10 new year resolutions a freelancer can make that aren’t stupid or idiotic and it is not for the sake of making a new year resolution either
Someone is going to the gym and others will eat more at home. Everyone around you is making new year resolutions. As a freelancer and you don’t want to be making these idiotic new year resolutions that go down the drain after a week.
So what new year resolutions you can make that aren’t stupid or idiotic and isn’t for the sake of making a new year resolution either.
So here are ten new year resolutions for freelancers that can promise to themselves to them a better freelancer.
1. Connect with Fellow Freelancers
As an individual freelancer, you are working alone from home. However, it doesn’t need to remain like that forever.
Have a new year’s resolution to find someone who can complement what you would do. Connect with other freelancers and try to find synergies in the services you provide. The new year can be an excellent time to see beautiful people to form a team.
It is not all about your outsourcing. The benefits can be mutual, where you can find more work from other fellow freelancers as well.
It can open up many avenues when you are ready to synergies with other freelancers and build a team.
2. Increase Rates
One of the best new year resolutions as a freelancer is to increase your hourly rates and make more money in the coming year.
If you have enough work coming your way, it makes sense to be increasing your rates, and the new year can be the best time to raise your rates.
If you aren’t sure if you should be increasing your rates or not, raise prices for new clients and let old clients pay the old rates. Once you have enough new clients paying higher rates, you can ask former clients to increase rates.
If you aren’t ready to increase rates, add additional services to make more money freelancing or use these 9 Ways to Make More Money Without Raising Rates.
3. Learn New Stuff
Ideally, you shouldn’t wait for a calendar change to learn new stuff, but the new year can be an excellent time to learn something new for self-improvement.
Moreover, in the new year, clients are on vacation mode as well. It provides some time for me to catch up as well.
So, I add courses to my Udemy account often to make sure I am learning something new.
Take new year’s first few days as an opportunity to complete some courses that you always wanted to learn.
4. Find Better Clients
If you do what you have been doing, you will get the results that you have obtained.
So if you want to improve client’s you have to think out of the box and do things differently.
- As a developer, if you are fetching clients only via Upwork, start a programming blog.
- If you use only one or two freelancing sites, you may want to look out on other sites as well.
Experiment with new ways to find better-paying clients.
5. Outsource
There is a limit to the amount of work you can do. Outsourcing is a necessity of individual freelancers to grow beyond a point.
Moreover, if you are good at doing something doesn’t mean you should be doing it. Freelancing is an individual’s work, but it doesn’t mean everything has to be done by the individual himself.
I am a web developer, but then I am not good at making pixel-perfect designs. So I always outsource it to others.
If you aren’t outsourcing, you should have that as a plan in the new years for sure.
Look what can be outsourced and find new clients where you don’t need to work personally.
6. Be More Productive
Freelancers should always try to be more productive, and the new year can be an excellent time to make a resolution to be more productive in everything he or she does.
Avoid time killers like social media or over checking emails.
Try to work in slots and have a time-based goal when you want to complete a task and achieve the goal.
If you don’t be active in managing your time, you will be reactive to emails from the client.
7. Build an Individual Brand
Branding is an essential aspect of marketing, and there can be nothing more important than building a personal brand for a freelancer.
Work towards building your brand as a freelancer, and it is the best new year resolutions that anyone can take.
8. Reduce Debt
If you ask me what I do, I hate the most, and it will always be debt.
As an investor, I know it is the sole reason thousands of companies have gone bankrupts. Even the best of the companies found it tough to survive debt.
If you have a debt, take a resolution to reduce it bit by bit every month. Even if bank charges fees for prepayment, you still should be fine to pay the charges and pre-pay. In most cases, the charges will be a fraction of what you may anyway pay as interest.
The best way to reduce debt is to borrow money from a family member and pay off the amount. Slowly over time, pay the money from whom you have borrowed it.
If you don’t want to take the money from family members, ask friends. A few months of help from a friend can help you save a lot of money you may pay as an interest to the bank.
Lastly, if you can’t take from friends, transfer the loan to a secured loan to reduce the interest percentage and save on the interest cost. It can help you repay the loan faster.
9. Improve Client Service
Less communication makes clients very jittery in the outsourcing world, and I realized this very early.
So I provide a speedy turnaround time to clients where I don’t take more than 24 hours on weekdays to respond.
Better served clients can help you with references, feedback, and long term contracts.
As a freelancer, you are a service provider. Can you find ways to improve the quality of services?
If yes, every freelancer should take it as a new year resolution to provide high quality and better services to each of their existing as well as new clients.
10. Take a Vacation
Every freelancer should take a couple of weeks of vacation every year. However, when you are taking up new year resolutions, the time for a vacation is long-gone. However, it doesn’t mean one can’t plan the next vacation well in advance.
There can be no better time than planning it as a new year resolution.
Vacations can be very energizing, but planning a vacation can be energizing as well. Moreover, when you are planning a holiday well in advance, it can help you get better deals as well as take plan an exotic vacation.
