Earn More Money As a Freelancer by Quitting Jobs
In-Demand Freelancers: If you let your clients know that everyone is busy with you, you can end up making more money.
As Carol Tice explains in Make a Living Writing magazine, telling clients that you don’t have time to do their project can benefit you in the long run:
When you tell some potential clients that you cannot accept them because you are too busy, they are impressed. You must be a good writer!
They want to hire you even more. Sometimes they offer you more money in the hopes of getting you to kick someone off your schedule to make room for their assignment. Sometimes you say yes.
Tice also notes that if you are thinking about abandoning a new customer because you don’t have time for it, you should ask yourself if it’s wiser to abandon one of your current customers instead. It may be time to end a relationship with a low-paying client, for example, to give yourself enough time and space to pursue a higher-paying client.
In short: if a client offers you a talk and you’re not sure you have time to fit it into your freelance schedule, don’t take on extra work and exhaust yourself. Tell the client that you would like to work with them, but are currently full-time, and see how they react.
If they offer you more money, you have just increased your earning potential.
If they ask to be placed in the next available slot on your schedule, you’ve just booked yourself a job for the future – and averted a potential freelance drought. (You can also suggest the next spot on your schedule to the client instead of waiting for them to ask.)
If they are ghosts, behaving abusively, or not flexible enough to plan their project around your existing workload, then you know they probably won’t be a good client for you in the long run.
And that doesn’t mean you have to worry about losing a prospect.
After all, you are fully occupied.