Or you might want to sell your freelancing business, and the buyer will want to know how you’ve been handling things.

In short, these are the times when you will need to explain what you do to others. Or you may need to tell others what you want them to do. At first, these tasks may leave you at a loss for words. This article will help you get your words back.

The first task in your explaining project will be to figure out exactly what it is you’ll need to explain. Here’s an outline of the three basic functions of a business, with questions to guide your thinking:

1. DO

This is everyone’s favorite. Here you’re describing what you DO for money.

Let’s say that you’re a website designer. You don’t just pull those marvelous designs out of your head and dazzle the clients with them. You probably have some sort of prototyping process. How does it work? Do you create your layout ideas in Photoshop, then save them as JPEGs and post them in your server space for the clients to review? Or do you go straight into the coding and post rough drafts of your ideas?

Then, once you’re past the idea stage, how do you build websites? Are you building them out of HTML pages or are you using a content management system like WordPress or Drupal? Do you have subcontractors working with you on site buildouts? What kind of subcontractors? How do you instruct them?

Then, once the site is done, how do you hand the files off to the client? What sort of client training do you offer? How about service after the sale? Do you maintain websites? Do you offer related services like search engine optimization and website hosting?

Now, I just threw a whole bunch of questions at you, and you’re probably scratching your head, trying to figure out the answers. The good news is that you’ve answered them already. Here’s where you can find the answers:

1. On your website. You may have a page devoted to describing your production process. Or you may have written a client’s guide to working with a WordPress-based website.
2. In your proposals to prospective clients. Proposals are good places to find descriptions of production processes and the service you’ll offer after the sale.
3. In your e-mail and texting exchanges with prospective and actual clients. Those question-and-answer fests are good places to find details on everything I’ve covered above.

2. GET

How do you acquire new clients or drum up repeat business from existing clients?

This is the marketing and sales part of your business. For the purpose of this article, let’s define marketing as what you do to get people to come into your freelancing store. Sales? That’s persuading people to buy what’s on your shelves.

I’ve previously written about what can happen if you pay too much attention to marketing and not enough attention to sales. (Hint: your freelancing business suffers.) So, I’m going to devote most of this section to sales.

Sales consists of two activities:

1. Defining your Ideal Client Profile and figuring out where you can find people who fit this profile.
2. Reaching out to them.

As you may have guessed, a lot of people really enjoy the first activity, because it doesn’t require talking to strangers and asking them for their business. Heck, it’s kind of fun to write a little essay on who your Ideal Client is. And searching online and offline for leads lists? That can add up to hours of not talking to the people who might hire you.

Then there’s that second activity. Reaching out to people. Talk about scary. But using a script will make it a lot less scary. In my own business, I use scripts for making cold calls. Scripts for making warm calls. And I’ve created templates for cold and warm e-mails. I even have a scripted method for answering my telephone.

Scripts come in handy if Introverted You hires a vivacious employee to help you prospect for business. After all, you don’t want Vivacious Vincent to get on the phone and not know what to say. Or when the phone rings and Vincent is closest to it. What would you want him to say in that case?

So, what do you want your business scripts to say?

Now, a word (or two) about marketing:

It can consist of everything from placing advertisements to sending a monthly e-mail newsletter. Any marketing activity provokes a flurry of questions. For example, let’s look at advertising. You can place your ads in media ranging from printed publications to websites. What will those ads say? What will they look like? What do you want people to do after they’ve seen or heard them?

Same goes for your e-mail newsletter. Who will be on your list? What are you going to say? Will you use an HTML newsletter, or are you going to stick with tried-and-true plain text. (One of my friends still uses plain text for her newsletter. And she says it works just fine.)

3. RUN

Now this is a word that gets no respect. Some people even call it “administrivia.” But let the following things go, and watch your business run into the ground.

Accounting: Do you use accounting software? If so, what kind do you use? What sort of functions does it perform for you? Invoicing? If so, what information do you include on your invoices? What do your invoices look like? Can your software generate checks? What do your checks look like? Who do you order them from? What kind of financial reports can you generate with your accounting software? And how do you use those reports?

And, since I mentioned financial reports, I guess I don’t have to tell you that they’re needed for filing taxes. How do you handle that fun-filled task? Are you a DIY kind of tax filer? Or do you use a tax accountant? How do you communicate with your accountant? Do you consult with your accountant at times other than tax season? (I hope you do!)

Administration: That’s right. You the Administrator. That was probably the last thing you aspired to be during your job days. But, take heart. In your freelancing business, there isn’t a lot of administering to do. Unless you need to do some long-range planning. Like writing a business plan so you can get a bank loan or investor capital. Or developing a professional development plan. The word “plan” leads naturally to the next question: What will go into those plans?

Legal: This isn’t the part where you’re going to sue someone. Or (heaven forbid!) be sued.

But even the freest spirited of freelance business has some legalities to comply with. For example, do you live in a city that requires that businesses be licensed? If so, how did you apply for your business license? And how often does it need to be renewed? What’s the fee? And what about professional licensure? Are there certifications and licenses that you need in order to enter or continue in your field? How is this done? What about security clearances? Do you need those? If so, how do you apply and keep them current?

Office and Business Management: Okay, you don’t work in an office anymore. Which means that you’re now your very own office manager. Ever had to purchase equipment for your studio? A telephone or a computer? Or how about office supplies? As Internet-savvy as we like to be, there are times when we still need to send a letter to a client. What does the business stationery (letterhead, envelopes, and business cards) look like? And where do you order it from? And how do you manage all those projects that your business gets involved with? How do you supervise the work of your employees? Or, if you don’t have employees, your subcontractors?

Okay, that’s enough. I’ve asked you quite a few questions. And you’ll probably think of others. It will take time to answer them, but here’s what could happen if you do:

Years ago, I did business with a small accounting firm on the east side of Tucson. This firm documented everything that it did, and I do mean everything. They had quite a thick procedures manual, but no one felt overwhelmed by it. Rather, they regarded it as The Book. They turned to it many times a day.

The Book allowed this firm to run so smoothly that the boss and employees didn’t have to work through the weekend before April 15. (In the United States, April 15 is Tax Day, the federal tax deadline. A lot of accounting firms go flat-out during the last week or two before this date.) Matter of fact, Tax Day at this firm was so relaxed that the boss and her employees came to work in pajamas. And TV cameras would show up to document the occasion.

Now, you may be wondering why I’m referring to this accounting firm in the past tense. It’s because it no longer exists. Boss sold it to a larger firm, and, I’m told, the completeness of The Book helped to increase the sale price. That’s where documenting your business processes can get you.

One of the most difficult parts of freelancing is the tendency of the freelancer to eventually lose joy for the work. You may have come, like me, from a gig that paid well but didn’t fully capitalize on your talents. You decided to start working as a freelancer in order to make money doing what you love. That’s what this is all about, right? Following your passions?

The struggle comes when, as with anything, the shine fades. But you have it extra tough as freelancers because you’re left without any of the protective structure of a formal work environment. This isn’t a salary position. You can’t have a bad day, get nothing done, and make your boss happy by doing twice as much the next day. An off day for you means no billable hours.

What happened? Wasn’t this supposed to be a wild ride toward financial freedom and fame for being an expert in your chosen field? For creatives, especially those who make their living by framing and finishing ideas, the grind of freelance work can slowly rip the joy out of the creative process.

How can you get the joy back? Whether you’ve been freelancing for years or are just starting out, I think you’ll find value in the following tips:

1. Simplify your process

Get back to the basics of your craft. Take away the client-focused “big picture” mentality and focus on the details how you get things done.

• For the web designer, try giving up designing in-browser and spend a week with a notebook and pen. Steep yourself in the world around you and get a feel for the way your design sensibility has developed since you first started. You might even learn something new about yourself as take a break from the big screen.
• For the copywriter, try to spend as much time away from your computer as possible. Perhaps limit yourself to an hour per day of online time. Sure, you won’t be able to fall back on your lightning quick typing skills to get projects out the door at the last minute. But that frenetic pace is part of what’s taken your joy. The idea is to dig down to the process that made you fall in love with your work to begin with. Surely you didn’t start freelancing because you hated what you do!
• For the consultant, try distilling your initial interview process into fewer than 5 questions and spend most of your time listening without trying to prepare an immediate response. It’s tempting to get sucked into constant rapid-fire interactions, especially because they seem so “professional.” Slowing things down and allowing for more robust answers will give you more room for deeper insights and, possibly, a reminder as to why you started doing this in the first place.

2. Change your location

If you can afford to spend the next month working from a villa in Rome, do it! The rest of us will have to content ourselves with working from a different coffee shop or switching coworking spaces. The point of changing your location is to alter the subliminal influences of a place that gain power over time. When you look at your current workspace, do you see a place where numerous late nights and frustrated phone calls take place? Do you sit in your office chair and get that feeling in the back of your mind that you’ve plopped yourself into more of the same old thing?

Dig your way free of the suffocating weight of your current environment and try working in a space that feels “new.”

3. Resurrect an old passion

Perhaps you once played in a band, took pottery classes, or went rock climbing back in the days when you didn’t have clients scheduled back to back? The freelancer’s workday is a blend of work and life like no other. You can use this to your advantage and push joy back into your work by adding joy in another part of your day.

For a creative, improvement in one area will necessarily help with the rest. Picking up that guitar again will hone your sense of rhythm as a copywriter. Taking pottery classes might cure you of your fixation on grunge web designs. Rock climbing and most other physical activities will give you a boost by reducing stress and increasing your stamina.

4. Set short-term goals

Remember when you were a dreamer? Now your work has extended its gnarled tendrils into every part of your life and you’ve stopped dreaming. I don’t have a quick and easy solution to bring your dreams back but I’ve found setting short-term goals to be a powerful way of helping me think more about my future.

When you think about your future, you’ll begin to consider possibilities and hopes that you may have forgotten. Setting short-term goals and reaching them will help you regain joy in your work by reaffirming your ability to use this work you’ve chosen to change your life for the better. For example, you may have dreamed that freelancing would allow you to be debt-free but life is complicated and you’re back scrambling to make minimum payments on your credit cards. A short-term goal in this case would involve paying one of your cards down by an additional $300 this month. Once you’ve planned and achieved that goal, you’ll have confirmation that you can indeed reduce your debt as a freelancer. Nice!

5. Get professional training

Join a professional society, start a professional club in your area, or sign up for classes related to your field. Why? Because iron sharpens iron and the freelancer who knows she has an edge in her field is the least likely one to frown at the idea of doing more good work.

Professional training will also give you another reason to get out of the house and talk to people. Until we start using James Cameron’s expression technology to move the eyebrows on our avatars, we’ll only find the true joy of companionship within range where deodorant matters.

What about you? Have you lost your joy for your craft and later regained it? If so, how did you do it and what can you share to help us find your success? Thanks for sharing!

Get more tips and creative inspiration from Seth Simonds at his blog or hit him up for a follow on Twitter.

“In How to Write Great Copy for the Web, author Donna Spencer will help you start writing content for the web that works! Learn about how writing web copy differs from other forms of writing, and how writing useful, functional and concise copy can both help persuade your readers, and also help with search engine optimization!

Whether it’s for your own site, or for somebody else’s, How to Write Great Copy for the Web will quickly bring you up to speed with some clever strategies that will make you popular with your site’s visitors, or with your clients!”

We know it’s hard to judge a book by its cover, so we’re making the first chapter and the table of contents available to download for anyone who is interested. That way you can decide for yourself if this book is right for you. We think it’s great for any sort of freelancer who wants to write web copy, be they freelancer writers who are new to the web, or web designers whose clients keep asking them to take care of copy—it happens all the time, so it’s a great idea to learn the skill and make some money out of it!

• Download the first chapter here.
• Get your discount by signing up for the Rockin’ List here.
• Purchase How to Write Great Copy for the Web here.

One of the nicest things about freelancing is that you decide when to give yourself a raise. If you feel like you’re doing a great job, developing experience and becoming hotter property, you don’t need to wait for your boss to notice. You can give yourself a raise, and if your clients agree with your assessment, you’ll get it.

As a freelancer, you can give yourself a raise by increasing your hourly or per-project rates. This part is simple, but setting up the right preconditions for the change is a trickier process. How can you raise your rates while making sure you still get plenty of work?

Throughout this post, there are a few things I want you to remember:

1. There is zero agreement amongst both freelancers and clients about how much their work is worth. I’ve received quotes varying between $250 and $2,000 in response to exactly the same job ad, posted on the FreelanceSwitch Jobs Board. It’s clear that across the dozens of applicants, no two freelancers
   agreed on what their service was worth!
2. For any given service, one prospective client could have a budget of $500, and another a budget of $5,000, and everything in between. In many ways, it’s useful to think of your hourly rate as the price of a product. Some people will never pay more than $100 for a pair of shoes, while others regularly spend $500. The cheaper pair of shoes may be just as good quality as the more expensive pair, but in the eyes of the customer, the perceived value is different.
3. Raising your rates is fair practice. When a prospect accepts your pricing and becomes your client, they are accepting that the value you will outweighs your rates, allowing them to turn a profit on your work. If they didn’t believe this, they would have sought out a cheaper freelancer.
4. The market should set your rates. Your perception of your own value to clients is a guesstimate unless you test it. If you’ve never experimented with different rates, how do you know that your clients don’t feel like you’re undervaluing your services? They certainly won’t be the ones to tell you!

When to Give Yourself a Raise

One situation where you should always try raising your rates is when you are unable to meet the demand for your services. If you have enough clients to keep you busy 50 hours of the week – and you only want to work 35 – it’s time to incrementally raise your rates until supply and demand equalize again.

Another sign that you might be charging too little is if nobody ever mentions your rates as a sticking point. At the very least, you should occasionally have clients try to negotiate you down in price, but still choose to work with you even if you don’t budge. The saying “You can’t please everybody” is true—and if you’re pleasing everyone, something is probably wrong with your rates.

If you’re doing lots of work each week, are being paid for it, and still struggle to make ends meet, you may find you are charging too little. In the developed world it would be considered very unusual for a skilled freelancer to charge less than $25 an hour. After all, you’re not flipping burgers, or doing a job the average person could be trained to do in a week. You are a skilled worker and deserve to be compensated as such.

Another time to think about a rate rise is if you’re simply better than you were at the time you first set your rates. If you’ve been working 30+ hours a week in your freelance field for a year, you can’t help but have become more skilled than you were when you began. For better results, clients should expect to pay more, and you should expect to charge more.

There are also some situations where raising your rates might be a good idea even when your roster of clients isn’t full. While some freelance services—like HTML & CSS markup/coding—are in widespread demand, others—like programming in Ruby on Rails—are more specialized. There may not be a large enough pool of prospective clients to keep your hands full for 35 hours a week, but as a specialist, trying to attract more clients may not be the best way to increase your income. Instead, remember that your services are rare, and as such, can command higher rates.

Opposite to the situations described above, there are circumstances where you probably shouldn’t meddle with your rates:

In these situations you should stick with what’s working until you have a more solid base from which to experiment.

An Approach to Testing

My philosophy for finding your current ideal price-point is to raise your rates in small increments on a per-client basis until you find your sweet spot. The second half of the strategy is to make sure you receive feedback on your rates. This is so you can clearly observe how your rates are affecting your business.

If you display your rates publicly, in the Services area of your website or blog, clients have the opportunity to evaluate them in private. Ten people may consider your services and reject them on the basis of price without you ever knowing. This can be a great time-saver when you’ve settled on your rates and are confident in them — these are all people who may have otherwise requested a quote, only to reject it after they saw the bottom line. But the situation changes when you are trying to re-evaluate your rates. You want your client’s decision-making process to be open to you. This is why you should consider removing public pricing from your site during this phase, and discussing prices only after prospects contact you.

If you’ve put effort into an email exchange, or into preparing a quote, most prospects will take the time to write a response, even if they decide your service isn’t right for them. And most of the time, they will state a reason for deciding not to hire you. Keeping track of these reasons will be invaluable when trying to determine your current
‘sweet spot’ rates.

Giving Yourself a Raise

If you’ve decided to re-evaluate your rates and have made sure you’re in a good position to do so, here’s how to begin: the next time a new prospect inquires about your services, add $5 to your previously quoted hourly rate. If you are someone who charges by the project, increase your project rate by 10%. Try the same thing for the next prospect, and the next prospect, and the next.

Do you notice a change?

If you find that more people are knocking you back on the basis of price, to the point where you aren’t able to work as many hours as you like, you may need to return to your earlier, more successful rates, and work on building up the value of your services before trying again. However, if you find that you are converting at the same rate, and being hired just as much, this suggests that the market has accepted your new rate.

Because this process is based on small incremental increases, you can continue to repeat the process until you finally feel the market pushing back, telling you that you’ve gone a little too far. At that point, pull back one notch to your last successful price-point. For now, this is your current sweet spot. In future, when you feel you’ve once again increased the value of what you provide, you can attempt to advance further if you feel confident doing so.

Value-adding Can Take it Further

Earlier, I talked about how clients will measure your rates against their perception of the value you will provide them. By increasing this perception of value, you may be able to raise your rates further. Here are some ways you can add more value to your services:

Increase your skill. The most obvious method to start: simply get better at what you do. Learn new techniques, develop unique methods of working, and refine your style. More impressive work justifies more impressive rates.

Become better at expressing the benefits. This relates to the way you talk about and describe your service. If you can become better at the way you communicate the benefits of what you do, clients will see it as more valuable. Compare:

I write highly polished blog articles using impeccable spelling and grammar.

to…

My articles are highly optimized for StumbleUpon traffic, and have the potential to attract tens of thousands of visitors to your blog.

Both are important and desirable qualities, but the latter seems more unique and valuable.

By describing the benefits differently you might find clients are all of a sudden willing to pay more for your work, even though the final product is the same. The perceived value is different.

Create a perception of scarcity. People often associate scarcity and exclusivity with quality. Even something as simple as adding the following sentence to your service page can create a perception of scarcity:

Please be aware that, due to high levels of demand, there may be a waiting list for this service.

If you ever find yourself swamped with work and need to stop accepting new clients for a while, avoid taking your Service page down. Instead, add a notice letting prospects know how busy you are:

Due to overwhelming demand, this service is temporarily unavailable. Please contact me if you’d like to be notified when it re-opens.

Earn more prestige. Become well known enough for what you do and people will value you on much more than the apparent face-value of your work. People know that experts are always pricey, but usually worth it. If you can be truly perceived as an industry leader, you can probably charge your dream rates — and then some!

Tap into hot trends. A few years ago, a relatively new freelance skill emerged — SEO copywriting, in other words, the ability to write persuasive sales copy that would also rank in the search engines. Though any person with copywriting skill and a basic knowledge of SEO fundamentals can perform SEO copywriting, for a while it had a much higher price tag than ordinary SEO, because many small business owners were desperate to tap into the benefits. By being flexible enough to tweak their service to tap into a hot trend, copywriters were able to significantly raise their rates.

A Final Word

Adjusting your pricing is a vital strategy to increase your profits over time, but it shouldn’t be your only strategy. Otherwise, you’ll reach a point where it’s not working
as effectively anymore. For example:

• There may come a point where, to raise your rates any higher, you may need to start working with a different kind of client — say, big businesses with big budgets. However, these kinds of organizations often prefer to work with trusted firms rather than individual freelancers. Eventually you may reach a point where your rates can’t increase any higher without fundamentally changing the structure of your business.
• In the future, you may wish to work fewer hours to focus on other areas of your life that need attention. Perhaps you’ll have a child—or another child—or decide to go back to school, or write a novel, or go surfing six months out of the year. Who knows? Either way, regardless of what your rates are, cutting your hours by 10 or 20 a week will result in a significant pay cut. If you want to maintain your current standard of living, you’ll need to get creative.

In the rest of the chapter, I teach you how to create low-maintenance partnerships you can profit from, while doing very little extra work. You’ll also learn how to add new products and services to your business that eventually remove you from the equation — except when it’s time to collect your earnings!

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As a freelancer, I’ve tackled plenty of projects. Not all have been enjoyable, naturally, but I’ve been able to keep a steady flow of work. I don’t think every job has to be perfect, and as long as I’m making good money and maintaining my freedom, I’m generally satisfied with my career.

While I’ve worked regularly for some of the same clients, I have never had to work on one project that required multiple weeks of single-client focus. It’s a totally different beast. Not only can it be unpleasant, but it can uproot your whole vibe.

Obviously when you put “all of your eggs in one basket,” so to say, it’s not the ideal situation for most freelancers. Freelancers like to pick and choose, and the thing I love about being a solopreneur is being able to wrap up a project and kiss it goodbye when I’m not enjoying it. Most situations are temporary, and I have a say in who I work for. Of course there are initiatives that I enjoy but there’s no doubt that a huge advantage to freelancing is being able to finish a project and never have to look back on the work or the client.

In this case, I think there are two kinds of freelancers: Those that take on short-term gigs and focus solely on those. That can be lucrative, and often involves relying on a recruiter or agencies to find ongoing jobs. In my case, I am a full-time freelancer that takes on a mix of one-time jobs. I also have several clients that need ongoing work, and also hold down a very flexible part-time job. This blend of arrangements enables me to consistently pay the bills and live comfortably. So if you work strictly for agencies, taking on a long-term job for one client isn’t exactly dangerous–it can be great. But if you’re making a living off of several clients and having to constantly secure customers, and you take on one long-term job for a single client, it can hurt your business.

There are many issues that came up for me as I’ve been powering through the last several weeks. And I always try to learn from my experiences–and share those experiences with you–so here goes:

No Time for Marketing

It’s been hard to make time to outreach, and not only does that have the potential to hurt my business, but it wears on me emotionally. When you can’t plant seeds and you are the kind of freelancer who likes unveiling new opportunities, it hampers the feeling that you are spreading your wings and flying.

Instead, I’ve worried that I’m not lining up new jobs and ruining my business–but really, I know myself well enough to know that’s just an old fear I had from the beginning of my career as a contractor. In this case, it’s okay for me to take a break from marketing, because I haven’t stopped all efforts. I’m cutting down for now and I’m stable enough to step back from my normal marketing agenda. But I know it is temporary. Beginning freelancers may not be able to do this and ceasing on marketing could be devastating. Assess your own situation first before you take on a one-client gig that will go for a few weeks.

Perpetual Fretting

In addition to fearing that I’m not securing new work, paranoia can increase in other ways. Having hit a few snags communicating with the client, I couldn’t just throw in the towel. (First, I’m not a quitter. Second, the project is for awe-inspiring pay and working for a well-known company–a huge plus for any copywriter.)

The client and myself worked through some initial issues, especially in the communication arena, and while I would normally do that with any client because I like to see things through, I worried that the tension could hurt our relationship in the long run. The client is an agency that gives me regular work, so anytime I have to stand up to them or we have to go back and forth on project terms, I worry about losing future gigs. But this was a huge client of theirs they entrusted me with, so I wanted to make sure not to disappoint while standing my ground. Still, when there was some tension I felt very trapped. So I took many deep breaths, resolved the issues, and am now coasting through to the finish line. I trust in the end this client will use me again because they have in the past–despite issues. They know I’m a hard worker and there is back-and-forth with any employee.

Usually after I have some tension with a client, the project wraps up, we settle back into separate corners and meet up again refreshed and ready to work. The beginning of the project included a few bumps in the road regarding setting deadlines and settling on fees, and while they are settled up now, it was nerve wracking at first. But you can’t expect things to go perfectly, and you can’t blow tension out of proportion–negotiation is part of the project process.

Deadlines Galore

For this particular project, it was broken into several different deadlines. So an advantage to giving all my attention to this client has been that I only have to focus on their deadlines. There’s a plus. It’s nice to be able to focus on one thing instead of multi-tasking all the time. If you work for an agency on short-term projects, this is a huge advantage. For freelancers that rely on multiple clients, it’s nice to focus on deadlines from one client, but it’s not as feasible.

Maintaining Other Relationships

Even when you work on one project at a time with one client, you still have to communicate with existing clients and make time to respond to potential customer inquiries. While I haven’t had time to get out and establish new clients, my business thrives on several ongoing partnerships, including that part-time job I mentioned. I couldn’t just turn that off, though I could minimize other incoming work. Still, I’ve had to multi-task to take on other jobs without taking on too much. I ducked in to let the part-time job know that I needed less work for the next few weeks but let them know how much I could handle.

I firmly believe in having several ongoing jobs for any freelance business–waiting on individual projects to come in is too financially risky, especially if you have a lot of fiscal pressures. So even though it would be nice to focus on my big project, I had to make time to at least let others clients know that I could get back to them in a few weeks, or that I had time to take on a quick job. Maintaining communication and being honest is key when you have other clients. You can’t just turn off when you have a huge, ongoing task at hand. You want to be available but you don’t want to take on too much work and slam yourself at the same time. It’s a balancing act like everything in the contractor world.

I guess the point in all of this is that it’s easy to see the dollar signs when you are presented with a huge project. But you have to consider if it’s right for you and your business, especially where you are now as a contractor. For me, this was a huge undertaking. But now that I know how to manage a persistent project–and all is well with the client–I would do it again in a heartbeat. But first, I need a week to breathe. Maybe four.

As a freelancer, you may find yourself either a) too busy or b) too clueless to handle your own marketing. This happens more often than you might think, and even some excellent freelancers with a strong reputation aren’t doing a very good job at marketing.

But you, you’re smarter than that. And you realize you should get some help to rev up your business and take it to the next level. So you start looking for a marketing expert to give you some advice and counsel, and you find what you think is the perfect person for you.

Someone who’s savvy and experienced. Someone who understands your creative needs and your lifestyle. Someone who’s had a lot of success getting other businesses the attention they need.

Someone who, a month into your working relationship, is driving you up a tree.

It’s inevitable. You’re two talented people with strong opinions about how you should present yourself. The marketer thinks he’s right because he’s the expert. You think you’re right because you’re you. And it feels like you can’t agree on anything, from your brand image to your web copy to what to put on your business cards.

Here’s how to work with a marketer without losing your cool, so you can get on with the important stuff – getting the word out to new clients that there’s a fantastic freelancer in town.

Don’t Get Locked In

One of the most common problems freelancers have when working with a marketer is getting way too precise about what they want.

Most of you reading this are either designers or copywriters, and you feel like you have a pretty good idea on how to create the basic components of a brand that’s marketable. This is what you do for other people every day, after all.

Unfortunately, when you’ve already decided on the layout of your website and the look it needs to have and the tagline you want to use, you don’t give the marketing expert a lot of room to work. And that person needs that room to come up with new ideas that are probably more effective than yours.

I know. That bites. But think about it a minute: you’re a creative artist. Marketing isn’t your thing.

Instead of locking yourself into your ideas right off the bat, decide what you want in abstract terms. Think about what you want to accomplish with your marketing. Think about the type of person you want to work with, and what clients you get along best with. Think about what sort of person you are, so the expert can craft a brand that suits you.

But let the rest go. You need to give marketing experts the space to be creative in their own area of expertise so they can get you the results you want. And they can’t do that if you’ve boxed them into what you think is best for you.

Don’t Be a Pushover

While you don’t want to dig your heels in and completely ruin the marketer’s ability to create great new concepts for your freelance business, you also don’t want to be a pushover. If you absolutely hate the ideas the marketer comes up with, say so – and say so quickly.

Usually when you hate those ideas, it’s because the marketer didn’t really understand what you want. It’s time to go back to the original conversation and reiterate what you do want, who you are, and what impression you want to give to your clients.

It often helps the marketer immensely if you can demonstrate exactly why his ideas won’t work for you. Concrete examples of what works for you and what isn’t lets the marketing expert get a stronger grasp on your needs, and he’s much more likely to come back with better ideas that fit you more.

For example, you can point to a particular tagline and say, “Look, I’m an easygoing, casual sort of person, and this makes me sound like a guy who lives and breathes numbers and results. I don’t think that fits with who I am.”

Don’t let the expert walk all over you. Many might insist that you that you have to go along with their idea, because this is what will sell. That’s all well and good, but if you don’t feel that you can back that up, then it’s not going to work. Stand firm if you’re uncomfortable and ask for new concepts to work with.

And if the marketer won’t back down, find a new one.

Be Willing to Walk

Sometimes you and the marketer just aren’t a good fit for one another. It happens. That person may just not be able to get a good vision on what you’re looking for, or his skills may not be developed enough to deliver a brilliant new concept for what you need.

You can walk away. It’s allowed. It’s okay. As a freelancer, you’ve been on the other side of this equation. Freelancers inevitably get clients who they just can’t satisfy, no matter how hard they try. So you know, personally, that not being a good fit isn’t a measure of how skilled you are at your job.

It’s just that you couldn’t get your visions to mesh.

Be polite when you’re parting ways. This isn’t a judgment on the marketing expert for not doing a good job. If you know that person tried their best, be sympathetic. It didn’t work out, and you’re going to work with someone else, but it’s not a good idea to burn bridges behind you.

You never know – that marketing expert may be looking for someone just like you for their next client’s campaign.

Go out and try again. It’s worth it to find a marketer who gets you and is capable of finding just the right way to sell you to new clients. Be willing to put in the time and money to find the right fit, because it really will pay off in the end.

It’s worth all those new clients, isn’t it?

About the Author: For more tips on how to get the most out of your freelance business, check out James Chartrand’s blog at Men with Pens, where you’ll discover on-target advice that helps you get ahead of the game.

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There are two basic types of motivation: intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation comes from the feeling of self-achievement inherent in the task or project achieved, i.e. solving a puzzle, completing a school assignment, or finally publishing that website you were working on for a client.

Extrinsic motivation is the reward you get from others – or outside “forces”. This includes money and other financial or tangible rewards, such as a free vacation for achieving your sales targets, a trophy for winning first place at the Olympics, or even the crowd cheering as you overtake car #2 in the last stretch of the race. This explains the “home team advantage” methodology.

Extrinsic motivation (namely money) is often the primary basis for our motivation. Everyone needs money, and wants as much of it as possible. That’s no secret. However, I believe the feeling of self achievement is equally important when it comes to staying motivated.

When you’ve finished the design work for a client, what feels better? Getting paid or seeing your client smile, succeed, and receive brand recognition partly due to your efforts? If you picked getting paid, try thinking about it this way:

A small, startup company seeks your help in setting up their identity (logo, business card, website, etc.). The company is completely unknown but happens to take off. All of a sudden the company is everywhere – the NY Times, TechCrunch, CNN, a trending topic on Twitter, you name it.

Do you still feel the same? Okay, that might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but hopefully my point was made.

But what about the money?

There are many ways that you can use money and your personal financial status to keep yourself motivated. Here are a few ideas:

• Reward yourself: decide on an amount (that doesn’t cut into your bill paying or savings) and reward yourself after a job well done. Of course you don’t want to spend every hard penny you’ve earned on your favourite hobby, but if it’s all work and no play you’ll get burnt out. Reward yourself as a reminder of what you’re working towards.

• Financial status: do you want to put a down payment on your own place in 2 years? Pay off the house in 7? Have children and send them to private school? Remind yourself how much money you need to earn each month in order to support your desired lifestyle. If you’re not quite there yet figure out the steps needed to get there and write them down.

• It takes money to make money: do you have any business plans that require startup capital you don’t currently have? Do you plan to buy and rent properties? Invest? These are other good ways to remind yourself to keep at it.

What else?

Networking. It’s easy to meet other people in your industry on the internet these days (especially if you’re a designer). If you don’t already have a blog, consider starting one. Sign up for Twitter and get out there! Meeting other people in your line of work helps you to learn the language and communication styles that are effective in your industry.

If you know a lot of designers, for instance, they can refer clients to you when they’re overbooked, or when a client requires something beyond their expertise.

It’s also a good idea to try to network in person. It’s refreshing to get out of your home or office and meet people face to face. People will often share more in person than they will on their blog or via Twitter. Escaping your workstation every once in a while will give you that added fuel you need to move forward when you return from your mid-day vacation.

When all else fails, I tend to go on a “success story” binge. Take an hour to watch a few TED Talks, read a few articles about people on the Forbes 400 list, or poke around the Small Business Success Stories page on BusinessWeek.

Stay motivated – and if you can’t, try something new.