Most of us who are freelancers find ourselves constantly wearing so many hats that at times it is really hard to keep up. As a freelance photographer I am like a one man orchestra where I play all the instruments at once and my clients and peers are the audience of my one man show. It is hard work, especially because you always feel like you should be paying more attention to something different from what you are paying attention to, without leaving everything else unanttended. It can get overwhealming at times, but it is also very rewarding.
For me the key to not loosing my mind is to delegate or automate those tasks that I feel do not require to be done by myself. Also, being organized and consistent helps me interiorize tasks so much that I just do them without even thinking about them. Here are a few things that I do that help me stay focused on the core of my craft without the distractions of the daily administrative tasks:
- I assign a day of the week for each repetitive or administrative task. For instance, every Wednesday I write on my blog. So I have an alert set up to remind me every Wednesday morning that I have to write my weekly post. I do the same for other tasks like researching for new clients or sending emails to clients with whom I have worked before or finding out about new photography contests. Each day of the week has different tasks assigned.
- When I get up, the first thing that I do is check my social media feeds and notifications and while having breakfast I prepare my daily post. To manage all my social media effortlessly I use Hootsuite and to know which is the best time to post to reach most of my audience I use Iconosquare. I also use this last one to track all those people who like to follow/unfollow because they mess up my statistics.
- I knew since day one that I wanted an affordable online portfolio which was easy to use and which would take all the burden of maintaining a website off my shoulders. I use format.com, it’s the one that works for me.
- I keep track of my prospective and actual jobs with fotoClient. It’s an easy and centralized way to manage your upcoming projects.
- I have alerts set up in different online job boards so that I passively receive job alerts everyday. I use services like ImageBrief, FashionWorkie, StarNow or TheFreelancersClub.
- As a freelancer most of the times you not only have to manage your business but you are also in charge of taking care of your home, especially if your spouse has a full-time job. Because of this, I do all my shopping online. For photographic equipment I trust Calumet, for props I always go to Amazon, I get all my stationary printed from Moo and my go to print lab is DS Colour Lab.
These are only a few things that I do to keep my business up and running as effortlessly as possible. Do you have any of your own that you would like to share?
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