Freelancers in the creative sector rarely start their career with a business plan. The reason why is that most service providers in a creative sector don't consider themselves to be business owners. A creative freelancer will sooner tell you that they're "a photographer" rather than "a business owner".
Why does any of this matter? Well, for many creative freelancers, their career is short lived as they don't have the business background to brand themselves, market their services or most importantly generate enough sales to survive. You most likely didn't start selling your services just to make money but it's a necessity for most to be able to pursue a passion. So if you're struggling with the business side of freelancing, it's time to do something about it.
Let's look at the options. The most common choice is to do nothing, continue making mistakes and hopefully learn from them. Most freelancers can't afford to go down this road as by the time they've figured it out, it's too late and they are back working in a dead-end job that they hate.
80% of freelancers fail in the first 18 months due to lack of business know how.
Door number two is to go back to university, take an evening course while you work or get private lessons in business studies. The positive from this approach is that you'll receive an in-depth education in general business. The problem is that it's very expensive, the business learning is almost always presented in a general manner often not applicable to a freelancer's career and it takes up a lot of your time. Should you have the funds to stop working while you go back to school then it can work but for most this is simply not an option.
When The Freelancer Club opened it's doors, our main objective was to support freelancers and help them develop their career. We pinned the worrying statistic of the number of freelancers who fail on the office wall and vowed to reduce that number. In an effort to do that we are very proud to introduce The Freelance Academy. The Academy provides creative talent with access to business courses delivered by some of the industries top professionals. The courses are tailor made especially for freelancers. We cover everything from branding your freelance business and increasing your Instagram followers to productivity techniques and LinkedIn advertising workshops. We add courses exclusively to The Freelance Academy every month to ensure that freelancers gain a better understanding of business and continually develop.
We know how random a freelancer's schedule can be so we've designed the courses to be taken when it suits you. Watch the courses at any time, anywhere and as each course is divided into easily absorbed lessons, you can dip in and out at your on pace. Each course includes an assignment provided by the instructor to ensure that you put your learning into practice and we've created them so that you can immediately add them to your freelance business while you learn. Once you finish a course you can upload a project and have the instructor provide you with feedback. You can also ask questions to the community as well as the instructor to help form a real class spirit online.