Top Tips for Freelancing While Seeing the World

The great thing about being a freelancer is that you can do it from anywhere. As long as you have a secure internet connection and a safe place to work, you’re good to go.

It’s still best to work from home or from an office, as you need the comfort, the amenities, and the lack of distractions. However, it’s technically possible to work while you’re on vacation and many freelancers try to juggle their clients and contracts while traveling the world.

It’s not easy, but it’s possible. Just make sure you follow the steps below.

Save Up Some Money

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The lack of job security is the biggest issue with freelancing. When you’re on vacation you’ll be spending a lot of money and devoting most of your time to traveling and sightseeing.

The best-case scenario is that you’ll only spend what you make while traveling and can easily balance vacationing and working. The worst-case scenario is that you’ll spend every cent you have and will need to miss days of sightseeing just to work and keep the coffers full.

Unless you’re earning a massive hourly wage and can guarantee ongoing contracts, you’ll need to have a lot of money saved up before you can leave.

Plan for the worst — you never know how things will turn out.

Get Long-Term Clients and Book Ahead

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A friend of mine was once convinced that he could freelance while traveling Europe. He’d only been doing it for a year and as he was making twice as much cash as ever before, he wanted to treat his partner to stays in Paris, Berlin, London, and a few other dream destinations.

He had it all worked out. He was going to contact clients before and after his flights, do a little work upon arriving, and then work for 3 hours in the hotel at the end of the day.

Four weeks later he returned broke, frustrated, and tired. He’d passed an entire month spending money he didn’t have, struggling to find work, and getting just 3 hours of sleep per night during the final week.

As a freelancer, there are no guarantees that you will get work and if you’re telling prospective clients,?“I can only work 3 hours a day and will only be contactable at night”,?they’ll probably give the job to someone else.

The only way around this is to build up a strong foundation of trusted long-term clients and make sure you have some big contracts. That way, you can give your clients a realistic deadline, work at your leisure, and plan your vacation accordingly.

In the case of my friend, he spent most of his time trying to get work, being turned down for new contracts, and then finally getting a job on the basis that he worked 7 to 8 hours a day. As a new freelancer, you need to make those allowances to keep your clients happy. When you’re experienced, you have a little more freedom.

Get Help From Your Clients

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If you have been working with your clients for a long-time and have built up a lot of trust with them, let them know what you have planned and make sure they will have work for you during those times.

You can also ask them to pay you on a weekly or per-deliverable basis, as opposed to monthly. That way, you won’t be running dangerously low on funds several weeks into your vacation and can keep the funds flowing.

Keeping your clients informed will also give you more freedom when it comes to deadlines. You won’t be able to work full-time while you’re on vacation, and so you’ll need to drop your working hours and extend your deadlines.

Start Your Own Agency

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Many freelancers are happy to continue doing what they are doing. But for those with eyes on business success and major expansion,?starting a digital agency ?is the ultimate goal.

It’s something that I?recently discussed with Shay Berman ?and something that could help you if you want to travel the world. Of course, a business should never be an excuse to work less and travel more. If anything, it’s the other way around, and you’ll rarely hear a new business owner exclaiming,?“I have plenty of free time!”

But there are levels, and with digital agencies, you can scale as quickly or as slowly as you want.

In Berman’s case, he runs a sizeable digital agency devoted to many aspects of content creation. He has multiple employees to oversee and contracts to manage, and it’s definitely not something that you can do halfway around the world while working for a few hours at a time.

But if you scale everything back, hire just one or two trusted freelancers, and then give them all of the work, you will buy yourself a lot of free time.

If you have an extra 20 or 30 hours during any particular week, you can do more work yourself and keep all of the cash. If not, just give the work to your trusted freelancers, take your cut, and spend a little time checking and delegating.

There are some caveats, though. Outsourcing is very common among freelancers and it often results in terrible work, shocking standards, and angry clients. Don’t outsource work given to you by long-standing and loyal clients. They are paying you for your services and they expect you to do the work.

But if a new client likes a sample that was produced by an outsourcer, there’s no reason why you can’t let the same outsourcer do the rest of the work.