As a freelancer, making deadlines is a crucial part of building relationships with clients. Use these tips to organize and stay on top of your projects.
When you’re a freelancer, making deadlines and staying organized is critical for success. But, freelance deadlines can be sporadic depending on how many clients you have at any given time. Being successful and maintaining a great client network is more than just delivering amazing work. It means the entire experience of working with you was a success.
A pivotal part of maintaining your reputation as someone awesome to work with is meeting the deadlines you agreed on with your client. When contributing to Shutterstock, there isn’t any specific deadlines for submitting work. Instead, it’s important to stay on top on providing great content at the right times. Following the Shot List is a great example of creating and delivering timely stock work.
In this article we’re sharing ten tips on how to make deadlines and stay organized as a freelance creative.
Tip #1: Making deadlines should be a priority
Deadlines aren’t optional. These are contractual obligations you agree on with a client. So, you need to care about them. Be serious about making your deadlines, and prioritize your deadlines. Making a deadline is the first step in building a positive relationship with a client.
Tip #2: Communicate with your clients
Things happen. But, if you and a client are in agreement on a specific deadline, make sure that you give the client as much notice as possible to adjust expectations if something happens that causes you to miss a deadline.
As a freelancer trying to stay organized, it’s important to maintain an open line of communication with the clients who hire you. Stay in touch and maintain an open and transparent dialogue.
Tip #3: Don’t procrastinate
You may receive projects that have a deadline that’s weeks away.
Don’t procrastinate. Maintain a sense of urgency from the moment you receive a project, or you’ll find yourself with a deadline two days away and in a panic that you haven’t started the project. Start tackling it from the moment you receive it.
Tip #4: Pad your deadline with extra time
Don’t leave things to the last minute. Give a cushion to the day you need to deliver. By striving to make a deadline that’s in advance of the actual deadline, you give yourself breathing room if something goes wrong.
Tip #5: Break down your tasks into steps
By breaking down the tasks you need into steps, you can start tackling it and minimizing the workload as you go. Give an estimate of how much time it will take you to do each step and write a list. Then check off everything you complete as you go. It will feel much more gratifying than trying to tackle the project as one giant piece.
Tip #6: Don’t commit to unachievable deadlines
As freelancers, one of the biggest things that causes us to miss deadlines is over-promising and not delivering. By taking on too many projects with similar deadline dates, you overwhelm yourself. Learn to say no if you can’t commit to a project fully. After all, there will be other ones in the future.
Tip #7: Learn from your mistakes
If you miss a deadline, analyze what went wrong and ensure it doesn’t happen again. Things go wrong, and situations arise that sometimes are out of your control. Be aware of what caused that missed deadline to happen, and avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
Tip #8: Stay organized
People work in different ways, and they also organize themselves using different techniques. Use whatever technique works best for you to help you stay organized.
The easiest way we’ve found? Your cell phone has a calendar, so you’ll always have it on you. Put deadlines into your calendar, and set up notifications so you ensure you make each deadline.
Tip #9: Be your own boss
By using the above tips and picking the best organizational method that works for you, you become your own time manager for each project. Hold yourself accountable to your responsibilities. If you have multiple projects, rank them by their deadlines, and then prioritize them even further through what logistics you need to do to make the project a success.
Use scheduling and productivity tools to manage your workload, and be the boss of your own work. Because no one is going to do it for you.
Tip #10: If all else fails, drop everything and get it done
Despite your many pre-planned efforts to make deadlines, sometimes you just have to get it done. Whether or not you underestimated the amount of work a project ended up taking, or a last minute change caused everything to crash, sometimes you just need to put in the time.
Ideally, you don’t want to have to get to this point. By working with the client closely and managing their expectations, pre-plan so things don’t get crunched and so everyone ends up happy with the end result.
Missing deadlines can put your reputation and relationship with clients at risk. Providing awesome, quality content is only one part of your obligations. Making your deadlines is another. Giving each client and projects a great experience working with you has the potential to lead to new opportunities, and referrals, so make your deadlines count.
This article was originally published on Shutterstock Custom. Featured image by Nadia Grapes
Looking for more freelance tips? Check out these articles:
- Creating Inspirational Photographs in 2020
- 11 Rules All Successful Editorial Photographers Follow
- Earn Money Referring Customers with This Special Promo
- Using Shutterstock’s Shot List to Plan your Upcoming Photoshoots
- How to Add Freelance Work to Your Resume