Freelancers, Don’t Make These Mistakes!
CBG Reader Andy Parthenopoulos has written a smart article about the mistakes he made as a beginning IT freelancer. Whether you’re in the IT industry or not, this article offers 6 solid tips for freelancers, told through Andy’s real-life dreadful experiences.
If you’re a freelancer or independent contractor, no doubt you have been through the same school of hard knocks as Andy warns others about in this article, such as not getting paid nearly enough for a project that turned out much larger than it originally seemed or taking on project with impossible deadlines.
Like Wendy Piersall’s Top 10 Blogging Mistakes I Made in My First Year post (which received so much traffic that it took down her server), Andy’s willingness to share his blunders makes this a compelling read. If you’re new to freelancing or an old pro, this is an article worth reading!
23 year old Andy is also the creator of a noble non profit project called Fill the Dams, a website designed to help raise $1M for Australia’s water crisis by purchasing liters in the site’s virtual dams.
Andy’s Damblog offers more candid discussion of the progress on Fill the Dams, including his disappointment in the fact that his recent Fill the Dams press release went largely unnoticed. I think the idea is fantastic and worthy of mention – great job Andy, thanks for taking such an active role in protecting the environment and for offering your mistakes in IT freelancing so that the rest of us may learn and prosper!
If you like Andy’s story, be sure to Digg It!
I think the trick is, let your success go public and your mistakes stay secret, unless you want to get Dugg of course.
I think when people share their mistakes, it can do much more good than harm - even beyond the fact that it’s linkbaitable! Everyone makes mistakes, so making them public is not necessarily an admittance of being unqualified.
In fact, I would even be more likely to send business in the direction of someone that I knew was open and honest and had been at what they were doing long enough to make mistakes. You could always spin this type of article as a “6 tips for freelancers…” but it just isn’t as compelling as learning about WHY the author has the credentials to offer the list of advice.
Thanks for the comment!
Thanks a bunch for the kind words, Christine!
In reply to the comment, I believe that failing to admit to mistakes can lead to trouble further down the track, particularly if it appears you are covering them up. Eg. look at the recent trouble with Flickr censoring German users.
Writing the article serves as a permanent reminder to myself and the community that I am committed to continuously improving. It does not suggest I am incompetent as an IT contractor.
In all work I have undertaken I have been conscientious in providing value to the client. The article merely points out that we all must learn the business/negotiation aspect of consulting to help create a win-win situation.
Sorry a little topic but thanks for the mention of Andy’s DamBlog project… I’m in Sydney (where ironically dam levels have increased thanks to bucketing rain in the last two weeks) and thought his blog was interesting.
The Damblog and project certainly deserve mention. It’s great to know that today’s future success leaders are passionate about the environment that we all share.