Handling work overload

In the process of progressing a freelancing career, there may be a fortunate position of you being inundated with more work than you can handle. If this is happening to you, what are the possible ways that you can handle such a situation. Though it is a fortunate situation, it requires careful handling in order to not to damage the client relationships.

Ok, to the possible ways that you can handle it:

Turn them Down

You can politely turn them down. Almost all clients will understand that you are not able to take on their projects due to your current commitments. This is something that you can do maybe a couple of times to a client and then the chances are that they may not come back to you in the future, because they may develop the presumption that you are fully booked.

Refer

You can refer them to a friend or a fellow freelancer. The clients will in most cases appreciate this option as you are recommending the another person and they will be a bit comfortable.

Again there are two downsides to this. If the person that you referred the business to does a good job the clients may give him/her preference over you for future projects. Almost all freelancers would not let go of a good client very easily. So if your client happens to be one of those gem of a client, the chances are your fellow freelancer will go out of his/her way to retain them.

The other end of this is if the person does a shoddy job, it will damage your reputation as well as your relations with the client as well. Since their decision to go with the person you recommended depended also on the trust your client has placed on you, this will result in clients’ trust in due getting diminished or even completely destroyed. So this is something that you should do with care.

Of course depending on your relationship with your colleague, you may earn a referral fee for the project that you referred as well as for any future work the client may give him. Or even better if you can get into a formal agreement with them both to say that this is a one time arrangement and that they cannot work together in future without your consent in future.

Subcontract

You can take on the job and subcontract it to another. This way, you are eliminating any risk of you losing your client in the long term. The client may feel comfortable as they are dealing with the same old you. But this option might end up adding an additional workload on you as now you will have to manage the subcontractor as well as ensure the output meets the quality level that the client is expecting from you. Also, be prepared to spend a significant amount of time in communications as now the communications flow through you.

Expand/Evolve

You can expand single you to a entity. This is the natural evolution of a freelancer unless you have a strong preference to stay as an independent freelancer. This is the birth of a company and there are quite a few successful companies that have started off in this manner, specially in the IT domain.

Personally this is my preferred option as well. I would like to build my freelancing career into something that is not solely dependant on my time. As a freelancer, my most precious commodity is my time. The amount of work I do is directly proportional to the time I can put into doing it. So my income becomes a direct function of my available time.

As with most of us, I came into freelancing seeking financial, creative and of course time independence. So the natural step I would take is to expand or evolve. I would like someday to be not working but still earning an income. The way to do this is to have others do the work for you. Of course, the chances are, even if I can afford to not to work, I’d still be working or developing something as I love what I do! But it is good to be working because you like what you do rather than because you have to!