Freelancing has it’s ups and downs… you’ll meet a great contact, you’ll lose a great contact, you’ll get a high-paying job, you’ll have jobs that never pay, you’ll have $800 days, you’ll have $20 days, you’ll have freedom like you’ve never believed, you’ll have days where your computer is the only thing you see…

While I love my career and don’t foresee changing it in any time soon…there are a number of things I didn’t know when I got started. Here are 13 reasons why you should NOT become a freelance writer:

1. Poor People Skills: If you don’t like dealing with people, then hiding away in your home office won’t help. Freelancing is all about connections - you have to be approachable and confident in your communication.
2. Poor Organizer: Believe it or not, organization can make or break you freelance business. You need to keep track of numerous clients, projects, invoices, emails, and to-do lists. In my opinion, organization is more important to success than your ability to write.
3. Poor Motivation: As a freelancer, the only person you’ll have pushing you through every day is yourself. If you aren’t self-motivated, then you aren’t going to be successful.
4. Poor Listener: As a freelance writer you can’t just write whatever you feel like (in most cases), you need to meet other people’s specific needs. That means listening to what they have to say and applying it… while you might feel like your ideas are better, you’re not the one paying for the project to be completed.
5. Poor Typist: If you type less than 30 words per minute, that means you’re working 50-70% slower than other freelance writers. Sure, I don’t always type 90 words per minute - because I hardly ever think that fast…but when an idea hits your head you better know how to get it down fast or you’ll miss the next one that’s about to follow.
6. Poor Marketing: The #1 demand I’ve found for my writing has been sales copy for websites, sales letters, direct-mail, auto-responders, and opt-in pages. If you don’t have marketing skills then you’re missing out on a lot of money.
7. Poor Marketing 2: Not only do you need to apply your marketing skills to your client’s work, but you’ll also need to market your own services. If you know how to pull in prospects, you’ll spend less time on acquiring new clients and more time making money.
8. Internetaholic: If you’re addicted to browsing the internet and unable to overcome this habit, then you’ll never reach anywhere close to your potential as a freelance writer. Internet browsing, in my estimation, kills your productivity by at least 50%.
9. Soft Chin: As a freelancer, you need to roll with the punches. You’ll have tons of letdowns - the client that didn’t like your work, the high-rolling prospect that went elsewhere, the projects that never get paid - but you need to take the hit and move on. If you get depressed and start feeling bad for yourself, you might miss out on a great opportunity that is right in front of you.
10. Low Self-Esteem: If you aren’t confident in your ability to write, then you’ll have a hard time attracting clients and never get paid what you’re worth on an hourly basis.
11. Easily Distracted: You’ll always have things to work on besides work itself. But there comes a time when you need to stop blogging, stop marketing, stop answering emails, stop bidding for work, and START WORKING.
12. Need Security: If you need the security of knowing you’ll have work to do tomorrow and knowing you’ll get paid every two weeks, then stick with your 9-5… because freelancing won’t always give that to you.
13. Poor Goal-Setting: The only way I’ve been able to succeed as a freelancer is by setting daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals. If you don’t plan your future, then your future will never turn out the way you wanted…well, unless you win the lottery or something.

Have you noticed I didn’t mention anything about needing a formal education or knowing how to write. While I consider myself lucky to have those things, I don’t believe you need them to succeed. You can learn through books and blogs and practice your writing until it develops…but you can get started as a freelancer with hardly any ability in those areas at all.

What you will need is discipline, organization, and a positive attitude!

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