Tips for WFH/ Freelance?

[Eeve]

I know I'm late to the party, but during the pandemic I've been at work the whole way through (NHS role). However, I've just handed in my notice (woo-hoo!) and 12 weeks from now I will primarily be working from home in a self-employed/ freelance capacity.

What are your top-tips to make this successful??

There are some good FB groups that will give you a lot of support. Freelancing Females is a good one. Watch out for groups that are overrun with people selling their wares, and look for groups that are kind. (I joined one web design group and the answers were so dismissive and unhelpful that I soon left.) They're good to find people to chat to online and set up support systems.

Set up good systems. Bill every month. Track your expenses. Use a bookkeeping system to keep track of things. If you're billing by time, use a system like Toggl to carefully track it.

Consider doing trades with people initially to build up a portfolio.

@ZZTopGuitarSolo thanks for these ideas, really useful. I'm no longer on Facebook so unfortunately I can't access that!

Find a way of switching off from work - its only too easy to get your boundaries blurred. Set up a separate 'work' email, and be scrupulous about not looking at it in the weekend, and have a room (or an area of a room) which is only used for work and which you "leave" at the end of the working day. Get on linkedin and keep your entry up to date - 99% of the time it will be no use at all but at some point someone will want to find you and it will help. Consider a website and keep it up to date. When the world returns to normal try and get out and about as much as possible - getting your face known in your particular industry/locality is really important.

Good advice from MaudesMum there. I'd add that it's very useful to have a separate bank account for your business. It makes tracking everything so much easier.

Also agree on the work email, website and LinkedIn. Periodically someone will ask me to send them examples of work I've done, and I just refer them to my website.

Depending on what business you're in, a business FB page can also be useful.