Being a freelancer means a lot of freedom to plan your own days at work, but it also does require discipline and planning. Being your own boss, you need to be good at making the right rules to succeed. Most of these tips sound just like common sense, but actually remembering everything when it’s needed isn’t necessarily as easy as you would think.

Different rules work for different people. Having worked as a freelancer on and off for over ten years, I’ve created this list of my best tips on how to succeed. Maybe you already use several of these or versions of them, great! Hopefully you will also find a tip or three that can help you to succeed in what you do! : )

Freelancer positions have many of the perks that 9-5’ers dream of – flexible hours, locations and the option to pick and choose what work is most interesting.

We’ve scoured the Internet to bring you – the freelancer – the top 15 online essentials for staying organized, clean and most importantly, sane.

Most remote workers don’t have an “IT Guy” or an assistant on hand, so it’s important to be sharp and self-reliant when it comes to the basics. Here’s a list to help you evaluate and hone your own skills – let us know in the comments if we’ve overlooked any skills that you’ve found indispensable!

At all stages in the freelancer’s career it is essential to manage finances to get the most out of self-employment. For people with creative leanings, finances and accounting may seem like daunting aspects of becoming one’s own boss. Below are simple steps, including useful applications and information resources, to help freelancers manage finances and increase profit and pleasure.

I was watching Mythbusters on TV the other night, where  Jamie mentioned that you could actually think of a myth for every single thing in the world, My thoughts immediately turned to Freelancing. After quite a bit of thought I compiled a list of 5 Freelance Myths Busted straight from the start. Let’s not lunge around to much and get straight to business.

Freelance designers will probably spend more time in their home office than anywhere else. Having a comfortable office that is conducive to work is essential in order to keep your working hours pleasant and productive.

In this post we’ll look at some things that you can do to make your home office more comfortable and more enjoyable to spend those working hours. Obviously, some home offices come with certain limitations (such as the area of the house or the size of the space), but every situation could be improved in some way by the things in this list.

For freelancers, there’s a direct correlation between how many hours you work and how much money you make. Increasing your income can be tough because there are only 24 hours in any given day and most of us have to do things like sleep and spend time with our family at some point. Even when we’re working, we have to spend hours on administrative tasks that we’re not actually getting paid for. There are a few ways to increase the number of hours you can devote to paying work — without cutting the number of hours you sleep each night. Some require a little up front investment of time, but a few extra hours can be worth it.

Credibility on the web is not easily earned. To be a successful designer, you need people to recognize you as skilled, competent and professional. When someone needs something designed they turn to you because you’ve proven yourself to them as capable and reliable. That’s web cred! Once you’ve established yourself, life as a designer starts to get easier. Clients will start rolling in and your days of spec work and begging for projects will be over. Getting to that point, however, is no easy task. Being recognized by your peers and potential/current clients as an authority on design takes a lot of hard work, time and often luck. Here are some tips to put your name out there and earn some legitimate Web Cred.

Well after doing a post called ( Guide to landing a design job ) I decided create this post 4 Tips to becoming a good freelancer. With millions of Graphic designers, web designers, and developers, you should know by now it’s a challenging field. I will be giving you 4 tips to help you get started on the right path to build your list of clients. Some of these tips you will learn  is how to make the right portfolio to show potential clients and also, what to ask or not ask in the first meeting, when to get started on designs and how long before showing the client, how to go about making changes, and also how to bill the client and always ending the job on a happy note.

Thousands of service buyers complain of poor quality work from freelancers and design agencies every year; often to the point that reputations are ruined and the design industry as a whole suffers. From disappearing service providers to fly-by-night scam artists, the online world is packed with opportunities for things to go wrong, and it’s really not surprising that so many online and offline entrepreneurs have a bad impression of freelancers and one-off designers.