Full time freelancing off to a great start

I was planning on updating this blog on a more regular basis now that I am a full time entrepreneur/freelancer. But due to a heavy workload, a little bit beyond what I can cope up with at the moment, that had to be put on back burner for a week.

Getting back to the topic, as I mentioned in my last post, I was converting to a full time freelancer/entrepreneur from the beginning of this month. I hung up my boots as a paid employee on the 31st of March, handed over all the company equipment that were in my possession, gave up all the corporate benefits that I enjoyed (really? Were there any?) and stepped out to the uncertain world of freelancing.

Luckily I had a project lined up, which was a short term one month project for a client/friend in UK. They were already pushing me to start it ASAP, so I knew that there were not going to be any work less days for me. I was going from one project for my employer to another project for my own boss! Then there was another prospect that was hanging by a rope because the client and I could not seem to find a convenient time to discuss the project. I only had half a hope pinned on that.

So I started on the project A and at the same time started to chase the project hanging on a rope. For my luck that too worked out. I had attempted to secure that project as it had mentioned that was a part time project which required only 20 hours a week. So I started it at that. But just three days into it, the client informed me that he may have 40 hours a week worth of work for me. This put me in a little dilemma as I wanted to work on a freelance gig for only half my time and wanted to dedicate the rest of the time towards building my business.

But I opted to take up the offer as this client is also looking for a off shore team to carry on his work. He has no intention of building a team in the USA but wants to work exclusively with outsourced developers. If I play all my cards right, this should open up an opportunity for me to convert this client from being a personal client of mine to a client of my company, where the company can set up an offshore team for him. With this idea in mind, I agreed to take up the additional workload.

So in a nutshell, my freelance career has had a very good start as far as the assignments are considered. Now I am concentrating on completing my project A and the tasks for my second client and am not even looking at any other opportunities out there. When I was in the planning stages I was hoping to spend about 10% of my time in actively marketing/bidding on projects and was considering expanding my search beyond oDesk to my professional network, other freelancing/job sites like eLance.com etc. But so far, I have not had the need to explore these other avenues.

To be honest I think I will need to focus more on being productive at home and learn to manage the distractions. Being with the kids the whole day has its share of distractions and it is very easy to drop the work and do something else. I feel as if I am on leave from work and this naturally brings in a lethargy. But I am slowly trying to develop a rhythm and working pattern to overcome this I am on leave mood. And I will keep those strategies I adopt to become productive as a freelancer recorded on this blog.