When You Have TOO MUCH Work

For many freelancers there is a period where they are doing everything they can to find work and get their first few engagements, but with ongoing marketing and the development of a portfolio/good reputation you may find yourself in the enviable position of having more work than you can manage. Nice problem to have, but a problem none the less. You still only have so many hours in the week and you didn’t become a freelancer to work around the clock! Flexibility and work-life balance are the most common reasons for people wanting to be freelancers, so managing too much work is a necessary skill. Here’s a few ideas:

1. Raise Your Prices
   If you are getting offered more work than you can handle, the first thing to consider is raising your fees. Some of your potential clients will not be willing to pay the higher rate, but others will and you then increase the return on your time. Also, recognise that with experience your skills are improving and so it is normal for what you charge to go up. If you were in employment you would expect regular increases in pay, why shouldn’t you expect the same as a freelancer? Hopefully you’re investing time in learning new skills and improving your entrepreneurial ability and so it is logical for your rates to go up. When there is more demand for your services than you have time for is the perfect time to raise your rates. This will score two goals: you’ll earn more per hour and you’ll decrease your workload to a manageable level.
2. Improve Your Business Conditions
   Another way to constrict demand of your services is use this as an opportunity to improve your business conditions. This might look like asking for 60% payment up front or even payment in full before you take on the work. This reduces your risk of clients being late with payment (or not at all). You will not have to spend time chasing payment which is time you can put to more productive activities. Again, not all your potential clients will agree to this but you’ve currently got more work than you can handle – demand outstrips supply – so this is a good time to limit that demand through raising your business conditions. (Shout out to Robert Vlach, author of The Freelance Way who raised this suggestion in a podcast interview with Matt Dowling).
3. Farm the Work Out to Others
   If potential clients want you to take on work it is possible for you to sub-contract that work out to other trusted partners and take a cut for managing the work. You will first need some trusted partners or colleagues you can take on, but you should be spending time networking with others who do similar work to you to be part of a community. You never know when you might need this community. There is a grey area whether you need to tell the potential client that you won’t actually be delivering the work. This doesn’t have to be presented as something nefarious either, you can simply say that your business is growing and you are taking on some additional staff to help you deliver exceptional results for your client. This happens all the time. At the same time, you will need to do quality control on the work, so I don’t think it’s ethically wrong to not say anything to the client. They are getting a solution overseen by you and you are engaging someone to help you deliver the result. An important consideration is that if you are busy this solution is still going to take time as you are going to have to source the individual, agree terms, monitor their work and maintain communication with the client – so this may not solve your problem of being busy though it does allow you to increase your productivity per hour and therefore increase your earning capability! This is also the first step towards growing from a freelance business to a small business. Only you can decide if this fits in with your longer-term plans or not.

When you first started out  you probably dreamed of having this much work, so use this as a moment to acknowledge how far you’ve come. This is a significant milestone in the journey of being a freelancer. The above suggestions are three possible ways you might deal with this situation of having too much work.

Which one looks most attractive to you?