Freelance Friday

Tips to keep your freelance business running while your on vacation

1.Work in Advance
For a freelancer, going on vacation is doubly expensive. Not only do you have to fork out on flights, accommodation and spending money like everybody else, you have to account for the money you’re not making while you’re away. If you want to maintain a steady income, spread extra work out over the weeks prior to your departure.

2.Choose Your Dates Carefully
An obvious one, but very important nonetheless–make sure you book your vacation for a time when you have relatively little work to do. If you have seasonal downtime in your industry, identifying the best time for a vacation is easy. If you don’t, try and line up your trip to coincide with the completion of several big projects.

3.Inform All Clients
There’s no use just sticking an Out of Office auto-reply into your email the night before you go away. An auto-reply is essential, sure, but you need to inform your clients well in advance of your departure. Important clients should be informed personally–don’t be scared, they’ll understand. Make sure they know that you’re contactable in an emergency. A short message should be added to your email signature, months before you leave, to inform everybody else.

4.Prepare Email Responses
Whether or not you intend to work while on vacation, you need to be sure that you still have jobs coming in while you’re away, to do on your return. To save time, you should prepare some canned responses for any potential new clients that might get in touch. Something like–I’m traveling until the 25th December, but I’d love to take a closer look at this on my return, please send over all the details and I’ll contact you as soon as I get back.

5.Outsource
If you really can’t fit all the work you need to do into the weeks prior to your vacation, consider outsourcing it to a trusted colleague. You might lose money in the short-term, but they’re bound to send work your way when they go on holiday themselves. Furthermore, it’s better to take on work offered by a client and give it somebody else you trust than it is to turn it down. Turn a client away once and you might never hear from them again.

http://freelancefolder.com/15-tips-to-keep-your-freelance-business-going-while-on-vacation/