Freelancing: Starting On Your Own

Well, the bill pressure is mounting up again, so I’m looking at the idea of freelancing once more.

I’ve taken stabs at this in the past; I joined a paid freelance writer’s forum for a few months and created a book blurb writing Gig on Fiverr, but I’d always get derailed by the worry that I was starting a sideline I didn’t really care about. Naturally, this happened right at the beginning, before I’d given the sideline a real chance, but fear is rarely rational, and fighting it with words never seemed to work.

Just recently, though, I finally realised how I actually felt when that worry leapt to mind – a very unpleasant, withdrawing kind if feeling – and that I had had it with experiencing that feeling. So I resurrected my Fiverr Gig and created another one for voice work.

But as I watch the mail come in and insurances and other expenses go up, I’m finding myself beset by two more worries which are even more insidious – the worries that:

1. I don’t know what I’m doing,
2. I’m on my own with this.

It’s the second one that’s the worst of the two. I (think I) can finally handle being a newbie, but no one in my immediate circle is, to my knowledge anyway, starting out with freelancing, so I often feel like I don’t know to whom I can turn for help and I’m scared of asking for fear of wasting someone else’s time on me, especially if I’m asking a question with (what would seem like) an obvious answer.

But I still get a bit lost on forums (especially the big ones like Flying Solo), just trying to work out what to look for or how to find folks who are one or two steps ahead of me that I can hang out with and learn from, and maybe get a little reassurance that I’m not on my own with all this. I’ve never been exactly confident on LinkedIn either.

Is anyone else, or has anyone else been, in similar straits? How did you sort them out? Where did you find help / connections?

Originally posted on LinkedIn. Featured image by Lourdes Nightingale.