'd like to give based on experience:

Be Organized
Create to-do lists, but a whiteboard or have a notebook. Just organize your stuff.
  
Rates and how much you're worth
Even if you're starting off in a freelance site like oDesk or freelancer, you should still create your rates. You never know when a friend or acquaintance would recommend you to a future client. The last thing you'd want is to send a late email because you had to cram and figure out your rates first.
  
I cannot stress enough the importance of researching the going rates of your services. A lot of freelancers will charge their clients too high or too low. Most often, they charge low. Please don't charge too low just to get a client. Case in point - oDesk. When you're starting off, sites like oDesk are good places to get the ball rolling. However, the difficulty in oDesk is that there are a lot of contractors who charge ridiculously low rates (and I mean disgustingly LOW) just to get clients. In effect, oDesk became known as a place to get cheap labor. I'm not generalizing since I met my long time clients there who pay very well.    
    
Email Saves
Personally, I think contracts are really good tools to protect both parties from any confusion and future stress especially for big projects. However, I'm pretty sure that more often than not, a lot of freelancers still work without contracts which is why email is very important. ALWAYS COMMUNICATE VIA EMAIL. It doesn't matter if you've talked through the phone, personally or through skype, always make it a point to send an email summarizing what you've talked about and ask if you forgot to include anything. This may not be a formal contract but believe me, being able to go back through your emails will save you from a lot of trouble.
  
Learn to say NO
There will come a time that clients will come all at the same time. Please, don't be a hero. If you think you can only handle 3 clients at a time, then POLITELY talk to the other clients and explain. If you're lucky enough, there will be clients that are willing to wait.
  
Your Workstation
As a freelancer, your main tool (money maker) is your computer/laptop. Treat your machine as an extension of yourself. Take care of it, do regular check-ups and back up your files, back up your files, back up your files. Did I say back up your files? I remember one incident I had when I was in the middle of a website project and my laptop just decided to conk out. I couldn't work at all and had to reformat my laptop. This would be okay if I didn't have a deadline in 2 days. It's a good think I had back ups of my work in my external drive and my dropbox so I just continued working after reformatting. 
  
You Are Your Own Boss
This cover a lot of stuff but I'll try to keep it short and concise. The day you start as a digital worker is the day you become your own boss. That said, all decisions will completely depend on you. There are no more sick leaves to file. Miss work for a day means no income for that day. 
  
Being your own boss will make you realize that any problem is your problem and there's no one else to fix it but you. Learn to accept that there will be problems and learn to keep calm. The last thing you'd want is to have a melt down in the middle of the day.
  
Plan
In any corporation, there are key performance indicators or KPI's that guides you and helps you figure out your role and your goals as an employee. Just like that, as a digital worker, you should be able to plan out and determine your role and goals. You need to find out where work will be coming from in the next 6 months or in a year's time. Plan well and plan for the worst. Plan today, tomorrow, next week, next month and next year.

“Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.”
- Denis Waitley

Being a Freelancer or Digital Worker is slowly beginning to be a good option for a lot of people. It opens a lot of opportunity for growth and, like me, be able to travel while working. You can have a meeting while you're in Barcelona and 5 days later, have another meeting while you're in Amsterdam. The possibilities are endless. 

“In reality, there's more work out there for digital workers than you could possibly imagine. oDesk-Elance represent somewhere between 2-5% of the overall potential marketplace. That's the truth. We're very early in this game; the first inning really. ”

- Damien Darby