When you say employee, you say bureaucracy. When you say freelancer, you say freedom and creativity. This is the general opinion when comparing these two types of work. But are the above statements true? Not necessarily and not 100%. I agree that being part of a company requires doing lots and lots of paperwork and this is necessary because otherwise everything will melt into a big chaos. Being a freelancer looks so much simpler, especially for beginners. It is true, but keep in mind that the more clients you have and the more projects you complete, the more you should pay attention to some details in order to keep things nice and clear. This applies to larger projects such as website design work. So what a freelance web designer should take into consideration are two major issues: the client and the payment.
Better organization of the client – freelancer relationship
When there are so many useful application nowadays, why not make technology your ally and use it in order to make things easier when you are dealing with complex requirement from multiple clients? Such applications are generically called CRM (Client Relations Management). A few examples are Zoho, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs. They will help you to keep notice of past, current and potential clients, of task statuses, of financial activity. You will enjoy a panoramic view of your activity as a website design freelancer, and will help you improve your marketing strategy by collecting all the necessary data. Synchronization of different applications is the key to a global perspective of your work timeline. This is time saving and inspiring; such applications may offer you ideas you would not have thought of or just give you the necessary time to focus on your work.
Apart from Zoho, other successful CRMs are StudioCloud , a desktop application which is able to circumscribe all aspects of your activity, and Doolphy, which focuses on projects and on the tasks emerging from those projects.
Payment methods
It doesn’t make any sense working hard and keeping your business perfectly organized if you don’t collect the money you have earned. Any freelance web designer should be familiar with payment tools such as Freshbook , Square and Paypal.
Freshbooks claims to seriously take the workload off your shoulders when you need to do the tedious task of billing. It helps you track time, send invoices to clients, it supports online payments. There are perhaps millions of website design freelancers using this tool.
Square is useful when needing to accept credit card payments and is appropriate for freelancers who meet their clients in person. You need to take the free reader with you and to attach it to your iPhone or Android smartphone.
Paypal is a classical one, but it is still used by millions of people and it still does the job for you when you want to transfer money.
So, in conclusion, being a freelancer leaves you more movement space and you may not need to use a single piece of paper in order to organize your business or to keep records in folders. On the other hand, you can’t rely only on your memory, otherwise you may lose track of some good amounts of money or not notice great opportunities. If you are involved in website design project, it would almost be ironical not to use technology in your favor and make your work easier.