How to Set Up a Freelance Schedule

When I first began freelancing I had a few growing pains getting used to the schedule. As a freelancer, you now have tons of freedom. However, even though I had more time on my hands, the time between an old project and new project would often drag out. I decided that even though I enjoy the freedom freelancing gives you, I needed to create a schedule for my work week. Below is my guide on how to set up a freelance schedule.

Batch Scheduling:

I like to do batch scheduling which is to set a specific day of the week to accomplish a task. Here is an example:

• Monday: Social Media Planning
• Tuesday & Friday: Client Consultation
• Wednesday & Thursday: Project Work

By setting up specific days for tasks I can be flexible and move days around depending on my workload.

Sprint Implementation

I previously worked for a software company. One of the things that I learned there was the Agile Methodology and the use of Sprints. A sprint is a short, time-boxed period to complete a set amount of work. Duration for a Sprint is under a month but usually two - one week.I like Sprints because they allow you to set up a structure of what to accomplish in a set amount of time. Being a freelancer can be overwhelming sometimes as there is always something you want to accomplish. However, organizing a set amount of work and establishing a backlog in the future will help in relieving that stressful workload.

Summary: How to Set Up a Freelance Schedule

In conclusion, organizing my freelance schedule made me a lot more productive. Freelancing provides a great deal of freedom. However, having a schedule each month provides a way to track my goals and accountability.

Related Articles:

What I Spend the Most Time on as a FreelancerUsing Trello for Project Management

Using Trello for Project Management

I began using Trello for Project management and productivity tool this January. Trello is a visual project management and collaboration app that is used by many. As I discussed in What I Spend the Most Time on as a Freelancer, Trello has been an amazing tool for organizing my projects and blog schedule.Below is a Sample of a Trello Boards:

Company Background

Founded by Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor under their company Fog Creek Software, Trello began in 2010 as a collaboration tool. Trello would eventually spinoff from Fog Creek and become Trello, Inc in 2014. Towards the beginning of 2017, Trello was acquired by the software company Atlassian.

Cost

Trello has several plans available for individuals and companies but most noteworthy is the Free Plan. With the free plan you get:

• Unlimited boards, lists, cards, members, checklists, and attachments.
• One Power-Up per Board
• Attach files up to 10MB from your computer, or link any file from your Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, or OneDrive

Additional Costs

In addition to Trello's Free plan, other plans available are the Business Class and Enterprise.Business Plan highlights:

• Unlimited Power-Ups including integrations with Jira, Bitbucket, Evernote, Google Hangouts, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more
• Attach files up to 250MB
• Group and organize all of your team's boards with Collections
• And More

Enterprise Plan Highlights

• All of the robust features of Trello Business Class
• Single Sign-On available for all SAML IdPs
• Enable 2-Factor Authentication to keep all work data secure
• And More

What You Get

The below screenshot is an example from the Trello blog in how to use a board as a editiorial calendar:

Competitors:

Some noteworthy competitors to Trello include:

• Asana
• Basecamp
• Airtable

At this time, one disadvantage that Trello has in comparison to its competitors is a time tracking feature. However, there are a number of third-party extensions that are available to enable time tracking in Trello. Many of the apps above have a native time tracking as part of their software.

Summary: Using Trello for Project Management

In conclusion, using Trello for Project Management is a great tool. I think that Trello can work for anyone whether you use it to keep track of your side projects or your companies workflow. I think Trello's main strength is the app's ease of use and visual design. The interface is simple and easy to look at. People have used Trello for job searches, goal tracking, and even holiday planning. Overall, I find Trello to be a great tool to organize and track your projects.

What I Spend the Most Time on as a Freelancer?

When I decided to become a freelancer, I thought my most of my time would be spent working on projects. I think there is a misconception that once you create a website, traffic will automatically flood to you. In college, I remember we were told as students to just focus on our portfolio. Looking back, I think as design students more attention should have been given to business aspects such as marketing. Outside of project work, what I spend the most time on as a freelancer are:

• Marketing
• Research
• Outreach and Processes

Marketing

To my surprise, I found the bulk of my time was spent developing marketing strategies. As a mentioned above, a common misconception in freelancing is you think traffic will automatically come to you. You must constantly make sure your website is updated in order to promote it. Because of this, I use blog posts as a way of updating my website. One of my goals for 2018 is to write two blog post once a week.Aside from blogging, I have to make sure my website has great SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Having great SEO helps your website become ranked higher in search engines, making your services easier for potential clients to find. I wrote a blog post on how to use YoastSEO to write better blog posts.I also found that for marketing and promotion I needed to embrace Social Media. This meant making sure my website was featured on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I also need to make sure I embrace other Social Media outlets such as LinkedIn and Medium.Lastly, I have discovered how important Google Analytics is to developing marketing strategies. For instance, Google Analytics measures where your traffic is coming to your website. If the bulk of your traffic comes from Facebook and Instagram but not Twitter, than I need to devote time in the next few weeks to establishing more of a presence on Twitter.

"To my surprise, I found the bulk of my time was spent developing marketing strategies"

Research

Another focus of my time is spent doing research. This can range from researching a hosting platform or testing new technology. I want to make sure that the experience is great when people visit my website. So if my website is slow, or heaven forbid crashes, visitors are not getting the right experience that I want them to have. I found the r/web_design community on Reddit to be a great tool when researching hosting platforms.As a designer/photographer Adobe programs are your typical tools. However in the case of Project Management, I needed to research tools to keep myself organized. I recently began using Trello, a project management tool. Trello has been amazing as it has helped organzine projects and blogging ideas to use in the future.

Outreach and Processes

Lastly I spend most of my time on outreach and having processes in place for my services. In the case of outreach I want to make sure that I don't just focus on client outreach, but also reaching out to fellow freelancers as well. I think it is helpful to have a network of colleagues to run ideas by or to even refer clients to incase my schedule is full.I found that having processes in place help in making projects go smoothly. For instance, if I am designing a website, having a process outlined for the client to send me files makes it easier for the client and myself. Or creating forms that identify questions that highlight what a client is looking for in terms of their project.

Summary

In conclusion, although focusing on these other aspects can appear overwhelming, I find part of the process fun to learn. Going forward, I think the best way to approach this side of the business is to schedule. For instance, I found scheduling one week to focus on writing a months worth a blog posts. That way, it free's my time for other projects to tackle.