Freelancing part time always gave me the ability to pick my projects and I could always choose to turn something down if I did not have time for it or just did not feel like the project fit my skills. Since I am transitioning, I have that fear that many beginner freelancers have that I won’t get enough clients or make my bills because of lack of work.

This fear has pushed me to take on every project that has come my way. I am still in the transitioning phase of life as discussed in my previous blog entry. I am working full time for a job I love and am blessed to continue with them on contract after my maternity leave. I am also blessed with a few clients that will be around for awhile. Along with preparing for a new baby and all that entails.

These are all great things and I am very excited for each of them.

However, everything all at once has taken a toll on my brainpower as well as my sleepless, pregnant body.

I am learning now that I have to learn my limitations, even for good things. I know that right now I am truly not able to work the 12 hours between full time and freelance a day that I once could. This is not good for myself and my work will start to look sloppy.

With that in mind, I am setting up a few boundaries to try to maintain. Here is my list so far:

• Maintain a regular bedtime schedule. No matter where I am with a project, sleep is important.
• Spend a few minutes playing with my puppy because he deserves attention too (and he lets me work after he gets his attention)
• Take a more realistic look at what is involved in each project and add more “slush time” so I am not time-crunched as quickly.

Have you set boundaries for yourself in freelancing? Discuss them below.

Professionally, I will be officially making the transition from full time to freelance. There had been some back and forth because the company I work for wants to keep me as a contractor, but it is a small company and there were many loopholes to work though. Now it is official.

Transition is sometimes the most difficult part. I am currently still working full time and freelancing at night. I have a few terrific clients I am working with right now and having a great time, but it is time consuming to work both gigs and exhausting while being very pregnant and all of that prep work. I am very excited about my regular clients and eager to get settled into full time freelance.

In the meantime, here are my freelance goals:

Rework this website to have it better organized
Consider splitting my blog and online portfolio into separate sites
Blog at least twice a week
Get my logo finally finished for my website and business cards

I hope to have everything ready to go sometime in May after maternity leave. In the meantime, please be patient. Feel free to give me freelancing tips or work at home mom tips in the comments below!

This past year, I have been moonlighting as a freelance editor/writer while still maintaining a full time job. This paycheck security meant that I could take or leave projects with no real financial burden. This means I slacked a bit when it came to 1.) Looking for new clients and 2.) Securing the contract.

As I transition now into full time freelance, I do find myself with more anxiety when it comes to finding enough work to cover the bills. Every freelancer goes through this phase as they are first starting out to make their brand known. The safety net is being pulled out and now I better step up the performance.

Freelancing means you have the ability to set your own price. However, clients do not have to agree to that price. Then it is up to negotiating to compromise on a price. Since I still consider myself a newbie in the freelance business, I tend to set my prices too high simply because I overestimate how long a project will take to complete. However, if you price to high, it could scare clients off where they will not bother to negotiate any longer and look for someone else.

On the other hand, if you price is too low, a client will not think you are skilled in your profession or that you fail to grasp what is involved in the project. I am guilty of both, and found that my best bet is to research what others in industry charge for similar projects and try to break down each project into each step involved. I add up a price quote from each individual task to get the overall price to charge.

My latest example:

Client needs a manual overhaul, but felt my price was too high. I decided to break down the project into steps:

1.) Phone calls, meetings, and any other correspondence to obtain materials.
2.) Learning the software program for basic understanding.
3.) Reviewing manual materials and compare it to the software to see where the breakdowns occur.
4.) Reorganize and edit the manual (Obviously, this should take the bulk of the time.)
4.) Updating screen shots to reflect any changes.
5.) Review and finalize the finished project and compare it to the checklist to make sure all client needs were met.

I learned that sometimes the client just needs a better breakdown of the total project cost to know where their money is going. Also, knowing that this client will have future work for me makes me work harder to keep the client, even if that means I might have to cut costs initially.

Freelancers, please feel free to add your tips and tricks below when negotiating with new clients.

Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, ELS, a board-certified editor in the life sciences, has been self-employed since 1995. She has helped researchers in more than 20 nations get their articles published in more than 35 US and UK biomedical journals by removing language barriers. On Twitter, where she networked her way into coauthoring a book, Katharine’s handle is @KOKEdit. Learn more about her at http://www.kokedit.com.

One of the best techniques for dealing with seemingly daunting projects is to break them down into a series of small tasks. When I went freelance full time at the start of 1995 just two weeks after giving birth to my second child, I intuitively used that technique. It worked so well that I employed it through that child’s toddlerhood and preschool years—and then used it again after giving birth to my third child. My workday logs back then read as if I were doing a series of sprints. My second child is now a high school senior and my third child is now a fifth-grader, and both they and my editing business are still thriving. Hey, childless colleagues who doubted years ago that I’d survive, are you listening?

When each of my two sons was a baby or a toddler, my workdays were spread out over a 12-hour period—though I got nowhere near 12 hours’ worth of work done—and ran something like this:

• Breastfeed the baby/feed the toddler. Get Child dressed for the day.
• Eat breakfast myself once Child is settled.
• Take a shower while my mother-in-law watches Child.
• Begin answering e-mails and editing.
• Stop to breastfeed, diaper, read to, or play with Child.
• Do some more editing.
• Stop to breastfeed, diaper, read to, or play with Child.
• Do some more editing.
• Feed Toddler lunch and eat my own lunch.
• Do some more editing.
• Stop to breastfeed, diaper, read to, or play with Child, or put Child down for a nap.
• Do some more editing.
• Stop to breastfeed, diaper, read to, or play with Child.
• Continue as needed.

Compare that with my current schedule: http://editor-mom.blogspot.com/2011/08/do-freelance-editorial-professionals.html.
In 2002, I posted to a freelancers’ e-mail list some tips for surviving self-employment when you’re a new parent. I wrote:

I work 25 to 30 hours a week, without using day care, and I have an 18-year-old daughter, a 7-year-old son, and a 4-month-old son. I’ve done things this way for my last two children, so I’m thinking my system works. In case some of these things work for you, I’ll give you my tips. Take what works for you and chuck the rest; the best advice I can give you is that you are the expert when it comes to the needs of your child. I’m not trying to be preachy here; these things just work for me:

1. Purchase a baby sling-type carrier. (If you want a list of businesses—and their web-site addresses—where you can purchase one, let me know. I have it set up as a Word document.) “Wear” your baby in the sling as you work. I’m doing that very thing as I type to you right now. Your baby will nap and be calm in the sling because he or she knows you’re right there. Your life partner can also wear your baby for great parent–child bonding.

2. If you’re female, breastfeed. It’s the healthiest thing you can do for your baby, and it’s the easiest and cheapest way you can feed him or her. My 4-month-old nurses in the baby sling while I work, as did his brother before him. Bottle-feeding in a sling can work too.

3. Don’t answer the phone if you don’t have to during working hours. I have a dedicated work phone line and keep the answering machine on. The tape says I’m “either editing right now or away from my desk. Please begin speaking after the tone, and if I’m available, I’ll pick up the phone.” If you really, really need to communicate with a client but your baby’s fussy, which means you can’t talk on the phone, settle Baby in the sling, let Baby latch on if you’re breastfeeding, and then call or e-mail your client.

4. When you sleep at night, sleep with the baby in bed with you and your life partner. You and Baby will both sleep better because you don’t have to stumble groggily out of bed to go get Baby from the crib to feed him or her, and Baby will be secure, even while sleeping, in the knowledge that you are right there. While you’re sleeping, turn the alarm clock away from your line of sight. If you don’t really know how long you’re up during the night, you won’t feel as sleep-deprived.

5. Get your life partner to take over care of Baby when he or she comes home from work (if your partner isn’t self-employed), except for breastfeeding if you’re the one who’s breastfeeding. You need physical space to rejuvenate yourself so you can do intensive parenting during the work week.

6. Know that your workday will stretch throughout the day. I start work sometimes at 8:30 a.m. and don’t finish until 7 p.m. But I do only 5 or 6 hours of work total, taking breaks for meals, playing with my kids, supervising homework time, showering, etc.

7. Avoid working weekends whenever possible. You need this time for fun with your family. Your life partner needs you and you need him or her.

8. Get relatives and friends to help out with care of Baby. My in-laws live in the downstairs apartment of the house that my husband and I own. Now that my mother-in-law’s retired, she comes upstairs in the morning so I can do a few household chores, get out for a 1.5-mile walk, and shower. Before that, my father-in-law is outside waiting at the bus stop with my 7-year-old son so that I can give the 4-month-old his first nursing of the morning. Then at lunchtime, my mother-in-law comes back up and plays with the baby for a while so I can have the use of my entire body for my own lunch. Getting your own physical space is very important for recharging your emotional batteries. I didn’t have the luxury of help from my in-laws before they retired; I just did it all myself when my second child was a baby. That was when I hugely appreciated my husband’s taking over the second child’s care when he got home from work.

9. Make sure you have plenty of friends and mentors—live and in person or online—to vent to and compare notes with. Support is critical.

10. Become very, very good at multitasking.

And when my third child was a toddler, I added these tips for my colleagues:

11. Occasionally, when cash flow is good, my toddler will spend three hours, three days a week, at the in-home day care center that my next-door neighbor runs. He doesn’t really need the care, but he gets to play with friends there. If you can make similar arrangements, you’ll get in some good working time.

12. Track your working time, which you’ll get in fits and starts, with time-tracking software that allows you to add up your work periods each day.

13. My office is in my kitchen [and it still is, in 2012], which flows into the living room without any interrupting walls. My husband put up baby gates so that the kitchen–living room area was like one giant playpen containing me and my toddler. This allows the toddler to run over to me and ask me to read books to him at my desk and then run off back to the living room to play. He naps right beside my desk. I nurse him to sleep on my lap as I work, and then when he’s soundly sleeping, I lower him into the rocking baby seat next to me. If you can set up your working space so that you and your child have quick access to each other, working with your child around will be much easier.

I became a freelance proofreader in 2006 when my daughter was two years old. I’d worked ‘in-house’ for a couple of publishing companies for 13 years prior to giving birth. Holding my tiny child in my arms, I realized that the concept of working ‘in-house’ was going to take on an entirely different meaning if I was going to earn some money and bring up my daughter in the way that I wanted to. Two years on, I was officially a work-at-home mother (WAHM).

One of the things that riles me most is when people ask me if I work now that my little girl is eight years old – as if I’m not working when I’m not proofreading!

Proofreading is never going to make me rich but it’s financially more lucrative than the other work I do on a daily basis: feeding the dog; feeding the child; feeding myself; driving said child to school; walking the dog; washing last night’s dishes; vacuuming all the previous day’s dog hair; proofreading; loading up the washing machine; more proofreading; hanging out the washing; back to proofreading; collecting the child from school; feeding the child; feeding the dog; updating my website and blog, as well as my LinkedIn and Facebook status, all usually while watching TV; feeding myself with the food that my husband has prepared (yes, he’s a gem). That’s my day in a nutshell.

I’ve chosen to focus on publisher clients and my publishing experience and training have allowed me to generate a core group of clients from whom I am regularly commissioned to proofread. This means I don’t have to spend a great deal of my day on marketing myself. In the beginning I sent out a lot of prospective letters; these days, new clients usually come through recommendations from current publisher clients or via the advertising I do in the freelance directory of the UK-based Society for Editors and Proofreaders’ (SfEP). The social networking I do is mainly about information sharing with other editors and proofreaders from all over the world. I’m happy to do this in the evening so that my proofreading work isn’t interrupted during the day.

Of course, when my daughter is on vacation, all the proofreading work has to be done in the evenings, too, but that’s the thing I love about being a WAHM – the flexibility is wondrous. I couldn’t conceive of going back into a structured office environment. I get to do a job I love without missing out on the school nativity play, the summer vacation trips to the beach, and my smiling girl’s arms around me after she’s walked out of the classroom at the end of the day. I didn’t miss out on her first words, her first steps, her first day at school, or her first (and last, actually) ballet lesson. And I get paid to read books.

It takes time, commitment, patience, and flexibility to build up a successful freelance business, but it takes all of the same things to be a parent, so perhaps it makes perfect sense to marry the two!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season! 2012 will be an exciting year for myself and my family as we have a few life changes coming along this year. I will take just a moment to reminisce of what happened in 2011, both personal and professional.

Started More Specifically freelance editing/writing business, along with this online blog and portfolio.
Moved into our very first home.
Paid off the last of our Credit Card debt.
Met wonderful colleagues on Twitter – I highly recommend this tool for every freelancer.

As 2012 starts, I am planning big changes for the year as we get ready to expand our family with our first born due in March. I am also looking forward to becoming a work at home mom (WAHM) as I transition to full time freelance.

I am officially taking the leap! My current full time job has graciously agreed to allow me to work with them on contract and that means I will work from their office two days a week. I am blessed to be able to continue working with them as well as take on more freelance editing clients. I will admit that i am nervous about the changes, but excited.

Thank you all who have encouraged me throughout this decision, especially those work from home moms who have gone before me and have been successful.

At only 244 pages, this book is not intimidating to anyone who is interested in knowing what Twitter is and how it works. As long as the reader understands basis computer knowledge, they should be able to read through this book and quickly become a twitter expert.

The authors write in easy to understand language and start right at the beginning, which is always a great place to start. The book takes them through how to set up an account, as well as defining the twitter lingo.

Anyone new to Twitter will be able to quickly understand the basics of how to use the site with the help of The Twitter Book. However, some of the information could become overwhelming at first, but be sure to keep The Twitter Book as a reference when you want to revisit old tweets, search for tweets, or have a chat.

As someone who originally did not see the benefits of Twitter and now am an active tweeter, I found the advanced information helpful, such as following live-event coverage and several searches.

The authors do a wonderful job of explaining all of the advanced extra websites that are associated with Twitter, such as TweetMeme to find out the most popular stories, or Topsy to keep track of links to your personal website. I find even the most advanced Tweeters do not know everything that Twitter can do on a regular basis using these sites.

Get The Twitter Book and start Tweeting!

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I want the iPad to be the answer to mobile marketing and running a business. However, the shortfalls keep it from being truly something this freelancer cannot live without. Part of my personal dilemma could be that I am a true PC girl at heart, so I do not have the aid of iPad-Mac compatibility.

I have found that although checking and replying to quick emails overall is a nice feature, especially with the app shortcut already signed in to my account, emailing clients is not always that easy. The example I will use is when I am emailing a client regarding a software feature or bug. There is back and forth email conversation, then they want to see a screenshot. I have the ability with the iPad to take the screenshot, but not the ability to add that picture to an email. Indeed, I can go to the image and tell it to email, but am not able to send a message with the picture or have it attached to the previous messages for reference.

I also do not like the idea of having to save files within each application. Again, as a PC girl, I like to search explorer and have all my client files together in one folder so they can be referenced later. Instead, I have a pdf file saved in the app for signing contracts, a file in documents program, as well as a file for the invoice. I personally use dropbox to keep track of my files between electronic devices. As stated in Part 1, every time I open the file on the iPad I must save a new local copy, leaving multiple versions.

I will add also that the last update caused me much anxiety because even with having a few backup versions of my iPad, other problems with the update led me to wonder if I would ever see my information again. Especially since some of those apps are the only places I have that information. There is really no way to access some of the information if not on the iPad itself. This would cause serious issues if the iPad had not recovered from it’s latest upgrade.

The tablet as a general electronic is a terrific piece of technology and I definitely see that in a few years, everyone will have to have an iPad and laptops will not be as abundant. Until then, I plan to keep mine around.

The first downfall is that there is no official Microsoft Office program. Documents To Go is a good app to view Microsoft Documents, but a local copy must be saved before the file can be edited. For me, this produces too many “versions” of the document and could be confusing. I want to open a document, make changes, and close out.

On a more personal note, my husband and I use an excel spreadsheet to track spending. I first felt the iPad would be great to add a quick entry, but it takes too much time to open the file, make a local copy, edit the file, and save the local copy to Dropbox. In all of that time, I could have my computer booted up, fixed the file, and saved.

I would love to hear opinions anyone has about how they have overcome shortfalls of the iPad.

After setting up my new routine, I decided it was finally time I update my iPad to the latest version. Before I initiated the update, I made sure to create a backup of all my beloved apps and files since the reason I have an iPad is to run my freelance business.

A successful backup was created. Then the update started…and then I received an error message that the update. Of course, the message was vague enough that I had no idea what that meant. I tried the update again only to see the same results even after a fresh reboot of my computer.

I am sure most of you have experienced that feeling of knowing that the way you had everything set up on your device was now lost in space only to be replaced by the “restore to factory settings”.

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