A Freelancer’s Starter Ethics – 20 Guidelines

20 guidelines to go by for the young freelancer. Don’t undervalue yourself or your clients.

The beginning of a freelance career can be a treacherous time. You’re trying to get your foot in the door where ever you can, making cold calls, cold emails, anything to land that first job or that next project. At any point in your career you run the risk of falling prey to some pitfalls of freelancing that are not only detrimental to you but to your clients as well.

There are some simple steps that can be taken to make sure you are valuing yourself as a freelancer and to make sure your clients are getting the most out of you.

The very obvious; Stealing, plagiarism, and the like.
On any project and to any degree, plagiarism won’t help you get anywhere. You’ll probably come up with something more creative yourself if you give it a shot. This is not to say inspiration is off the table but you as the creative know where to draw the line. Freelance Switch has some great resources for the legalities involved.
Set your rates high
One of the biggest problems facing freelancers at any point in their career is undercharging your clients and undervaluing your services. This doesn’t just hurt you in the sense that you could get more for your professionalism and effort but it undermines other freelancers who charge more responsibly. This in effect drives down rates for the whole industry because it can change what many clients will be willing to pay for the same services.
Set your rates fairly
Number 2 is not to say that you should over-charge your clients. It means you should not charge anything less than you think your services are worth especially if it is only to appease the budget of a potential client. It comes down to an issue of self-worth. No pricing guide for freelancers will be able to tell you exactly what you should charge for your skill set. You know what feels right and what is unfair.
Push back on seemingly concrete client budgets
Often times a client will come to you with a set budget for your services. The client, if you are honest with them, probably knows you are a young freelancer without the experience of some of the seasoned professionals, but no matter. You, as the freelancer, need to be compensated justly even if the budget is seemingly “set in stone.” Try to push on the budget to get it more to your liking and see what kind of response you get. Usually is takes some courage to do so especially on some earlier jobs and the client may recognize this and revise the budget. All from asking.
Get your rate even in hard times
There will always be another job down the line so if the rate is breaking your back, then no sweat. Leave it. I know this sounds like odd advice for the up and coming freelancer, but hear me out. The beginning of a career can also be a time of low risk since, more than likely, you aren’t really trying to pay all the bills with this gig. Starting with strong freelance integrity will benefit you later in your career without a doubt. So pass up that job if you have to. More will come down the road.
Avoid setting project rates in stone regardless of scale
This one is pretty straight forward. If you don’t have a flexible project rate list then you might charge someone the same for a site with 10 pages as you do for a site with 100. If you do tend to charge clients this way, be able to adjust to any size project and be ready with a fair price. Clients like to see a strong price list or something of the sort, much more than someone guessing a price as they are on the phone.
Be honest with yourself when giving a time estimate
Some people work well under pressure an others need plenty of room to breath. Either way it’s your obligation to give your client an accurate estimate of how long a project will take both in terms of hours and how those hours will be distributed over the days. Freelancers, myself included, have on occasion drastically underestimated the amount of time a task would take, sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly. It’s only fair to you and your client that this is clearly stated at the beginning of the process.
Keep track of your hourly time as you go
If you’re working on a project remotely for an hourly rate, keep track of your time! It’s as simple as that. You’ll need to tell the client how long you have worked on a task and rounding up isn’t really okay. We have all fudged an hourly invoice here or there because it’s not easy to keep track of when you get wrapped up in your work. So to make it easier use things like an actual egg timer, a program like Minuteur, or websites like ClockingIt and SlimTimer. I’ve used them all and I’m still in the search for the prefect timer program but they certainly help.

EDIT: I’ve recently given up on all start and stop timers. I now use Active Timer which tracks all of the activity of all applications open. It’s free of human error in keeping time especially if I set it to open when my computer starts up. I can just break down what it has recorded into the actual amount of time I spent on a single task without starting or stopping it when I do something else for a bit. Give it a try.
Always be positive about your skills and potential
Some freelancers have been known to take their skills for granted and even denounce that they are anything special. Part of your job is to sell yourself and whatever self confidence you have will be read positively by your clients and increase the likelihood that they will actually hire you and maybe give you return business.
Don’t rely on the big freelance competition sites
There are a few services offered to freelancers by big competition websites. Singing up with them brings a stream of jobs to your inbox with some frequency but be wary of these sites. They are set up to benefit the client, especially when it comes to price, because of the competitive aspect. With frequency, a buyer will go with the lowest price offered for his project. I’m not saying avoid these completely but they do trend towards undermining the prices of freelancers and might be a bad habit early on. There are plenty of other ways to get jobs that rely more on actual talent.
Pro bono and or charity work isn’t always the answer
Taking on a few pro bono or charity projects to boost the old portfolio quickly might sound like a good idea but it usually ends up being more trouble than it is worth. Pro bono work is great if you have both spare time and spare patience for the job. Otherwise there are lots of people out there who want to pay you for what you do and get things done efficiently.
Working for a friend or acquaintance may not be a good idea
These affairs are very tricky because you know all of the people involved to a much greater degree than you might know a client. If something goes wrong or some services rendered are not satisfactory things could go sower fast. You wouldn’t want anything to get tense in a personal relationship because of a job you are completing. It may sound like an easy way to find jobs but just be careful in these situations. The contract rule may even apply.
Only promise what you can deliver to clients
We all like to bolster our resume from time to time with the occasional extra coding language or mastery of software that could land you a job, but what if it actually does? Then I guess you learn it, right? It’s not a great practice to say that you can do something you have no experience doing because if there’s really no hope for you with it then the client should really be looking elsewhere to fulfill their needs. Misleading clients is never a good idea and once you slip up once and have to admit that you might not know enough to complete a project, you get your reputation hurt. Just say what you can do, be good at it, and do it.
Make sure you are getting credit for your work
People should know who is designing what they are seeing. You should get publicity for yourself in any way you can. Even it’s just a link at the bottom of a page or a ‘designed by’ someplace small, getting credit and therefore recognition for your work is an important part of any career. There will be no more designing in the shadows. Let your talents shine in the light and market yourself like a good freelancer.
Get a contract at the start of a project
Making a contract is not a bad habit to start at any point. These can vary from a semi-formal email contract, which can be binding to some degree, to a full fledged mailed and signed piece of paper looked over by a lawyer at some point. Either way it’s not a terrible idea to have something in writing at the start of a project just in case something happens. You don’t want things to turn into another freelancing horror story. There are some resources on Freelance Switch for this sort of thing.
Spec work should be avoided at all costs
We all know what spec work is. “Let me do this thing that I would otherwise be getting paid for and then you can decide whether you want to pay me for it or not.” This is a huge problem for freelancers. For one thing you are delivering all those goods up front with only a possible promise of reward for cooperation. You are also leaving yourself open to the “client” rejecting you and then using your goods anyway. It’s a practice that cheapens the design process and it’s a problem in the freelance industry that has been discussed at length. Just get paid for what you do.
Jobs with template sites or other stock designs hurt you
Some people use this as legitimate work but I think it’s a practice that makes the client base smaller and isn’t really good design. First, I think that every site should have a uniquely fitting design and that a cookie cutter approach doesn’t work. Also more and more people think that it is acceptable to buy a cheap template thereby replacing what would have been done by a freelancer. This job tends not to pay as well as some others. It hurts you and your fellow freelancers when there are plenty of better opportunities out there if you just know where to look.
Stretching yourself thin is dangerous
If you are doing well and taking on more and more projects simultaneously, then good for you. But beware! There always lies the possibility of stretching your magical freelancing powers too thin. It happens to the best freelancer but it helps to be aware of it. Sometimes you are just too busy designing good to design great. Your powers of great design or writing or whatever you do best may be hampered by being overused. If you have to, refer work to another freelancer friend with a recommendation. The last thing you want is to have something slip through the cracks.
Don’t work on projects you will hate. Find ones you love.
Maybe at the start of your career you might not find that this is an option for you but it certainly should be. Finding jobs you love and losing the ones you hate is one of the great freedoms of freelancing. You have the power to pick and choose who you work for on a daily basis so why not make it pleasurable for yourself. It’s almost a given that you will put more effort into projects you really love and feel more fulfilled when they are done.
Find clients that match you
Being a freelancer is half about how you deal with people. That being said, you can choose the people you deal with as a freelancer. Often times you can tell from first contact with a client whether or not they will be a match for you solely in terms of personality. Best of all, you decide whether you want to pursue work with them or not and when you find a client that is just right, it makes up for all the ones you may have passed up.

Have some ethics of your own to add? Post them in the comments below.

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