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There are many benefits from being self-employed, but as with most things in life a few disadvantages are thrown in with the package too. We get to work from home, work our own hours, do what we enjoy, have as many days off as we want and blast out tunes all day long (well, at least I do!). But unfortunately we also have to correctly manage our time, avoid distractions and mistakes, find our own work and communicate with difficult clients – we do it wrong, and our wage (ultimately our lives) depends on it. This article compiles 16 superb articles to help you get your head around freelance designing.

I’ve been freelancing for about half a year, the last week or so of that being full-time since quitting my part-time job. I have a fairly good idea of how to manage my time and make things work now, but I still have a lot to learn, and I still will in a years, ten years and probably twenty years time.

I have compiled a list of 20 superb articles specifically aimed at self-employed individuals and designers, all of which have helped me progress as a freelancer and a designer.

1. Freelancing 101: The Typical Life

This is a wonderful article by Elle Phillips (full time freelance designer since 2004) about their typical day to day life in the home office. When I read this article I could really relate to it, I have set myself a lot of the same rules such as strict working hours (unless it is really urgent).

2. Critical Mistakes Freelancers Make

This smashing article by Robert Bowen outlines 10 common mistakes that freelancers, especially new ones, commonly make. Knowing the mistakes before you make them can often result in not making it at all, so this article is one you need to check out, especially if you’re a newly self-employed person.

3. Time Management 101

So you have the skills and courage to become self-employed, but your rubbish at managing your time? This 101 course in Time Management by Bob Bessette can teach your a superb way of organizing your daily and weekly tasks by putting them in to categorized buckets.

4. What To Do When Your Project Starts To Go Downhill

Projects of all kinds in the creative field can go downhill, even if you’ve spent days or weeks on end planning it. This article by Bill Dotson reviews the situation hundreds of designers face every day, and helps you make the most out of a bad scenario to get you back on your feet and the ball rolling faster than ever.

5. Five Survival Tips For The Newly Self-Employed

Self-Employment and Freelancing isn’t always fun and games. It involves hard work, excellent time management and the ability to keep track of your earnings, net profit, outgoing expenditure and the ability to fill in boring forms. This short and handy article by Serena Cowdy offers five survival tips on tax, insurance and why you need to keep all of your bills.

6. Opps! I Did It Again, I Made A Freelance Mistake

We, as humans, aren’t perfect, and we never will be. If we make a mistake, we fix it and learn from it so not to make the same mistake again. Making a terrible mistake on a project tends to leave you with two options: Option One is to ask the client for more time with an updated quote and lose respect and credibility. Option Two is to fix your mistake free of charge and keep your credibility. But why do we need to make a mistake in the first place? This article by Shoaib Hussain offers professional advice on how to avoid it.

7. A Simple Guide On How To Effectively Talk To Clients

Every client is different. In fact, every person is different. Just because one person from a company has the knowledge to talk to you about software, the internet and different techniques, it doesn’t mean someone else from that same company has the knowledge to talk to you in the same manner. This article by Jacob Gube offers fantastic advice on how to find more out about your clients and how to effectively talk to them.

8. When And How To Dump A Client

It’s a cruel and difficult world when freelancing. There are perfect clients, chatty clients, grumpy clients, and pure terrible clients. There’s nothing worse than working your ass off all night long for a low-budget job. This article by Shoaib Hussain offers five incredibly useful tips on when and how you should dump a client if they’re continually a pain in your back-side.

9. How To Manage Time When Working From Home

In your old job you may have been organized, tidy and dedicated. Since becoming self-employed and working full time from home have you noticed a change? Are you turning into a frenzied mess? Don’t be ashamed, when you are your own boss and don’t have any one to listen to it’s hard to dedicate time and very easy to get distracted. This article by Natalia Jones shares 10 top tips to help you get back on track.

10. Ways For Designers To Work For A More Productive Work Day

A combination of good habits can drastically improve your work day. This article by Adam (The Pro Designer) offers tips on time management, taking short breaks out, eating healthily and how to get main tasks done in your best working hours. All of the great tips in this article are all ways of getting more work done in a shorter period of time.

11. How To Get Your Ideas Across To Clients

Getting your ideas across to clients isn’t always an easy task. Some expect miracles, some have a bad taste in design and others just simply don’t appreciate what you’re capable of. Fatima Mekkaoui shares great tips on how to involve and engage a client within a project. If you like the following quote you’ll like this article: “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I might remember. Involve me and I will understand.”

12. How To Plan A Content Heavy Website

Although this great article by Mary Fran is specifically aimed at keeping yourself organized when planning a content heavy website, it’s got some brilliant little tips that work for other areas of design, too. If you find struggling to file yours documents in a logical and uncomplicated way then this is a great place to learn how to put that right.

13. How To Respond Effectively To Design Criticism

Regardless of whether you are self-employed, an in-house designer or one of many employees at a design agency, you need to be able to accept criticism in all forms, shapes and sizes – if you can’t do that and you want to be come a designer than you’re either heading in the wrong direction or you need to adapt and change how you take harsh comments. This article by Andrew Follett explains just how.

14. The One Thing You Need To Do To Become A Better Designer

Matt Ward shares his opinion on how you can become a better designer by redesigning famous logos, studying effective layouts and by never being completely satisfied with your work. Every designer has room for improvement and this article is just one of many great write-ups out there that might just help you on your way to learning some new essential skills.

15. 16 Tips To Improve As A Graphic Designer

People learn in different ways, some by reading, some by doing and some by listening. Brian Hoff shares with us sixteen ways on how you can improve as a graphic designer, including collecting books, taking lots of photographs, redesigning old projects to see how you’ve improved and sketching on a day-to-day basis.

16. You Can Survive And Thrive After A Crisis

This incredibly inspirational article by Grant Friedman really digs deep into fellow designers from the online community past, sharing with us how they overcame hardship and achieved success. If you’re struggling with life at the moment, family-based, money-based or you’re simply not enjoying your job, this article can really make you look at things differently, overcome your problems and turn it in to great success.