Working More On Your Own Projects For Long-term Rewards

All too often freelance designers work so hard to find new clients that they forget to leave time for themselves to work on their own projects. They panic when they have no client work to do. It shouldn't be like that. I believe that designers should be happy to have a free time slot every now and then where they have no client work to do and can instead concentrate on their own projects and ideas.

Why shouldn't I just do as much client work as possible and make a lot of money?
Client work may earn you money in the short term, but what about the long term? When the project is finished, you will have to find a new client, as clients don't always have ongoing work for you.

So you jump from one project to the next, working against the clock and battling to keep up.

Working on your own projects on the other hand, will not pay off immediately, but can reap great long-term rewards.

You will work on something that you will WANT to work on, and not something that you HAVE to do if you want to have food on the table this month.

Additionally you will be building your own business, which will help you become independent and earn a lot more money than yo ever could doing freelance work.

How do I make time to work on my own stuff?
The next time you finish a project and are looking for a new one, leave some time in between the old project and the new one (how much time exactly you want to leave depends on you - it can be anything from a few days to a couple of months).

In that spare time, focus only on one thing: Building something cool.

It can be anything, from starting a blog or a service to creating a new product or even writing a book. The possibilities are endless and you can let your creativity run wild.

As a freelance designer, you are in a unique position because you have gathered experience in a wide range of fields working for different clients and you can now use all that experience to create your own products or what ever it is you want to do.

A great example of someone who has done this is Adriaan "Adii" Pienaar. He used to do freelance work for clients, doing web design and development.

As a side project, he created Premium News, a premium WordPress theme that caught on really well.

So well, in fact, that he, Magnus Jepson and Mark Forrester got together and built a whole business around it called Woothemes, which is now the most popular WordPress theme shop on the web.

The business Adriaan Pienaar, Magnus Jepson and Mark Forrester built together.

Additionally to Woothemes, he has built another business, Radiiate, which is a web design firm.

If he had not taken action and built Woothemes and Radiiate, Adii might still be freelancer, chasing after clients.

Do you have any cool ideas of something you would like to create? Tell us in the comments, we would love to hear them!