Freelancing Woes...

There comes a time in every freelancers life when suddenly you would realize that there is not enough work in the pipeline. This can happen for a variety of reasons, ranging from seasonal changes, you are not pitching enough (well, yeah, sometimes we are so busy finishing the existing assignments that we forget we have to pitch to get new ones) to just pure procrastination.

Something like this happened with me last month and it was a combination of the first two factors. I woke up one fine day and realized that the pipeline was very empty and I was used to congestion. Initially, I actually welcomed the idea, thinking of lazy afternoons ahead. This lasted for about two-three days during which time I had cleaned up my house from top to bottom and had nothing to do but to twiddle my thumb. And then I starting pitching at breakneck speed and hustled like I haven't for a very long time. 

The panic subsided and thank God for that otherwise my family was beginning to lose patience with me. They generally like me working on table and out of their way. Anyway that is a separate blog topic. I started working on my novel (don’t laugh people…it is bound to finish sometime. Have patience, folks!).

I decided to use the time to revamp my professional website (which will take another few days) and launched marketing blitz on all possible fronts. There is a reason I went on overdrive. The last time I encountered similar problem, I lost confidence and gave up freelancing. This time around I decided to change my strategy to survive and thrive in a downturn. I can say now that it did help. But one has to be proactive and not reactive to avoid these kind of situations. 

Let it be said that in spite of best efforts sometimes it is bound to happen...and whenever it doesn't mean that you give up totally on your freelancing dream but to change the strategy a bit. Think of the new markets, new areas and newer things that you can do. Just don't ever give up...